times within And the Band Played On . The casual sex found within San Francisco’s gay
community is blamed by Shilts for diseases such as ‘Gay Bowl disease’ and hepatitis. 21 In the
same chapter the bathhouse scene is first portrayed through the gaze of Kico, who is
‘horrified’ and ‘disillusioned’ by the sex acts he witnesses inside. 22 Even drag queens’ mere
existence in public is portrayed as a hindrance to the gay community and its public image. 23
Overall, the characters Shilts intends for the reader to sympathize with expressess an overall
hostility towards the aspects of the gay community Shilts personally disliked. While this
shows hostility toward large swaths of the gay community, Crimp’s assertion that this is
because Shilts takes on a ‘heterosexual viewpoint’ is dubious. Mckay demonstrates that
Shilts had been personally traumatized by promiscuity which is a far more compelling cause
for hostility than embracing a ‘bourgeois universalist’ perspective in their writing. Walds also
raises important points about how the idea of naming a ‘patient zero’ for AIDs is impossible
and more than likely damaging.
And The Band Played On set out to demonstrate how the inaction of the Reagan
Administration and the media exacerbated the AIDS epidemic and became overshadowed by
the story of ‘Patient Zero’. By projecting everything he disli ked about gay America onto
Dugas, and by portraying him as the homophobic caricature of a predatory gay man, Shilts
provided an overall homophobic America with a much more appealing and salacious story.
Shilts used the concept of a ‘Patient Zero’ as a scap egoat for disease. By making this
scapegoat a promiscuous, allegedly predatory gay man, Shilts contributed to the narrative
21 Shilts, p. 52 22 Shilts, p. 63 23 Shilts, p. 52
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