The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America

by Isaac Butler

DALE PECK (cultural critic): Angels asked a question that a lot of gay men, particularly middle-class white gay dudes, asked themselves. OK, for the past couple of decades, we have built a very vibrant subculture that was very much based around being outside the mainstream. This was our little world, and if you could afford to live there, and if you were not suffering, if you were not a woman, a person of color, if you were not trans and dealing with people thinking you didn’t actually exist, you could have a really good time there, and have a superior attitude. Ugh, straight people! So boring. Mainstream culture! So limiting. Here we are, having a fantastic time, not raising children, making a lot of money. It’s great! All that cultural work contributed to the familiarity and the normalizing of homosexuality in America, and the AIDS crisis threw all of that into jeopardy. The gay community responded to that with work that was very politically engaged. By 1991 you had the question: What are we fighting for now? Are we fighting for our own little community on the outside where we get to do our own thing? Or are we fighting to be American just like other Americans? Angels asked that question at the moment where we actually had to make that choice. We had to ask ourselves what that means. Being outlaws made us interesting. You could use that position to criticize mainstream society, to say what society can’t say, but you can’t live there forever, particularly once the mainstr...