In the middle of a now-forgotten epidemic that killed millions of people, a now-forgotten Australian TV series presented its plea for rejecting stigma and discrimination, respecting diversity, and encouraging the dissemination of information and public education.
As the 1980s drew to a close, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation commenced a long-running soap opera which, like many other TV series before it, focused upon the professional and private lives of doctors and medical practitioners – but with a twist. Australian television historian Moran observes:
“In developing “G.P.”, the ABC took a leaf out of both Seven’s “A Country Practice” and Nine’s “The Flying Doctors” in focusing on the business of doctoring but smartly decided to orient the program towards an urban milieu.” (Moran, 1993, p. 204.)
Given this change of setting, G.P. promised to be less reliant upon utopian rural stereotypes, and more willing to examine modern reality in urban/suburban Australia. In this contemporary setting, G.P. offered more gritty realism and less faux nostalgia as could be found in some overseas medically-oriented fictional programs, such as, Doctor Finlay’s Casebook or All Creatures Great and Small.
7 March 1989 saw transmission of the first episode of G.P. (Shore, 1992, p. 48.) The series introduced a number of characters and storylines which covered a broad range of medical and social issues – and demonstrated a mature and inclusive attitude to diversity. This also meant that episodes portrayed a wide spectrum of people, including those affected by HIV/AIDS. Lasting eight years and running for 318 episodes (imdb.com, n.d.), this series tackled AIDS in a way that no other Australian TV drama series ever did before – or has done since.
Whereas A Country Practice and The Flying Doctors had contained tokenistic, usually single-episode stories on the epidemic that was killing thousands of Australians, G.P. took a more comprehensive approach. The series was willing to tackle stereotypes and invisibility, attempting new additions to Australia’s folklore and culture in the midst of a terrifying plague.
Paediatric AIDS
Like the producers of The Flying Doctors before them, the creators of G.P. fashioned a story about AIDS early in their series – the 22nd episode during their first year of production. Telecast on 8 August 1989 (imdb n.d. #2) and titled, “Toss A Coin”, the episode told the story of five year-old Zoe, who had contracted paediatric AIDS from her now-deceased mother. Complications were added when the little girl was victim of prejudice and discrimination at her school. The director, Geoff Nottage, reportedly cast his own daughter as the only school friend to stick by Zoe (Shore, 1992, p. 58). This episode won the 1989 Human Rights Award for TV Drama (ibid, p. 110).
Unlike the stories in The Flying Doctors and A Country Practice, this story in G.P. may have actually been inspired by real-life Australian events such as the case of Troy Lovegrove or – more pointedly, the experiences faced by Eve Van Grafhorst, a young girl with HIV whose family were ultimately hounded out of Australia. The producers of G.P. were clearly not afraid to reflect gritty realism, confronting viewers with nuanced stories that were more challenging and confronting to their own perspectives and prejudices – and more likely to inspire sympathy or empathy. Like the aforementioned TV shows, this episode avoided linking HIV and AIDS to gay men as the primarily affected cohort – but this invisibility would quickly change in the series.
Gay Men
It was not long before G.P. produced another story about AIDS – telecast on 3 April 1990, “Mates” was the eighth episode of their second season (imdb, n.d. #3) and this time, the series challenged Australian audiences to view gay men in a compassionate and respectful light.
One of the doctors, Steve Harrison, discovers that his friend, Mark, has been refused an operation to correct an injury which he sustained during a game of squash. It turns out that Mark had been tested for AIDS without his knowledge and that he had subsequently been diagnosed as HIV positive. Dr. Harrison must come to terms with this news and his own homophobia – but must also break the news to Mark and to Mark’s gay partner, Alex, who is not HIV positive (Shore, 1992, p. 70).
“Mates” was a breakthrough on Australian television because it presented gay men as otherwise fairly ordinary people who lived within society and who enjoyed the respect of their heterosexual friends and colleagues – it was just that some of them happened to have AIDS.
GP: “Lovers” (aired 1 May 1990 – from imdb)
Four weeks later, this story concluded in the episode “Lovers” which was telecast on 1 May 1990 (Zuk, 1998 – 2004). “Lovers” presented the reality of people dying with AIDS, and the discrimination faced by many gay couples at the hands of their own family members. At the time, Australian law did not recognize gay partners, and heterosexual family members had exclusive legal rights as next of kin. In a global context, the World Health Organisation did not remove homosexuality from its “Classification of Diseases” until 17th May that same year (IDAHOBIT, 2023), although tragically, AIDS would entrench an association between homosexuality and medicalisation for many years.
In “Lovers”, Mark is now dying of AIDS and his loving mother arrives – to be confronted by his homosexuality, his medical condition, and by his gay partner. Her furious homophobia puts a great strain upon the relationship between Mark and Alex, and it greatly adds to Mark’s distress as he loses the battle against his terminal medical condition. After his death, his mother freezes Alex out and even refuses to allow him to attend the funeral, despite Dr. Harrison’s pleas for compassion (Shore, 1992, pp. 71 & 72).
Such treatment of gay partners by hostile heterosexual family members was not uncommon in Australia at the time. It is to be hoped that this episode challenged such families to become more accepting of their children’s partners. Perhaps G.P. contributed to a growing groundswell of support that led to marriage equality, inheritance rights, and related family legal rights in the following decades.
“Lovers” reportedly won a number of awards (ibid, p. 71) including the 1990 “Penguin” Award for Best Direction (ibid, p. 110).
Heterosexual AIDS
On 16 November 1993, the episode, “Loose Ends” featured a minor character who was an HIV positive male patient. He chatted with the doctors about his forthcoming marriage. No further details were specified about his background, and he appears to have been included mainly to as a stock character to help “normalise” the existence of HIV positive people in society.
The series’ sixth and seventh years in 1994 and 1995 – the era when one of the doctors was a gay character – seemed to feature references to AIDS or related topics on a frequent basis.
“A Temporary Mess” (10 May 1994) focussed on a young female school teacher whose HIV status was publicly disclosed and she faced fear and prejudice from many of her colleagues, her students and their parents. The issues of privacy and prejudice were examined – and compassion was extended mainly by the gay doctor, Martin Dempsey; and one of the students, young Peter Browning, who had an adolescent crush on her. In a final, touching scene, Peter dismisses the HIV bigotry of his friends and their parents by calling them “dickheads” and shyly befriending his teacher.
Condoms
Safe sex condom ad from the era
Two episodes with references to condoms were run concurrently in 1995, and they both seemed to imply that condoms were not necessary for heterosexuals.
Dr. Sonia Kapeck lectures her younger sister about using condoms in the episode, “In Control” (4 April 1995) but the teenager returns the condoms to Sonia in a subsequent scene because she evidently doesn’t believe that she needs them. What may have been a covert reference to celibacy may have also been a warning about complacency against safe sex during an epidemic.
The following week (11 April 1995), the episode, “After Hours” featured an adult heterosexual couple having a casual sexual liaison without condoms and then asking each other if they should be concerned about “diseases”. The question is left open – maybe placing the onus for a decision upon the viewers themselves.
Australia was at that time emerging from an era when condoms had not been widely available like today: often only on sale over the counter, upon request from chemist shops (provided the chemist had no religious objection to selling them) – which made their availability especially limited within certain geographic or demographic cohorts; and which were still barely mentioned in polite society (often referred to by vague terms like “protection”). Following the “liberation” of the condom into widespread useage in 1986 following the arrival of AIDS (Blazey Peter Blazey, 1986, In coming years, scandals would break out in at least one state of Australia (Queensland) regarding the existence of condom vending machines. Such changes were happening across Australia – the colloquial “franger” was being lifted out of impolite backyard conversation and into polite society.
Just as the gay community had been forced to learn to love the prophylactic, mainstream Australian society was now also being challenged to embrace the rubber contraceptive. Forget embarrassment or old fashioned notions of morality – lives were potentially at stake! For any television program to mention condoms explicitly during this era was still an achievement of progressive courage, and maybe optimally possible on the ABC-TV network, whose non-commercial TV stations would not be subjected to the concerns of advertisers.
(Photo supplied by Phil Carswell)
AFRAIDS – Associated Fears Relating to AIDS
Although many TV news programs and other fictional stories featured fear of AIDS (usually subconsciously incorporating it into their storyline without much self-examination), G.P. was the first Australian program to explore many facets of AIDS phobia and to infer its irrational nature.
On 18 April 1995, the episode “What About Your Heart?” included a scene of a doctor who was bitten by a mentally ill patient – then casually dismissing the incident because he claimed to have regular tests for HIV and hepatitis. As HIV is not transmissible by saliva, the scene was evidently an acknowledgement of the potential for people to have irrational fears concerning the virus.
Later that same year, the episode entitled, “Like Father, Like Son”, which was telecast on 15 August 1995, featured a father who needed heart surgery and who strongly encouraged his adult son to donate blood in order to protect him from contracting AIDS from a blood transfusion during surgery.
Another episode, “Hush Little Baby”, telecast on 7 November 1995, included a comment from a parent about her young son getting into a fight at school, in which a punch drew blood from his opponent and elicited a verbal scolding from the parent of the other child – what if he had AIDS?
On 17 August 1993, the creators of G.P. followed up with an episode called “Infected”, which starred gay actor John Hargreaves – who was later to tragically die of AIDS himself – playing a dentist with an irrational fear of infection and disease, including AIDS.
On 4 July 1995, the episode “Not Fade Away” introduced a two-part story which was possibly the nastiest story of the series. Young gay doctor, Martin Dempsey, is treating a gay patient with AIDS who is battling a declining quality of life and eventually indicates that he wishes to die with dignity. Dr. Dempsey assists in his euthanasia – and the patient’s sister reports him to the police. Significantly, the episode features a real-life AIDS Vigil in Sydney – the only known Australian TV program (outside news clips) to spotlight this authentic moment of pain and trauma in the Australian AIDS community.
