ABSTRACT
Without setting out deliberately or programmatically to articulate a critique of media images of people with AIDS (PWAs), Danny nevertheless constitutes one of the most powerful critiques that exists to date. This is in part because it duplicates, in so many of its features, the stereotypes of PWA portraiture, but at the same time reclaims the portrait for the community from which it emerges, the community of gay men, who have thus far been the population most drastically affected by AIDS in the United States. A great many of the conventions of media portraits of the PWA appear in Danny, but their meanings are reinvested or reversed. Danny’s image as a kid who lived for sex is complicated in the video by another subtle reversal. Manistream coverage of AIDS is padded with portentous pictures of medical procedures, such as IV needles being inserted, doctors listening through stethoscopes, and tinkering in laboratories.
