Angels in America ve How to Get Away with Murder başlıklı eserlerde gizlilik ve ifşaat

Abstract

The emergence of various sexual subcultures and communities is part of a larger process that has characterized the twentieth century, resulting in ever-growing social complexity and social differentiation. This differentiation process has produced “a new pluralism of class, ethnic, racial and cultural forms as well as a diversity of gender and sexual experiences,” as Jeffrey Weeks puts it in his work, Sexuality (1986, p. 75). Angels in America (1992-1995) by Tony Kushner is a play set in America in the 1980s against a backdrop of conservatism, sexual politics, and a new mysterious disease: AIDS. On the other hand, How to Get Away with Murder (2014-2020) is an American legal thriller television series created by Peter Nowalk and produced by Shonda Rhimes in ABC Studios, in which the LGBTQ community finds its long-neglected place in American society. In both works, written twenty years apart, secrecy and disclosure strongly tied to sexual identity is the real nexus of the storyline in which the protagonists fight with their sexual identities along with social, cultural, and political attitudes, thus, transforming their entire lives into a battleground. In this paper, we aim to discuss the secrecy and disclosure of sexual identities in light of the USA's social, political, and cultural changes in Angels in America and How to Get Away with Murder.