Queer Jewish Murderous Heroes: The Rehabilitation of "Historical Villains" in Post-AIDS Narratives (2012)

Undergraduate: Clark Meshaw

Faculty Advisor: Inger Brodey
Department: English

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In Kushner’s Angels in America and Tom Kalin’s film Swoon, Kushner and Kalin select real individuals who have been written, historically, as villains: Kushner uses the figure of Roy Cohn while Kalin chooses the subjects Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb. I propose that both Kalin and Kushner commit to a project of “rehabilitation” in an attempt to show how both anti-Semitism and homophobia played a part in the creation of these “historical monsters.” The vilification of these individuals, in Kushner and Kalin’s work, is made possible through the positing of an “American Identity” based on exclusion politics. I will also examine how Kushner and Kalin select figures historically renowned as murderers to deconstruct the term “murder.” As post-AIDS narratives, Kushner and Kalin reflect upon the fact that the heteronormative conservatism of the 80’s resulted in the negligence on the part of the United States to address the AIDS epidemic. Kalin and Kushner subvert the political ideology of normalcy in order to show that the political right’s reaction to AIDS is comparable to the murders committed by Leopold, Loeb, and Cohn. These characters remain villains in these fictions, but they are made into likeable villains. Kushner and Kalin show how definitions of murder and murderers are relative and defined by those endowed with hegemonic privilege and authoritarian power.