Hey I was watching the movie and towards the end where the door guy tells the group that disco is dead, and Charlotte asks is it because of the herpes outbreak. Does anyone know if that particular line (the herpes outbreak line) was an allusion to the beginning outbreak of HIV/Aids...and if so didn't Alice have herpes or so called herpes...couldn't she essentially have had HIV?
shareI don't think there was any indication that Alice had HIV.
It would certainly change the tone of the ending. She gets her book published, she connects with the Matt Kesslar character and they end the movie dancing to "Love train"
Instead she would unknowingly infect the Matt Kesslar character and then both of them would die within a few years. It is a bit depressing.
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When the guy admits to infecting her with G and H, she says "H?" Then nothing is explained, but I finally realized HIV would not be called H back in those days and that later it seems Herpes is the big epidemic.
shareGonereha (sp) and Herpes right? I thought that's what she had.
You can't come in here, this is my mastabatorium!
i think you are confusing Chloe's character in this movie with the girl she played in Kids! but seriously, i watched the film again last night looking for clues that Alice might have a more serious ailment, but i found none. Alice contracted G (gonorrhea) and H (herpes). that is serious, but not fatal!
shareI think part of the point was to remind us that, at that point, herpes was the worst STD anybody could imagine contracting.
When the former doorman who announces the death of disco at the end of the movie talks about people staying home because they are sick, that is probably more a harbinger of disease to come.
There was a herpes "epidemic" if you will in the early 80's, I remember it pretty well. Really more like 81-82, it was the big deal at the time.
It seemed like everyone had sex in the 60's and 70's and never had a problem, come the 80s you had sex and came down with something!
Yeah, when Tom says "G and H" it was gonnorhea and herpes. There was no HIV/AIDS back then, certainly not in the heterosexual community. About that time the gay community was starting the see it, but no one knew what it was.
"About that time the gay community was starting the see it, but no one knew what it was. "
Exactly. It didn't even have a name at that point, and the first quasi-official name was GRIDS (Gay Related Immuno- Deficiency Syndrome)
Herpes made the cover of Time magazine in the summer of 1982. It was a big source of concern amongst my peers when we returned to school for senior year of college in 1982-83.
shareNo, she was really refering to herpes.
Believe it or not before AIDS became a known problem, genital herpes was the big thing that young people worried about. There was a big outbreak of herpes in the mid to late 70s and it was seen as a huge threat since it couldn't be cured like other STDs.
It seems quaint in the post AIDS days that something so comparatively mild would be seen as so devastating.
The funny thing about Herpes is that it is not that bad. People just don't want to GET it because they worry about something that can't be cured, however it really is not bad at all. Many people are infected as babies, who f'ing cares?
shareThe funny thing about Herpes is that it is not that bad.
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Second, I once took a human sexuality class in college and I distinctly remember when we covered STD's and got to herpes, my instructor admitted that if she had a choice she'd rather get AIDS than herpes.
right before scrolling down to reveal your response i was thinking the exact same thing.
shareIf was definitely herpes. After she gets the prescription from the pharmacy, her roommate tells her that herpes can almost be a blessing, because then you can meet a man who loves you so much and wants to be with you so badly that he doesn't care that you have it and will expose him to it.
shareShe was just conceited, while thankfully not contagious, it is quite bothersome.
shareno you've confused your movies. That was in Kids.
shareI'm glad i'm not the only one confused, when she went to the drug store and the pharmacist said "sorry" and the scene b/f her ex told her he gaver her "g" and "h" i was shocked. As the movie ended and they dident deal with any sickness and Alice and Josh danced to love train, i was thrown, what the hell, happy ending even though she has aids. But as the other people explained it was herpes, gross but at least not aids.
share People were just beginning to hear about HIV during the time period at the end of this movie. The first significant articles in mainstream publications --not medical journals-- came around 1983. So most of the public didn't know much if anything about it.
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It was herpes, I remember that was the big scare back then , after aids came you'd be relieved that it was only herpes. Back in Jersey around the mid 80's the sequence for licence plate was A-I-D people at the time were bummed when they got the new plates and were trying to refuse them
shareH for herpes...
my vote history:
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur13767631/ratings
This is why I am a 45 year old virgin. I'm sexually phobic.
shareAbsolutely, positively NOT HIV!
Prior to the "HIV" moniker, this virus was referred to as HTLV III, but nobody-- I mean NOBODY-- would have referred to it as "H" in this movie's early 80's setting, and the few scientists who were even aware of this then-new entity didn't even have a name for it in this era.
The population of individuals referenced in this movie would not have even known of its existence at this point in time, even if their father were Dr. Robert Gallo!
The H referenced is undoubtedly HERPES.
Before AIDS came along, Herpes was the dreaded sexually transmitted disease that everyone was so afraid of catching. Once word of AIDS spread, you didn't hear people discussing herpes so much....it kinda too the back seat.
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