The following week, on 11 July 1995. The episode title, “A Parting of Friends” is indicative of what ultimately happens between the professional partnership of Dr. Dempsey and his colleagues at the Ross Street clinic as a result of his actions to assist in a suicide of a terminally ill AIDS patient. Although the police enquiry is eventually dropped due to lack of evidence, the other medical staff react angrily to the disclosure of Dempsey’s actions – and the senior doctor sacks him. The departing doctor seems to maintain a friendly relationship with the others, but there seems to be a definite undercurrent of acrimony towards him, and this arguably portrays Dempsey’s colleagues – the main characters of the series – in a rather uncomplimentary light.
This story parallels a Hollywood movie (“It’s My Party”) which was released in April the following year – demonstrating that the writers of G.P. were at the forefront of social comment regarding AIDS.
This story also tapped into a powerful social controversy at the time, highlighted by AIDS – the rights of patients who were terminally ill with AIDS and who asked to be allowed to die with dignity. Their plight helped to bring the topic of voluntary euthanasia to the forefront of Australian politics and society, particularly in the Northern Territory, where the Territory government passed a law allowing terminally ill people to receive assisted voluntary euthanasia (Maddox, 2005, p.50) – the very same month that the GP aired this episode. Under conservative Prime Minister Howard, however, the Federal government responded during 1996 and 1997 with its own legislation which overruled this Territory law (ibid, p. 52). Victorian doctors were later to lead a public call for AIDS-related euthanasia (The Age, 25 March 1995, p. 1) and a veritable army of medical staff comprising a virtual underground army of assistants for those with AIDS who wanted to die with dignity (Magnusson, 2002, p. 23), it would take some decades for Voluntary Assisted Dying to be legally implemented across Australia.
Condoman was first a 1987 Indigenous health initiative to promote condom use.
Indigenous AIDS
During its fifth season, an episode of G.P. entitled, “Dancing with Death” tackled the topic of AIDS and the indigenous community. Telecast on 23 March 1993 (Wikipedia), the episode was notable because one character bore some resemblance to real-life Australian Dr. Fred Hollows – a man who had caused controversy because of his outspoken public comments on AIDS and indigenous people.
Women with AIDS
In season six, G.P. tackled the problem of women with HIV/AIDS in an episode entitled, “A Temporary Mess”. Airing on 10 May 1994 (Wikipedia), it featured a female character who faced prejudice and stigma once her HIV status was publicly revealed.
This was an era that was potentially more difficult for women with HIV than it was for gay men. The LGBT+ communities had support services available for their members, while women – a smaller cohort but impacted by their own specialist medical needs – were often invisible and overlooked. One female activist recalls the programs that were run by women for women:
“We had annual retreats and at each one, we didn’t know who would be alive the following year. It was scary times. Funerals were commonplace. Who would be next?”
While women had initially been at the forefront of leading the fight against AIDS and related stigma in Australia, it was still remarkable for an Australian TV program to sensitively feature a female character battling such difficulties.
Activists Fighting Amnesia
G.P. demonstrated that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as a government-funded broadcaster, was willing and able to go where commercial television did not dare. More than that, it seems possible that the ABC was keen to promote AIDS awareness in line with the policy of the same Hawke-Keating Federal Governments that had given Australians the frightening Grim Reaper as a way of imprinting AIDS within our collective community consciousness.
A generation later, G.P. has been largely forgotten – partly because it was telecast on a non-commercial network, and partly because it dealt with complex social issues (such as AIDS, itself now largely forgotten) in nuanced ways that defied the typical soap opera formula of stereotypical characters and simplistic binary solutions.
Its legacy may very well be that it helped to save lives by promoting safe sex, anti discrimination and acknowledging the existence of diversity. The program may have contributed to changes in societal attitudes – marriage equality, anti discrimination, condom usage, voluntary assisted dying, anti racism, equality for women – in ways that have now become so much a part of our collective consciousness that we forget where those modern perspectives originated. Most significantly, it served to educate and inform during a terrible epidemic, and its creators should be proud that, like so many other activists of that era, they role-modelled and served when lives were at stake.
Where some people might now see forgotten actors and artists, we should see and recognise them as heroes of their time and culture.
In 1949, author Joseph Campbell wrote “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, which explored in part: “specific details about the continuing importance of mythic stories in current times, the energies that support such, and how the body of myths and stories can become corrupted, undernourished, assaulted, even destroyed — and yet return again and again in fresh and unusual ways.” (Estes, 2004, p. xxvi). This generational cycle of life, death and new birth is not just biological – it is cultural. Our heroes and villains are reborn or rebooted every generation. This constitutes a large part of our folklore.
“Narrowly, the term “folklore” has been traditionally considered the oral tales of a society. More broadly, the term refers to all aspects of a culture – beliefs, traditions, norms, behaviors, language, literature, jokes, music, art, foodways, tools, objects, etc.”
Every culture and every community has its own folklore – from religious ideologies to national cultures; from populist Hollywood storytelling to minority cohorts (for whom folklore is particularly important to provide collective identity and community cohesion). Folklore can not only mirror a culture, but it relies upon its cultural background to fully explain its own context: “the folklore of a people can be fully understood only through a thorough knowledge of their culture” (Bascom, 1954, p. 338). Folklore bridges generations, fuels ritual, inspires literature and art, and – in recent decades – has flavoured and influenced television, film, urban mythology, and social media memes.
In The Beginning
In 1918 in Oakland, warnings to wear a mask. Photo: public domain, Source: FoundSF.org
Folklore has provided a basis for many origins – whether the origin and life cycle of the world, or the ironic origin and death cycle of plague; from the Plague of Justinian (which may have caused the fall of the Roman Empire) to our most recent epidemic to impact the whole world (COVID), stories and cultural traditions thrive. Diane Goldstein explores one example of such origin stories:
“A significant part of AIDS legendary tradition betrays our obsession with origins. Whether the narratives focus on government conspiracies, African or Haitian AIDS, “patient zero” type characters, superbugs transmitting the virus through bites, or hundred-year-old AIDS cases, the concern is the same: establishing a first — a source for this thing that made our world change so irreversibly” (Goldstein, 2004, p. 77).
In seeking to address origins – of nations, of religions, of communities, or of our sporting rituals – folklore provides a secular outlet for the religious impulse. Our folkloric responses and rationalisations for plague (and other natural disasters) is perhaps among the most basic, primal versions of this impulse. Vampires and werewolves are attributed to folklore arising from cholera, rabies, and other diseases. The so-called “Spanish Flu” epidemic of 1914 – 1918 was not Spanish and its victims were not (despite recent COVID-inspired vaccine denialism) victims of poorly administered vaccines. Another, more unexpected example is provided by David Keys, who suggests that the Bubonic Plague may have contributed a macabre background to the stories of King Arthur:
“Contrary to all received wisdom, the sixth-century plague catastrophe may indeed have been preserved in the oral tradition and in literature which, centuries later, acted as source material for particular aspects of the medieval Arthurian romances – especially those associated with the quest for the Holy Grail” (Keys, 1999, p. 158).
Keys points out that the supposed life and death of King Arthur in the sixth century was contemporaneous with the time of famine and depopulation associated with the arrival of Plague and climatic change. The subsequent Arthurian legends and much of their associated medieval literature refer to the so-called “Waste Lands”, a concept of landscapes and society ravaged by war, pestilence, famine or plague (Keys, pp. 158 – 165). It could be conjectured that the medieval King Arthur stories may have grown from earlier memories of the plague times and the need for society to find a hero and a hope during times of devastation.
One lesson which might be inferred from this Arthurian legacy is that the full effect of modern plagues – such as AIDS and COVID – are yet to be determined and included within our own communal folklore. Perhaps we are yet to find our modern heroic Arthur – or maybe we have simply to recognise that we have already birthed many such heroes amidst their modern sufferings.
“This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it was a sight which I could not but look on from morning to night (for indeed there was nothing else of moment to be seen), it filled me with very serious thoughts of the misery that was coming upon the city, and the unhappy condition of those that would be left in it.”
– Daniel Defoe, “A Journal of the Plague Year”, 1666.
In the nineteenth century, author Henry Murger’s novel, “Scènes de la Vie Bohème” (1851) inspired the 1890s Puccini opera, “La Bohème” and both productions included characters who were living and/or dying of consumption (tuberculosis). A century later, US playwright Billy Aaronson came up with a concept to update this material. The idea was developed into the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway musical, “Rent”, by musical composer Jonathan Larson. Aaronson and Larson agreed that instead of tuberculosis, their afflicted characters would have AIDS (Evelyn McDonnell with Kathy Silberger, 1997, pp. 18 – 21). Thus we see popular art being used to change public understandings and perceptions of two epidemics: TB and AIDS.
Following World War Two, Nobel laureate Albert Camus wrote his story “The Plague” in 1947. His tale concerns a visitation of the Bubonic Plague to a French village of Oran in the 1940s, resulting in a quarantining of the town. This tale is seen as a largely allegorical retelling of the Nazi invasion of France during World War 2. Thus was Camus able to make statements without arousing political or partisan contention.(Tony Judt, Introduction, in Albert Camus (translated by Robin Buss), “The Plague”, Penguin Books, 1947 (2001), p. viii.) His tale remains one of universal truths regarding the nature of isolation, suffering and malevolence:
“From that point on, it could be said that the plague became the affair of us all.”
(Camus, 1947, p. 53).
Historic folkloric links united all people behind the common foe of plague; in recent times we have seen that change. Australia’s early cultural responses to AIDS are an example of this: after reference to the medieval imagery and fear of the Grim Reaper, Australian television (the genuine mass media of the era) was uncertain how to approach a problem that mingled sex, plague, homosexuality and death. Efforts included deferring the problem away from homosexuality, and generally ignoring it altogether. But early fictional approaches on Australian television demonstrated patchwork attempts to address it as a social issue.
