AIDS Politics Is Local: Narratives of Plague and Place in the Culture Wars

Abstract

The fourth chapter brings the project to the close of the twentieth century, beginning with Robert Mapplethorpe's final exhibition The Perfect Moment and concluding with Tony Kushner's play Angels in America. Both works were protested for their celebration of non-heteronormative desire and identity, and both provoked discussions about sexual morality in the context of the AIDS epidemic, crystallizing major nuances in obscenity discourses. Because same-sex desire had historically been assumed to fulfill the legal criterion that something be offensive in order to merit suppression, these frank texts challenge this presumption while engaging in deliberate acts of LGBTQ+ visibility. The regional challenges that resulted when the works toured also highlight the importance of local politics in determining the fate of transgressive sexual representations, as they were celebrated in some locales and picketed or prosecuted in others. Because Supreme Court rulings on obscenity include provisions that works can be banned if they violate community standards, obscenity prosecutions often do take on such local characteristics, demonstrating the complex legacy of obscenity cases.