The Fate of the Other in Tony Kushner's Angels in America

Abstract

Before HBO first aired Mike Nichols's two-part television adaptation of Tony Kushner's Angels in America (Millennium Approaches and Perestroika) in December 2003, news of its production generated certain degree of skepticism as to whether the critical excitement it had generated during some of the most heated days of the AIDS crisis would be renewed.1 Moreover, many were immediately struck by the fact that this new incarnation curiously omitted the boldly provocative subtitle under which it once appeared: a Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Just what did this elision intimate in terms of Kushner's re-envisioned work?2 In this and other respects, it seemed natural to speculate on just what lasting cultural or moral relevance the 1993 drama might have for society facing what seemed altogether different challenges full decade later. On the journey to its star-studded incarnation could Angels in America still speak to the even greater social fragmentation, complex identity politics, and cultural ambiguities of the twenty-first century? On basic level, Angels in America concerns cluster of intersecting individuals whose lives are profoundly touched by the epidemic of AIDS deaths in New York in the mid-1980s.3 However, unlike its immediate predecessors, the epic scope of Angels can seem especially bewildering to those who encounter it for the first time and struggle to follow the sprawling narrative that ultimately encompasses such disparate matters as the historical migration of the Mormons, the McCarthy hearings, historical