The Flying Doctors season 1 (telecast 26 May 1986 – 17 November 1986, Nine Network)
The Flying Doctors
“I came home to die. But home isn’t there any more.”
– Les Foster, fictional character dying of AIDS in “The Flying Doctors” (written by Morphett, 1986).
From Skippy and Bellbird on 1960s television; from Boney and Matlock Police to Against the Wind in the 1970s; with films ranging from Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Getting of Wisdom in the 1970s to Crocodile Dundee in the 1980s; Australians appeared to have a love affair with rural lifestyles. Into this tradition came the TV series, The Flying Doctors, fictitiously based upon the real-life organisation, the Royal Flying Doctors’ Service, in the equally fictitious outback town of Cooper’s Crossing (and which is NOT to be confused with the more recent RFDS. which was launched in 2021). After beginning as a 1985 mini-series of three episodes (Zuk, 1998a), The Flying Doctors returned between 1986 and 1991 for a successful run of 221 episodes (Zuk, 1998b). In 1986, during the series’ first year of regular telecast, the episode entitled “Return of the Hero” featured a gay character.
Given that gay characters were quite rare on Australian television at that time, and notwithstanding that this token gay character appeared for only one episode and was dead before the episode ended; his appearance nevertheless marked a courageous stand taken by writer Tony Morphett and all the others who were involved in the episode’s creation. Getting a prominent Australian actor like Gerard Kennedy to play the gay character was also a bit of a coup for Aussie TV at the time.
In the story, a local old boy, Les Foster, returns to Cooper’s Crossing after many years of living in Sydney with his “business partner”, Johnnie. Les is clearly sick but reluctant to reveal the details of his condition to his brother or the other townsfolk. However, he does disclose to Dr. Chris Randall that he is suffering from Kaposi’s sarcoma and AIDS, and that he has come back to Cooper’s Crossing to die.
Encouraged by Dr. Randall, Les “comes out” as gay to his brother Ted, who doesn’t want to know – he prefers to think of his brother as a local war hero. Les dismisses Ted’s hero worship and states that his wartime experience was a very small part of his life. He wants Ted instead to acknowledge and love his whole life. This is a pivotal scene which perhaps could be seen as a metaphor for the battle facing everyone with HIV/AIDS – rather than society making it a “big deal”, their medical condition constitutes only a small fraction of their total life experience and it reflects little upon their actual personality.
In the meantime, the medicos of Cooper’s Crossing discuss Les’ HIV/AIDS status amongst themselves –a breach of Les’ privacy which, in the context of its times, was seen as acceptable and “responsible”. This culminates in a nurse refusing to admit Les to the hospital and telling his friends that he has AIDS. Such breaches of medical ethics regarding people with AIDS were not unheard of in the 1980s.
Following this public exposure, the townsfolk clearly have trouble accepting that Les is a “poofter” and this adds to their fear and stigma. The men folk refuse to drink from glasses at the pub because they fear contagion from the glasses in the dishwasher; and poofter bashers attack Johnnie (with an explicit comparison being made between homophobia and racism). Shortly before he dies, Les faces up to his former friends in the pub. They had not physically participated in the poofter bashing attempt, but their attitudes and bigotry had contributed to the atmosphere which had allowed such violence to thrive. Les implicitly berates them for this by throwing his Korean War medals onto the floor:
“I killed young men in the name of freedom… and look what I got! Well you can find yourselves another hero, fellas. I resign!” (Morphett, 1986).
One surprising incident reveals that Les and Johnnie have their own irrational AIDS fears – in a scene which mirrors the pub incident when others refuse to share glasses, Les and Johnnie attend a communion service but decline to share a communion cup with others. This causes the local priest, Father Jacko, to guess the true nature of Les’ illness. Jacko becomes the only townsman to offer Les, Johnnie and Dr. Randall his unconditional support. During his pastoral chats with Les, Jacko concedes that his church contains both “poofter bashers” and others with compassion. Jacko even assists in a reconciliation between Les and Ted during the penultimate scene when they all share communion (and the communion cup) together. Perfect love evidently casts out all fear.
Les is finally struck down with terminal pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, another opportunistic disease common for people with AIDS in the 1980s. He dies in the arms of his lover Johnnie. Later, when the townsfolk attend his funeral, they admit their shame at their own actions, wherein they had expressed intolerance and fear.
A cursory assessment of this episode might suggest that the storyline mirrors the same concepts evident in those few films coming out of Hollywood during the following decade which dared to touch upon the issues of homosexuality or AIDS (often taken to mean the same thing) – featuring stigmatized gay men and outraged or repulsed heterosexuals as a justification for implicit homophobia. Hollywood movies such as “An Early Frost” (1985), “As Is” (1986), “Our Sons” (1991), “Philadelphia” (1993), “My Brother’s Keeper” (1995) and “In The Gloaming” (1997) largely portrayed gay men as the “other” and used plotlines which focused to varying extent upon their heterosexual relatives, friends or acquaintances coming to terms with this shame and the loss caused by their son/brother/friend’s homosexuality and/or his imminent death from AIDS.
Yet it would be unfair to suggest that this episode of “The Flying Doctors” was implicitly endorsing such views. As such, this storyline paralleled the real-life discrimination faced by some Australian gay men with HIV/AIDS at the time, and it metaphorically compared their battle with that of Les as a war veteran. During the eulogy, one character states that “Les Foster was a genuine hero” and perhaps, by extension, the writer sought to imply that all gay men who faced the double-whammy of HIV/AIDS and societal prejudice were heroes of that modern-day battle.
Perhaps the creators of this episode also wanted to challenge their audience to examine their own prejudices as reflected within the shame felt by the other characters at the funeral. This is further demonstrated by the fact that the creators focused largely on the societal rather than the medical problems faced by Les. They avoided the horrifying stereotypical images which were so common in the mass media at the time – of skeletal, emaciated AIDS figures covered in KS legions and confined to hospital beds. In this medically sanitized world, Les Foster’s skin remained unblemished and generally healthy (except for his pasty white face). And despite his terminal pneumonia, he had no cough or breathing difficulties – just a general malaise and he collapsed a couple of times to demonstrate that he was unwell.
Overall, however, this episode demonstrated to its mass audience that AIDS had potentially reached everywhere in Australia – even the fictitious outback town of Cooper’s Crossing – and that it was being accompanied by an epidemic of fear and prejudice.
Conversely, the limitations in the episode are also worth of note. The gay characters made a token appearance in only one episode for the purposes of facing discrimination and death – a cinematic tradition inherited from Hollywood. They came to Cooper’s Crossing – itself an isolated country town – as a metaphor for the social isolation faced by many gay men from the heterosexual community in real life. Moreover, they were presented as isolated and friendless back in the metropolitan city that had lived – there was no gay support network, no care teams, nobody to support and care for them. Perhaps these errors can be attributed to the heterosexist ignorance of the writer and creators, or possibly to the creative restrictions of a television program with a limited time constraint within each episode; either way, all these shortcomings could have been addressed by a small verbal reference in a passing scene.
Significantly, “Return of the Hero” was only the seventeenth episode of this series to be telecast, and the producers were undoubtedly taking some risk by presenting such a controversial story so early in the run of the series. They should be commended in the eyes of history for their willingness to tackle a very strong and deeply felt societal prejudice.
A similar theme was used in episode 92 (season 4, 1988), “A Shadow of Doubt”, in which a mysterious illness was linked to racist fears and potential scapegoating. Once again, the series producers were willing to address the issue of ‘the other’.
Perhaps most significantly, the theme was revisited during Season 8 (July 1991), “Being Positive”. This story also features a visitor to Cooper’s Crossing – this time as a former patient, anthropologist Jerry Davis, who previously suffered a terrible accident that resulted in “lots of blood” being spilt – who reveals that he has tested positive to HIV, and the doctors who saved his life must await the results of their own HIV tests while battling with questions of patient confidentiality and their own fears. It turns out (unsurprisingly) that none of the medical staff has been infected with the virus, but the word slips out around town and bigot Jock Cavendish leads the outrage. Other characters also express intolerance, presuming that Davis is “one of them” until it is finally revealed that he was exposed to the virus during his work in Africa. He is safely heterosexual, and their biggest concern now is whether or not to tell his female paramour.
This episode made some attempts to address discrimination, leading one character to respond to homophobia with a comment that: “There’s not a sliding scale of respectability among victims of this thing. They’re just victims”, a well-intentioned attempt at eliciting sympathy, but which was ironic given that this was around the time that real-life people with AIDS were seeking to no longer be identified as “AIDS victims” but as “people living with AIDS”. Another response: “You should feel sorry for anyone who’s got it” comes across as patronising and lacking authenticity. A concession was made when confronting homophobia: “People like Jock Cavendish and the AIDS virus have got a lot in common: the less you fight them, the more powerful they become”. These well-intentioned attempts to address discrimination nevertheless remain problematic and flawed.
In seeking to address HIV/AIDS among heterosexuals, this episode contextualises ‘the other’ as themselves, and identifies people with AIDS as including haemophiliacs and infants with paediatric transmission, implicitly pointing out that gay men are not the only cohort impacted by the virus. However, the major flaw in this episode was its failure to explicitly mention or directly acknowledge homosexuality or gay men, effectively contributing to homophobic stigma and helping to make homosexuality invisible (or unmentionable) during an era when a medical scourge was decimating the gay male population. While trying to be rational and level-headed, the episode came across as just another example of TV and films (mentioned earlier) that attempted to reimage AIDS as a heterosexual problem and contextualise the stigma as affecting only heterosexuals. While its overall treatment of AIDS was less hysterical than in the earlier episode, its exclusion of homosexuality served to perpetuate the very homophobia that the earlier episode attempted to address.
