MovieChat Forums > Safe (1995) Discussion > 'Safe' as an AIDS movie

'Safe' as an AIDS movie

posted 18 years ago by gavagai
15 replies | jump to latest

It seems to me that the disease is actually AIDS, striking some scattered heterosexuals at a time when no one was looking for it and resulting in hysteria.

Many critics have read the disease as a metaphor for AIDS and the film as an analogy to the 1980's experience of AIDS generally. Observe that Todd Haynes was a founding member of Gran Fury, "one of the earliest, and most influential, pioneers of AIDS activism through art..., an artists' collective formed in 1988... [they] sought to create a public, non-museum role for art that attempted to inform a broad public and provoke direct action to end the AIDS crisis."

But I think you can interpret the film as being literally, not metaphorically, about AIDS and mysteriousness of AIDS-related symptoms in heterosexuals at a time when HIV/AIDS was thought to be a gay disease. Lots of elements fall into place if you suppose that the disease actually is AIDS.

Some evidence:

1. Consider the other people in the commune: a kid who thinks he got sick "because of all the drugs I took" (needles), a woman who got sick and soon later her husband Nell got sick (one gave the other HIV, she developed symptoms first), a woman whose child got sick then later she did (she was infected, passed it on through the womb, and he, being a child, developed symptoms first), a very effeminate man who probably has had sex with men (the one who tries to pick up Carole at the end), a woman who was raped as a child, and Carole. Notice that Carole's stepson is about 10-13, meaning that the marriage is probably newer than 10 years old, meaning that she could have been having sex with other people in the relevant time (untreated, it takes about 9-11 years, sometimes many more, for symptoms to develop after infection).

2. The movie was made in the mid-90s, but Haynes takes great pains to show us that it takes place in the 80s (those dresses! hairstyles!). The opening scene tells us it's 1987, when AIDS was still thought of as a gay disease, when HIV testing wasn't widespread, and when people didn't know much about it.

3. The symptoms, on this reading, are a mix of real AIDS-related symptoms (catch the lesion on her head) and paranoia-induced reactions (the reaction to her husband's cologne and the nearby freeway are "in her head").

Notice that we're explicitly told that Peter, the cult leader with the huge mansion, actually does have AIDS. This raises new questions about the character: is he, for monetary gain, luring in unknowningly-HIV+ people and telling them that they have a mysterious disease that only he and the commune can help them with?

I'm sure there are flaws with this interpretation, and I'd like to hear what you think.

[–] 666Night999 18 years ago

I think it is supposed to be left undefined. Haynes' other movie POISON, I believe, also dealt with a strange disease. I think Haynes may be using a purposefully ambigious ailment to shed light on what was really going on in the late 80s: materialism. Like AMERICAN PSYCHO, both movies take place at the height of 80s materialism. Taken to the extreme, PSYCHO has the main character committing murders(real or imaginary), while SAFE has the main character physically ill, trying to find a solution. Maybe the environment, with all its pollution, is supposed to illustrate a new sickness in humans. Not only the need for industrial evolution and advancement or environmental disaster, but I think Haynes wants to show how we as humans are in a sense destroying ourselves, a separation from our species and the environment. Both are sick, both can heal with love!

"Nice beaver!"
"Thanks, I just had it stuffed."--The Naked Gun

[–] bunnywithanaxe 18 years ago

Guru Guy says in one of the TV ads that his center was developed in response to a variety of what he seemd to percive as environmenta illness-- he included Epstein-Barr and AIDS on that list. It woudn't surprise me if the characters of the movie were given backgrounds that included a variety of diseases.

Having said that, a few thoughts after watching the film again:

1. Given the volatility of her reaction to chemicals as Carol entered Wrenwood, if that were a byproduct of AIDS, then she should have been showing signs of PCP and Karposi's by then.

2. After he seizure at the drycleaners, her doctor said there were no signs of definable illness. By this time they were making such diagnoses regularly (the victims or families of victims were not always passing on the diagnoses to the public--remember "And the Band Played On" and the popularity of "liver cancer"?-- but they were being made.)

3. Nell? I think you might be on to something. The fact that the whole family seemed to be involved, and that the brief scenes with the husband revealed him to be seriously racked up, might give a litte wieght to it being AIDS.

