Culturally, we are in the middle of an Aids “memory boom” as film and television creatives turn to stories from the terrifying crisis that began in the early 1980s. In the last few years we have seen the huge success of dramas like It’s A Sin and Pose, which explore the lives and experiences of gay men and trans women during the early days of the Aids epidemic.
The latest – and perhaps unexpected – addition to this raft of dramas revolving around the issue is the new biopic about Donald Trump’s early business career, The Apprentice. Here we see the former president learning the ropes from his homosexual business mentor, the lawyer Roy Cohn, who later died of Aids.
In the 1980s, the Aids epidemic in the US and UK affected mainly gay men who were just beginning to emerge from decades of discrimination and criminalisation to take pride in their gay identity.