A Country Practice
Australian television had also enjoyed a popularity of traditional, family-oriented drama programs. Popular series had included The Sullivans and Bellbird in the 1970s; with the show, Neighbours (commencing in 1980) featuring a number of families living in a fictional Melbourne suburb.
A new addition to this tradition, and combining itself with the previous genre of stories set within rural settings, A Country Practice, (ACP) began on Channel 7 at the end of 1981, coincidentally around the time when AIDS was first appearing on the radar. Set in a small fictional country town of Wandin Valley, the series ran throughout the 1980s to generally healthy audience ratings. Major characters included Molly Jones, a young woman whose on-screen death from breast cancer on 5 June 1985 caused national shock-waves; in the words of one commentator: “a nation was in mourning” (Mercado, 2004, p. 165). The show thereby demonstrated that it had the capacity to rouse within its audience great compassion for people afflicted with terrible medical problems. After the series concluded, creator James Davern was quoted as expressing pride that the show had tackled social issues including gay bashing, AIDS, alcoholism, rape, and domestic violence (ibid, p. 170).
In 1986, however, that same producer of ACP expressed reservations about portraying two social issues: incest and AIDS. Davern explained that topics such as AIDS were deemed unsuitable for a family-oriented show:
“We have given it a lot of consideration, and we find that, at this date, February 1986, still not enough is known about how the disease is transmitted, and I don’t believe in scaring people. And the fact that it’s linked so strongly with homosexuality makes it very difficult to make a homosexual AIDS victim a ‘goody’ and sympathetic.” (Tulloch & Moran, 1986, p. 291).
Davern’s assertion that it would be difficult to portray a gay character sympathetically is somewhat a reflection of his times – as explained by Tulloch and Moran when they clarified that the challenge faced by Davern was in “trying to make social deviants realistic yet sympathetic” (ibid) – but was also somewhat untrue. Australian television had been presenting gay and lesbian characters sympathetically (albeit extremely rarely) – since 1972 when the popular and controversial Number 96 had thrust gay character Don Finlayson onto the screen. Other Australian dramas with sympathetic gay or lesbian characters had included, Prisoner and All The Way. It appears that Davern had wanted to steer away from the stereotype that gay=AIDS, and to avoid a repetition of the storyline from The Flying Doctors which examined the prejudice faced by gay men.
Davern’s other assertion that “…not enough is known…” about AIDS and that he wanted to avoid needlessly frightening his viewers, is an interesting one. Taken at face value, it seems incorrect: by February 1986, medical science had clearly identified the virus which caused AIDS, had identified the risk factors, and had even produced a blood test to help identify those who had been exposed to it. What appears to have worried Davern was increasing public concern about AIDS as a potentially heterosexual problem – a concern which would soon be expressed on Australian TV in the form of the Grim Reaper:
“Davern was also aware of the controversy among the medical profession over whether heterosexuals were even at risk from HIV/AIDS, and he apparently wanted to wait until the medical profession had ‘got its story right’. He decided to wait until a different angle could be found and the ‘story’ of heterosexual transmission had been confirmed.” (Tulloch & Lupton, 1997, p. 102).
Nevertheless, following the appearance of the Grim Reaper and Suzi’s Story, the producers of ACP evidently felt further pressure from the Australian Medical Association (AMA) to finally broach the subject of AIDS:
“According to James Davern, the AMA had been putting ‘some pressure’ on him since 1987, trying to persuade him to produce an AIDS story for ACP.” (ibid, p. 101).
His response was to adopt this ‘new angle’ to AIDS, focusing on the danger suggested by the Grim Reaper: that is, that non-gay Australians were also at risk of exposure to AIDS *(ibid, p. 102). Specifically, the dangers faced by females and injecting drug users became the focus of a four-part ACP story, episodes numbers 591 to 594 (MacAlpine, 2009?a), entitled, Sophie, telecast in 1988.
Sophie was the daughter of the major character Dr. Terence Elliott. She was a news journalist who had travelled the world for her work MacAlpine, 2009?b) – also developing a drug habit along the way. Her death from AIDS gave viewers a glimpse of AIDS which avoided the gay stereotype, but it simultaneously revisited the subject matter of the Grim Reaper advertisement and Suzi’s Story in that it presented a young woman dying of AIDS. The only ‘new angle’ in the story was that Sophie was an injecting drug user – a topic which might raise questions at that time about whether it comprised “wholesome family viewing” relative to homosexuality.
One of the writers of these episodes was Tony Morphett, who had previously written the first AIDS episode of The Flying Doctors. He was reportedly quite keen to produce a story about injecting drug users because he felt that this was a target audience which needed to be informed and educated about the dangers of AIDS.
Despite this, in the context of history, then, ACP can arguably be seen as a disappointment because the story of young Sophie Elliott and her battle against AIDS lasted only 4 episodes – and in the final episode of the series, a “flashback” included recognition of actress Lorraine Bayly who had played the mother of an “AIDS victim” in another story (Mercado, 2004, p. 169) – taking the number of episodes to feature AIDS to a mere 6 in the entire run of 1058 episodes. At the time, gay men were primarily afflicted with AIDS, but ACP evidently shied away from this topic apparently because of Davern’s previously-stated concern that a gay character with AIDS would not attract viewer sympathy. This was not an unwise perspective: societal homophobia was still rampant across Australia, and positive portrayals of homosexuality might easily have led to viewer protests, outrage or boycotts.
This treatment of AIDS ties in with American television’s treatment of the same issue at that time: up until 1988, the only characters to die of AIDS in US daytime soap operas had been women (eg. see Waggett, 1997, p. 36). That did not change until 1988, when the program As the World Turns introduced a gay character whose off-screen lover was HIV-positive (ibid, pp. 62 & 63).
We can see these programs as interacting with communal folklore: although not necessarily folklore in themselves, they were influenced by – and, in turn, contributed to – our national AIDS folklore at the time. Other TV shows that came later (in particular “GP” on ABC television) had more inclusive and diverse perspectives, and will be examined in later blog posts – as will books and films.
How To Have Sex in an Epidemic:
One of the earliest COVID fiction books to be published was Love in the Time of COVID, and its author is attributed with exploring a more individualistic approach to the impact of this most modern of epidemics:
“Have a nice big helping of residual simmering rage (so great for the immune system!) at being abandoned by our ‘leaders,’ at the profiteers and incompetents and liars, at a cleverly murderous microscopic entity that wants to exploit you as a host and strip your organs for parts.” – Kipnis, 2022, quoted by Iglesias, 2022.
This appears to contradict another COVID story which is more in line with the writings of Plague-era Daniel Defoe:
“People were dying in the city. Some more than others. The virus had roamed the earth but had chosen to settle down there.” – Dee Cameron, watching the COVID epidemic from afar, in “Our Country Friends” (Gary Shteyngart, 2021).
It seems our modern folklore of AIDS, and COVID (and its consequent epidemic of loneliness) has yet to be invented and written. Will we remember our heroes, or our denialists?
[EDIT: This blog was edited on 4 September 2024 to add and reinterpret material from its analysis of the “Flying Doctors” episode “Being Positive”.]
William Bascom, 1954. “Four Functions of Folklore“, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 67, No. 266), October – December, pp. 333-349 (JSTOR).
Albert Camus, 1947. (Robin Buss translator), The Plague, Penguin Books, reprinted 2001.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., 2004. “Preamble: INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 COMMEMORATIVE EDITION”, in Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton University Press, 1949 (reprinted 2004), pp. xxiii – lxv.
Diane E. Goldstein, 2004. “What Exactly Did They Do with That Monkey, Anyway? Contemporary Legend, Scientific Speculation, and the Politics of Blame in the Search for AIDS Origins”, (chapter) in Once Upon A Virus, University Press of Colorado, Utah State University Press, pp. 77-99.
Gabino Iglesias, 2022. “Are we ready for COVID-19 as a central theme in literature?”, npr.org, 24 February.
Tony Judt, 2001. “Introduction”, in Albert Camus (translated by Robin Buss), The Plague, Penguin Books, originally published in 1947.
Kitty MacAlpine, 2009?b. “A Country Practice: Dr. Terence Stephen Elliott”, http://acountrypractice.com/Char/tselliott.html[dead link], accessed 16 January.
Evelyn McDonnell with Kathy Silberger, 1997. Rent by Jonathan Larson, HarperCollins Books.
Andrew Mercado, 2004. Super Aussie Soaps, Pluto Press.
Tony Morphett, 1986. “Return of the Hero”, The Flying Doctors, Crawfords Productions.
Gary Shteyngart, 2021. Our Country Friends, Random House.
John Tulloch & Deborah Lupton, 1997. Television, AIDS and Risk, Allen & Unwin.
John Tulloch & Albert Moran, 1986. A Country Practice: ‘Quality Soap’, Currency Press.
Gerard J. Waggett, 1997. The Soap Opera Encyclopedia, HarperPaperbacks.
T. Zuk, 1998b. “The Flying Doctors/RFDS“, Australian Television Information Archive, page created 10 November.
= = =
This was preparatory work for my PhD studies on, “A Social History of HIV/AIDS in Melbourne During the ‘Crisis Years’ 1981 to 1997”; this latter work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
“Wake in Fright” is not only a title of a 1971 Australian film, but it is a call to arms for people who want to stir themselves from the sleep of complacency or inaction, and commence the journey from awareness to action – the difference from being awake to being woke. But a generation ago, this film touched upon a number of themes that were becoming relevant during its time, and it can still speak to us today as part of Australian culture – challenging the “She’ll be right, mate” dismissal of injustice and suffering.
And perhaps not surprisingly, women led one particular movement for related social activism, and one early advocate effectively used her life (and death) to call for calm compassion.
US film critic Roger Ebert reviewed the film under the headline “An Outback horror story” – which it certainly is, with its depiction of outback isolation and alcohol-fuelled violence, its toxic masculinity (including sexual assault and virulent homophobia), and its repulsive documentation of kangaroo slaughter (a scene which reportedly caused a walkout of some audience members during a 2009 screening at Cannes).
