Representations of HIV and AIDS in the Media - Essay Example

Running Head: Representations of HIV and AIDS in the media Representations of HIV and AIDS in the media The word AIDS is an abbreviation of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. An anagram of AIDS, SIDA, was formed for use in French and Spanish. The doctors thought 'AIDS' appropriate as people attained the condition somewhat than inherited it; as it resulted in an insufficiency within the immune system; and as it is a syndrome, with a number of demonstrations, relatively than a single disease. AIDS provided society and the media with a double-edged opportunity and challenge, the truly frightening specter of a deadly disease that could be associated with sexual permissiveness, showing up among a group the media have consistently defined as being outside the mainstream. The AIDS epidemic has been widely interpreted as a challenge to the institutions and the values that typify the achievements of modern Western society: science and medicine, respect for the rights and concern for the welfare of all citizens. So far, the record of our societal and institutional response has been mixed at best, possibly because AIDS came upon us in ways that tested our motives and our institutions. By emerging among groups that are largely despised and rejected, AIDS proved once again the truism that the importance of an event may be determined less by what happened than to whom it happened. The prospect of safer representations of AIDS bodies and panicked sex requires recognizing that media images aid cultural symbols and this as Stuart Hall (1982) has commented: implies the active work of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping: not merely the transmitting of already-existing meaning, but the more active labor of making things mean. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic (at a point when widespread educational efforts might have saved thousands of lives since lost), Congressman Henry Waxman of California made this point by contrasting public response to AIDS and to Legionnaire's disease: "Legionnaire's disease hit a group of predominately white, heterosexual, middle-aged members of the American Legion. The respectability of the victims brought them a degree of attention and funding for research and treatment far greater than that made available so far to the victims of Kaposi's sarcoma. I want to emphasize that contrast, because the more popular Legionnaire's disease affected fewer people and proved to be less fatal. What society judged was not the severity of the disease but the social acceptability of the individuals affected with it." (Gayle, 1987) The first accounts of AIDS in the mainstream media emphasized its apparent link to gay men's sexuality (there were also at that time two other outsider "risk groups," IV drug users and Haitians, and the first "innocent victims," hemophiliacs). The first story on AIDS aired by NBC News appeared in June 1982, and Tom Brokaw framed the issue in a fashion that remained constant throughout much subsequent coverage: "Scientists at the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta today released the results of a study that shows that the lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an epidemic of a rare form of cancer." (Sara, 1987). The media alternated depictions that distanced AIDS as the fate befalling those gay men in the "fast lane" whose lifestyles have put them far outside the mainstream. Investigators also believe that AIDS is principally a phenomenon of the raunchy subculture in large cities, where bars and bathhouses are literal hotbeds of sexual promiscuity, with stories intimating that AIDS might also threaten the general population. The media's mainstream orientation was reflected in their concern over the fate of the "general population" if and when AIDS spread beyond the deviant "risk groups" in which it mostly appeared. In a CBS News special titled, appropriately enough, "AIDS Hits Home", correspondent Bernard Goldberg unwittingly spoke this premise when he commented: "For a very long time, heterosexuals, straight Americans, thought AIDS was somebody else's problem that is, if they thought about AIDS at all. AIDS is what homosexuals got. But a scary reality is starting to hit home, that the AIDS virus is out there and it's not just gays who are catching it." In other words, one might say, real people are in danger. The initial flicker of attention in the mass media was not only late, it was also short-lived. There were merely five network television stories on AIDS in 1982 (and three of these focused on persons considered by the media to be "innocent victims"-hemophiliacs, children, and recipients of blood transfusions). In 1983 that number rose to thirty-nine, but the following year it dropped to twenty-five, even while the death rate continued to climb. This poster is created in 1984 that is conveying a message that "sharing needless and syringes" can spread AIDS. As at that time people were was not known of this epidemic disease and there were numerous myths regarding the spread of AIDS. They are fascinating from a chronological perspective, as they were formed soon after HTLV-III was recognized as the virus that rooted AIDS. HTLV-III became recognized as HIV in 1986. As, There may still be uncertainty surrounding the causes and possible cures of AIDS, but there is little uncertain about the response of the media and other institutions to the epidemic. As many analysts have described and many news professionals have admitted, the homophobia of the press, combined with its assumption that audiences shared its biases, led it to ignore and downplay the story. Although our society is literally awash in sexual imagery, which is used as the lure in ads for hundreds of products, western countries are unusually prudish about any direct mention of sex