Roger Platizky
Austin College

. . . it is how and what one remembers that defines much of AIDS literature
. . . and film.

-- Clum ( 1993, p. 208)

With 20 million people already infected worldwide with HIV, it would be
an act of sublime denial not to realize that AIDS has already deeply en-
trenched itself into our world's history and consciousness as well as its
bloodstream. As difficult as it might now be to remember, there was a time
before AIDS, a pre-history that made its presence felt like a gradually
darkening sky before an eclipse. This premonitory mood, a time of in-
creasing anxiety and epistemological uncertainty, can be detected in many
early works about AIDS, especially those written by middle-class gay men
who were among the first stigmatized (yet vocal) minorities to be ambushed
by this disease. Frequently in these early works of witnessing, testimony,
survival, and loss, there is a boundary drawn between the "Before" and
"After," an imaginary line that divides the pre-history of AIDS from the
point of no return. Especially within gay literature and film, the "Before"
stage is often remembered with longing that comes close to being prelap-
sarian, whereas the "After" stage is an inconclusive journey--part heroic
quest, part death march--because there is still no known cure for those
afflicted with the disease. We find this pattern illustrated, and occasionally
challenged, in many early works about AIDS and, perhaps, most notably
in the influential works And the Band Played On (by Randy Shilts, 1988),

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