Given that “Wake in Fright” is a no-nonsense expose about living on the geographically and culturally violent fringe of Outback Australia – and I have seen it referred to as being one of a wave of “Ozploitation” films that might also including “Mad Max” and “Wolf Creek” – it is perhaps not surprising that the film was “lost” for about forty years, and rediscovered a generation later. James Guida in The New Yorker suggested that:
“…When it was released it was so angrily denounced by the filmgoing public in Sydney that it disappeared forever — well, nearly. They were so aghast at the world of violence, aggression, ritualistic drinking, brutality toward nature and warped homoerotic sexuality masquerading as macho masculinity and bogus male bonding, that [the film] was a box-office flop.”
Somehow during my tender teenage years, I watched this film on television (before it disappeared) and its scenes of boganism were later recalled when, like the film’s protagonist (a school teacher), I was also assigned a job in the school of a dusty country town. For me, the isolation and culturally desolate landscapes were very real, and the film’s kangaroo killings were revisited when I joined some local “mates” on what I thought was a social night, but which became (for them) a night of “bunny bonking” (hunting rabbits by guns and spotlight). The film’s underside of Australian culture was very evocative of real life.
But for me, the film’s most frightening depictions of violence were its cultural hatred and repulsion towards homosexuality. Created during the same era in which Hollywood was churning out films like, “The Boys in the Band:” and “Midnight Cowboy”, inferred depictions of LGBT+ characters in films were generally self loathing or aberrant, adding an undercurrent of seediness or villainy to characters who were destined to either die or lead lives of loneliness (later revisited in “Brokeback Mountain”). Aussie films during this era, such as “The Everlasting Secret Family” and “The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie” followed suit, with LGBT+ characters either queer coded as part of their inferred displays of deviance, or were subjected to larrikin slurs of being comedic “poofters”. Such stereotypes were later examined by film historian Vito Russo as part of the western culture of queer invisibility or oppression. It would be some time before our culture would feel the impact of the US Stonewall Riots, or the publication of the gay liberation tome, “Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation” by Australian activist Dennis Altman.
Meanwhile, “Wake in Fright” disappeared and was presumed effectively lost. I recalled the film with probable confusion caused by my having seen it at such a young age and being probably unable to fully absorb and process its nuances and multilayered meanings. I vaguely recalled its homophobic depictions of male bonding and homophobic male self-loathing, reinterpreting these through the lens of a fellow teacher, a woman who once casually commented about teenage schoolboys fighting in our schoolyard: “I wonder if boys like to fight and wrestle because it’s the only way that they can touch and have emotional closeness to other males without being accused of being gay”. I saw the deep-seated threat of homophobic, toxic male violence first-hand in that country town one day, when the local radio station had declared the day to be “Blue Jeans Day” and had jokingly called for people to wear blue jeans as a way of “coming out” as gay. I had coincidentally worn blue jeans to school that day, and my students joked about it while I tried to have a mature (but age appropriate) conversation with them about human rights and equality – in the days before Anti Discrimination laws. One of the other young male teachers (a known womaniser), when also jokingly questioned by his students about his blue jeans, became loudly and physically aggressive, literally threatening to assault the nearest student if anything more was said on the matter. It seemed that the visceral violence of the outback country town from the film could also be found in real-life locations elsewhere in Australia. And there I lived: in an isolated, threatening, cultural desert.
But the most frightening correlation between the film and real life happened in 1995 when its star, Gary Bond, died of AIDS. His gay life – and his death – remained largely hidden from polite Australian society. Perhaps his homosexuality was another reason why the film had largely disappeared.
This was the era of AIDS, when public toilets frequently boasted graffiti that read “GAY = Got AIDS Yet?” or “AIDS = Anally Inserted Death Sentence” and became one focal point for roaming gangs of “poofter bashers” (I even recall reading in the newspaper about a young father who was bashed to death on a nearby train just for allegedly looking gay). Despite a number of prominent Australians speaking up for tolerance, acceptance, and in opposition to homophobia and AIDSphobia, other prominent Australians spoke of gay men (and other disempowered cohorts) as being ‘radical deviants’ (Simper, 1986) or purveyors of ‘brazen indulgences… to spread AIDS in Australia” (Nile, 1986).
The gay community had rallied and successfully conducted “safe sex” campaigns to reduce the spread of HIV, but this had remained largely within their own or related affected communities – all of them stigmatised and marginalised. They needed someone to speak up on their behalf. One early such advocate was a young woman who, along with her husband, became a mouthpiece for AIDS activism that had the potential to heighten and spread fear – but their loving, gentle voices gave testimony to a more compassionate, loving approach.
Suzi’s Story – Be Awake and Be Woke
“Forgive.”
– Vince Lovegrove explains Suzi’s advice to him about life in Suzi’s Story
(Lovegrove, 1987a).
The television documentary Suzi’s Story focussed on the family of Vince and Suzi Lovegrove, a young couple in Sydney who had met in the 1983 and had married shortly after the birth of their son Troy. Before long, the tragedy of AIDS would strike this family.
Vince Lovegrove later recalled their early days together in New York City and the ignorance that pervaded communities that were already affected:
“During my time in New York I lived in Christopher Street, Greenwich Village and the homosexual community would demonstrate in the streets, handing out information pamphlets and collecting fighting funds for this new disease that was confined to the gay community. We thought.
“This was 1983, and we had nothing against gays. But even so, just to ensure our safety, when we descended the three flights of stairs in our small apartment block and walked onto the street, we scanned the sidewalks. We wanted to be doubly sure we wouldn’t catch AIDS by accidentally brushing past someone who was infected. We talked about it often, sometimes seriously, but mostly jokingly, congratulating ourselves on how lucky we were not to be at risk.”(Lovegrove, 1993. p. 2.)
But even back then, warning signs were present:
“Ironically, Suzi was constantly ill from the moment we met. She often suffered from tiredness, lethargy; on a few occasions there were skin rashes, vomiting…. Maybe a cold, a change of weather, a hangover, stressed-out Manhattan living. Always a plausible explanation for the simplest of symptoms.” (ibid)
On 10 March 1986, now living in Australia, their worst fears were confirmed. Blood tests revealed that Suzi had HIV antibodies, indicating that she had been exposed to HIV some years earlier (ibid, p. 4), and both she and her son Troy were eventually diagnosed with AIDS.
The documentary Suzi’s Story was filmed in early 1987, chronicling their family’s life in the weeks leading up to Suzi’s death. The love and support they received from relatives was contrasted against the mixed response from friends – some supportive, others fearful and rejecting. The program was sensitive but also blunt: Vince shared how he and Suzi had enjoyed sex together for years without his becoming infected; his daughter from a previous marriage discussed whether her school friends (or their parents) would be supportive.
It was also a time of great testing – and not simply from their battle with AIDS. Vince reported that he had to battle four court cases over his and Suzi’s right simply to film their documentary at all, as many people evidently disagreed with the wisdom of filming the last months of a dying woman’s life (ibid, p. 66). It seemed that the societal taboo against death was another hurdle that people with AIDS would have to overcome if they wanted to have their problem dealt with openly and honestly.
Suzi’s Story aired on Channel 10 on 23 June 1987, only nine days after Suzi Lovegrove’s death from AIDS. The viewer response was “unprecedented” (Johnstone, 1987) and led to a repeat screening on 9 July 1987, preceded by newsman David Johnstone reading aloud extracts from three sample letters which had been written by viewers responding to the first screening. He also stated at the end of the second screening that the viewer response led Channel 10 to believe that the documentary had contributed to breaking down the stigma associated with AIDS (ibid).
Positive viewer response also led Vince Lovegrove to write a eulogy to his wife in Sydney’s Sun newspaper prior to the second screening of the documentary on 9 July:
“Well, you really did it this time, my love…Viewers fell in love with you and your dignity…You smashed all the myths of AIDS to smithereens…
“And they now know what is needed most by victims. Love. You should be damned proud. And Australians should be proud of their response…” (Lovegrove, 1987b).
The newspaper also reported that “a massive wave of sympathy and support” included money to support young Troy Lovegrove in his own battle against AIDS (ibid). The documentary even won a 1987 Human Rights Award as testimony to its widespread impact in fighting stigma.
The emotional and compassionate response of Australians to this young heterosexual couple and their family began a slow, glacial transformation to extend compassion to others at risk, who remained invisible: gay and bisexual men, injecting drug users, haemophiliacs, and their female sexual partners and infants. That stigma was still there – although Vince and Suzi Lovegrove (and their children) had challenged such fear, ignorance and stigma with their own brand of calm courage. Australia woke in fright – and began a journey forward into a new era of both effective HIV medications and a more compassionate society that was learning respect for diversity.
Other advocates – especially women – would come forward in those early days of a terrible double epidemic (one of a virus, and one of stigma and rejection). But young Suzi Lovegrove set the scene for change by appearing on televisions in living rooms around Australia, and making people weep for those lost to AIDS. Her husband Vince was tragically killed in a car accident on 24 March 2012, but Suzi and Vince should be remembered and honoured as people who were willing to stand up (at considerable cost to themselves) against a terrible plague and its terrible stigma. We can still learn from their example today.
References:
Author unknown, 1996. “Proud lives remembered: World AIDS Day 1996”, in Sydney Star Observer, 28 November, pp. 2 & 3.
David Johnstone, 1987. Introduction to repeat screening of “Suzi’s Story”, Channel 10, 9 July.
Vince Lovegrove, 1987a. Interviewed in “Suzi’s Story”, A Carlyon-Gillespie Production, in association with Pro-image Productions for Network Ten Australia.
Vincent Lovegrove, 1987b. “My Dearest Suzi”, the Sun (Sydney), 9 July.
