465: AIDS 1 - Earliest Days

By the late 70s/early 80s, an accepted element of a healthy life on the gay scene was the regular trip to the VD clinic and then a few pills or shots to clear up the STD of the moment. A cartoon that appeared in the gay magazine “Christopher Street” in the summer of 1981 (and which I’m sure was reprinted in “Gay News”) showed two men at a bar with one saying to the other: “What do you say you and me pool our viruses”. If printed in a straight magazine, it would almost certainly be condemned for homophobically suggesting the diseased quality of gay life, but when printed in gay magazines it’s a twist on contemporary mores. Either way, it was a foreshadowing of what was to come.

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“National Lampoon” 1982

(The headline alludes of this piece alludes to a famous "NY Daily News" headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead". This is a surprisingly early piece alert to one small blip in a small subset of the American population. On the one hand this can be read as satirising the casual bigotry and religious condemnation in the dismissal of the rising deaths in the gay community. On the other hand, it’s just as likely to provoke laughs in its unconcerned readers, for whom satire is breaking taboos, saying the unsayable, and joyously anaesthetising the heart so as to appreciate finer graduations of cruelty and vitriol. In retrospect, this piece is unfair to Dianne Fehrstein whose AIDS budget for the City of San Francisco was bigger than President Reagan's AIDS budget was for the entire nation for several years in the 80s)

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A little over a year later and AIDS is a word to conjure with in this glib concoction.

“Punch”, 18 May 1983

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Auberon Waugh’s Diary
Private Eye 26 August 1983

In fact, there are only 14 confirmed cases of AIDS in Britain, as I keep telling everybody. The disease is no less fatal than rabies, and the health authorities have managed to control rabies by a strict policy of quarantine. Would the Gay Community take it very badly if I suggested that American homosexuals visiting Britain should be required to spend six months in kennels before being allowed out to take their pleasure with the natives. My purpose is not to annoy English gays, many of whom are terrifically amusing, talented, artistic, etc, but to protect them. Scientists are working on an idea that a prophylactic against AIDS might be to eat huge numbers of cucumbers every day, but it would be foolish to rely on this.

Illustration by Brian Bagnall

(What is intended here in a sententiously high-toned and blithely semi-nonsensical opinion-proffering manner would later go on to be offered as serious advice by numerous media and political pundits. Where the cucumbers come into this I don’t know, other than the tendency for people to use them as demonstration models for the application of prophylactics.)

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Eddie Murphy, Delirious (recorded August 17, 1983)

http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2007/12/27-faggots-eddie-murphy.html (I’d already covered this piece of stand-up before, but mostly just looking at Murphy’s manner, rather than his extended piece on AIDS)

Ladies be hangin' out with gay people. Ladies be saying, "Gay men are the best friends to have. 'Cause they don't want anything from you and you don't want anything from them and he can just hang out and you can be with him and it's fun and you can talk to them" and all that bullshit and they be hangin' out with them.

You know what's real scary about that? That new AIDS shit. AIDS is scary 'cause it kills motherfuckers, AIDS. That ain't like the good old days when venereal disease was simple. In the good old days you'd get gonorrhea and your dick hurt, Go get a shot, clear it right up. Then they came out with herpes. You keep that shit forever like luggage. Now they got AIDS. That just kills motherfuckers. I say what's next? I guess you just put your dick in and it explode (mimes sex and an explosion) and the girl will be on the bed and go "Maybe I should see a doctor about this."

Kills people! And it petrifies me because girls be hangin' out with them. And one night they could be in the club havin' fun with their gay friend and give them a little kiss (lip-smacking sound) and go home with their AIDS on their lips. Get home with their husband and like five years later it's "Mr. Johnson, you have AIDS." He goes, "AIDS? But I'm not a homosexual." "Sure, you're not a homosexual."

(In an October 1990 interview with Spike Lee, Murphy apologised for making these jokes about AIDS. He explained that he had been only 21 at the time, and that AIDS was then a new disease that nobody knew enough about at the time., and that he wouldn’t joke about it now because it’s a much more sensitive issue.)

