Ideas in Antiquity Week 7
I truly loved this week’s reading. The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer is defintely on my top five list for my favorite play, never surpassing Hamilton which has a special spot in my little heart. Thank you Lin Manuel Miranda for such an amazing play, incredible songs for me to sing all day, and most importantly for giving me plenty of new celebrity crushes. Lord knows how fine that original cast is *inserts heart eyes*. Listen to Ten Duel Commandments, Cabinet Battle #2, My Shot, and The Room Where It Happens and tell me you don’t wanna go watch the whole play now (you know you do, p.s. it’s on Disney+).
Back to the point though, the Normal Heart was such a good read for me. I love a good play that’s retable to modern society but there’s one thing I love more. Sarcastic and overall bomb characters. Ned and Emma literally made me laugh, drop my jaw, and yell out period once or twice (I may or may have not gotten yelled at by my siblings/mom for this). I loved how unfiltered this play, like my mouth at times, is. I hate when real issues get sugar coated and watered down to please people. This world is a cruel place filled with greed, hatred, and overall nasty things, people, and GERMS. People need to know nothing but the raw truth in order to make the change we need. So let’s get started with this analysis, shall we?
The HIV pandemic started in this story with Dr. Emma Brookner. She is truly an amazing badass female doctor who stands up to men despite being in a wheelchair. She has no filter, a “no bullshit” attitude, and acts as a mother who fights long and hard for her patients. Beginning with 16 of her now 28 diagnosed patients now dead, she struggled with certainty as she didn’t even have a proper name for the disease that’s making her patients drop like flies. This scene helped set a strong yet controversial beginning through my second favorite character, Ned. Ned is that one friend that you can’t go to certain places with unless you have sneakers and Vaseline cause we all know, you’re going to fight someone.
Ned spoke on one of the most important parts of leadership, connections or relationships as we know it in this course. The main reason for the spread of this disease was sex. Sex is something, in both this play and even the lives of people today, that drives and acts as a key point in relationships. In this modern day first, sex or sexiness in terms of attraction helps form beauty standards. The ideal body in society is usually someone with long hair, Brazilian type body/curves, and a “pretty” face. While different people can have these, this image is one that ruins people’s self confidence and bank accounts. Plastic surgery is a growing industry as it brought in over $16.5 Billion in the year 2018 alone. People spend thousands of dollars just to look better in the eyes of potential sexual partners and to get love. Love is the most prevalent theme in this story as it is what all the men are looking for. Hell, love is what everyone in these modern times are looking for.
Everyone craves some type of connection in order to feel better in this cold, harsh world. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it can get quite dangerous as people do reckless things out of desperation. I myself have been guilty of this. I have stepped out of my character, been used, and given one too many chances to people more toxic than arsenic. I have also witnessed people become hyper-sexual just to have someone stay in their life to fill an empty void. Hypersexuality is what drove this play and the disease that conquered and took over their lives. While there were people like Dr. Emma Brookner who thought the men in this play could just stop having sex, things just weren’t that simple.
Sex in this story made the characters feel more human. As openly gay men in the 80s, anyone who identified themselves as a part of the LGBTQ+ community were seen as disgusting, deserving of the HIV epidemic, and faced significant amounts of discrimination. It also didn't help that like today, the President of the United States at the time was openly against them and their lifestyle. The only way they felt accepted was by having sex despite the unknown disease being spread around their friend groups. Another way they gained acceptance was by forming an organization that accepted them.
The Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) was the organization founded by the leading characters in the play. This organization served as a safe house for all as it sponsored fundraisers for AIDS research and offered various helpful services including: counseling, a telephone hotline, and other services. While it was helpful, the biggest problem in it was the leadership. The most controversey came with the electing of the president. Instead of electing Ned, the actual founder who has a very smart mouth, the other founding members chose Bruce.
