Isaac Julien | This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement / 1987 or 1988 || Unknown filmmaker | AIDS ‘Grim Reaper’ Ad Campaign / 1987 [social commercial] || Nicolas Roeg | AIDS: Monolith / 1987 [social commercial] || Unknown filmmaker Cindy, the Life of the Party / 1980s [social commercial] || Unknown filmmaker | The Patient at Stage 9 / 1997 [social commercial]

a battle against the shame of desire

by Douglas Messerli

 

Isaac Julien (screenwriter and director) This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement / 1987 or 1988

Unknown filmmaker AIDS ‘Grim Reaper’ Ad Campaign / 1987 [social commercial]

Nicolas Roeg (director) AIDS: Monolith / 1987 [social commercial]

Unknown filmmaker Cindy, the Life of the Party / 1980s [social commercial]

Unknown filmmaker The Patient at Stage 9 / 1997 [social commercial]

 

In late 1987 (according to the British Film Institute; other sources argue for release in 1988) British filmmaker Isaac Julien produced a new experimental film that made a very brave proposition. During this time period, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, Julien took the current AIDS ads of the US, Europe, and elsewhere which consisted mostly of stern warnings to gay men that unprotected sexuality led to becoming HIV-positive, followed by AIDS and likely death, and stood those basically well-meaning but basically homophobic ads on their heads.

    But before I describe Julien’s work it is necessary to remind viewers just what those dark ads to which Julien is responding during the same period. Perhaps the worst of them was the Australian government’s so-called “Grim-Reaper” ads which was not simply aimed at gay men, but at the entire population. “At first only gays and IV-drug users were being killed by AIDS,” begins this narrative, as a gathering of about ten individuals, males and females of all ages are lowered by a griding machine and dropped into place as the grim reaper rolls a larger TNT sized bowling ball into them knocking everyone of them down like bowling pins. “But now we know that everyone of us could be devastated by it. The fact is over 50,000 men, women, and children now carry the AIDS virus. But in three years nearly 2,000 of us will be dead, and if it is not stopped it could kill more Australians than World War II.”

    The metaphor of the bowling ball and pins is repeated as a mother and a child held in her arms are blown into the air by the impact of the ball.

     The lecturing voice continues: “But AIDS can be stopped, and you can help stop it. If you have sex have just one safe partner. Or always use condoms, always.” A line of text appears across the screen: “AIDS. Prevention is the only cure we’ve got.”

     In the same year, John Hurt narrated an even more violent British ad showing a volcano exploding (a second ad showing an iceberg) as an unknown hand chisels unto a monolith inscribed with the words: AIDS. Roeg chose these images specifically because they represented “doom and gloom.”

     The voice-over narration by Hurt reads: “There is now a danger that has become a threat to us all. It is a deadly disease and there is no known cure. The virus can be passed during intercourse with an infected person. Anyone can get it, man or woman. So far it’s been confined to small groups, but it’s spreading. So protect yourself, and read this leaflet when it arrives. If you ignore AIDS it could be the death of you. So don’t die of ignorance.” At this point a package of wrapped lilies are quite literally tossed upon the leaflet on the screen.”

   A 1980s US ad features Cindy who is described as the life of the party, who goes from one sexual partner to the next. That is “until one party she met a partner who would stay with her for the rest of her life, AIDS.” The narration continues: “Don’t experiment with sex, if you do, use a condom. For being the life of the party could be the death of you.” A large skull is featured at the end.

   Another ad featured the musical group Los Lobos, again arguing for individuals to refrain from sex but adding that if they do have sex they should use condoms. And it didn’t stop in the 1980s. One of the worst, from 1997 is a US ad titled “The Patient at Stage 9,” which rekindled early ads that focused all the horrors on the gay community and drug users.

    I’ll let the commentator of commercials on Helloimapizza speak for this monstrous AIDS commercial.

 

    “…[I] couldn’t find anything about the credits behind it or what company commissioned it (although it was apparently produced by Lowe & Partners), but I guess the anonymity just adds to

the poignancy – who exactly was Luke Stahler, and was he even a real person? Although we may never know the truth, the ad is still very disturbing. We see a young man sprawled on a bed in a darkened room, quietly whimpering in pain. When he reaches out to turn on a bedside lamp, we can see his body visibly covered in darkened lesions known as Kaposi’s sarcoma, an AIDS-related illness. His cadaverous, fragile body tremors as he desperately tries to sit up in his bed, but it bears too much for him as he softly sobs in prodigious pain. There’s something that’s just so harrowing about hearing only his cries and nothing else: no narration, no sound effects… nothing. We don’t even see much of his face or physical body either, just a very frail young man trying desperately to sit up in unbearable agony, with nobody around to help him. But that’s all this ad needs to really hit you right where it hurts. “And you think it’s hard to get out of bed to get a condom” reads the tagline….”

