Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Angels in America Tony Kushner essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Angels in America Tony Kushner essay
This paper will discuss Tony Kushner’s Angels in America - A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, published in 1992. The play gives insight into what it meant to be a gay American in the late 20th century showing accurate depictions of social, medical, religious, and political life. The importance of this play cannot be overlooked as even a decade after the premier, the play was dubbed as “one of the most important pieces of theater to come out of the late 20th century” (Odenwald). One question remains, is the play still relevant today? By using a post-structuralist approach this paper attempts a queer theory deconstruction of the text looking for contradictions and the ways it empowers the underlying conflictory motif.
Considering the fact that today’s political and social climate is very much like the one discussed in the play, it is well worth trying to find out if said play is indeed still relevant. In doing so we will look at issues of disease, sexuality, binary systems, and conflict trying to show how a play that talks of the queer fails in actually being a play about the queer.
In a very distinctive manner the play works on the basis of the self versus the other paradigm. Said paradigm comes to show how the world of New York is taking shape in a heteronormative way. If everything has a place, and order, a specific way of functioning then the play would be the villain destroying the context and trying to recreate something new- free of bias and prejudice. The question of boundary, specifically, social boundary arises from the need to understand (outside of the play) the plurality and versatility an actor must have. While social boundaries have been created in order to discourage people from crossing, or mixing gender roles and...
... middle of paper ...
...not walk the walk. In other words, Millennium approaches, but, to what avail?
Works Cited
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009. Print.
Fausto-Sterling, Anne (March/April 1993). "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough". The Sciences: 20–24.
Kusher, Tony. Angels in America: Parts 1 & 2, Nick Hern Books, London, 2007
Odenwald, Dan. "Soaring Angels." : Angels in America on HBO: TV Section: Metro Weekly. Washington, D.C.'s Gay & Lesbian News Magazine, 4 Dec. 2003. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. .
Theberge, Nancy. "'It’s Part of the Game’: Physicality and the Production of ender in Women’s Hockey.” In The Gendered Society Reader, edited by Michael S. Kimmel, Amy Aronson, and Amy Kaler, 73-80. Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press, 2011.
It’s safe to say that Kushner’s “Angels in America”, is one of the most famous plays to explore the topic of homosexuality. Joe 's character represents
Both parts of Tony Kushner's play Angels in America paint a painfully truthful picture of what gay men go through. In most cases, they suffer either inner anguish or public torment. Sometimes they must endure both. Being homosexual in America is a double-edged sword. If you publicly announce that you are gay, you suffer ridicule and are mocked by the ignorant of society; but if you keep your homosexuality a secret, you are condemned to personal turmoil. Kushner's work attempts to make America take a close look at itself and hopefully change its ways. The fear of public scrutiny forces many gay men into a life of denial and secrecy.
... homosexual being felt in the world around the 1970’s and 1980’s. The time period in which this play was written was one of great dissonance to the LGBT movement. For Harvey Fierstein to be so bold and public with his own lifestyle was truly admirable and brave. Fierstein shows us that ignorance can destroy a life because of what is unknown.
Ice hockey, a sport that has been in existence for over two hundred years, has become a fan favorite across the globe. From Canada to Sweden, you will be able to find some of the best ice hockey players in the world; both male and female. This pastime has instilled a unique tradition throughout the years of its practice by a combination of both physical skill and mental strength. Although it did not provide aid to globalization, it has created a worldwide culture that many people are proud to be a part of. Since its inception until now, there has been a great deal of gender stereotyping concerning the sport. Regardless, ice hockey will continue to be a lucrative market, as well as a cherished hobby for many years to come.
This essay sets out to distinguish how male characters can be portrayed in the same fashion as their female counterparts, and therefore become subjected to the same erotic objectification. This will be researched under the circumstances that the production revolves around gay characters and the assumed audience is exchanged from a homogenous crowd of heterosexual spectators, to a homogenous crowd of homosexual spectators. To support this claim there will be references to a segment from the American remake of the television series Queer as Folk (USA, dev. Ron Cowen, Daniel Lipman, 2000-2005) where Brian Kinney (Gale Harold) and Justin Taylor (Randy Harris) first meet.