27 - Faggots: Eddie Murphy

From “Delirious”, (1983)

Also, faggots aren't allowed to look at my ass while I'm onstage. That's why I keep movin' while I'm up here. Now if you don't know where the faggot section is, you gotta keep movin'. So if they do see it it's quick, and you switch. They don't get no long stare at your shit and start havin' imagination flowin' on my …I know when you're lookin' at it too, because my ass gets hot.

'Cause I'm afraid of gay people. Petrified. I have nightmares about gay people. I have this nightmare that I go to Hollywood and find out that Mr. T is a faggot. Really, he be walkin' up to people going "Hey boy! Hey boy! You look might cute in them jeans. Now come on over here, and fuck me up the asss. Come on! I'm gonna bend over now. Uungh! Aaagh! Hey boy, slow down. You're going to mess around and come too fast and make me get mad. I'll clench up my butt cheeks and rip your dick off."

You know, you know, you know who would be a funny faggot? Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton. Wouldn't they be funny faggots? And Ralph Kramden leanin' out the window there one day sayin' "Norton! Norton, pal! Come on down! I want to show you something. HEH HEH" "Hey Ralphie boy, what do you say there, pal of mine?" "You know Norton, I've been watchin' you. And I know you've been watchin' me, Norton. You're watchin'. I know." "So Ralph, what are you gettin' at?" "Norton my friend, how would you like to fuck me up the ass? I know you want to fuck me, Norton! And you know that I know that you know that I know that you want to fuck me. Now I'm gonna bend over. And when I do, start fuckin'! Here I go!" "Whoooooooooah!” Hummuna-hummunah-hummunah-hummunah-hummunah-hummunah-hu...Way to go there, Ralphie boy!"

I kid the homosexuals a lot, cause they're homosexuals. I, I fuck with everybody, I don't give a fuck . It's like um, I don't mean anything by it. You can hang out with a gay person. You can guys. Don't feel, you know like alienated gay people 'cause they're gay. 'Cause you can play tennis with a gay person. Really, just after the game you say "I'm gonna get a beer, what you gonna do?" "I think I'll go suck somebody's dick." "Well, I'll see you later. Take it easy. You go suck that dick. I'm gonna have the beer."

Ladies are hip to it too. Ladies be hangin' out with gay people. Ladies be saying, "Gay men are the best friends to have. 'Cause they don't want anything from you and you don't want anything from them and he can just hang out and you can be with him and it's fun and you can talk to them" and all that bullshit and they be hangin' out with them.

You know what's real scary about that? That new AIDS shit. AIDS is scary 'cause it kills motherfuckers, AIDS. That ain't like the good old days when venereal disease was simple. In the good old days you'd get gonorrhea and your dick hurt, Go get a shot, clear it right up. Then they came out with herpes. You keep that shit forever like luggage. Now they got AIDS. That just kills motherfuckers. I say what's next? I guess you just put your dick in and it explode (mimes sex and an explosion) and the girl will be on the bed and go "Maybe I should see a doctor about this."

Kills people! And it petrifies me because girls be hangin' out with them. And one night they could be in the club havin' fun with their gay friend and give them a little kiss (lip-smacking sound) and go home with their AIDS on their lips. Get home with their husband and like five years later it's "Mr. Johnson, you have AIDS." He goes, "AIDS? But I'm not a homosexual." "Sure, you're not a homosexual."

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Now this fairly notorious excerpt is little more than the aggressive humour of the playground. Murphy has a great youthful energy and charm, with rapport with his audience, and these jokes are a way of bringing everyone together: this is what we really think and laugh at, all the stuff that isn’t safe for TV. Of course, much of Murphy’s act is very externally focused rather then the personal anecdotes and interpretations of the likes of Bruce or Richard Pryor. A strange guttural hooting Mr T and some only so-so impressions of “The Honeymooners” sodomising one another is not terribly advanced stuff. And there’s a weird quality of being vulnerable to homosexual advances, gay panic, while knowing it’s not really right. By this time, using “faggot” is a deliberately offensive move. It’s a way of showing I’ll say what I like about whom I like.

Immediately after this, when Murphy was criticised, he mocked gays all the more for being pissed off for his having mocked them in the first place.



Some years later Murphy would apologise for these jokes in his routine. And we all know the sterling work Murphy has since made in out-reach projects to the transgender community.