Contaminating the ‘End of AIDS’ in Contemporary British AIDS Media

This chapter explores the relationship between contagious bodies visualised in film, television, and contemporary British AIDS media. By attending to the porous nature in which contagious bodies both follow historical anxieties about contamination and social hygiene, and their potential to interflow with other troubling fluids, affects, and ideas, this chapter articulates the ways in which contagion is being transformed in this media culture. The analysis focuses on Luke Davies’ web series The Grass in Always Grindr (2018-19) and Russell T. Davies’ television series It’s a Sin (2021) to examine and articulate different ways in which contagious bodies operate on screen. The chapter suggests that these bodies have the capacities to change our understanding(s) of HIV/AIDS histories and futures. Placed within the context of ongoing “end of AIDS” health promotion, the chapter suggests that this media culture has the capacity also to transform our understanding of how to negotiate and create new presents and futures “after AIDS”. The chapter situates the power of reading contagious bodies as media praxis, and what this might offer art historians and media scholars interested in the histories of health, medicine, and homosexuality.