How to Survive a Plague: The Power of Empathy
Per UNAIDS approximately 39.9 million people around the globe are currently living with Human immunodeficiency viruses, or HIV. Since the beginning of the epidemic, approximately 42.3 million people have died of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, related illnesses (UNAIDS). Those numbers are mind-boggling. People tend to have a hard time comprehending numbers that high. The average person will meet only a small fraction of both people living with HIV and those who have died of it. When thinking about these statistics, we should zero in on number one – we should think of one person in the world currently living with aids, one person who died of AIDS-related illnesses. It’s important to think about this person, imagine their hobbies, their favorite music genre, a pet peeve that drives them crazy, the people they loved, a restaurant they frequented – we should think about this one person and who they are, or were, to understand and humanize these statistics. It’s easy to see numbers and shrug them off, forcing our subconscious to move on, because they’re just numbers, right? But it is a lot harder to think of every single one of those digits as a unique, complicated, human being and move on. Empathy is vital in understanding any epidemic, and it’s certainly vital in understanding an epidemic that hit marginalized groups as it did. A lack of empathy for the LGBTQ+ community is a giant factor in why the numbers I listed above are as high as they are. In the documentary, How to Survive a Plague, directed by David France, we see activists fight and fight for years for that empathy.
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This isn’t a fictional film. It’s a documentary that details the activism of AIDs groups such as ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and TAG (Treatment Action Group) in the 1980s through 1990s fighting the United States Government, drug companies, the Catholic church, and the public perception of HIV and AIDs. This film is made of compiled footage and interviews, not of fictional characters that are derived from the minds of writers. The people we see on the screen are or were real people. This documentary does a great job of letting the audience get to know some of these activists, to get us to care about them beyond the screen we see them on. Kenneth MacKinnon writes in Movies and AIDS, “It seems inevitably to be the case in mainstream movies that AIDS is looked at “from the outside” since AIDS is assumed to be a gay disease. Whether that outside is from the normal-family perspective or heterosexual vision, paradoxically, as if AIDS cannot be looked at for any length of time – or at all” (171-172). In How to Survive a Plague, though it differs from mainstream media in that it’s a documentary, it forces the audience to look at it. They take the camera and put us right beside people in AIDS activist groups and people who have AIDS. There is no looking in from the outside when this film intends for its audience to get to know these people on a personal level and to care about them and the work they are doing.
For example, we came to care about activist Bob Rafsky through an introduction to his family, including his daughter and the mother of his daughter, and his dedication to this cause. There’s a moment when Rafsky, along with other ACT UP members, sit in at DAIICHI Pharmaceutical Companies, and he points at the man in charge and says, “Because you’re the man fucking responsible! You are my murderer in your shirt and tie!” (1:06:25 – 1:06:25). It’s a powerful moment, where we see this man’s pain and his anger. It’s raw and honest. We are granted access to pieces of this man’s life, and to hole his death left. Historically, when marginalized groups are affected negatively compared to the majority, people tend to look the other way, or even cheer it on. This moment, among others in the film, presents to us the humanity that not only lies beyond the political activism groups but also what lies at the heart of them. It goes back to the notion of garnering empathy. When we look at them as just numbers, it’s hard to see them as anything other than statistics, but How to Survive a Plague makes sure that humanity is at the core of this film, because that truly is the most important part of truly understanding the AIDs epidemic and the activism that sprung from it.
How to Survive a Plague plays with images, thus plays with its audience’s perception of AIDS. There are plenty of instances in this film in which we see the physical effects of AIDS. For example, the opening images of the documentary are of different people in hospital beds, who are suffering from the symptoms of AIDS. The first thing we see is the shocking truth of just how damaging this disease can be to the human body. The second image we see is of a small, crowded room, filled with people, bustling and lively, as everyone listens to the determined voice of two others standing on top of a table, introducing the ACT UP movement. In The Melancholia of AIDS: Interview with Douglas Crimp, Crimp said, “On one hand, we were fighting against the notion that AIDS is an inevitable death sentence, and on the other hand, we wanted it known that people were dying from a terrible disease” (Takemoto 85). This film doesn’t shy away from the cold, hard truth of this disease, but it spears those images of strife and hardship with moments of resilience. A prime example of pain and resilience coming together is when ACT UP marched on the White House carrying the ashes of loved ones who had passed from AIDS. There’s a moment where these protestors dump the ashes on George Bush’s front lawn, chanting “shame!”, and then embrace each other with tears in their eyes (1:21:24 - 1:22:39). On one hand, there’s the cold reality that these people are protesting even in their death, but their power in the act, in the fact that these people, even in their grief, organized and demanded better of our leaders. This film presents this act as one that was inundated with an undercurrent of grief, sorrow, and pain, and they didn’t shy away from that truth. What they did was show us that reality, and juxtapose it with the images of strength, rage, and determination that sprung from that pain.
Overall, How to Survive a Plague is a powerful and moving piece of media. It shines a light on a tragic time in our history by not shying away from the sorrow, but also emphasizing the resilience of the movement and its people – particularly the resilience of queer folk in the face of homophobia, illness, and death. It falls a little short for me in terms of its representation, however. The leadership of groups like ACT UP was indeed comprised of white men, and the film portrays this truth, but women and people of color have always been integral in movements of progress. While I was pleased to see women activists being included as they were, I felt that the inclusion of people of color was less than I had expected. Historically speaking, the LGBTQ movements – namely white people - haven’t always given the proper gratitude to BIPOC activists, such as Marsha P. Johnson, who was a very prominent figure in the Stonewall protests. Considering this is an educational film, I think it would have been more truthful about the AIDS crisis had it given more of a spotlight to BIPOC activists who were fighting for equality, their lives, and the lives of their loved ones just as everyone else was. This film does do a great job of educating its audience, while also striking up sympathy and deep emotion. Its biggest success it’s just how well it portrays humanity in a time of great dehumanization.
Works Cited
Crimp, Douglas. “The
Melencolia and AIDS: An Interview with David Crimp.” Tina Takemoto. Art
Journal, 2003, pp. 81-90.
MacKinnon,
Kenneth. “Movies and AIDS.” The Politics of Popular Representation: Reagan,
Thatcher, AIDS, and the Movies, 1992, pp. 168-187.
“Global HIV &
AIDS statistics — Fact sheet” UNAIDS, 2024, https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet.
Accessed 4 Sept. 2024.
How to Survive
a Plague. Directed by David France, Public Square Films, 2012.
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