or sex-related terms. Even when the medical community began to identify the ways in which HIV, the virus causing AIDS, is spread, the media were unwilling to use terminology that most people could readily understand. It is noted that "there's a disparity at this point in this country between the moral values of certain groups. When you have a viewer ship that is the entire country, it becomes very difficult to know how to handle that." The major way AIDS is transmitted is through sexual contacts. Broadcast news media even today almost always use phrases like "bodily fluids" rather than use the word "semen" or vernacular terms such as "cum." This is another poster of same era that is formed in 1987 that is the most renowned AIDS posters ever produced, this illustration of a child with stretched out arms convoyed by the message, "I have AIDS, please hug me, I can't make you sick," has developed a worldwide icon in the fight against HIV/AIDS prejudice. Media attention to AIDS seemed always to erupt whenever there was a dramatic story that involved heterosexuals. A young hemophiliac named Ryan White, 13-year old hemophiliac with AIDS who was harassed by schoolmates when they discovered he had AIDS, became a national figure after massive media exposure; a major AIDS funding bill was eventually named the Ryan White Act. This poster imitated the changed tone of the media coverage of AIDS following Ryan White's audacious battle, which assisted shift focus from unawareness and favoritism to recognition and spanking knowledge of the fatal disease. intended to inducing compassion, the straightforward yet influential message in the poster has consequently inspired a diversity of spin-offs used by worldwide AIDS responsiveness and education programs. As, in late eighties, Public service announcements intended to educate the public about AIDS have tended to be tongue-tied by censorship and fear of political repercussions. After an initial effort at advertising condoms in the late 1980s was met with resistance from the networks, condom manufacturers backed off. As late as 1998 all the major television networks as well as Fox, UPN, and WB were unwilling to accept advertisements for condoms. As the amount of explicit sexual content in TV ads and programs increased, however, condom ads began appearing in the 1990s on cable channels such as MTV and Comedy Central, and some local network affiliates tentatively ventured into this territory. This poster, from the UK in 1984, was formed by the Terrence Higgins Trust. through the exclusion of a simple drawing of a lightning bolt conceivably to designate the strident effect this information is anticipated to have, the poster consists of a block of text that elucidates what AIDS is and how it is spread. As time gets on, it is apparent that definite segments of the population were either not being attained by the media, or merely not paying attention. This is perhaps attributable to the early on postulation that AIDS was a severely gay disease, and did not consequence or had not attained other groups of society. rapidly, more modified and visual posters instigated to appear. This poster, for instance, targets heterosexual white women. At the instance of its publication, an increasing figure of babies was being born with AIDS. The above poster merges cartoons and sex education. initially formed by the Australia Commonwealth Department of Community Services and Health, and premeditated in combination with AVERT, an global AIDS charitable trust based in the United Kingdom, the Condoman character was fraction of a broader prevention campaign that embattled younger Aboriginal viewers. In an attempt to conquer the cultural stigma against condom use, the Condoman conceitedly controls a box of condoms and decrees there is no motive to be embarrassed. The icon associates masculinity and accountable sexual behavior by challenging the petition of promiscuity and proposes that safe sex is not a motive to feel embarrassed or mortified. These two posters are examples from 1985. They explain who is at risk from AIDS. This poster, also elucidates who is at risk, however it also comprises several of the more simple messages that the subsequently group of posters use. It is as well of a chronological interest, as it envisages that there will be four hundred deaths a month and more than three million people infected by 1991. In 1987, the British Government escalated a poster and brochure campaign with the slogan "Don't Aid AIDS". This changed transformed into the theme of "Don't die of ignorance" over the period of the next year. This poster fits in linking the two campaigns. It does emulate the television advert by using a picture of the word AIDS on a tombstone. Despite the limitations of media coverage, by the late 1980s the AIDS epidemic had accomplished something that the lesbian and gay movement had not been able to achieve-the end of gay invisibility in the mass media. Even so, nearly all the attention to gay men was in the context of AIDS-related stories, and because this coverage seems to have exhausted the media's limited interest in gay people, lesbians became even less visible. AIDS also reinvigorated the two major mass media "roles" for gay people: victim and villain. The public image of gay men was becoming inescapably linked with the specter of plague. The above posters moved on from merely putting out messages concerning how HIV is passes on, or who is at danger, to clearing up how to stop you becoming contaminated. As, The AIDS epidemic is more than a health crisis. These posters is exposed much of the hostility to gay people that was never far below the surface. The specter of a "gay plague" was pointed to by preachers, politicians, and pundits eager to use a disease as a moral weapon in their crusade against "sexual permissiveness." AIDS proved no exception and the Post regularly