Episode 20 - Dallas Buyers Club with Elio Colavito

Off-Campus History

Today we’re discussing the 2013 film Dallas Buyers Club and its depiction of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

Dallas Buyers Club is based on a true story and follows Ron Woodroof, a straight, homophobic cowboy who contracts AIDS. In hospital, Woodroof meets a queer person who also has contracted AIDS named Rayon. The two of them start a business called the Dallas Buyers Club, in which they import and sell medication for AIDS that have not been approved by the FDA. The AIDS epidemic hit gay and bisexual men and other members of the queer community especially hard, and the movie is an important popular portrayal of LGBTQ+ history.

Today we dig into the history behind this portrayal. How does the US government’s response to the AIDS crisis compare to how it was depicted in the film, and how does it compare to places like Canada and the UK? How did the queer community respond to the AIDS crisis, and how did queer culture and society change as a result of it? We also chat about the film as an important depiction of the history of transgender and differently gendered people, and what the film does well and poorly in that regard.

To discuss all this with me and more, I’m joined by Elio Colavito. Elio is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto and an expert in LGBTQ+ history in late twentieth-century North America. Specifically, their research focuses on the history of transgender mutual aid networks in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

For those who want to learn more about both government and community activist responses to the AIDS crisis, check out Jennifer Brier’s book Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). For those interested in learning more about American transgender history, check out Susan Stryker’s book Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Seal Press, 2017). Also, you can find some of Elio’s work at https://lgbtqdigitalcollaboratory.org/!

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