Angels and the AIDS Epidemic: The Resurgent Popularity of Angel Imagery in the United States of America

Tony Kushner's Angels in America has been the most visible of the recent plays about life in the age of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Both part 1, Millennium Approaches, and part 2, Perestroika, enjoyed long runs on Broadway after opening in May of 1993, and part 1 received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Although not the only dramatic piece dealing with AIDS, Angels in America has the distinction of being hailed by some as "the most important theatrical event of the latter part of the century" (Weber 29-30). The play is a two-part, sevenhour-long production that takes "the AIDS plague as the central defining metaphor for a national spiritual decline during the 1980s and as a starting point of a social order for the next century" (30). Heavily intertwined with this message is the theme of judgment. Prior Walter, a main character with AIDS, feels dirty, as though his heart is "pumping polluted blood." He literally wrestles with angels to try to figure out why such a disastrous illness has come to plague the earth (Kushner, Millennium Approaches 34). As he grows ever sicker, Prior finds himself drawn to cosmologies with "no judgment, no guilt, or responsibility" (42). However, as the "American Prophet," Prior finds that there really is no judgment. Angelic symbolism has been appropriated from traditional religious systems in order to shape new strategies of individual and collective behavior in a period of social transformation. Using the sociological theories of Emile Durkheim (Elementary Forms) and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (Social Construction), I will explore the resurgent popularity of angel imagery in the United States of America from 1990 through 1996, and its relation to the AIDS epidemic. A person interested in bringing angelic symbolism into play can attend workshops and join networks devoted to contacting angels, and can read some of the 200 or so books on the subject of angels which have been published since 1990 (Woodward 57). One can surf the "Angel Ring" of Internet sites on the World Wide Web. And the interested individual can even dress for these activities in a complete array of angel clothing, "from an angel vest and suspenders to angel boxer shorts," finished off with a splash of Angel Water- perfume (Colt 71). None of the above even begins to touch the numerous angel statues, pictures, and assorted tchotchkes that have flooded the market. One woman in Wisconsin has collected 11,161 angel artifacts (Colt 62). Angels have had an undeniable presence in the commercial realm. No matter how trivial the current angel symbolism might appear, however, it is my contention that the social relations behind the use of angel symbolism are anything but trivial. Angels could just be the latest in a series of images found to fit a gap in the consumer market, perhaps as the successor to the unicorns and sunflowers of the 1980s. Yet, the multiple subjective meanings associated with angels argue against the notion that this imagery is just part of a marketing fad. Angels are religious images, and as commercialized as angels have become, it is significant that Americans have recently shown such fascination with these particular religious symbols. People are grasping for something spiritual, perhaps to deal with the hopelessness of drug addiction, the narrow prospects in the job market, or maybe just to deal with the fears and anxieties associated with the end of the millennium. In this work, I will argue that angels reached new heights in popularity from 1990 through 1996, because an angel represents a spiritual but non-judgmental sign of divine intervention to help people deal with the AIDS crisis. From a theoretical standpoint, there can be varying interpretations of past and present faith in angels. Karl Marx believed that "Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc.," including their religious systems (Marx, "The German Ideology" 27). The angels, devils, and gods of any religion may appear to humans as "independent beings endowed with life and entering into relation both with one another and the human race," but they are, in Marxist terms, no more than social constructs reflecting the material conditions and historically specific circumstances of human beings (Marx, "Capital I" 64-65). …