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Brokeback Need Not Be Brokeforward
Still Angry After All These Years
Still Angry
After All These Years
Larry
Kramer Visits Middlebury College
by
Ernie McLeod
Say
the words "Larry Kramer" in a crowd of gay people old
enough to remember the 1980s and you’re likely to provoke strong
responses. To some, Kramer is the prophet who recognized and spoke the
truth about AIDS when most chose to bury their heads in the sand. To others,
Kramer is the sex-hating curmudgeon, blinded by a tunnel-vision anger
that’s outlived its usefulness. Reactions to Larry Kramer sometimes
overshadow his accomplishments as a writer and activist.
Kramer was in Vermont recently, participating
in a two evening
salute to his life and work at Middlebury College. The first night featured
a screening of the 1969 film "Women in Love," which Kramer wrote
and produced, based on the D.H. Lawrence novel. After the screening, Kramer
discussed the making of the film, now available on DVD with his commentary,
including the infamously homoerotic fireside wrestling match between Alan
Bates and Oliver Reed.
The second evening focused on Kramer’s
activism and creative work since the beginnings of the AIDS crisis. Kramer
has been HIV-positive for many years and received a liver transplant in
2001.
The program began with a student reading
excerpts from Kramer's award-winning 1985 play, "The Normal Heart,"
which chronicles the fear, ignorance, helplessness, and apathy that defined
the plague's early years. "Every word is applicable today,"
Kramer later noted.
Middlebury College Dean David Edleson
then spoke eloquently
about what Larry Kramer has meant to him personally and to all of us who
have benefited from his activism. Edleson said that Kramer has "saved
countless lives by his voice," adding that he thinks people too often
focus on Kramer's anger, failing to see the "profound love"
behind the rage.
Whatever one might think of Kramer's
methods, his importance as an activist can't be disputed. In addition
to being a founder of both Gay Men's Health Crisis and, later, ACT UP,
Kramer published the now famous 1983 "1,112 and Counting" essay
in the "New York Native."
"If this article doesn't scare
the shit out of you, we're in real trouble," Kramer began before
lashing out in every possible way at the massive denial surrounding AIDS
at that time. The article indeed scared many, and is now considered a
turning point in forcing people to wake up to the fact that people were
dying and AIDS wasn't going to disappear.
After the admiring introduction
and a standing ovation from the large crowd in Dana Auditorium, Kramer
responded with, "I never know what to say when people say nice things
about me."
Once he got over the temporary loss
of words, the rest of the
evening centered on a speech Kramer delivered five days after the re-election
of George W. Bush, titled "The Tragedy of Today's Gays." The
speech (published in book form by Penguin last year) is quintessential
Kramer: passionate, caring, furious, relentless.
Not surprisingly, the Bush administration
and the religious right come under scathing attack, but so do most of
the rest of us. At several points in the speech he repeats: "I love
being gay. I love gay people. I think we're better than other people.
I really do. I think we're smarter and more talented and more aware. I
do, I do, I totally do. I really do think all of these things. And I try
very hard to remember all this." Then he takes us to task again for
our passivity, our lack of responsibility.
Regarding the state of gay rights
and the gay movement in this country, Kramer offered this assessment:
"America has been taken away from us. We have no power. We have no
place in the social structure of this country." He believes that
the country has been "so infiltrated by people who hate us"
that it doesn't matter who the president is. He traces the right wing
"cabal" back to a 1971 plan devised by Lewis Powell that emphasizes
unified action backed by heavy financing.
In other words: they have it,
we don't. Whereas some might point to LGBT advancements over the past
decades - non-discrimination laws, partnership rights, more effective
AIDS treatments, media presence, for example - Kramer believes that "we
haven't moved very far at all."
Kramer stressed the need to
"find, isolate, and claim our heroes." He puts Abraham Lincoln
at the top of this list and points to C.A. Tripp's book "The Intimate
World of Abraham Lincoln" as a step in the right direction; noting
that heterosexual scholars have generally tried to dismiss Tripp's study
or any attempts to claim Lincoln as a gay man. "We have to go out
and get our history," he told the students, decrying the current
trend towards gender studies, which he writes off as "gobbledygook."
A panel discussion with participation
by Middlebury students and faculty followed Kramer's remarks. Kramer's
answers to the panel's questions, and to questions from the audience,
were as blunt and harsh as his earlier statements. As people searched
in vain for glimmers of hope amid his grim prognoses, a pall descended
over the room, causing Kramer to joke finally, "I hope everyone isn't
going to go home and slit their wrists." He reiterated his conviction
that vinegar, not honey, brings about change; citing the ultimate success
of ACT UP's confrontational style that’s become the model for other
activist groups. He separated his "despair at the world" from
his currently happy personal life.
Lobbed into the politically correct
bubble of academia, Kramer's
brutal candor seemed not unlike a detonating bomb. After Kramer's
departure from campus, some students spoke of feeling offended, while
others felt empowered and inspired to take immediate action.
At the end of the day, however, what
one thinks of Larry Kramer doesn't really matter, least of all to Kramer
himself. What matters is what we do when people like him - if in fact
there's anyone else like him – aren't ranting and pointing fingers.
Towards the end of the discussion, Kramer was asked what moved him to
take action. "I like to fight and just that," he responded.
"I love educating myself. I love seeing how awful people are."
It's easy to disagree with Larry
Kramer. Faulting the force of his convictions is more difficult.
Ernie McLeod writes and photographs in Middlebury and Montréal.