TheLoop21.com

By: eharris (follow this member)
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 00:00

(Read more about our Stop Black AIDS campaign.)

If Hollywood were an indicator of the AIDS problem in the black community or any other, HIV and AIDS would not be considered a problem at all.

The issue of AIDS is simply not acknowledged, at least when it comes to programming, scripts or celebrity leadership. Which is scary when you consider that for so many people, Hollywood is the leader when it comes to putting issues and trends on the front burner for many people in our society.

Not since the movie Philadelphia, which came out way back in 1993 and starred a young Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks, has there been a mainstream movie that shined the spotlight on AIDS in its of topic or plot. And the last time a real life, well known entertainer made the news because of AIDS or HIV was when NWA group member Eazy E died from the disease in 1995. (Read and watch our interactive timeline of AIDS in black America.)

Since then, you would swear that the disease had gone the way of the mumps, or some other disease or sickness that no longer played a factor in the main consciousness of our society. And yet, as we are learning, AIDS has not gone away, not by a long shot. On the contrary, it has over time become even more devastating, particularly to blacks and other minorities.

Is it that Hollywood does not care, or has it, too, simply misread the disease?

I don’t think either is true. I think in Hollywood it is just a case of people moving on to what is sexier, or what is perceived to be an issue that people are talking and thinking about on a large scale. AIDS, in the beginning, was perceived as a mainly a gay disease. That perception was OK at first to Hollywood, because the fact is, the industry is very open to gays and lesbians, and while movies depicting that lifestyle are generally not made or sold to the mainstream, there was certainly a great deal of sympathy toward AIDS and its effect on that community. That's why there was the initial focus on the problem.

But in time, it appeared that the gay community made strides in dealing with the disease. Hollywood is driven by a focus on the mainstream, and when the white gays, the people we often perceive as being the ones most affected by AIDS, was affected by it less, Hollywood began to see the disease as less important.

However, even black Hollywood has left the issue alone, because the truth is that most producers are simply not going to take a chance with such a serious — some would say taboo — issue. Blacks are already largely pushed into the comedy corner by Hollywood executives, and to put it mildly, it's difficult to work AIDS into the mix when the objective is to be funny. And when we do deal with serious issues, movies dealing with racism or the triumph over racism, are the ones that tend to sell, because racism is an issue people believe blacks accept and want to see in movies.

There's a perception that blacks will reject movies and shows based on AIDS, in part because of the lingering notion that it's a gay disease, and this is the irony of the whole situation. We need programs or characters that deal with this issue, so that more people can become aware of the reality of AIDS, but at the same time, unless you are talking about a news program or a documentary, programming is based on the ability to sell to an audience. The programming is driven by the audience, not the other way around. It is a Catch-22 that is costing us lives.

Hollywood sends a powerful message by what it does and does not pay attention to in movies and television, whether it takes responsibility for it. So as long as few in Hollywood are either taking the lead on this disease or putting out programming that deals with it, I am afraid most people will continue to assume they no longer need to worry about AIDS. As a result, that silence coming from Hollywood is devastating.

Earnest Harris is a feature film producer, director and scriptwriter, and co-owner of Marlo Productions, a feature film production company based in Los Angeles. He is also the head of Harris Image Management, an entertainment publicity and public relations agency in the same city. He has written about race, politics and business for many years, and taught a course on communications as a Woodrow Wilson Instructor at The Lyndon Baines Johnson Graduate School for Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin.