Rsell T Davi ss down wh Nick Leve to discs his new seri rooted the 80s Aids crisis, LGBTQ reprentatn on screen and straight actors playg gay characters
Contents:
- IT’S A S IS A LOVE LETTER TO 1980S GAY CULTURE – AND HATE MAIL TO THE ERA’S HOMOPHOBIC HEGEMONY
- IT’S A S CREATOR RSELL T DAVI: “CAST GAY AS GAY”
IT’S A S IS A LOVE LETTER TO 1980S GAY CULTURE – AND HATE MAIL TO THE ERA’S HOMOPHOBIC HEGEMONY
The acclaimed HBO Max seri, featurg a largely LGBTQ st, tells the story of a group of gay men and their iends London the early 1980s at the begng of the HIV/AIDS crisis, shg a light on a dark chapter that's been fadg om memory. * it's a sin gay scene *
Do you serly thk there is an illns that only kills gay men? It n lculate that you're gay and kill you, but only if you're gay and no one else?
How n tell you're gay? Takg part the nversatn are Lisa Power, a -founr of LGBT chary Stonewall who also volunteered for Swchboard durg the Aids crisis; the Rev Richard Col, the vir of Fedon Northamptonshire and former member of the pop group the Communards; Marc Thompson, an HIV activist, the director of the Love Tank CIC and the -founr of PrEPster; Guardian lumnist and thor Owen Jon; Omari Douglas, who plays the character Rose It’s a S; and Jason Okundaye, a wrer and the -founr of Black & Gay, back the day, a digal archive honourg and rememberg black queer life those of you who lived through the perd, what memori did watchg the show brg back? Richard Col: My first engagement wh Aids was through the gay prs – there were mours of this “gay ncer” that was happeng Ameri.
Then the first person close to me who died was the activist Mark Ashton, who was a very signifint person on the gay scene. I remember movg through the phas: what is this thg that is killg gay men?
IT’S A S CREATOR RSELL T DAVI: “CAST GAY AS GAY”
Rsell T. Davi's "betifully gay" seri creat an evotive, personal time psule of an 1980s London bet by the Aids crisis. * it's a sin gay scene *
Seeg all the ath and the neglect, the rpons om fai … What Rsell T Davi also ptured was the accuracy of the gay muny at the time, the early 80s: the ropey pubs wh dirty dancefloors, snoggg for those of you who didn’t, did the show add to your knowledge or unrstandg of that era? I’m 24, and lookg at that perd I had always thought of as a dragged-feet rponse om homophobic ernments. Somethg that is said the show [by Olly Alexanr’s character, Rchie] that really moved me was about beg the perfect vis to nfirm people’s homophobia.
I was born 1984, so wrapped up the homophobia of the playground at the time was the stigma of HIV/Aids. Beg gay was nflated wh the evabily of gettg HIV and dyg of Aids.
That was a time when sectn 28 was place and there were anti-gay laws; we didn’t have tn about as was illegal to talk about LGBTQ issu the classroom. And black gay men were disproportnately, and ntue to be disproportnately, affected by That’s really tertg to hear Marc.
* it's a sin gay scene *
In dog my rearch beme glargly obv to me that I had to dig to fd any documentatn of black gay life the 80s. It opened my ey to how we actually document black gay history. We need more ways to immortalise the black gay, you’ve also spoken before about how black gay men and black Ain women worked together durg the Communi across the board me together.
There was this disnnect between black Ain muni and gay muni.
Ocsnally there was a b-up and there was homophobia, racism and misogyny. Some of the whe gay men that we worked wh at the time have certaly learned a lot and are now some of the greatt champns around race issu and genr issu as There was this huge divi the early days of the rponse between the gay muny, which was largely assumed, pletely wrongly, to be whe, and the Ain muny, which was equally appropriately assumed to be heterosexual. You also had the problem that if someone black was diagnosed wh HIV, they weren’t asked about whether they might be gay or have sex wh men.