666Night999:

"Not only the need for industrial evolution and advancement or environmental disaster, but I think Haynes wants to show how we as humans are in a sense destroying ourselves, a separation from our species and the environment. Both are sick, both can heal with love!"

Exactly, I think you've got the premise. The healing starts with the individual.

[–] bertdockx 12 years ago

"Not only the need for industrial evolution and advancement or environmental disaster, but I think Haynes wants to show how we as humans are in a sense destroying ourselves, a separation from our species and the environment. Both are sick, both can heal with love!"

Are you guys suggesting that the Wrenwood centre is being a help to her? Because to me it was obvious that the second part of the film was a condemnation of that 'society' too. Her condition becomes worse, it's again a society based on hypocrisy, lies, abuse of power, ... She goes from one prison (suburban life) into the other. There's no real contact being made between these people, and especially not between the leader and the patients (other than abuse). The most obvious scene in this regard, is the one where the leader asks a group of patients why they became sick. At the end of the session all the patients are depressed and alone, while he's holding hands with his beautiful girlfriend, saying how lucky he is. The guy is a monster, a villain. Just look at his house.

I even found the sarcasm and satire so obvious that I got bored a little bit towards the end of the film. The point was being made pretty soon after she arrives, and it was being repeated (not very subtly) afterwards, again and again.

Still a great movie, but very depressing.

"Exactly, I think you've got the premise. The healing starts with the individual."

There is no healing for her. She's hardly an individual, just an empty shell filled with lies, like all the characters in the film. She's beyond repair.

[–] mongrove_mantichora 18 years ago

Gavagai,

Very good reading! If you can track it down, check out the Summer 1995 issue of Artforum International. There's an interview with Todd Haynes (p. 87), where he basically states that "environmental illness" is a metaphor for AIDS -- that he wanted to present the AIDS epidemic through the lens of this totally mysterious, "female" disease.

[–] SheBear 18 years ago

It seems to me that AIDS is used in the film as juxtapostion against what Carol is experiencing. AIDS is real. What Carol has is not.

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ModalLogic 18 years ago

Even though that I do not think that the diesease is neccessarily AIDs, it nevertheless seems to have some parallels with the plight of people with AIDS in the eighties. I do believe (contrary to some people's view) that the disease portrayed in he film is "real" but is not taken serious to such an extent that the only options that Moore's character has is to find help with "treatment" that is not in end "curing" the disease. I remember watching news reports in the eighties about AIDS sufferers taking "alternative medicine" because there was nothing yet in the medical community that could be offerred. This was propelled by stigma that AIDS was somehow only connected with the "gay lifestyle". However, I do think this was not due to lack of effort of the medical community but instead the gross insensitivity of politicians, religious leaders and the mainstream population in general.

Another analogy can be drawn with "chromic fatique syndrome". The wide spread perception was that this was not a "true" disease and had more to do with "self motiviation" than any physical problem. I worked with a fellow who rattled incessantly about his lazy sister-in-law who "claimed" to have this condition while gloating about how he "pulled" himslf together from wasted youth to make something of himself. Too often people make judgements about the nature of afflictions that are based in some notion of moral certitude rather than objective analysis.

Much of Madness, More of Sin.

[–] ricknoberts 17 years ago

Regarding this thesis:

It could be argued that her persistent cough was indicative of PCP, but the "spot" on her head looked nothing like a KS lesion, which is far darker (deep purple) in pigmentation.

This film is very complex. I think that Carol's illness might be best explained as a parallel and metaphor for the Duesberg Hypothesis, which says that AIDS is caused by environmental factors, recreational drug use, chemicals, and/or malnutrition. There are also concurrent satires of New Age medicine, alternative therapies (such as acupuncture, self-help, HPA 23) that can be seen as deleterious and disingenuous, and that many with AIDS employed in hope that it would cure them.

I don't, however, believe that Carol had AIDS, but rather suffered from environmental illness (which could be an allergen to the American Psycho-like yuppiness of her life), and the stigma associated to her and like sufferers *mirrors* that of AIDS sufferers, but the people with EI are not AIDS sufferers in reality.

