Honest Trailers – Life, Above All
Abstract
Health exists at the center of culture. People are obsessed with cultivating and maintaining it. But undeniably, the narratives of care shift in accordance with the bodies of health in question. Historically in healthcare, bodies of color have adorned cloaks of invisibility and frames of helplessness. In the U.S., medical professionals and the public media often pay less attention to diseases once they no longer significantly affect white populations. And when they do pay attention to diseases affecting communities of color, media and medical scholars frequently assume a position of responsibility for the communities, who they assume to be in a position of vulnerability. Healthcare has thus provided an outlet for the white man’s burden.
In the early 1980s, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a virus transmitted through bodily fluids that attacks the immune system and leads to the chronic disease of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), began to infect populations globally. In current narratives of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, medical journals and organizations focus on adolescent populations in Africa, emphasizing the extremity of the virus and subsequent inability of the kids to live if not for the tender aid of American research and donations.
This video project aims to critique and challenge the lens of patronage by which largely white nations tend to view other non-white nations. The video explores existing work around HIV/AIDS in populations of children in Africa. Inspiration comes from Jon Bailey’s YouTube web series Honest Trailers, which satirizes different films through parodies of their trailers. The film chosen for this project is Oliver Schmitz’s “Life, Above All,” based on Alan Stratton’s novel Chanda’s Secrets and selected as an entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. The story follows Chanda, a twelve-year-old girl from South Africa, and her resilient leadership in her family’s battle with AIDS. This Honest Trailer compares and contrasts Chanda’s story with American expectations of health in bodies of color by juxtaposing film clips, music, and narration.
References (Chicago style)
Dargis, Manohla. “Burdened in a Ravaged South Africa.” New York Times, July 14, 2011.
Freckleland. Nothing’s Funner Than Summer. Recorded 2014. Track 2 on Be My Friend. Apple, Inc.
Lowenthal, Elizabeth D et al. “Perinatally acquired HIV infection in adolescents from sub-Saharan Africa: a review of emerging challenges.” The Lancet. Infectious diseases vol. 14,7 (2014): 627-39. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(13)70363-3.
Mitchell, Claudia. “In my life: youth stories and poems on HIV/AIDS: towards a new literacy in the age of AIDS.” Changing English, 13:3 (2006), 355-368, DOI: 10.1080/13586840600971919.
Schmitz, Oliver, dir. Life Above All. 2010; South Africa: Sony Pictures Classics. YouTube.
Woubshet, Dagmawi. The Calendar of Loss Race, Sexuality, and Mourning in the Early Era of AIDS. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.