How To Analyze Dallas Buyer’s Club: Fact, Fiction, And The Meaning Of Self-Governance.
If one side says all drugs are bad, it’s more common to gravitate toward the side that says we should legalize all drugs. The all drugs are bad side will normally use some form of binary moral virtue signaling as a way of dictating and further demonizing the destructive elements drugs have brought out within addicts and the dealers that fuel their addictions. When it comes to the drug legalization angle, morality will draw greater focus on the U.S Drug wars and its many failures to end a war where the cartels are either in bed with certain governmental powers that allow them to operate and thrive to more territorially expansive scales, while having the violence that characterizes them escalate to a point where the distrust of pharmaceutical companies and the poisons they peddle come off as an added form of baggage to the absurdities of the same prison industrial complex that still incarcerates many non-violent individuals for minor if not minuscule drug offenses.
On an episode of the Konkrete podcast, freelance journalist Luis Chapero—who’s written extensively on the drug war—once stated that if you end the war on drugs, then it becomes a mental health issue as opposed to a security issue. As to how severe the mental health angle can be tackled when focusing on the problem many addicts suffer in the current day, especially now in the wake of a growing fentanyl epidemic in the West, it doesn’t change the overall importance and value that self-governance plays as opposed to the more centralized control aspect that higher institutions play in dictating what a human being can and cannot put in their body, even to the point of unwarranted demonization.
In the case of the Aid’s crises, the administering of AZT (azidothymidine) served as a major focal point in the discussions revolving around the diagnoses that Ron Woodruff received. Any biographical narrative will certainly warrant its own debate regarding truth and falsity. As to what side has the greater authority given the multitude of opinions, especially in the current age where information travels fast and to greater degrees of distortion, it only becomes harder and harder to determine who is the winner behind the history we look to for a better grasp of the present.
As a dramatized narrative, Dallas Buyer’s Club uses Ron Woodruff’s aids diagnosis as a means of making a pro-drug/anti-big-pharma argument that defies the more institutionally mandated authority of the same industrial complex that actively fights to mandate what an individual can or cannot administer into their body. Whether there can be any validity within the film's account of Woodruff’s choice to self-medicate is in fact true, it still doesn’t detract from the reality that the film is essentially about the kind of self-governance that should be championed against any means of centralized control that behaves as if it has a moral right to dictate what substances are healthy and not healthy for the same populace that characterized the many victims of the aid’s epidemic.
What makes Dallas Buyer’s Club special lies not on whether it is based in fact or fiction, but more importantly around the choice of how the only truth that governs the life of an individual—be it right or wrong—is itself a constitution of a truthfulness very few people uphold with a sense of personal responsibility. The late writer/public intellectual Christopher Hitchens (“god IS Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” and “The Trial of Henry Kissinger”) once said that “The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” Whether this line of independent thinking is for better or worse is subject to question. However, the value of personal responsibility towards oneself without any harm coming to others carries more value than seeking the authority of another to dictate why there is meaning to one’s life.
Jean-Marc Valley’s directorial take on the Aid’s crises does not hold back in characterizing the inherent evil that defines pharmaceutical corporations, so much so that in the present day, and post-covid, it’s pretty much become common knowledge for the average person to carry a genuine if not antagonistic distrust of the pharmaceutical industry and the many incentives that fuel its profit-driven motive to keep people sick rather than to actually cure them of the many ailments that form the basis for the drugs they administer and ultimately aid in the contribution of even greater crises, which often see little to no progress.
There can be no denying that the Aid’s crises was a fiasco, and although the name of Anthony Fauci is often associated with the many controversies currently circulating around the Covid pandemic, the fact they played a similar role in the Aid’s crises alone carries a poetic irony that further illustrates the repetitive role history plays, but also the lack of growth and humility humanity often embraces when faced with problems carrying the same negative calling cards. In the focus of a film like Dallas Buyer’s Club, which tends to nudge towards the more pro-drug and anti-big Pharma route, the fact that it faces an ample amount of accusers labeling many of its narrative components as purely fictional says something about the incentive of a story and how it can be misperceived from illustrating the central point at hand. When looking at the bigger picture that characterizes a story about a man like Ron Woodruff, who burned the candle on both ends and willfully embraced the consequential fires that ultimately led to his demise speaks volumes about the importance of a person’s willful decision to maintain a sense of self-governance over the individuality that constitutes their identity as opposed to the tyranny of a majority that is incapable of functioning without any hierarchical dictation.
“They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.”
—Arthur Schopenhauer “The World As Will”
Although it would be a far cry to call the self-destructive tendencies of the Ron Woodruff that Dallas Buyer’s Club showcases as being suicidal, the right to his own life and person are the ultimate aims of his incessant will to make a clown of himself every time he drinks, takes drugs, has unprotected sex, and occasionally rides a bull to the point where labeling him a rodeo clown would carry its own measure of absurdity. Strangely enough, throughout the course of the narrative, Dallas Buyer’s Club has certain focal points where a clown is presented before Woodruff, almost as both a form of cosmic mockery and a call towards the self-awareness that pertains to the absurdity that defines much of his arrogance the film spares no effort in showcasing. This can range from his toxic masculinity or his stridently outlandish homophobia, which several outside sources such as the visual blog Information is Beautiful claim that only 61.4 % of the story is accurate. It’s an odd estimate to get to, and this only throws the elements of fiction and creative liberty more into the forefront of a film like Dallas Buyer’s Club, which has a clear intention in holding the immoral practices of both the pharmaceutical industrial complex and the same FDA (Food And Drug Administration) that legislates what drugs are considered legal or illegal based on the payments those same drug companies provide them to a more accountable standard.
Given the historical framework in which Dallas Buyer’s Club tackles the aid’s crises, along with the controversial administering of the antiretroviral medication AZT, several moments within this film highlight the swarmy corruption pharmaceutical reps in ten thousand dollar suits are known for when peddling medications with highly lucrative financial gains despite carrying potentially dangerous side effects that are either ignored in favor of manipulated medical data, or even treated as a minor issue in comparison to the majority that has benefited from the drug’s use. Again, when it comes to weighing in what elements of Dallas Buyer’s Club are factual as opposed to fictional given the context of what these alterations are ultimately aiming for, it’s subject to question. At the same time though, focusing on solely these elements is missing the main point of the film, which is perfectly encapsulated when the film’s Woodruff is told by a judge that despite being considered terminally ill, he should have the right to treat himself in whatever way they see fit. But sadly, the law being the law (fucked up beyond logic), even that basic human right is subject to face an absurd measure of scrutiny from outside forces, and that is the true essence of Dallas Buyer’s Club as a story of one person’s fight for their life.
Whether the Dallas Buyer’s Club fully captures the authenticity of Woodruff, his battle with aids, the FDA, and the pharmaceutical company’s determination to keep Aid’s patients on AZT as opposed to allowing them to voluntarily seek alternatives, the film never detracts from the core purpose of illustrating the greater importance of a person’s fundamental right to choose how they manage their health. Elaborating further on the words of the judge, the fact that he winds up pointing out that the FDA’s role was to essentially protect people, not prevent them from getting help only strengthens the case that whether it is for the better or worse, the individual’s right to their own life is what makes Dallas Buyer’s Club an important narrative to learn from, be it fact or creatively fictional in an era where censorship and mandated bullying are preventing people from even having a discussion as to whether or not they can wear a mask out in public or even honestly say that they took an alternative form of medication as opposed to a vaccine brought to you by Pfizer.
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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