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WIDE ANGLE: ENDING THE STIGMA
First it was referred to as a “mysterious illness.” Later it was called “gay cancer”, “gay plague” and “GRID,” an acronym for gay-related immune deficiency. Most egregiously, some called it “4H disease” — shorthand for “homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs and Haitians”, the populations most afflicted in the early days.
While these names were ultimately replaced by AIDS — and later, after the virus was identified, by HIV — they reflected two key realities about AIDS at the time: a lack of understanding about the disease and its strong association with gay men.
Although the first report in the mainstream press about AIDS appeared in 1981, the first movies to explore the disease wouldn’t come for four more years.
When the feature film Buddies and the television film An Early Frost premiered 40 years ago, in the fall of 1985, AIDS had belatedly been breaking into the public consciousness.
Forty years ago, the first AIDS movies forced Americans to confront a disease they didn’t want to see
Earlier that year, the first off-Broadway plays about AIDS opened: As Is by William Hoffman and The Normal Heart by writer and activist Larry Kramer. That summer, actor Rock Hudson disclosed that he had AIDS, becoming the first major celebrity to do so. Hudson, who died in October 1985, was a friend of President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan. Reagan, who had been noticeably silent on the subject of the disease, would go on to make his first — albeit brief — public remarks about AIDS in September 1985.
Five days before Reagan’s speech, Buddies, an independent film made for US$27,000 and shot in nine days, premiered at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on Sept. 12, 1985.
A film on the front lines
If you haven’t heard of Buddies, that’s not surprising; the film mostly played art houses and festivals before disappearing.
Its filmmaker, Arthur J. Bressan Jr, was best known for his gay pornographic films, although he’d also made documentaries such as Gay USA. Buddies would go on to reach a wider audience, thanks to a 2018 video release by Vinegar Syndrome, a distribution company that focuses on restoring cult cinema, exploitation films and other obscure titles.
It was inspired by the real-life buddies programme at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, an organisation Kramer co-founded. At the time, many people dying of the disease had been rejected by family and friends, so a buddy might be the only person who visited a terminal AIDS patient.
The film feels like a play, in that most of the movie takes place in a single room and features just two characters: a naive young gay man named David and a young AIDS patient named Robert. Over the course of the film, the characters open up about their lives and their fears about the growing epidemic. It also includes a sex scene — something other early AIDS films completely avoided — in which David and Robert engage in safer sex.
AIDS packaged for the masses
The remarkably frank and intimate approach to the epidemic in Buddies contrasts sharply to the television film An Early Frost, which premiered on NBC on Nov. 11, 1985.
The film’s protagonist is a successful Chicago lawyer named Michael who hasn’t come out to his family, much to the distress of his long-term partner, Peter. When Michael finds out he has AIDS, he’s forced to come out to his parents, both as gay and as having AIDS.
Much of the film deals with Michael’s self-acceptance and his attempts to mend his relationships. Yet the production of An Early Frost was fraught with concerns about depicting both homosexuality and AIDS. Unlike David and Robert, Michael and Peter show no physical affection — they barely touch each other.
Knowledge of AIDS was still evolving — a test for HIV was approved in March 1985 — so screenwriters and life partners Daniel Lipman and Ron Cowen went through 13 revisions of the script. The real-life fears and misconceptions about how AIDS could and could not be transmitted were central to the storyline, adding extra pressure to be accurate in the face of evolving understanding of the virus.
Despite losing NBC $500,000 in advertisers, An Early Frost drew 34 million viewers and was showered with Emmy nominations the following year.
A quilt of stories emerges
Buddies and An Early Frost opened up AIDS and HIV as subject matters for film and television. They begat two lanes of HIV storytelling that continue to this day.
The first is an approach geared to mainstream audiences that tends to avoid controversial issues such as sex or religion and instead focuses on characters who grapple with both the illness and the stigma of the virus.
The second is an indie approach that’s often more confrontational, irreverent and angry at the injustice and indifference AIDS patients faced.
The former approach is seen in 1993’s Philadelphia, which earned Tom Hanks his first Oscar. The critically and commercially successful film shares a number of story points with An Early Frost: Hanks’ character, a big-city lawyer, finds out he is HIV positive and must confront bias head-on. HIV also features prominently in later films such as Precious (2009) and Dallas Buyers Club (2013), both of which, like Philadelphia, became awards darlings.