    It has long been my contention that the AIDS crisis changed everything about gay life. The major defining feature, open sexual behavior, suddenly became a death warrant, and the concept of having sex with only one partner, obviously a pitch for monogamous sexual behavior became central to all these ads. Is it any wonder that gays would work harder than ever in the late 1990s and into the new decade for the right to marry, which of course explains the proliferation of virtual hundreds of films over the next several decades focusing their themes of finding the one desirable boyfriend and settling down with him forever after, a reiteration of the heterosexual world view.

A few long-sighted gay cinema makers such as Derek Jarman, Lionel Soukaz, Arthur J. Bressan, Jr, Bill Sherwood, Amos Guttman, John Greyson, and particularly Jerry Tartaglia attempted to warn the gay community about this loss of sexual identification, but given the consequences of the AIDS epidemic and the shrill lessons of the media, of which AIDS ads are only one of many attempts to alter gay life styles, which just as often came from within the community itself, it was a losing proposition. Gays were basically neutered, transformed in the world consciousness to normative lovers who just happened to like the same sex.

    Within this context, accordingly, we now can realize just how radical Isaac Julien’s short film of made in 1987 truly was.   

     Julien’s film is divided into two parts, the first of which simply presents the beauty of gay love. Shifting from scenes in London to Venice and the grand canal, home to lovers around the world, the director’s wordless testimony, presents shimmeringly beautiful seascapes that might remind one of Monet, a mixed racial couple handing the film’s viewers their floral bouquets, a man caught within the image of a brightly lit exit and that same image trapped with the man, as well as gay men simply strolling the streets, kissing, and enjoying their lives.

     Mary Downes, writing one of the earliest reviews in Independent Media Magazine in 1987 nicely summarizes the film’s purpose and its overall effect:

 

“How is sexual desire surviving under the modern regime of Aids fearing morality? This video reclaims some of the territory seized by the new puritans. A pulsating soundtrack and hot pink tinting make men the objects of desire in this unashamedly erotic”

 

     The second part of the short film, moreover, goes even further, repeating several of the images, while adding a seemingly rap music text that repeats over and over the words: “Feel no shame in your desire,” the words also appearing separately at intervals upon the images themselves, sometimes creating a collage of 3 or even 4 layers of visual interplay, at other times breaking the frame into 4 equal sections as if to repeat the images of love themselves as often as the quiet voices are implying through their mantra.

      Writing on this film for Jump Cut in 1991, José Arroyo nicely explains this second and the film as a whole:

 

“The second part begins with a male head turning, trying to face the audience as if struggling to materialize. It finally does so and stares blankly at the audience. This section is characterized by the accretion of images introduced in the first section juxtaposed against new ones. The images are cut to the beat of the soundtrack's rap. The figures in the frame invariably look back at the audience. They are aggressive objects who gain subjectivity through the matching of their gaze to that of the audience. A recurring image in the first section of a blindfolded man unblocking his eyes and gaining sight makes more forceful the power of their gaze. The film's message becomes underlined through a kind of video aesthetic of synchronously superimposing the different words that make up the phrase, "Feel no shame in your desire," onto various images. This section, like the first, ends with the laughing kiss of the interracial mate couple.”

 

     Perhaps Lee Ray, writing on Letterboxd best summarizes the film as a whole:

 

“While the AIDS advertisements were loaded with imagery of death and filling everyone with fear regarding sex, Isaac Julien’s This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement flips them on their head. celebrating joy, the beauty of the world, and making sure that no one feels shame in desire. Bright colors, lovers holding flowers, dancing, upbeat music…this isn’t an AIDS advertisement, it’s an advertisement for desire, for a shame-free life, for a breather from death’s presence…the very things all the other advertisements forget about.”

    The shame of desire continues even today to haunt the Grindr generation, seemingly having to apologize and explain themselves for simply attempting to find someone— given the effects the 1980s and 1990s plagued with disease also had on gay bars—to share the joy of sex. AIDS not only change the sexual habits of much of the LGBTQ community, but altered the sense of community itself. As lovely as it might be to imagine thousands of gay couples sitting home at night by the fire reading or watch their TVs, such actions define the end of the very notion of community. I have lived that life apart for some 55 years now, and I don’t regret the love I found with a safe sex partner who surely saved me from AIDS and death; yet I still miss the thrill of the gay bars and the gay men within them and on the streets that preceded such domesticity.

    And finally, my bet is that Julien’s film perhaps rose AIDS consciousness more than all those horrific visions of sex and death.

 

Los Angeles, December 12, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).