Gay community and the aids virus represented in dallas buyers club

Dallas Buyers Club: Analysis

After enough exposure over time, sometimes people are given no choice but to alter their beliefs. Whether it be a world of propaganda that turns its people to hate, or a victimized world that finds passionate patriotism in its overwhelming odds. Be they people of faith who lose their devotion to constant suffering, or non-believers converted after a sea of troubles is treated by a kind hearted community. Albeit some may do it begrudgingly, there is a strong correlation between time spent with a foreign belief and its steady adaptation to one’s way of thinking. An exemplary case is made of this point with the character Juan Woodroof in the movie Dallas Buyer’s Club, who after a terminal diagnosis with the AIDS virus, is thrust into a community of patients desperate for a cure in a frantic market. Many of these patients, as the nature of the disease entails, are homosexuals, transexuals, and quite simply the type of people a lone-ranger-Texas-loving-tobacco-spitting-gun-hoarding like Juan simply wouldn’t be caught dead with normally. However, through his long and arduous time spent in the company of the homosexual community, and the befriending of the transgendered character Rayon, Juan’s homophobic and transphobic attitudes dissipate.

In the early scenes of the movie, Juan Woodroof’s character is laid out as conservative as it gets- he is a womanizer, a drug addict, someone without any real well defined moral compass. By the end of the movie, his character is more suited to the anti-hero model, wholeheartedly appreciating the company and support of Rayon, and fighting for the acceptance of those struggling with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It starts with slow changes, like his partnership with Rayon. This very, very slowly escalates to a friendship as their time together carries on in Juan’s illness. Starting with the partnership, the cut of the profits, the share in the business model, the shared living space, the locations he allowed Rayon to bring him to (like the Gay Bar, for example), and the enormous sum of money Rayon gave him shortly before her* death. This starts out as a forced and unforgiving acquaintanceship, but slowly evolves to respecting partnership. For example, when Rayon is turned down by Jaun’s homophobic friend in the supermarket, Jaun goes out of his way to make a scene over shaking Rayon’s hand- and quite literally forces the man’s hand after he so rudely declined. This new devotion to showing Rayon respect is a significant turning point in respect and acceptance for Juan, and only goes up from that point.

Despite the fact that he so adamantly rejected any and all label of being homosexual in the early stages of his diagnosis, Juan’s attitudes towards homosexuals becomes much less vulgar as the movie progresses. At first, he violently attacks his friends in a bar for accusing him of carrying “ fag blood”, and he forcefully imposes the same biggotry onto Rayon and her associates. But, as the Buyer’s Club takes off, the time he spends with the people he helps provide the drugs for proves to soften him and open his eyes to the community. He starts to treat them more like people and less like social outcasts, and not perpetuating the annoying trend of the 1980’s version of saying “ no homo”. This is one of the reasons the movie may have been made in 2013- to bring attention to the biggotry that still exists in our society. People take one look at AIDS, and we assume it’s a disease only gay people catch. People take on look at the gay community, and they are just vectors of the AIDS virus and a plague to society. Well, some people, anyway. With the topical issue of gay marriage and AIDS research still being in tireless need of a cure, this movie seems to have come out at the perfect time, at a peak of both problems’ concerns.

*/he, I’m not entirely sure how those pronouns work sometimes.