The edgier, more critical approach can be seen in the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s, a film movement that developed as a response to the epidemic. Gregg Araki’s The Living End (1992) is a key film in the movement: it tells the story of two HIV-positive men who become pseudo-vigilantes in the wake of their diagnoses.
Somewhere in between is Longtime Companion (1990), which was the first film about AIDS to receive a wide release and tracks the impact of the epidemic on a fictional group of gay men throughout the 1980s. The film was written by gay playwright and screenwriter Craig Lucas and directed by Norman Rene, who died of AIDS six years after the film’s release.
Studios still leery
In many ways, television is where the real breakthroughs have happened and continue to happen.
The first television episode to deal with AIDS appeared on the medical drama St Elsewhere in 1983; AIDS was also the subject of episodes in the sitcoms Mr Belvedere, The Golden Girls and Designing Women. Killing All the Right People was the title of the latter’s special episode — a phrase the show’s writer and co-creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason heard while her mother was being treated for AIDS.
More recently, producer Ryan Murphy has made a cottage industry of representations of queer people, particularly those with HIV. His stage revivals of The Normal Heart and Mart Crowley’s 1968 play The Boys in the Band were later adapted into films for television and streaming. He also produced Pose, a three-season series about drag ball culture in the 1980s that stars queer characters of colour, several of whom are HIV positive.
Yet for all of these strides, representations of HIV in film are still hard to come by. In fact, out of the 256 films released by major distributors in 2024, the number of HIV-positive characters amounted to… zero.
Perhaps movie studios are less willing to risk even a character with HIV given the drop in movie theatre attendance in the age of streaming.
If you think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that people might not want to be seen going to the theater to watch a film about characters with HIV, the results of a 2021 GLAAD [Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] survey may surprise you.
It found that the stigma around HIV is still very high, particularly for HIV-positive people working in schools and hospitals. One-third of respondents were unaware that medication is available to prevent the transmission of HIV. More than half didn’t know that HIV-positive people can reach undetectable status and not transmit the virus to others.
Another important finding from the survey: only about half of the non-queer respondents had seen a TV show or film about someone with HIV.
This reflects both the progress made since Buddies and An Early Frost and also why these films still matter today. They were released at a time when there was almost no cultural representation of HIV, and misinformation and disinformation were rampant. There have been so many advances, in both the treatment of HIV and its visibility in popular culture. That visibility still matters, because there’s still much more than can be done to end the stigma.
The writer is Associate Professor of Theatre at the College of the Holy Cross in the US
Republished from The Conversation
Published in Dawn, ICON, October 26th, 2025
Maliha Azami Aga’s paintings, recently showcased during the exhibition ‘Alternate Reality’ at the Ejaz Art Gallery in Lahore, are characterised by vivid colours, dynamic brushstrokes and profound emotional depth.
They offer more than just visual splendour, inviting viewers to see the world through her unique perspective. Her palette — vivid fuchsia pinks, charged blues and pulsating yellows — interacts in a kaleidoscopic manner that splashes across the canvas, seizing the space and holding the viewer’s attention.
Aga’s Midnight Sun captures the rare phenomenon of luminosity at night, symbolising the inner self that burns like a midnight sun — defiant and illuminating. In contrast, the vast black sky haunts as a silent witness to the eerie stillness of night. A rare and rhythmic orchestration of hues — fuchsia, turquoise, orange, bold reds and emerald — seem to vibrate across the canvas. There is a feeling of urgent movement and restlessness in the strokes.
I see two distinct metaphors emerge from this painting. One is a celebration — the radiant illumination of the inner self, shining like a midnight sun through darkness. The other is far more haunting: the blood of innocents spilled across the foreground, its hues so potent they seem to have moved the very skies to grief.
The vivid colours of Maliha Azami Aga’s paintings belie a deeper undercurrent of turmoil
Winter of Discontent explores emotional, political and existential tension. The title, borrowed from Shakespeare’s Richard III, suggests a deep inner or collective unrest, a season not just of cold, but of upheaval, sorrow and hardship. The trees stand stripped bare, their stems painted in red, blue orange and yellow — devoid of leaves, they suggest desolation and endurance.
The Promised Land carries an immense symbolic weight. I find great spiritual relief in this work that seems to say that those who endure pain, hold fast to truth and walk the path of righteousness in this world are not forgotten. Their suffering is not in vain. For them, there is a promise — a realm beyond this one, full of ease, mercy and reward. The turquoise and white sky, and the snow-capped mountains at the back, evokes peace, purity and the surreal beauty of a dreamlike realm.
