I’ve
recently started working on a little overview & ranking piece on
American Horror Story as I’ve been finishing up the most recent season,
but once I started putting my thoughts down on AHS:NYC, I soon realized
that this season demands that I capture them in a separate thread. It’s
simply too big and impactful for me to lump in with the rest of the
series and, honestly, it’s so different from what came before, both in
tone and the nature of the content, that it simply has to be given its
own stage. After 10 seasons of a series which was always predicated on a
sly sense of black-as-pitch humor and often camp extravagance , NYC hit
me in a way I simply wasn’t prepared for. I had expected, from the
series posters, that it was going to be something sexy and sleek, but it
turned out to be an entirely different animal. Sexual yes, but so
dark, brooding, gritty and, above all, completely devoid of anything
which veered into the usual sense of perverse “fun” which was at the
core of so much of what came before.
NYC is, by far, the most
intimately impactful & grounded of any of the stories which have
been told in this anthology series to date. There’s barely a whiff of
anything “supernatural” in it. The few fantastical elements occur in
allegorical dream sequences while its horrors are distinctly tangible
and real. For this installment, Ryan Murphy and crew have tackled a
controversial story which is determined to push boundaries and
tolerances. They’ve taken on the genesis of the AIDS epidemic within
the hardcore gay subculture of New York City in 1981, and in doing so,
they’ve set the scene for the most serious and unsettling social
exploration they’ve ever attempted. There’s simply nothing to smirk at
as we deal with the hatred of the gay community and the indifference to
its suffering from the outside world, while simultaneously exposing the
culpability of the people within it as they often inadvertently set
themselves up to become victims. There’s an overwhelming sadness and
loneliness to it all, but that’s not the core emotion which drives this
story.
There’s a LOT of anger brewing inside this tale of a
sub-culture being stalked and terrorized by multiple adversaries while
the world outside ignores their plight. From psychopaths to phantasms
to infections, everyone is a potential target and no one is safe.
Obviously, this is all an exploration of the devastation unleashed by
the AIDS epidemic, which first found its home in the gay ghettos of NYC
at the beginning of the 1980s, though I’m sure there’s also a bit of a
nod to the current COVID pandemic. Sometimes its symbolic and
allegorical, sometimes it is painfully literal. The anger being
unleashed is, first and foremost, directed at the world in general, who
considered the gay community deviant, disposable and subhuman, and who
were ready to allow the pain, suffering and death to go on, unchecked.
That disgust and dismissal cost an incalculable number of lives. In
effect, it was a silent holocaust, an implicit & passive genocide.
The world saw the suffering and, for the most part, were ready to say
“good riddance”.
Yet there’s also a healthy dose of anger set
aside for the people within that community. In terms of genre styling,
there’s a major nod to the film, Cruising (1980), though the failure of
that story, being that it was told by a straight male outsider delving
into a scene he didn’t understand, is corrected by keeping all the
characters native and insiders who know the score. This keeps the
internal critiques founded in experience and first hand knowledge. The
scene in NYC at the time was one of the greatest pinnacles of debauched
hedonistic decadence to ever manifest on the face of this planet. On
the one hand, it was a level of sexual freedom few could ever have
imagined, a kind of “Shangri-La”. It was a magical era of discovering a
new level of openness and liberation, but the other edge of that sword
was a neglect of individual responsibility and interpersonal respect.
The still frequently secretive, nameless and often faceless nature of
the sexual encounters could be dehumanizing in the extreme and didn’t
help engender empathy when people were devalued and seen as “rough
trade” commodities to be indulged in one moment and discarded the next.
Bigotry,
of course, forms the core of the social issue being dealt with, but
again, it’s not just external sources that get condemned here. It’s not
merely the hatred and indifference of the “straight world” we have to
contend with and the show’s creators do not shy away from the prejudice
that lurks within the community itself. There’s a particularly telling
moment when Zachary Quinto’s character is boasting about his famous orgy
parties and casually delivers the selling point, “no fats, no fems”.
