Queer Temporalities: Queer Futurity and The AIDS Crisis in POSE
In Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, Jack Halberstam points out how the supposedly ‘straight’ times experienced by modern individuals: marriage, reproduction, maturation and inheritance are being distorted by queer subcultures “strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and eccentric economic practices” (1). It could be stated that the origins of queer temporalities stems from “points of resistance” to the “temporal order” of chrononormativity in the age of modernity (Freeman xii). Halberstam distinguishes queer time as most discernible in the late 20th century in the LGBTQ+ community during the AIDS crisis, where queer futurity was non-existent, if not “severely diminished” (1).
The AIDS crisis’ alignment with queer time and its subsequent anti-(hetero)normativity comprises of the following: the “compression” of temporality and time continuity; the “annihilation” of a promised future; and “the potentiality of a life unscripted by . . . [chrononormative] conventions” (1).
A theatrical representation of Halberstam’s queer time is POSE — the American drama television series about New York City’s African-American and Latino LGBTQ+ and gender-nonconforming ballroom culture scene in the 1980s and early 1990s. The television series features queer characters constructed by queer creatives (Ryan Murphy, Janet Mock, Our Lady J) and is set within queer times of modernity. The shows unwavering attention remains on the HIV/AIDS pandemic that diseased the ballroom community as well as how they collectively resisted the plague. POSE’s story encapsulates queer time in its subject matter and in the very modern and present way it is being told. The 21st century familiarity with acts of minority-led protest and socio-political defiance is presented in the emergence of the grassroots organisation, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power).
The Season 2 premiere, “Acting Up”, begins with the series’ two HIV-positive characters, House Evangelista matriarch, Blanca (Mj Rodriguez) and emcee turned resident father figure, Pray Tell (Billy Porter) visiting their deceased friend’s burial place on Hart Island. The scene shows how the mile-long strip of land in the Long Island Sound was used by the government as a mass burial ground at the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis for the (many queer) victims who did not have the finances to afford funeral costs or loved ones who wanted to claim their bodies. When we see the two parental protagonists pay their respects, the site is still being dug up as more and more nameless coffins are tossed and piled up on top of each other. The bleakness, wretchedness and rage brewing within that opening scene, serves as a vivid visual metaphor that regardless of the ballroom’s vitality: the trophies, Houses, culturally appropriated Madonna-isms etc., it is haunted by the many deaths at the hands of this crisis.
Ryan Murphy’s POSE creates a literal fight and flight response with the show’s interpretation of the AIDS crisis and this is mostly evident in the characterisation of Pray Tell. He ‘flies’ away from the reality of his diagnosis by refusing to take his medication. However, we eventually watch him to choose to live as he realises taking his medication is the only fighting and healthy chance he has to prolong his life. The same way we watched Pray Tell fight for the ballroom as a legacy rather than a scene, trend or moment is similar to how POSE focuses on the HIV/AIDS global pandemic as central to late 20th century history.
Temporality’s queerness provides opportunity to battle the limitations of modern time by readdressing how the classifications of past, present and future might creatively and unpredictably interact.
Pose has been renewed for Season 3, but the show’s release has been delayed indefinitely.
References:
“Acting Up.” POSE. FX. 11 Jun. 2019. Television.
Freeman, E. Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories, Duke University Press, 2010, pp. xii.
Halberstam, J. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, New York University Press, 2005, pp. 1.
