Skip to main content

It's a Sin - First came the Freedom, then the Ignorance, and ultimately, the Prejudice

 


It's a Sin is a show focusing on the gay community in the 80s, trying to survive the AIDS outbreak while fighting prejudice, intolerance, and abandonment.

Recently, more and more shows are timed in the 80s. It's been 4 decades, and it starts to feel vintage. Many, who, like me, were born in the 80s, were too young to remember anything, but still, feel some connection to the time and get curious.

If you decide to watch It's a Sin out of curiosity, then you should ensure that you're ready for it.

How did it all start?

It's tempting to look back and accuse people of ignorance, but this show it's an interesting journey. It goes step by step, creating a comprehensive approach to what happened and why.

The four main characters are from different places and backgrounds. That is the first clue to the fact that it didn't matter where you were from, how smart you were, or any other thing. Nothing would protect you. No one knew what it was.

Freedom

Most characters came to London from small towns. There, they found their identity as gay men and as people. They experienced a kind of freedom they had never had before. Young boys, being themselves for the first time. Are you asking them for restraint?

For once, they were happy. They felt like they belonged. It is a good, sometimes overwhelming feeling that you don't want to let go.

Ignorance

One of the best dialogues in the show is when Richie explains to his friends how absurd AIDS is from his point of view. And having the information they had, can we blame him?

Richie mentioned different theories and wild ideas about it at the time. I'd like to highlight one: a virus with no brain that would specifically target gay men. This was the information at the time (and other non-sensical ideas). How do you expect that something that doesn't make sense would be feared?

In a world full of prejudice and hate, such a bizarre description of an illness would always seem like someone is simply trying to hurt a minority. And that's the next point.

Prejudice and Hate

I'm not even focusing on how gay men and other LGBT community members were treated in general. Instead, I would rather focus on those with the disease, a scary thing no one really knew.

The most heartbreaking scenes are the loneliness in those hospital wards. The number of men that were put there to die… alone. Colin was even incarcerated in a room because he was considered a danger to public health. As soon as you'd get sick, you'd no longer seem to be considered a human being, and you definitely had no rights.

On Point

It's a sin is an excellent and educative show about the journey the gay community endured during a decade when the world was falling apart. The show is able to create the atmosphere and make you feel the crawling, invisible enemy is getting closer… slowly and silently.

It's a heartbreaking story, unfiltered, about a tough time. It will make you smile sometimes; other times, it will make you furious. Most importantly, understand how so many wrong things might have happened.

Great cast, a great story, and is very well designed. It is definitely worth your time. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes

This is not the sort of show which I usually talk about on this blog. However, as a psychologist, I’m usually quite curious in regards to criminals and their minds; and one of these days I started watching this documentary on Netflix . Taking into consideration the kind of thing this is, I can’t say I ‘liked’ it. I mean what you see in there is nothing to like, but I was rather terrified, which is probably the usual response. Nonetheless, it was definitely a good documentary. The eyes of a killer Everything displayed in this story was terrible. The descriptions, Bundy’s posture, everything seemed like some sort of horror show, putting into perspective what we may consider to be lucky or unlucky in this life. Before I even start watching it, I read somewhere that this was the kind of thing you shouldn’t watch alone. Sounds accurate right now. At the time, and considering my, mostly academic, experience, I didn’t think that this could actually be so upsetting.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mist (2017) - quick review

  A thick mist falls up a town, and something about it isn’t right - good premise. We would expect nothing less than good from a Stephen King’s book. Yet, as we all know, book adaptations can be quite disappointing.  It goes from good to terrible. I loved the plot and, in the beginning, I was very curious and interested - it was almost impossible to stop watching it. Yet, at some point, it started to get on my nerves, and not in the way that a good horror show should. As we got closer to the end of the season, many things stopped making sense. Some characters are simply… not believable. The explanations for whatever was happening were ridiculous and easily refutable. It all took away the feeling of “this could be real”. It killed my interest. Many changes were made to the original novel. Some of them were interesting and made the story better, yet others were… well, nonsense. Cast and production As I said before, the first episodes were good and made us want to keep watching, but I was
Post a Comment
Read more

Show Review: Emily in Paris

  It took me a long time to give Emily in Paris a shot because I thought it would be a silly, shallow comedy about some sort of influencer. Well, it is a silly, shallow comedy about some sort of influencer, but to be honest, I liked it.  Emily is a young talent in a marketing career and has the opportunity of her life: working in Paris for a year! And since her boyfriend is an idiot, she can try the full experience of being a single woman in the city of love.  Unfortunately, she is not as good at managing her personal life as she is at work. In fact, she is frankly terrible at making decisions outside work. Cultural Differences Everyone who has been in a foreign country knows that sometimes we get ourselves into awkward situations due to cultural differences. So watching someone else go through the same is quite funny. I must admit that seeing an American trying to speak French is hilarious. Of course, I’m not French (and French people who hear me trying to speak French could have a s
Post a Comment
Read more