The Concept of Progress in Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Göttingen (Philosophische Fakultät), course: The American Rhetorical Tradition, language: English, abstract: While this extensive film encompasses a variety of themes and topics, the focus of this paper will be its proposition of progress. It will be argued that Angels in America confirms progress to be inevitable and essential by drawing on, and redefining, American concepts and myths of westward movement and migration, equality and pluralism. Thus, traditional elements of the construct "American Dream" will be analyzed.

The first part will consist of a short overview of different approaches to progress employed in the film: historical, religious and political. Subsequently, the second and third part will focus on a set of selected scenes and investigate how progress, and the lack thereof, is communicated in the depiction of different characters as they are caught in a constant struggle between motion and staying put, between moving on and giving up, between living and death. From this, the redefinition of aforementioned American concepts will be derived.

In 2003, playwright Tony Kushner adopted his two-part play premiered in 1991 and 1992, Angels in America, to the screen. The HBO miniseries was directed by Mike Nichols and studded with celebrated actors such as Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. Set in New York City in the mid 1980s, a time of Reagan's politics and the silencing of AIDS, the series revolves around a set of characters differing greatly in ethnicity, religion, worldview and sexual orientation.

They include Louis and Prior, a homosexual couple having to cope with Prior's AIDS diagnosis, and Harper and Joe, Mormons, who are faced with Joe's oppressed homosexuality destroying their marriage. Other characters are Hannah, Joe's mother from Salt Lake City, Roy Cohn, a lawyer also diagnosed with AIDS, and Belize, Prior's black homosexual friend who is also Roy's nurse. Throughout the film, these characters come together in unexpected ways in an attempt to move out of their crises and transform themselves.