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Start Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Arthur Bressan Jr.’s film Buddies (1985) brought the first depiction of AIDS to narrative feature length film, but Buddies has only recently begun to receive attention with its reissue by Vinegar Syndrome. This paper performs a recuperative reading of Bressan's film that promiscuously reads across the filmmaker’s own collected papers, his pornographic features, and his documentary films, all of which inform, appear in, or bristle against the otherwise fairly rote melodramatic form. Buddies’ protagonist Robert, a Person with AIDS (PWA), receives palliative care in an AIDS ward; during this time, he remains sexual, outspoken, and angry. Robert’s vitalism may be contrasted with PWAs in other early AIDS cinema who appear as hagiographic figures, long suffering, regretful, newly asexual. The arrival of David, the buddy assigned by the Gay Men’s Health Clinic to keep Robert company, grants Robert an audience to pontificate to but also highlights the reciprocity of the titular buddies. This paper argues that Robert and David embark on a mediated affair that Bressan invokes by sampling and transforming two of his previous films, the documentary Gay USA and hardcore film Passing Strangers, and culminates in a scene of David helping Robert masturbate in the hospital and reclaim his vitalism. This act of love radicalizes the otherwise apolotical David and complicates received notions of AIDS melodrama by elevating activism and eroticism to the foreground.
What’s a Buddy for, Anyway?: Vitalism, Eroticism, and Activism in Arthur Bressan Jr.’s AIDS Melodrama Buddies
Arthur Bressan Jr.’s film Buddies (1985) brought the first depiction of AIDS to narrative feature length film, but Buddies has only recently begun to receive attention with its reissue by Vinegar Syndrome. This paper performs a recuperative reading of Bressan's film that promiscuously reads across the filmmaker’s own collected papers, his pornographic features, and his documentary films, all of which inform, appear in, or bristle against the otherwise fairly rote melodramatic form. Buddies’ protagonist Robert, a Person with AIDS (PWA), receives palliative care in an AIDS ward; during this time, he remains sexual, outspoken, and angry. Robert’s vitalism may be contrasted with PWAs in other early AIDS cinema who appear as hagiographic figures, long suffering, regretful, newly asexual. The arrival of David, the buddy assigned by the Gay Men’s Health Clinic to keep Robert company, grants Robert an audience to pontificate to but also highlights the reciprocity of the titular buddies. This paper argues that Robert and David embark on a mediated affair that Bressan invokes by sampling and transforming two of his previous films, the documentary Gay USA and hardcore film Passing Strangers, and culminates in a scene of David helping Robert masturbate in the hospital and reclaim his vitalism. This act of love radicalizes the otherwise apolotical David and complicates received notions of AIDS melodrama by elevating activism and eroticism to the foreground.
Bio
Dr. John Paul Stadler is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Film Studies at North Carolina State University. His research and teaching centers on the role of various media in shaping modern notions of gender and sexuality, particularly with regard to queer and transgender subjectivities. In his current project, Pornographesis: Sex, Media and Gay Culture, he explores the historical force, technological forms, and sexual politics of gay pornography.