Throughout various mediums, queer and gender portrayals are not shown in the best light. Majority of media show clear negative connotations of homosexuals and queens while constantly being a target of discrimination and ridicule. Though as time went on many writers decided to speak up and gain awareness for queer and gender biases by incorporating messages of societal discrimination in their plays. Much of their ideals were that of how sexual/gender identity portrayal, lifestyle stigma, and preconceived notions of the homosexual community. These ideals were combined in what is called gender studies and queer literary theory. Some of these concepts and ideas of queer and gender theory can be seen throughout the play
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford, 2011. Print.
In 1979, Caryl Churchill wrote a feminist play entitled Cloud Nine. It was the result of a workshop for the Joint Stock Theatre Group and was intended to be about sexual politics. Within the writing she included a myriad of different themes ranging from homosexuality and homophobia to female objectification and oppression. “Churchill clearly intended to raise questions of gender, sexual orientation, and race as ideological issues; she accomplished this largely by cross-dressing and role-doubling the actors, thereby alienating them from the characters they play.” (Worthen, 807) The play takes part in two acts; in the first we see Clive, his family, friends, and servants in a Victorian British Colony in Africa; the second act takes place in 1979 London, but only twenty-five years have passed for the family. The choice to contrast the Victorian and Modern era becomes vitally important when analyzing this text from a materialist feminist view; materialist feminism relies heavily on history. Cloud Nine is a materialist feminist play; within it one can find examples that support all the tenets of materialist feminism as outlined in the Feminism handout (Bryant-Bertail, 1).
...iking play, Tennessee Williams poses a question to society, as to whether or not these representations are accurate.
When I think of what it means to be Canadian, one of the first things that come to mind is hockey. This is true for many Canadian’s as hockey was and is an integral piece of the formation of the national identity. However, when people think of playing hockey their attention usually turns to the men in the National Hockey League or other top men’s leagues and tournaments. Even so, Canada has come a long way from its beginnings, when women were not even considered persons under the law until 1929. While it has taken many decades for women to receive more recognition in the world of sport, today shows great improvements from the past. A key reason that women are not treated the same way as men in regards to hockey is due to how the game began;
In Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, the interconnection of people and events, that might ordinarily be viewed as disconnected or unrelated, is implicitly presented in the characters section. Dual roles are implemented by a playwright that has one actor portraying the roles of two or more characters, with or without thematic intentions. The use of “dual roles” in several scenes of this play can be viewed as a demonstration of Kushner’s effort in maintaining the interconnectedness between characters, communities (i.e. queer, heterosexual, AIDS and political communities) and events to which they are relative. This essay will argue that Kushner’s use of dual role’s effectively interconnects characters, events and their communities that may be seen as usually unrelated. Analysis of four specific characters, Antarctica, Oceania, Australia and Europa, in Act Five, Scene Five of “Perestroika”, will demonstrate the connection of each Act Five, Scene Five character, to the actors main character based on the implicit evidence presented in the actors “primary” and “secondary” roles, the scenes dialogue and the character interactions. As one will see, by implementing dual roles, Kushner is able to expand or preserve the concept of a major character while the actor portrays another character, keeping the audience from having to completely renegotiate their knowledge between what they physically see of new characters and actually use the new context to view triumphs and struggles for a major character.
Fausto-Sterling, A. (1993, April) The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough Retrieved from http://moodle.csun.edu
Tony Kushner’s play, Angels in America, comments on a number of social issues of its time; ranging from political to societal. Additionally, it incorporates many concepts discussed in the Modern Condition courses. Thinkers such as Nietzsche, Borges, and DeBeauvoir are specifically represented in the play through the characters presented. Kushner uses his characters to convey the ideas of these thinkers in the context of the culture the play takes place in.
Barry, P. (2009) Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory. 3rd edn. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 216.
...d of the play who goes against order, or their given role of society is deemed unnatural. This becomes problematic because of the constraints it places on the acceptable of any change in society. Forgiveness and love are not attainable within this worldview.