It’s a line that stabs like a knife in the back for so many in the
community who have been ostracized by those characteristics for their
entire lives. It’s not bad enough to have to cope with being outside
societal sexual norms, but to be rejected by your own so-called
“community” is doubly heartbreaking. And then there’s the alienation of
the lesbian contingent, represented here by Sandra Bernhard’s trio of
feminist activists, demanding a voice within a community who dismisses
the female perspective as completely as cis straight males do. It’s an
ugly mirror to have to look into, but kudos to AHS for being bold enough
to demand we answer for some of our own sins.
Everything about
this season is, in fact, quite bold and brave as far as creating TV
aimed at a mainstream audience. Gay content like this is virtually
unheard of as it lands well outside the sanitized, “family friendly”
variety normally permitted on the small screen. Only Angels In
American, as a high profile HBO series, came close to getting this down
and dirty. It’s no “Will & Grace” or “Modern Family”, that’s for
sure. This is the kind of gay culture that sends the heteronormative
folk fleeing in panic, especially the straight male audience so prized
by network ratings watchdogs. This is New York at the peak of its
decadence. It’s bathhouses, glory holes, cruising parks, BDSM,
anonymous encounters and rampant drug use. And this is currently
streaming on Disney+! It kinda knocks my socks off that any right-wing
pearl-clutching zealot can stumble on this and be left aghast in horror
at the so-called “moral perversion” on display. I’d be surprised if
there haven’t been protests from conservative watchdog groups about it.
In
terms of the cast, it’s a little thin when it comes to series regulars
like Evan Peters or Sarah Paulson, though it is great to see Zachary
Quinto back in the fold after an extended absence, and Denis O’Hare
turns in another stellar performance. Sandra Bernhard makes her second
AHS appearance and Leslie Grossman & Billie Lourd round out the
regulars. The rest of the cast are first-timers to the franchise and
there are certainly standouts. Joe Mantello is a quintessential New
Yorker, impassioned, outraged and perfect as the gruff head writer for a
gay newspaper, while Russel Tovey is ideal as his closeted &
conflicted cop lover. The great Patti LuPone is onboard to provide that
matriarchal diva presence that lurks in all the best installments of
this series, but this season is, by far, the most male-centric cast
& story that’s ever been assembled by AHS, which is another of the
reasons it feels so different from what’s come before.
Without
getting into spoilers, I can simply say that what is presented here is
not a “feel good” uplifting or congratulatory look at the AIDS crisis.
It is a lament, a mournful cry of outrage and a plea for empathy. It is
also a demand to take responsibility for one’s own actions and
recognize the fundamental humanity which was destroyed by this tragedy.
It is exceptionally difficult for me to imagine regular fans of the
show embracing this story, but maybe I’ll be surprised. More likely, I
expect a backlash against it, and likely from both “hetero” and “homo”
audiences, though for different reasons. There’s a lot of uncomfortable
truths being told here, so I expect some may challenge the voracity of
certain aspects. It’s dangerous territory to suggest origins of a
pandemic, especially when they imply conspiracies. We’ve all become
hypersensitive to such implications in recent years and have far too
much experience with the unhinged lunacy of most of those who espouse
them. I don’t think they push that agenda too for, however, and
overall, I think the reflection being cast back at the audience is
honest and well intentioned in its aim to get us to recognized our
reality and the tragedy of our losses.
If you’re looking for any
kind of hopeful message in this, I’d suggest looking to the fact that we
survived. More than that, as a community, we became immeasurably
stronger. The steel in the core of this story is the indomitable spirit
of the people at its center and how they never give up and keep
fighting, even as the odds seem insurmountable. It's the reason the
tragedy hits so hard and brings up so much emotion. The gay community
DID survive this nightmare of terror and isolation and we became both
stronger and wiser for the struggle. This is why we are a threat to the
ignorant. That’s an important thing to remember when you consider the
way that the forces of darkness in our world are currently marshaling
their armies against us. So many efforts are being set in motion to
deny our rights and freedoms and chase us back underground and “into the
closet” again, or worse, eliminate us completely. But we’ve already
looked the Devil in the eye and we’re not going to stand by and let
those forces stop us. We have more strength and determination than they
can conceive of and we’re not the cowards who run from liberation and
freedom and progress. Always remember how powerful we really are and,
if you forget that, watch this again and remind yourself what it was
like to pass through Hell and that we’ll do it again if we need to.
