We [HEART] Pedro??

Are biopics dangerous artifacts to put in public view? In light of my emotional response to MILK, I was a bit taken aback to learn a new feature was airing about the late Pedro Zamora, a fallen soldier seemingly from another time in the LGBT sensibility.

"Pedro" aires on MTV and LOGO and comes in the wake of the successful biopic, MILK, written by the same screenwriter.

Zamora and his 15 minutes of fame are being brought back to a new generation of viewers for whom the early days of AIDS is a blank slate of indifference to hedonistic gay men's lives. MTV and LOGO are airing a "biopic" about Zamora, not the editors of DISEASED PARIAH NEWS. Zamora the biopic is pure Hollywood; DPN, a 'zine of the time was fun, raunchy, bitter, and always pointed (remember AIDS Barbie pictures intubated or with KS?!). With "Pedro" get the tissues ready but will we really be educated about the Health-Care Crisis, Racism within San Francisco whose working class and ethnic minorities were already beginning the Recession & Bubble Bursts that are only spoken of now after it affects the Establishment.

In the early 90's we were barely acknowledging lesbians (remember the ADVOCATE: a GAY magazine without any mention of lesbians on its masthead?), and certainly not warm to AIDS sufferers - adult OR children. Silence=Death really, really meant something. The Masses simply weren't talking while young men were dying.

But I suspect "Pedro" will make heroes where there were none and forget DPN and those who worked in the trenches, buried the dead, volunteered at SHANTI Project.

"Pedro" The Movie would not have been greenlighted in those days. So why is Zamora, the HIV+ Cuban-Ameican namesake being brought to life for this program now? Fifteen years have passed since Season 3 of REAL WORLD [MTV 1994] filmed in San Francisco and featured him in the cast. It is too ironic that this project be greenlighted while Zamora himself - an educator - had no health care. What does it say about our civilzation that we don't take care of our educators?

I suspect the biopic is to purge us our official guilt, our crimes, show how much we loved, followed, this ONE young boy who will somehow assign us a compassion[!!] for all things HIV/AIDS. As Pres Obama would say: let me be clear: this compassion did not exist beyond the LGBT community, its close allies and friends. With "Pedro" we can all say as other Ostriches have said in another Holocaust: "We love Jews: we hid Jews. we didn't know what was happpening." Former president, Bill Clinton, reportedly will introduce the MTV/LOGO feature, undoubtedly looking folksy and solemn.

I further suspect in our Gay Marriage-Obsessed days, Zamora's pre-nuptial lifestyle that many gay men came to celebrate with their bodies will be ... white-washed. I heard some psycho-babble that he threw himself into sex to compensate for the death of his mother. I have never heard such an analysis made of our philandering presidents.

"Pedro's" version will pprobably go: He caught The Bug, and he became a Hero. Yuck! No, he worked with his body through the hypocrisy and homo-hatred of a phony Christian society in many places, in many ways.

Zamora died "from complications from AIDS" a day after the final episode aired, no biopic slated. He had a union ceremony with another HIV+ activist, Sean Sasser, a Black man, whom we've otherwise heard nothing about. Zamora was one of many who insisted they would "fight" this, meaning Death, meaning Indifference, meaning Hate. Will viewers be equally moved to the rage that fueled ACT-UP to meet the US's official indifference to HIV specifically and health care generally or crocodile tears?