There is a profound tension between the fiery, blood-red sky and the vibrant, almost celebratory, rhythmic daubs in the foreground — all in stark contrast with the title Fallen Angels (My Children of Gaza). Rendered in acrylic on canvas, the work merges abstraction with emotional symbolism. The vivid, scattered dots of colour resemble floating souls, evoking the loss of innocent lives in Gaza. The sky mourns — a visceral cry against genocide — while the luminous dots in the foreground seem to illuminate a darkened world.
Jewel Series by Aga struck a familiar chord — its raw energy and layered colour fields reminded me of an exhibition title I once came across: ‘Colourful Chaos.’ According to the artist, the charged strokes reflect the complexities of her entangled thoughts and are what she “could grasp and what she could eliminate.”
‘Alternate Reality’ was on display at the Ejaz Art Gallery in Lahore from September 3-13, 2025
The writer is an art critic, fine artist and educationist based in Lahore.
She can be reached at ayeshamajeed2015@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, EOS, October 26th, 2025
Literally translated as ‘pick me up’ or ‘cheer me up’ from Italian, tiramisu done well is a delight. In fact, this transcendent, layered dessert of cake, coffee and cream is so popular that it is Italy’s most famous dessert export.
While some food historians speculate that tiramisu was created in Siena in the 17th century in honour of a visit by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de’Medici, others believe tiramisu may have evolved from the Italian dessert zuppa inglese, a cake layered with jam and custard, inspired by the English trifle. Tiramisu could have also branched out from another dish: since 1938, a Vetturino restaurant in Pieris in the Fruili-Venezia Giulia region has served a semi-frozen dessert called tiremesù.
Le Beccherie, a restaurant in Treviso in the Veneto region, claims that their chef Roberto Linguanotto and the restaurant owner’s wife, Alba di Pillo, invented tiramisu in 1969, with the dessert first appearing on its menu in 1972. However, a recipe published for the dish appears a decade earlier, in 1959 in Tolmezzo, Udine, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. That recipe is attributed to Norma Pielli, who owned a restaurant popular with hikers and one of whom reportedly dubbed the dessert ‘tiramisu’.
Where tiramisu originated is fiercely disputed, with the regions of Tuscany, Piedmont, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Veneto all sparring for the honour. The Italian government, however, has officially declared tiramisu to originate in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, with the country’s agriculture ministry listing the dessert as part of the region’s agri-food products.
Tiramisu is a decadent combination of coffee, cream and cake
Tiramisu
This decadent dessert can be prepared a day or two ahead of time and stored in the fridge: just make sure to store the dessert in an airtight container or cover well with cling film. If you’d like to make the cake way ahead of time, then it is best to freeze it on the same day you bake it, in an airtight container. The cake will stay well for up to two weeks. Thaw in the fridge for a few hours before defrosting it at room temperature.
While the original recipe calls for mascarpone cream, it can easily be substituted by cream cheese. Feel free to use your own recipe for a sponge cake instead of the one given.
Ingredients
For the sponge cake
1 cup white flour
1¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
½ cup whole milk
2 eggs
¾ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon vanilla essence
For the filling
1 egg
1½ cups whole cream/malai
1½ cups mascarpone or cream cheese
2 tablespoons fine sugar
1 cup espresso or strong coffee
Topping
¼ cup cocoa powder
2 tablespoons icing sugar
Method
-
Make the sponge cake. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease an 8×8-inch baking tray (brush with melted butter and dust with flour).
-
In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients — the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
-
Add milk and butter to a sauce pan. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally until the butter has melted. Set aside.
-
In a small separate bowl, whisk the eggs. Pour the whisked eggs into a large bowl. Add a little sugar at a time and constantly mix with an electric beater or by hand, until stiff peaks form.
-
Add the vanilla essence and stir well. Add the butter-milk mixture, pouring a little in at a time. Then fold in the flour mixture. Mix well.
-
Pour the cake batter in the baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes or until done.
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Make the filling while the cake is baking. Beat the eggs in a small bowl. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, cream cheese, malai and sugar together until light and fluffy.
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Brew a cup of strong coffee or espresso. For espresso, you will need to cook the coffee in a moka pot or espresso maker but strong coffee will do too. In a saucepan, pour one and a half cup of water and one tablespoon of ground coffee. Brew on medium heat until coffee is boiling.