[–] DVDAddict79 17 years ago

I was starting to suspect it was an AIDS-related illness myself, but there's an excellent analysis on the Wikipedia page, down at the bottom by the links section. Basically, it suggests it's Carol's life (or lack of!) and role in society as a person (or again, complete lack of) which is making her ill.

Whether the Environmental Illness is real or not, or whether she has it or not, is irrelevant - medicine has failed her, psychiatry has failed her, and the New-Age retreat will fail her because she needs to look at herself and the society around her before she'll become better. None of them offer her a solution because the problem is her pointless, shallow, emotionless and meaningless existence.

The Director himself said that he mentioned AIDS in the film because, at the time, there was a field of thought which claimed AIDS patients were making themselves ill, through anger and lack of self-love. He was critical of this as well, but I don't think the entire film is AIDS-related. After reading that link, it really does make more sense - although you've got to kind-of forget about the illness part of the film and look at the wider picture.

[–] brutoom 17 years ago

Because of the fact AIDS is mentioned in the movie several times, I didn't think that that was her disease.

For me this was a movie about hypochondria induced by a lack of love\attention, especially 'cause of the last line in the movie. The typical unsatisfied housewife tale suffering from a lack of happiness in her "perfect" life, but the twist is we see the movie as she experiences it, without knowing the cause of her feelings. Never has she (prob. because of her timid personality) questioned her happiness, she has it all, the perfect picture, but it never feels satisfying, this results in an allergic reaction to everything around her.

I found the wrenwood sessions to reveal this, all patients were unhappy and "made themselves sick". For the outside world hypochondria comes off as affectation and cries for attention, but the patient experiences the symptoms for real.

The 80's materialism-unhappiness vibe was overly evident throughout the movie and for me was the moral of this story.

[–] lookingfordetroit 17 years ago

and so the pure oxygen house and the being so far away from everything is that because people with aids feel so isolated from everyone else and only feel really good, at ease, when they are around other people with aids? when they ignore the fact that it's rare? whenever i believe one theory there are always questions about something else that doesnt quite fit!!

[–] bertdockx 12 years ago

The Wrenwood center is being portrayed as negative as the "80's materialism-unhappiness" before it, so it's not that simple. I think she moves from one prison to the other. She replaces one set of lies with another one.

Listen to her birthday-speech at the end. She just repeats different ideas that she's come across during the course of the film like a parrot, without any logic or understanding. She has no center, no real identity, she is a blank being filled in by her surroundings.

Wrenwood is part of the problem, it too is an alienating society. With a self-serving guru at the top.

[–] ununchanged 10 years ago

Totally agree with the starting post, totally disagree with some of the answers.

Her problem obviously was NOT solved in the commune, neither was the movie in any way positive about environmental-poison-theories or healing yourself with self-love.

Loving yourself would mean fighting for yourself, not blaming everything on yourself, acknowledging your aggression, taking a stand, demanding help.
Instead the people are blamed beyond measure ("Only you are responsible for getting sick") while paradoxically at the same time being ordered to love themselves and everything around unconditionally.

I don't think it is necessarily about aids but may very well be.

It's more about the dangerous cults that fill holes in modern medicine: "You made yourself sick, so you can heal yourself". Now isn't that practical, i'm a superhuman...

This ideological manipulation is still widespread among esoteric groups today. It's destructive to the psyche since people end up being trapped in a circle of guilt, and become dependent on gurus.
"Only you can help yourself" yet somehow you need to blindly obey people telling you how to help yourself. They tell you what to do yet, if it fails, it's never their fault.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (46827070) 10 years ago

Carol looked weaker at the end of the film than when she first entered the commune. So the commune definitely didn't help. She looked like an AIDS sufferer.

[–] Struckworld7767 9 years ago

Anyone notice that it's briefly mentioned that Peter Dunning has AIDS?

ANND there was a no sex and drugs policy rule

I think some of the people in the camp had AIDS. Whether Carol is actually sick I don't know, her life could be so horribly empty that her body subconsciously makes her sick.

Lol anyone notice the pregnant lady's face during the baby shower scene and Carol starts freaking out? She does not look happy nor concerned at all, lol the people in this movie I tell ya, I'd probably wouldn't be "Safe" around those people too, giving myself seizures.

I'm from Paris... TEXAS