In Jean-Marc Vallée’s 2013, triple Oscar-winning film, “Dallas Buyers Club,” themes including masculinity and hegemony are brought up throughout.
Matthew McConaughey stars as Ron Woodroof, an electrician who, with his reputation, lives mostly off of his sense of masculinity. He lives in a mobile home, drinks, plays cards, enjoys riding at the local rodeo, and is sexually promiscuous with women, and when he is sent to the hospital after getting shocked on the job, blood tests are taken and Woodroof gets diagnosed with HIV.
The film is set in the 1980s, the decade infamously known as when the AIDS epidemic began. The disease, at that time, was commonly found in gay men, as they were starting to become more accepted into society post-Stonewall. At the time, most gay men celebrated their pride, first and foremost, through sexual encounters with other men. Like Woodroof, these gay men in the 1980s were also promiscuous, and at the same time, for both Woodroof and gay men, contraception was hardly ever considered. So when Woodroof was told by his doctor about his diagnosis, he was shocked in disbelief and he was under the impression that only gay men could contract HIV/AIDS, referencing gay actor Rock Hudson who had died from the disease in 1985.
Then the doctor began asking Woodroof standard questions in the hopes of narrowing in on what might have caused this, and when the doctor asked if he had ever engaged in homosexual acts, Woodroof went right into defense mode to protect his sense of masculinity, inside and out, using multiple swear words and slurs in an attempt to convey how serious he is about not being gay. Woodroof even threatened he doctor.
“Look at me. What do you see? A go---mn rodeo is what you see. Alright? So fu—in watch it.”
The theme of hegemony comes into play after Woodroof visits the local library to research the history and causes of HIV/AIDS. At the library he had a flashback of an example of how risky he has been with his female partners and has a breakthrough with his new reality.
Later, after taking that first step to recovery, admitting the problem, he is shown to be determined to get better with the best medication, even though the ones he researched and listed are not approved, for human consumption, by the Food and Drug Administration.
“Hegemony implies a willing agreement by people to be governed by principles, rules, and laws they believe operate in their best interests, even though in actual practice they may not. Social consent can be a more effective means of control than coercion or force” (Dines et al., Hegemony 2018).
In this film, the use of the term hegemony is associated with hospital’s medical staff (with this exception of Dr. Eve, played by Jennifer Garner), but mostly with the FDA, seen by Woodroof as a controlling dictator figure to the dying AIDS patients, forcing the ones in medical trials on AZT, which has shown to cause more harm than help.
Source cited
Dines, G., Humez, J., Yousman, B., & Yousman, L. (2018). Hegemony. In Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader (5th ed., pp. 35–35). essay, SAGE.
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