infuriated the lesbian and gay community through its hostile headlines, slanted coverage, and negative editorials that characterized AIDS as fitting punishment for homosexual behavior. The above posters designed by T. Charles Erickson in 1988. The image of this unknown young man personalizes the message that condom is a safe and responsible choice moreover it gives a manifestation of the feelings concerning your partner. The message to be staid concerning love is to be serious concerning disease prevention links romance with reasonable, conscientious behavior. somewhat than exploit strategies of denunciation or fear, this poster, taken at face value, simply offers the views as well as preferences of one young man. The inner message condom use is merely colored in red. These above posters have featured an intact assortment of health and social matters distressing people today. Subject matter covered by the posters above includes racism, basic HIV conduction issues, ethnic minority requirements and disgrace and prejudice. In the above two poster displays the condom as an item not to be veiled away into a playful and helpful friend. This playful retain AIDS would almost certainly have been referred to as distasteful and morally culpable simply five years before while little was known concerning the new disease apart from that people were dying. More significantly, AIDS/HIV is no longer the prevailing idea behind the ad. Of course, the motive that one must use a condom is to assist stop the spread of AIDS and the HIV virus. Though, the newer generations of ads aren't focusing on the disease, simply how to stop it. The visual images of AIDS moved away from death and consequences and towards the practical, optimistic, even playful prevention of the disease. But besides these efforts by media in spreading awareness the rate of AIDS effected population is still increasing. In 1990s, when AIDS had claimed the lives of over eleven thousand westerns, AIDS is a cause of death in only a handful of obits. Similar patterns were found in most other large and small newspapers. At the end of 1993 the estimated number of AIDS cases worldwide was 2.5 million32 Region Estimated Adult HIV infection Estimated adult AIDS cases Australasia >25000 5000 North America >1 million 400000 Western Europe 500000 125000 Latin America & Caribbean 1.7 million 300000 Sub-Saharan Africa >9 million 1.7 million South and South-East Asia 2 million >75000 East Asia and Pacific >35000 >1000 Eastern Europe and Central Asia >50000 4500 North Africa & The Middle East 75000 12000 Total >14 million >2.5 million http://www.avert.org/his93_97.htm A World Bank report said that HIV is spreading so rapidly in parts of Africa that it is killing teachers faster than the nations can train them. The report noted that for example in parts of Uganda and Malawi, nearly a third of all teachers were HIV-positive. "With more than 113 million children not in school in the poorest countries already presents a major challenge. However, HIV/AIDS makes this much greater in those countries where the education system is already struggling to grow; teachers are dying, or are too sick to teach. And every year more children are losing their parents and the support that allows them to go to school. Achieving education for all in a world of AIDS presents an unprecedented challenge to the world education community." World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn http://www.avert.org/his98_99.htm The 1998 World AIDS Campaign 'Young People: Force for Change' was prompted in part by the epidemic's threat to those under 25 years old, for as HIV rates rose in the general population, new infections were increasingly concentrated in the younger age groups. The campaign also had a special representative, Brazilian football player Ronaldo. UNAIDS estimated that during the year a further 5.8 million people became infected with HIV, half of them being under 25.20 Country Estimated new HIV infections 1998 North America 44,000 Caribbean 45,000 Latin America 160,000 Western Europe 30,000 North America/Middle East 19,000 Sub-Saharan Africa 4 million Eastern Europe/Central Asia 80,000 East Asia/Pacific 200,000 South Asia/South-East Asia 1.2 million Australia & New Zealand 600 Global total 5.8 million http://www.avert.org/his98_99.htm The basic aim of visual aids is giving awareness to people. As time passed on, though, and AIDS moved into its subsequent decade, there is a deliberate but general shift in thoughts regarding the disease and those that were impure by it. Due to medical developments, AIDS was no longer a death sentence. People through the disease were living fuller, improved, more usual lives, more significantly, they were living longer. Besides, as more was erudite regarding the disease, it congested being the unseen monster that could smack at any time from anyplace. In its place, people began to distinguish it for what it was, a convenient disease. As this occurred, people became more conversant, less appropriate to panic, and more well-informed about safe-sex as well as the disease itself. This bring in the way for new posters that allowed for more information as people had a fundamental knowledge now and in a diverse tone. Though, AIDS is still a staid matter but it is no longer a thing to panic as long as people followed several simple strategies in their life. Therefore, the posters began to transform with the times. References HALL, Stuart, 1982. The Rediscovery of "Ideology": Return of the Repressed in Media Studies' in M. Gurevitch, ed. Culture, Society and the Media, London: Methuen: 56-90. RUBIN, Gayle, 1987. Thinking Sex' in Carol S. Vance, ed. Pleasure and Danger, London: Virago. SCOTT, Sara, 1987. Sex and Danger: Feminism and AIDS', Trobule and Strife, 11. http://www.avert.org/his81_86.htm http://www.avert.org/his93_97.htm http://www.avert.org/his98_99.htm Read More