The contained threat: Women in mainstream aids documentary

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Abstract
In 1986–87, when it could be no longer denied that women, and therefore, heterosexual men, were at risk for AIDS, the makers of mainstream media faced a difficult dilemma. How could they resolve their urge to represent women in the way patriarchy knows best, as culpable vector for the spread of disease, while at the same time perpetuating the myth that the middle‐class, white male spectator need not worry about becoming infected? In the AIDS documentaries of this time, women were depicted as contained threats: an oxymoronic representation that allowed them to register simultaneously as iconographic site of danger and as easily controlled subject. In this analysis of four mainstream media documentaries which were made to address the issue of heterosexual transmission, I discuss how women's sexuality is contained and controlled through representation. Furthermore, I examine whether the attempt to construct control over anxiety about AIDS is in any way similar to other social controls over women.

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