Bruce was both a good and bad leader. He was good as he had prior experience with his Vice President experience at Citibank. He was also pretty passionate about the organization’s initiatives and had a pretty face to back it up. The bad parts of his leadership also involved his face as he was still in the closet and scared to lose his job. I as a reader understood where he was coming from in that aspect because if I had $20 million dollars worth of investments, I would want to hide too. It’s great to be passionate and lead but sometimes there are other priorities/needs people need to attend to. Ned would have been a great president if he understood this and basically anything other than himself. Ned’s selfishness is his tragic flaw as he is very narcissistic and doesn’t consider others when he makes his radical decisions.
Ned served as a great back up leader but he struggled with understanding the emotions of the people he wanted to leave. It’s great to be proud of yourself and your identity but what he failed to realized is that not everyone is like you!! I feel that myself and my fellow leaders have all struggled with this at some point in their leadership experience. I am still working on this as I can come off very bossy like Ned and have a “my way or the highway” kind of attitude with certain things. This causes both Ned and I to believe that our decisions are okay because it’s right in our minds and we are a good representation of the group. True leaders honestly don’t represent everyone exactly and that is actually okay. Leadership is all about addressing people’s needs so as long as that part is covered, that’s all that really matters.
Ned unfortunately didn’t get that part of leadership down. He instead decided to focus on Felix and keep doing what he was doing. His extreme passion drove him only to destruction and sadness. Luckily, he had a great person to help him learn some valuable lessons. Felix, being Ned’s lover, served as a great mentor. He softened up Ned’s cold, hard heart while showing him another side to himself. Although he himself was battling HIV in his own body, he made sure to address everyone one of Ned’s needs in the short time he had left. He made sure he was set financially and knew he was loved.
The love between these two is something I aspire to have. While I hope neither one of us is terminally ill, I do hope to have someone who can teach me something about myself without making me go crazy/out of my character (yes that’s a sub and I don’t care). Felix taught Ned in the end to slow down and have compassion for others. I wish the two of them had more time as I feel that Ned could have really benefitted and truly grown into a better leader with his help. Unfortunately, all good things do eventually come to an end.
Another mentor that I feel helped Ned was his brother Ben. These two have the most interesting relationship in this play. As brothers, they have a special connection as they’ve been through some of the hardest points of their lives together. Ben is an extremely successful lawyer who tries yet struggles to fully understand and accept Ned and his sexuality. Ned, knowing this, overcompensates in order to gain his approval. Their relationship reveals a new side to Ned as it makes readers understand why he behaves that way. Ned is loud and overly confident as he’s simply scared to be like his father.
And chile… I can relate. I grew up struggling with guidance too as I never knew my place in the world. None of my peers were like me or fully understood my history and hence my behavior. I always felt that I had to be on top or no one would be proud of me. Or like Ben, I would be seen as weak. Both of us have severe identity issues. Our names have powerful meanings but it takes something traumatic to unlock it at times. His real name, being Alexander, shows his greatness and huge amount of strength. Mine on the other hand is a variation of the word “desire.” My parents saw my name as a symbol of strength and perseverance as I survived being a triplet as my twin brothers passed away next to me. The purpose of my name was to show that I would have anything I wanted or “desired” in my case.
And you know what? The name actually does fit. I grew up to be someone who knows what she wants and does everything to get it. Now while I don’t go around and say the most jaw-dropping things like my friend Ned, I do work extremely hard to defy people’s expectations. But I do get it and him though. It’s hard trying to be someone great when there’s no one who truly gets you. If there are two pieces of advice I’d give Ned, they are: “be the guidance you’re looking for” and “patience is key”. Good things come to those that wait but there are moments where you have to take a leap of faith. If Ned knew where to draw the line between these two, he would have been an amazing leader of his organization.
He unfortunately never got the chance to show it as he got kicked out. However, where one door closes another will open. Overall, this story really taught me to slow down and look around. Everything may seem like it needs to be rushed but time really does heal things.
Like I always say, what’s good with the next story y’all????
