Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics

Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics

MIT Press, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-1493. 319p., illus., bibliog., index. ISBN 0-262-03295-3. $29.95.
Douglas Crimp. 2002.

Douglas Crimp provides us with a unique collection of essays that confronts the conservative gay politics that has replaced AIDS activism that was so prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s. He touches on everything that has happened and been written showing us that melancholia has set in, resulting in gays becoming complacent in coping with AIDS. He stresses that the AIDS epidemic is far from over and that "queer politics" is greater now than it has ever been. Before AIDS, gays were sexually active and showing the world that they were virile young men who were intent on having a great time. AIDS changed that and these same men pulled back from the sexual antics and began the era of explaining to the world what AIDS is doing, not only to gays but to the rest of the population as well. This has now changed and gays are slowly drifting back to the ways of the pre-AIDS era, resulting in a steady increase in new HIV positive cases.

In his essays, Crimp gets straight to the point and is not afraid to criticize those who have written about AIDS over the past 20 years, especially other gay male writers. He is a strong believer in all that he writes about and he wants the world to know that this is a critical time in queer politics. We need to increase our AIDS activism in the name of all of the younger gays who have become complacent.

He examines Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On, various Hollywood films that deal with AIDS, the infection of prominent athletes and movie stars with HIV, as well as Mapplethorpe and Nixon's photography, musicals, videos, and the Names Project and "Day Without Art." All of this done in such a way to make you stop and think and realize that if we do not continue the push even harder to combat this disease, we will slide backwards and the epidemic will continue to kill our young men in increasing numbers.

This is a highly recommended book for all libraries. It may trouble many to read it but we all need to be jolted back into reality and realize that the crisis is far from over.

Keywords: Political Aspects; Gay men
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