Those People: A Look at Demonic Othering and Homosexuality in Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Kushner’s Angels in America George Emmerich

Those People: A Look at Demonic Othering and Homosexuality in Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Kushner’s Angels in America

The arts and humanities have served as not only social and political barometers of their representative ages, but also as cautionary voices aimed toward the future. Both Tennessee Williams and Tony Kushner incorporated the voices of the marginalized into their dramaturgy. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Williams animates a southern family’s fractured relationships and its dealings with the truth, craftily alluding to underpinnings of homosexual relationships and ruminating on their place within the South; Kushner examines this same marginalized group in Angels in America, but casts homosexuality into the forefront of culture. Each playwright addresses the subjugated group from a unique perspective: Kushner, directly; Williams, indirectly. Although Williams and Kushner utilize different techniques to present homosexuality and its relationship in contemporary social stratification, both Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Angels in America comment on the depiction of the homosexual as “other” -- a creature to be feared and persecuted.

How is this "other" initially constructed? Tenets of both egocentric and...