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Take the cake out when it is done and let it cool. Cut the cake length wise into three layers.
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In a nice serving dish, place the first layer cut side up. Brush or spoon 1/3 cup of the coffee on the cake. Then, generously spoon out 2/5 of the cream filling mixture. Place another layer of the sponge cake on top and repeat.
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Brush the top layer with coffee and cover with a thin layer of the cream filling. Dust with cocoa powder and icing sugar.
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Chill in fridge for three to four hours or overnight for the layers to set. Cut into rectangular pieces. Serve with coffee or tea.
Published in Dawn, EOS, October 26th, 2025
Muzzumil Ruheel’s solo show ‘The Wild in Our Mouths’, at Canvas Gallery in Karachi, was an exploration of the relationship between thought, text, image, sound and space. As has been the nature of Ruheel’s trajectory, the presence of stillness or the unsaid becomes equally audible as, if not more than, the visual in his work.
The current body of work evoked a feeling of liberation, where form wove a joyful dance, flirting with the spectator’s gaze. Cast in welded steel and anchored in the Thuluth script, these calligraphed forms defied convention. They were placed beneath eye level or above reach, thus playing with vision. The emptiness of the white walls insisted on viewing space in relationship to the object. There seemed to be no difference between these walls and the empty white spaces or flat colour areas of Ruheel’s earlier paintings on canvas, wood or paper.
The explored dualities, simplifying the idea, with disregard to boundaries of material or consumer demand. The visual as text, text as image and space as form was the proposition to explore here. The conventional viewing of art is still so predominant within the Pakistani art market and commercial gallery dynamics. Ruheel’s simple gesture can be viewed as a mark of dissent and resistance.
Even so, it is a subtext within the main narrative. One must also keep in mind that here one is literally ‘reading’ the art in the context of the artist’s journey and the places his form has travelled from. Ruheel’s work demands that commitment from the viewer.
Form, text and the gallery space itself were in dialogue with one another at an exhibition in Karachi
There has been a disruption in the age-old script and connotations attached to Thuluth as a form of embellishment of religious manuscripts and architecture. It is a cursive Arabic script that emerged in the seventh century and flourished during the Ottoman Empire. Ruheel’s inscriptions are like sculptural drawings, whose movement and orientation is solely determined by the artist.
He is situated well outside the orbit of a past time, nor does he seem to be replicating it, as has been the tradition. The spontaneity with which he chooses to play with line, exaggerating a curve or extending a line, defines his personal journey and where he chooses to place himself socially and politically.
The work alludes to larger questions on the nature of personal, social and political boundaries, expressed through the form. Only an expert calligrapher or a palaeographer can truly gauge the diversions in Ruheel’s use of script. We recognise some letters due to the familiarity of reading and writing in Urdu and Arabic. We are well attuned to the rigour of mashq or practice that strives for perfection and can see that Ruheel adheres to the discipline of his early training in calligraphy required for a compelling flow of line.
How far he deviates is dependent on the viewer to recognise, but one thing is for sure: the artist is having fun with form through language, which defies containment and expectation. He, therefore, charts a direction that creates unfamiliar pathways of seeing and ‘reading’.
Ruheel instantly places tradition off the pedestal, making it approachable and ordinary. He injects his story within recycled imagery off the internet, shattering the myth of the original in art. The title or captions carry a parallel commentary that completes the work. The form of a horse was calligraphed, carrying the text, “Where are your Reins?” and in brackets the translation in Urdu and direct translation in English: “Tumhari lagam kahan — Where is your leash?”
Another work, Can’t Argue with Genius, which he translated as “Ji Aap Sahi Keh Rahey Hain — Of course You Always Know Best.” This tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and commentary, inserted in the captions to the work, conveys the loss in meaning in translation from Urdu to English, and vice versa. It brings home the realisation of a colonised mindset, where we constantly need to translate and clarify, as if this was addressed to an English-speaking audience.
Ruheel comes from a place of familiarity with Urdu literature, as he fondly refers to the wide range of his inspirations, from Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi to Ibne Insha’s famous Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitab. This knowledge seeps into the nuances, punctuations and humour as he narrates, in his words, “this chapter.”
‘The Wild in Our Mouths’ was on display at the Canvas Gallery in
Karachi from September 16-25, 2025
The writer is an independent art critic, researcher and curator based in Karachi
Published in Dawn, EOS, October 26th, 2025
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