Vincent Lovegrove, 1993. A kid called Troy, ABC Books.
Fred Nile MLC, 1986. “Scrap Gay Mardi Gras”, The Australian, 21 February.
Errol Simper, 1986. “CEP funds wasted on ‘deviant radicals’,” The Australian, 12 March.
= = =
This was preparatory work for my PhD studies on, “A Social History of HIV/AIDS in Melbourne During the ‘Crisis Years’ 1981 to 1997”; this latter work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
The Grim Reaper, an infamous campaign by NACAIDS in 1987. Phil Carswell told me that he and Lex Watson, the only two gay men on the committee, objected to the advertisement, but were overruled. (Photo supplied by Phil.)
“When you grow up as a faggot,
you learn to accept being treated as a leper.”
– “Stephen”, shortly before his 1987 death from AIDS
(Hinch, 1987.)
Imagine a virus that was maybe one hundred times harder to catch than COVID, but was a hundred times deadlier.* A virus which, when left untreated (as it was in the early days, before modern medicines were discovered) was an automatic death sentence for almost everyone who contracted it. In the era of COVID, some people trivialise the suffering of those afflicted by a virus, and they cast aspersions on medical and political authorities who warn of such dangers. But such a blasé attitude was not common during Australia’s last epidemic. Instead, we endured levels of anxiety, panic, and victim blaming that were arguably unheard of in our lifetime – effectively a double epidemic of disease and stigma. Forty years ago – within living memory – many Australians demanded that those impacted by this earlier virus (HIV, which led to AIDS) be isolated from polite society; there were even calls for permanent quarantine and leaving victims to die. Forget the modern controversy over COVID-era facemasks; HIV/AIDS brought about anxiety and panic over sharing a handshake, a telephone, a cup (including a communion cup) or plates or crockery, a toilet seat, a swimming pool, breathing the same air, or getting a mosquito bite.
The grave of John Foster and his partner, Juan Céspedes.
Easter 1987 plumbed the depths of fear, hysteria and homophobia brought on by the HIV virus. One man who documented this era was John Foster, a Melbourne academic and author who himself died with HIV/AIDS almost thirty years ago to the day. Part of his story is tied irrevocably to Easter 1987 – a terrible time for those living (and dying) with HIV/AIDS, in the days before modern medications made it possible to live a long and productive life with the virus. 1987 will forever remain one of the nadirs of Australian HIV/AIDS history in the story of John Foster and in the wider story of this nation.
These days, we have treatments and preventative strategies/medications to mitigate against HIV and to ensure that those living with the virus should enjoy long and productive lives. Conversely, our more recent era of COVID demonstrates that we still have much to learn from the era of AIDS regarding how we respond to the joint epidemics of disease and social stigma. During the era of COVID, some generally conservative and reactionary peoples sought to blame a particular nation for the outbreak, although such stigma remained on the margins; whereas forty years ago, AIDS caused widespread and mainstream victim-blaming that focused primarily upon sexuality and forced many LGBT+ people (and other presumed ‘at-risk’ groups) back into the closet.
Stigma and Slur
A newspaper headline in 1984 (photo supplied by Phil)
This was the year that AIDS hysteria would possibly reach its heights in Australia. Whereas at the start of the epidemic, AIDS had barely rated a mention in newspapers because it was primarily seen as a “gay plague”; the momentum towards hysteria had built in 1983 with such headlines as “the black plague of the eighties…” (Clark, 1983) and such news copy as: “They are the new lepers…” (Rudakewych & Bagley, 1983). In 1984, the momentum continued with the ‘scandal’ of a gay male blood donor who was the focus of a national outrage. Then in 1985, Rock Hudson’s death from AIDS shook the world, and in 1986 a young child in New South Wales was banned from her pre-school centre and ultimately hounded out of Australia because she had received HIV through a blood transfusion. Such was the shock and fear and attention that stigma and hysteria built quickly. By 1987, it seemed virtually impossible to pick up any newspaper without reading one or more items about AIDS. By the middle of that year, there were hundreds of articles published about AIDS in Australian newspapers each month.
The news from overseas was also problematic in 1987, when, after effectively ignoring the epidemic and the deaths of thousands of Americans for most of his two terms of office, US President Reagan finally significantly addressed AIDS during a speech in which he posed a judgmental and homophobic question: “Don’t medicine and morality teach the same lesson?” (Barker, 1987). He was later booed at an AIDS fund-raising dinner, when he stated his support for widespread mandatory HIV testing during an era when there was no treatment, only stigma and discrimination – potential loss of housing and employment, and family rejection. The US Secretary of State, William Bennett, also publicly suggested that AIDS was a “good thing” if it served to discourage teenagers from having sex. (Rutledge, 1989, p. 42.) It is perhaps no coincidence that coy AIDS advertisements in the USA reached their peak around this time – an era which novelist Andrew Holleran reputedly called The Fear, when gay men abandoned what Rotello calls “the fast lane” and practised safe sex most avidly (Gabriel Rotello, 1997). Australian newspapers also reported this decline in casual sex among gay men in the USA (Author unknown, 4 April 1987a).
1987 marked the year of publication for US author Randy Shilts’ definitive but flawed early study of AIDS, And the Band Played On, which began to lift the lid on the hidden faces and statistics behind the viral epidemic; even while also spreading unwarranted fear and prejudice through its misidentification of “Patient Zero”, allegedly a French Canadian gay flight attendant who was spreading the virus across the USA and beyond through his willful and irresponsible sexual behaviour. In Australia, the response also remained somewhat problematic and potentially hysterical, such as when the Sydney Morning Herald published a front page story which claimed that AIDS had been found in the DNA of a number of African insects, such as fleas and mosquitoes, but reassured readers that this did not appear to represent a threat to humans (Thomas, 1987a).
In April 1987, an fire emergency services team extracted injured passengers from a car crash scene – only to later publicly express their abject fear after learning that one of the wounded was an “AIDS victim” (AAP, 1987a; Author unknown, 6 April 1987a). Meanwhile, an alderman for Launceston City Council was quoted in the media as stating that he did not like homosexuals, but that they did not worry him because “AIDS will take care of them” (Lester, 1987).
The year would also mark a turning point for the epidemic in Australia. Two media events would change forever the way Australians saw the epidemic; both would bring the threat chillingly into lounge rooms around the nation and make every family realise that AIDS could potentially happen to them.
One was the Grim Reaper campaign, a chilling advertisement put out by the National Advisory Council on AIDS (NACAIDS) as a deliberate attempt to confront the stereotype of AIDS as only a disease affecting gay men and drug addicts. It featured a skeletal Grim Reaper using a bowling ball to mow down groups of “average” Australians, and warned that it could kill more Australians than World War Two. Decades later, many people might still recall this advertisement as possibly the singularly most significant AIDS event in Australia’s history.
The second media event was equally significant at the time, and drew an enormous viewer response. It was the telecast of Suzi’s Story, a sensitive, touching and heartbreaking documentary about a young woman, Suzi Lovegrove, and her family, in the last weeks of her life as she slowly died of AIDS. Whereas the Grim Reaper created outraged calls for its removal, Suzi’s Story inspired such a positive response that Channel 10 repeated the documentary within weeks due to popular demand. While the Grim Reaper had taught Australians to fear AIDS and gay men, Suzi’s Story challenged Aussies to extend love and compassion to (heterosexual) people with AIDS rather than fearing or loathing them. Suzi’s Story will be explored in another blog article which I hope will come soon – but for now, let us recreate the atmosphere of homophobic fear and loathing that were commonplace in 1987.
Grimly Reaping
On Sunday 5 April 1987, one week before Palm Sunday, and a fortnight before Easter Sunday, Australia faced a watershed moment – this was the night that the Grim Reaper advertisement stormed onto the nation’s televisions (Author unknown, 5 April 2007). One possibly ominous portent regarding the arrival of Australia’s official AIDS campaign was characterised by a newspaper headline: “AIDS Judgment Day Has Arrived” (Tamsen, 1987a). Also, other editors at the Times on Sunday, declared:
“From today, the deadly epidemic of AIDS is a problem that no Australian household will be able to ignore… No longer can AIDS be conveniently considered as just a problem for a limited group of homosexuals and intravenous drug users… The threat is to the whole community” (Editors, 5 April 1987).
The opening words of the advertisement contained a shocking warning:
“At first, only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS…
But now we know every one of us could be devastated by it…”
The unintended result of these words was an implication reminiscent of some media reports from the United States – such as the doctor who suggested on television’s Good Morning America in 1983 that AIDS had the potential to spread beyond gays, Haitians and haemophiliacs, so that “normal people” were at risk of getting it (Rutledge, 1989, p. 21).
The Grim Reaper thereby reinforced a social stigma against gay men – they were evidently responsible for introducing this deadly affliction into Australia and now the rest of us were going to have to suffer as a result of their self indulgent and hedonistic lifestyle. Dr. Ron Penny, an early AIDS medical expert, later admitted that the advertisement “demonised” gay men: “The downside was that the Grim Reaper became identified with gay men rather than as the Reaper” (Penny, 2002).
Announcing the campaign was Federal Health Minister, Dr. Neal Blewett, who had recently stated in Federal Parliament that he believed AIDS to be, “the most serious public health problem this country has faced since Federation” (Editors, 6 April 1987). Alongside him was NACAIDS media spokeswoman, Ita Buttrose, who arguably sounded like a publicist for a conservative reactionary church:
“Casual sex is out, one night stands are gone, multiple sex partners are downright dangerous, and so is sharing needles and syringes… The sexual revolution is over (AAP, 1987a)… Abstinence is the best way to stop AIDS. Fidelity in marriage is vital – so are one-to-one relationships” (Thomas, 1987b).
This campaign was the end result of research which had indicated that many Australians were woefully ignorant about AIDS. In a survey of 1700 people, 36 per cent thought AIDS could be transmitted by shaking hands (Happell, 1987).
