As Susan Sontag has Shown in Illness as Metaphor, modern metaphors of illness “ are all cheap shots. The people who have the real (ph ys ica l) d is ease. . .are hardly helped by hearing their disease's name constantly being dropped as the epitome of evil.” Cancer victims are victimized anew when Arab polemicists describe Israel as “ a cancer in the heart of the Arab world,” or when John Dean describes Watergate to Richard Nixon as “ a cancer within—close to the presidency—tha t ’s g row ing,” or when Sontag herself writes, “ in the heat of despair over America’s war on Vietnam, that ‘the white race is the cancer of human history.’ ” Sontag concludes her analysis of the cancer metaphor by predicting that it will become obsolete “ long before the problem it has reflected so persuasively will be resolved." Political corruption will outlive Watergate and the genocidal tendencies of nations will outlive the “cancers” in the Middle East. AIDS virus number two, once identified, must be isolated and sent in search of another name, for it is itself a “cheap shot” metaphor for popular hysteria about AIDS. In viral fashion, AIDS-2 rides along with the HTLV-3 virus in the parasitical form of poor communications, WHAT THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CALLED THE "GUTTER PRESS” MIGHT NOW BE CALLED THE "SUPERMARKET” OR "CHECKOUT COUNTER PRESS,” HAVING RISEN FROM THE GUTTER TO THE . LEVEL OF THE CASH REGISTER, THE CLEARANCE POINT FOR COMMODITIES. static, interference. It represents a deviation from civilizing value that invades the host with as much energy as any biological virus, thriving on fear, ignorance, misery, bigotry and illness. But unlike the cancer metaphors of this century or the leprosy metaphors of the middle ages, this sickness will not become obsolete before the problem it reflects will be resolved. For William Burroughs reminds us in The Ticket That Exploded “ that the word may once have been a healthy neural cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system.” While the human race is estimated to be 500,000 years old, Burroughs asserts that the word has been around for a mere 10,000 years, leaving 490,000 years unaccounted for. “What we call history,” he concludes," is the history of the word. In the beginning of that history was the word.” I l l * “Substitute Flesh” T JL he image is fuzzy; upon closer inspection you see the TV lines scanning horizontally on the still photo. Rock Hudson, dark hair dominating the upper half of the image, presses his lips to the upturned face of Linda Evans, whose blonde hair and scarlet coat fill the lower portion of the frame. Both have their eyes closed; Rock seems almost to squint. Upon even closer inspection you notice that his lips are pressed not on Linda's mouth, but to her upper lip, almost on her nostrils. A staged embrace. “ The Dynasty Kiss—Rock Hudson’s Last Plea: 22 Clinton St. Quarterly Linda, Forgive Me!” (National Enquirer, Vol. 3, 1985). With this image, we are presented for the first time with the conjunction of the two viruses of AIDS. The National Enquirer places Hudson, the first celebrity HTLV-3 victim to publicly reveal his illness, in an editorial context that aggressively plays on public fear of the disease. By innuendo (“ Linda Forgive Me!” ), displacement (TV picture transported to “ the front page” ) and attribution to the image of a significance it does not in fact possess, the low-level anxiety that AIDS can be spread by a kiss is provoked, revived, given a certa in credibility. Like the HTLV-3 virus, this image of the disease is a mindless self-replicating machine unable to exist outside the host organism. The sensational revelations on the cover of the tabloid Weekly World News (Jan. 21, 1986: “ Top scientist shocks the world claiming . . AIDS IS S P R E A D BY G E RM W A R FARE . . . Nightmare disease is really a top secret weapon!” ) also present the fuzzy conjunction of the biological virus with the communications virus. What the nineteenth century called the “ gutter press”—the press that incited its reade rs to h y s te r ic a l fren z ie s of scapegoating during the Dreyfus Affair in France, for example—might now be called the “ supermarket” or “ checkout counter press,” having risen from the gutter to the level of the cash register, the clearance point for commodities. What is the supermarket’s interest in maintaining this proximity, this specious display, this hypnotic conjunction of the consumable, the consumer, and the consuming virus of low grade communication? To the AIDS-2 infected “ enquiring mind,” the fact that Rock Hudson is a victim of the HTLV-3 virus while Linda Evans is not is blurred, deformed by the manipulated image and interpretation. The medical problem collapses into a romanticized image of affliction and contagion. Unfortunately for the host organism, the virus’s power to shut down the judgment centers in the nervous system is far more easily carried out than reversed; the host’s ability to disbelieve is impaired. publicity about rarefy '5 « l BOS’ ? ? , dies or of the $ t the dis®' A ox caOS®5
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