11. Positive Reinforcement. Viatical settlement companies purchase the discounted life insurance policies of people diagnosed as terminally ill. Many of their ads exploit the theme of immediate gratification that was so popular in the fast-track pre-AIDS days. In one ad, a letter purporting to be from a satisfied client celebrates the purchase of a new car, a New Orleans vacation, and other “spoils.” Another ad repeats the capitalized phrase CASH NOW over and over. “Your NEEDS must be met ... NOW. Your DREAMS must be fulfilled ... NOW.”
The viatical ad depicted here employs a 19th-century painting by Flandrin popular with gay men since Baron von Gloeden created a black-and-white photographic version early in the 20th century. The work is frequently reproduced in the gay media, appearing on book and playbill covers and in ads for everything from dances to clinics. Why has it exercised such a persistent fascination for gay men? Describing the pose (without reference to the painting) in his 1977 book Manwatching, anthropologist Desmond Morris writes: “This is perhaps the most impressive way of creating a second person out of one’s own body.” In other words, a clone. “The doubled-up legs,” he explains, “provide a shape that can be embraced, leant against, and rested on. The arms, trunk and head all feel the comfort of body contact.” The posture, he maintains, has been found to be nineteen times more popular with women than with (heterosexual) men! “Perhaps the reason is that the posture is so extensively self-comforting that it begins to reveal its infantile connections too clearly, and males shy away from it.”
The knees-up boy makes frequent appearances in viatical ads urging the HIV positive to sell their policies in return for “relief fast” and “a cure”—for financial stress. Like the AIDS Quilt and the teddy bear, the knees-up pose reinforces themes of “comforting” and infantalizing prevalent in AIDS discourse. The ad’s offer of “positive reinforcement” and denunciation of “negative effects” reflects and reinforces the “positive = good” assumption embedded in the language.