Media commentators John Tulloch & Deborah Lupton explained the full scope of the advertising drive:
“The campaign was planned by the NACAIDS over some months and launched in April 1987. It was expected that 80 per cent of the Australian population, over a period of two weeks, would see the ‘Grim Reaper’ television advertisement at least five times. The same advertisement was also to be shown in cinemas and the campaign included radio and print advertisements and brochures explaining the risk factors for HIV/AIDS and how to use a condom” (Tulloch & Lupton, 1997).
Steeped in the religious atmosphere of Easter that year, the Grim Reaper imagery was evocative of medieval religious motifs: death incarnate as a skeletal Grim Reaper, outfitted with a scythe and ragged cowl, silent but devastating in its grim work. For sport, it was in a bowling alley, knocking down pins comprised of fearful, grief-stricken people – not a mixed, multicultural mob, but people who were “all dressed to represent white, respectable and healthy ‘middle Australia’” (ibid). This included a weeping girl and a young mother sheltering her baby in her arms – the innocent, virginal, and maternal stereotypes of women (ibid, p. 41) which had long etched itself into our national consciousness.
The Grim Reaper advertisement advised people to practice monogamy – or use condoms every time. It closed with a scene showing a legion of grim reapers spreading their death and destruction, while the closing words of the advertisement warned: “AIDS. Prevention is the Only Cure We’ve Got” (ibid, p. 40).
A screenshot from the Grim Reaper campaign, which terrified Australia in 1987.
A deliberate and primary emotion used within this advertisement was fear – the fear of AIDS and the fear of death. Federal Health Minister, Dr. Neal Blewett, reported that the campaign was intended to shock people into understanding that everyone was at risk – not just gay men and other high risk groups (Hailstone, 1987). Advertising executive Siimon Reynolds, the young man who devised the Grim Reaper advertisement, later acknowledged that it was intended to inspire fear in order to compel people to use condoms (George Negus, 2003; AAP, 1987a). This caused some people – including Western Australian Premier, Brian Burke – to immediately criticise the advertisements as having too much shock value and not providing enough information (Author unknown, 7 April 1987b)
The advertisement certainly scared the bejeesus out of people and raised the spectre of AIDS into our national consciousness. The first day of the campaign resulted in 1250 telephone calls being made to the AIDS Hotline, and over 3500 calls within three days. Many of these callers expressed concern that they might have been exposed to the virus (Author unknown, 9 April 1987). The Federal Opposition Health Spokesman, James Porter, quickly called for the advertisement to be banned before 8.30pm each night because it was scaring children (AAP, 1987b). One newspaper editorial christened that week, “The Week of the Big Scare Campaign” (Editorial Opinion, 1987). I recall my then-partner’s comment after seeing the Grim Reaper advertisement for the first time: “It’s enough to put you off having sex for the rest of your life.”
Level-Headedness
Death and the Miser, c. 1485/1490 (Hieronymus Bosch)
Disputing the medieval hype was one reporter from the Times on Sunday, who conceded that AIDS had the potential to possibly spread to 100,000 Australian cases by the end of the century, but who nevertheless tried to reposit the threat of AIDS within a calmer perspective:
“Since the first AIDS death in 1982, cardiovascular disease has killed roughly 260,000 Australians, cancer about 110,000 people, and road accidents about 14,000 more. Two hundred and thirty-eight people have died of AIDS, and while 442 people have the disease, only four contracted it through heterosexual sex” (Smith, 1987).
Another commentator from the same newspaper had a more succinct criticism:
“The Grim Reaper has been an enduring logo, to be sure, but advertising has moved on since the 14th century” (Cook, 1987).
Such a calm view on AIDS seemed rare in the Australian media at that time – and ran contrary to the NACAIDS campaign, which was intended to shock people.
Another calm media approach to HIV/AIDS at the time was an episode of the Geoffrey Robertson Hypotheticals program that was telecast on ABC television in 1987. Filmed in August 1986 (Robertson, 1987, p. vii), it actually pre-dated the Grim Reaper, but it was nevertheless a level-headed concurrent approach to the issue of HIV/AIDS. Including a varied panel of medical, religious, political, and community representatives, it confronted the prevailing societal homophobia via an exchange between Rev Fred Nile, Professor John Dwyer, and the program’s host, Geoffrey Robertson:
NILE: There’s no doubt that the AIDS epidemic is definitely related to homosexual practices; there’s no doubt about that.
MODERATOR: Not originally. It seems to have come from the Green Monkey in Central Africa. It spread through heterosexual contact in Africa, then to Haiti, and then, via visiting homosexuals, to the United States.
NILE: That’s one of the gay liberation myths they’ve stirred up.
MODERATOR: What is the origin of AIDS, Professor Dwyer?
DWYER: There is an abundance of evidence that is [sic] probably did enter the human population from an animal reservoir. The virus is clearly being spread with frightening rapidity in Africa through heterosexual activities. (ibid, p. 51).
Other Responses
Following the Grim Reaper, AIDS and sexual health clinics around the country were initially swamped with requests for HIV tests and information (Tulloch & Lupton, pp. 135 & 136). For example:
“The number of women attending one clinic for HIV tests increased by 127 per cent and the number of heterosexual men was 154 per cent. During the two weeks that the television advertisement was screened, approximately 40,000 telephone calls were received by the [AIDS] hotline…” (ibid, p. 136).
However, behind the self-congratulatory back-slapping by health bureaucrats lay some murky truths:
“The majority of people seeking testing and information, however, were judged to be at very low risk of infection and appeared to be demonstrating unfounded anxiety. Indeed, it has been claimed that those individuals most at risk from HIV infection were discouraged from seeking an HIV test in the months following the ‘Grim Reaper’ because of the stigmatization they felt the campaign had engendered…” (Rosser, 1988).
Barely one week into the campaign, it was announced that the Grim Reaper television advertisements would be ended early because of the overwhelming response (although it would reappear on movie theatre screens and TV during subsequent times). Over 12,000 phone calls had been received by the overloaded AIDS hotline in the first few days of that Easter campaign (Thomas, op cit; Author unknown, 13 April 1987). The Head of NACAIDS, Professor David Penington, reportedly stated that the campaign had actually caused an “inappropriate response” because thousands of enquiries had been received from people in low-risk groups; and he also believed that the content of the advertisement was “inappropriate” to be shown in a timeslot when young children might be watching (Schauble & Dixon, 1987). Another newspaper letter-writer also bemoaned the possibility that AIDS education might frighten children (Taylor 1987). One parent even complained to a newspaper that his 12-year-old daughter had suggested that, “There is no future because we’re all going to die of AIDS anyway” (No Future, 1987).
In Victoria, a scheme was proposed to introduce hospital detention for people who deliberately spread AIDS – their detention would be indefinite and “until they die” (Author unknown, 7 April 1987c). The Sun newspaper in Melbourne reported a rise in gay bashings that year (Author unknown, 16 July 1987) while Sydney would later come to be known as the scene for a legion of gay bashings and murders that escalated in the years following the Grim Reaper.
In Queensland, Brisbane tenpin bowling companies reportedly sought legal advice over the Grim Reaper advertisements (Author unknown, 7 April 1987a).
Gravesong for Juan
Cover of the 1993 edition of Foster’s book, featuring Juan practising his ballet.
In his autobiographical novel, Take Me To Paris, Johnny, John Foster recalled the arrival of the Grim Reaper because of its macabre intersection with Foster’s own real-life tragedy. His lover Juan Céspedes had spent his life struggling against an unfair world – and yet such cruelties had pursued him to the bitter end.
The meeting of the Cuban Juan and his namesake, the Australian John, had forged a friendship which grew into a tender love and cemented new hope in the young refugee/émigré. After fleeing homophobic detention in Cuba, living as a gay man in the twilight of a pre/post Stonewall era in the USA, and enduring the loss of his dreams for professional ballet after being struck and injured by a taxi; Juan had finally migrated to Australia in 1986 to be with John and to commence his new life of sanctuary and hope – but in another of life’s cruel twists, Juan was already suffering inexplicable illnesses and increasing debilitation; he was later to be diagnosed with AIDS.
Poor Juan had to struggle to cope with this news and its implications despite his broken English and the inconsistent help of doctors:
“Still lying on the couch where he had been examined, Juan raised himself up on one elbow. It was time for the evasions, the kindnesses, the determined optimism to come to an end.
“’Do I’m dying, doctor?’ he asked. The doctor had not been listening. ‘I’m sorry Juan, what was that?’
“He repeated the question, his voice thick and low. ‘Do I’m dying?’
“Perhaps it was the curious trick of his syntax that distracted the doctor. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said ‘I didn’t catch what you said.’
“And so for a third time he asked. ‘Do I’m dying?’ The words hung in the air, no more than a whisper.
“The reply was slow in coming. Then, simply, ‘I don’t know, Juan. I don’t know’” (Foster, 1993, pp. 144 & 145).
Even when he was hospitalised, life’s injustices continued for Juan – his treatment was complicated with nurses who experienced some initial uncertainties about handling their first AIDS patient; food assistants who had to be chastised about leaving his meal trays on the floor outside his room; and a television rental man who consistently refused to enter the room to collect the rental fees (ibid, pp. 152 – 154). Indeed, one might wonder how and why the ancillary staff even knew about Juan’s medical status in the first place. And a final insult came as Juan lay dying in hospital, facing his own mortality; and John Foster later recalled his anger at this assault upon his friend’s dignity:
“And then, most cruelly, in a way I found unbearable, he was assaulted, battered with the idea of death. Not death in general, not as an abstract principle or a spiritual reality, but death as a victim of AIDS. In the weeks that he had been in hospital, Miss Ita Buttrose and her colleagues at the National Advisory Council on AIDS had been preparing a campaign to alert the general public to the gravity of the epidemic. There were 442 cases of AIDS in the country; 238 deaths were already recorded. They needed an approach that would stop people in their tracks… So they hired an advertising agency and unleashed the Grim Reaper on the television screens of the nation.
