CNN – For the generations who grew up with his plays, there was an actor who incarnated more to a lively, playful and romantic heartthrob Rock Hudson.
Along with bubbly Doris Day in Pillow Talk , Lover Come Back and other romantic comedies clean cut, he was the image of masculinity heterosexual.
All the time, the typical American actor hiding a secret that could end his career: he was homosexual. Hudson seemed ready to take the secret of his sexual orientation to the grave, along with the knowledge that he had contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The source of the public’s relationship with celebrities and HIV / AIDS can be traced to Hudson.
Thirty years later, with the advent of sophisticated drugs, people infected with HIV can live a long and full life. That does not mean the end of the public life of a celebrity, a lesson of athletes like Magic Johnson and Greg Louganis.
That bodes well for the actor and superstar bad boy Charlie Sheen, who on Tuesday morning confirmed to Matt Lauer on the “Today” program that has been diagnosed with HIV.
“A lot has changed since the time Rock Hudson”, professor of media studies at the University of Syracuse, Robert J. Thompson said.
“As for HIV, the long time that Magic Johnson has lived with HIV and the many treatments that have emerged have given a new context to the condition not just HIV;. Many stars now they are confessing and making awareness of all kinds of medical conditions: cancer, Parkinson’s disease and others. ”
That was not always the case.
Celebrities who were forced to confess
In the 1980s and early 1990s, AIDS was a death sentence, and confirm publicly that one was HIV positive could be the death knell for the career of a celebrity.
However, many were forced to disclose their condition of HIV / AIDS. The choice to hide her condition was ripped from the hands of Hudson after he made a public appearance with Day at a press conference in 1985. His gaunt, which surprised his co-star, made it clear that something was wrong with his health .
The speculation in the media about that Hudson had AIDS intensified after the star collapsed while seeking treatment in France. His spokesman confirmed his illness on July 25, 1985 and he died a few months later, on October 2, 1985.
The much publicized battle with AIDS Hudson did become the first of a long list of celebrities who struggled with the stigma of virus and tortuous decision to disclose or not the personal status of each.
As more people die every day from complications of AIDS deaths tennis great Arthur Ashe, the artist Keith Haring and virtuoso pianist Liberace, they pushed the disease into the public consciousness.
But this did not quell the assumption that only gay men and people who had undergone blood transfusions were at risk of contracting the disease.
Ashe was forced to disclose their status in 1992, after learning that a newspaper planned to publish a story about his battle against AIDS, which he said was the result of a blood transfusion during surgery bypass.
The leader of Queen, Freddie Mercury, initially refused to respond to speculation that he had AIDS and confirmed his illness just one day before his death in 1991.
That is now a familiar story: required to disclose private medical conditions due to harassment of media celebrities. Even Sheen’s actions were motivated by threats of sensational stories.
Read: Actor Charlie Sheen reveals he is HIV positive
A well kept secret
Public figures like Robert Reed, Anthony Perkins and Rudolf Nureyev were able to keep their diagnosis private until his death.
Initial reports showed that the beloved father of Brady Bunch , Reed, died of colon cancer in 1992. But his death certificate, released the week after his death he also stated that he was infected with HIV and that contributed to his death.
His fellow actors said they knew I was gay, but he never talked about it with them.
Barry Williams, who played his eldest son in the program and referred to as a mentor Reed said his confession would probably have caused the program was canceled. “I would have tremendously harmed his career,” Williams told ABC News.
The world famous ballet dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev, who died in 1993, was still a very popular dancer in the world when he learned he was HIV positive in 1984. I was afraid that the United States and other countries will refuse entry if their condition was unknown.
It was only after his death that his doctor revealed that Nureyev, who had given him permission to speak freely after his death, had AIDS.
“I think of all the anonymous patients suffering by being ostracized. Thanks to its strength and combativeness, Rudolf lived for 13 or 14 years with this virus. People should know that,” he said Dr. Michel Canesi, according to the New York Times .
Perkins, who represented ilustremente Norman Bates in the movie Psycho of Alfred Hitchcock, on condition maintained its strict confidence, his wife told the Times. “I just did not want anyone to know,” said Berry Berenson after his death in 1992. “He thought that if anyone knew, it would never work.”
However, the stigma was slowly raised through the efforts of educators on HIV / AIDS as Pedro Zamora.