“It would run for only two weeks, they said. But what comfort was that if they were the last two weeks you would spend on this earth; and when you were struggling to make sense of what was happening to you they confronted you with this fantastic cowled creature, socket-eyed and scythe-swinging, knocking down its victims in a bowling alley? No mercy, was the message; violent, impersonal, death as a complete wipe-out” (ibid, p. 170).
Juan’s descent into despair at this time became apparent with his request that his bedside poster of Rudolph Nureyev, his dancing idol, be removed from the hospital wall (ibid p. 167); its presence had become an “odious” reminder of broken dreams. Tragically, although he would never know it, Juan Céspedes would ultimately share the same fate as that of his hero – another refugee who had sought the freedom to dance in the western world. In a twist of cosmic irony, Juan died six years before Nureyev also succumbed to AIDS (Watson, 1994).
As he approached his darkest hours, Juan did appear to find some consolation. His last public appearance was at a local church service on Palm Sunday 1987, where even a child who was present expressed his concern and compassion for “the sick man”. Strangely enough, at a luncheon held after the service, Juan was interviewed by a journalist about why he came to church and what his plans were for the approaching Easter weekend (Foster, 1993, pp. 174 & 175). His answer to the first part of the question was brief but buoyant:
“He goes to Saint Mary’s because his friends go there and people care for him” (Strong, 1987).
This succinct answer hints at Juan’s childlike quality and also how he evidently felt love and support from his friends in his church community – sadly, a support that was offered to far too few gay men by religious communities during this era. The other part of his answer – that he hoped to go to church at Easter – would tragically not come to pass. Juan would be dead by the following weekend, and he would not even live long enough to see his short interview in print.
The Long Goodbye
Juan’s final night of life was also the final night that the Grim Reaper terrorised Australian television. Significantly, Foster’s memoir recounts a heartbreaking conversation the lovers shared in the hospital during this, their final night together:
“… Juan, lying there, fearful yet oddly patient, the tiny tears finding their way down his cheeks.
“Out of the patience came the greatest sadness, a sadness that lodged in me, it seems, for ever. Four short words, neither a moan nor a cry, but a simple clear statement of infinite regret. ‘I have accomplished nothing,’ he said…
“He had accomplished nothing, nothing that people would remember, nothing that would cause them to honour in him the name that had been borne by Cuba’s greatest patriot…
“What I wanted to say to Juan had nothing to do with greatness. It was simply this: that he had loved me…
“‘There has been us,’ I said. And I know he understood, because somewhere in that night, in the fragments of his dying, he said, ‘We made it, Johnny. Didn’t we?’” (Foster, 1993, pp. 186 & 187).
Juan died early the following morning (ibid, pp. 7 & 189), on Good Friday, 17 April 1987 – the day the Grim Reaper was removed from our television screens after its brief but successful assault upon our national consciousness, “at a time when those who feared homosexuals were smiling a secret smile of satisfaction at God’s busyness” (Hanrahan, 1993) Juan was aged thirty-three, the supposed age of Christ when he died – and such religious symbolism may have comforted his partner, John Foster, who was a prominent member of his local church community.
Juan’s passing never appeared in the death notices of Melbourne’s major metropolitan newspapers. To this day, his long-silenced signature remains in the Visitor’s Book of his church from the last Christmas Eve Mass he ever attended. Despite his severe illness at that time, his autograph displays the flowing, looping twirls suggestive of a graceful, soaring dancer. His inscribed home address is Melbourne, indicating that the soul of this Cuban refugee appears to have finally found a residence and an adoptive family during the last months of his life.
Let Freedom Ring
John Foster’s friend, John Rickard, reports that Foster remained troubled by Juan’s deathbed exclamation of despair and regret, and that he became determined to prove that Juan was wrong by ensuring he achieved something – even in death. Foster spent his subsequent years writing a memoir, in which he affectionately recounted Juan’s life, ultimately presenting him as a flesh-and-blood person whom book reviewer John Hanrahan would later describe as a “streetwise innocent” (Hanrahan, 1993). The resulting book, Take Me To Paris, Johnny, was launched in Melbourne on 2 September 1993. Three weeks after finishing his project, John Foster began to deteriorate from his own AIDS related illness (John Rickard, 1993) and he died on 6 May 1994, shortly after turning fifty. Rickard points out the insidious and diverse ways that AIDS had affected both Juan and John:
“Whereas Juan, the dancer, had, in his dying, seen his body wasting away to a skeleton, for John, the historian, there was the sad irony that his mind bore the brunt of AIDS” (ibid, p. 204).
The two lovers – Juan Gualberto Céspedes and John Harvey Foster – are now reunited and buried together in a quiet and overgrown corner of Boroondara General Cemetery in Kew, Melbourne. There, they rest at peace, far removed from the terror, turmoil and tragedy which shattered their lives.
As a testimony to these early days of AIDS and the fading resonance of the Grim Reaper, Foster’s book, Take Me To Paris, Johnny, remains a powerful and timeless love story. The front cover of the original edition of the book contained the subtitle, “A Life Accomplished in the Era of AIDS”, which was a clear reference to the brief, deathbed conversation of despair and regret, which Robert Dessaix later proposed was a concise dialogue filled with a “multitude of fears and anguish” (cited in Dow, 2003). Despite Foster’s loving, highly competent and tender writing, the book remains what Steve Dow calls a “neglected masterpiece” (ibid) and although having been reprinted three times, it has never won its due share of literary accolades. Another reviewer, Mary Rose Liverani, suggests that Foster died too soon after the book’s original publication to enable the literary world to discover his magnum opus (Liverani, 2004).
Or it may be that Australians are simply unwilling to read this affectionate, gay love story because of societal racism or homophobia, or because the stigma that accompanied the epidemic endures in its virtual erasure from our collective memories – or because our collective subconscious still recoils at the same silent echoes of the Grim Reaper which may have haunted Juan on his deathbed.
In the eye of this terrible storm that had engulfed and consumed them, their local church had provided them with sanctuary and shelter. Today, the church’s clock tower that was named in memory of John Foster, remains as a harbinger of better times.
(Photo supplied by Phil)
Pride and Prejudice
In 1991, Department of Community Services and Health literature proclaimed that the Grim Reaper campaign had not only achieved its goals but that every newspaper in the country had agreed that the risk of AIDS was so great that the fear tactic was justified – and the Grim Reaper image became a generic illustration to accompany AIDS news reports (Tulloch & Lupton, op cit, p. 134).
Advertising CEO Siimon Reynolds told a magazine that the Grim Reaper had been widely accepted:
“Virtually no criticism came from the general public. Channel 9 did a nationwide poll and an extraordinary 83% of the population came out in favour of the campaign. I believe it’s very hard to get 83% of Australians to agree on anything” (Author unknown, June-August 1987a).
Homophobia. Prevention is the Only Cure We’ve Got
Health workers also reported that some HIV patients attending their clinic were displaying distress at what they perceived to be the “ostracism” caused by the advertisement (Tulloch & Lupton, p. 1346).
Adam Carr, spokesman from the Victorian AIDS Council, advised gay men not to get tested unless they had access to adequate counselling and support services, particularly given the current lack of protections for such people: “Knowing you are positive is becoming increasingly dangerous for the individual in that it will be more and more difficult to obtain housing, employment and insurance, and to travel” (Smith, 1987a).
According to a Christian magazine, Professor Ian Gust, of NACAIDS, believed any such boycott to be “highly immoral” and that furthermore: “He went on to point out that for too long those in the health services had been bending over backwards to serve the gay community and it was time for them to see more of their responsibility to the wider community” (Author unknown, June-August 1987b).
And yet the reality was something different: the gay community had already been upholding their responsibilities to both themselves and the wider community. Due to the scarcity of reliable, verifiable information about HIV/AIDS in the mass media from the earliest days of the epidemic, the gay community and its gay news media had promoted safe sex and responsible, empowered lifestyle choices since long before the Grim Reaper arrived on the scene. As early as 1984, some three years before the skeleton terrorised our televisions, the number of HIV infections had peaked and begun a slow, steady decline (National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, 1999). The gay community should have been acknowledged and praised for this achievement, not vilified as portents of disease through the invocation of medieval imagery.
Indeed, many of the Grim Reaper’s real-life victims would not simply line up and meekly wait to be bowled over like those shown in the advertisement. Out of these depths would arise the Australian HIV/AIDS activist model: the AIDS Quilt to mourn the dead; care teams to sustain the living; self-empowerment programs to work with doctors and others in power to bring about positive, life-affirming change; and activists to raise hell and demand political and social evolution. Modern Australian social realities, including anti-discrimination protections for LGBT+ people, needle exchange programs, empowerment programs for disadvantaged cohorts, dying with dignity, marriage equality, and even the sale of the humble condom on supermarket shelves – all these and more owe their modern existence to the HIV/AIDS era and to the sad, bleak Easter a skeleton frightened all Australians.
Easter is, of course, a religious event that metaphorically commemorates opportunities for new life arising out of the ashes of death. The death, distress and turmoil experienced by Australians that Easter of 1987 – especially for the ostracised, stigmatised, deathfully-fearful gay male community (and other cohorts directly or indirectly impacted) – was a hellish time of fear, suffering and death; but out of these depths would arise a new consciousness for civil rights and compassion and activism to change the country and the world. Lest we forget.
*The author acknowledges that the opening sentence was inspired by a Facebook conversation, with the original comment possibly initiated by Adam Carr.
# # #
This is based upon an uncompleted thesis related to my PhD Studies on, “A Social History of HIV/AIDS in Melbourne during the ‘Crisis Years’ 1981 to 1997”. This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
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