Zamora, a member of the cast of the third season of MTV’s The Real World , he became the youthful face of life with AIDS when he appeared on the program 1994. His tender relationship with his partner Sean Sasser was a reference point for young people to learn about homosexual relationships, as well as about how HIV is transmitted.
The former cast member of Real World and cultural commentator, Kevin Powell, who went through his own growing pains in the program and wrote about the fact of becoming an old man old in the new book The Education of Kevin Powell , says that thanks to a beloved sports figure stigma began to rise just a few years earlier.
“This certainly began with Magic Johnson, a hero and an icon of American sports, when he announced that he was HIV positive,” Powell said in a statement to CNN.
“This was a dramatic and historic turning point because men like Rock Hudson, Freddie Mercury and Arthur Ashe, kept their HIV status largely hidden because of the crippling definitions of masculinity, for the homophobia in cases of Hudson and Mercury. ”
Secrets ‘that isolate you’
“Because of the HIV virus that I acquired, I will have to retire today from the Lakers,” said the great Earvin “Magic” Johnson in the NBA, sitting with his wife Cookie, in a press conference in 1991.
Recognition of Johnson shocked the sports world, and caused even journalists covering the story wept openly.
At this point, HIV is still equated to a certain death in the public mind, but eventually Johnson’s revelation caused a radical change in the perception of the virus and about who might buy it.
The science was updated, he was developing drugs that would allow those who had been diagnosed with HIV live for decades without developing AIDS. Johnson, whose HIV infection was detected early and who was treated by the best doctors, he became an indicator barometer of progress in that field.
He even returned to the NBA.
Johnson continued to survive and even prosper physically as he was successful in his business and philanthropic projects, a sign that the fact of living with HIV was not a death sentence. He has publicly lived with the virus for 24 years.
The Olympic diver Greg Louganis, became another personification of public life with HIV when he revealed his condition to Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey before the release of his memoir: Breaking the Surface in 1995.
“I felt I was living on an island with only a phone to communicate with the outside world, because that’s what secrets do,” he told Louganis CNN Monday. “They isolate you.”
However, the gold medalist distrusted the reaction to his revelation, which came four years after the news of Johnson.
“I did not know in 1995 how they were going to meet,” he said. “I’m not Magic Johnson I’m not a heterosexual man. I’m a gay man I received a lot of antipathy, I received a lot of criticism but it was what I needed to do for me…”
Its opening has inspired other sports figures and ordinary people to share their HIV status, to make public their homosexual condition or to stop bad relationships. The condition is only one aspect of his life, he said.
“The fact that I’m HIV positive does not define who I am.”
Both medicine and public perception of the disease have come a long way, but in 1995, public figures were still dying. The startling revelation of Eazy-E in respect of that year he was sick with AIDS brought the conversation on HIV rap community.
As a member of the rap group NWA, it was influential in a genre that was marked by promiscuity exalt. The rapper, whose real name was Eric Wright, revealed his condition shortly before his death.
“I’m not saying this because I’m looking to the place where I go to something more pleasant,” Wright said in a statement at the time. “I just feel I have thousands and thousands of young fans that have to learn about what’s real when it comes to AIDS.”
Living in the present
when the former child star of the series “Who’s the Boss?” he discovered he was HIV positive in March of 2003, he knew that this was not a death sentence.
However, even with the cocktail of lifesaving drugs, “this is still something we have to deal with the rest of my life,” he told Oprah Winfrey Pintauro in September 2015, He made public his HIV status.
Pintauro, who publicly declared homosexual in 1997 and married last year, maintained their status secret for 12 years. “This is a big deal, you know?” He said. “It’s not something that people really are talking right now.”
Revealing the HIV status remains “somewhat important” for any celebrity. Sheen told Lauer that has paid millions of dollars to keep quiet and keep their diagnosis a secret for the past four years.
Despite their fears, Sheen has largely been supported by the public for the first time since his confession.
Powell attributed that reaction to the power possessed by reality TV and social networks to destroy the limits.
“We have seen people in discussions of national television talking about race, gender and sex, relationships, addictions and engaging in all kinds of behavior, including Charlie Sheen prior to your ad that is HIV positive, “Powell said.
Read: Charlie Sheen and HIV stigma as ‘the new closet’
“That is why he has been acclaimed in social networks for telling the truth. Because that wild and dysfunctional as has been the life of Charlie, he really represents us us and we to him. ”
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