A Human

From the perspective of a straight man like myself, I took in the prowess and power of Jeffrey Wright’s Tony-Award winning performance as Belize in the groundbreaking play by Tony Kushner, Angels in America. I didn’t actually see the play but I noticed the bravura of Wright’s performance adapted to the small screen when the production appeared on HBO in 2003 as a miniseries. The captivating way he uses Mr. Kushner’s words allowed me to reconsider everything I knew about the LGBTQ+ community. He did one thing: make everyone human.

With strong words and even better actions, Wright’s character Belize demonstrates to the world of being a gay black man in New York City. Sure, I had some understanding of what queerdom meant. I watched HBO. This meant that there existed programming that clued anyone in on the facets of their world. Because their world is anyone else’s. What I loved so much about Mr. Wright’s performance is that he was effeminate. He was loose. He knew where he was in what he wanted to do. As a former drag queen turned registered nurse (and drag queen again?) he shows the power of being oneself.

In my own family, I have people who happen to be gay. They are some of the smartest, funniest, and most engaging people. But it’s not because of their sexuality that makes them so cool. And it’s not a detraction, either. They just have an affinity for the same sex. I was so glad when the two married. It meant that there existed some greatness in the land of the free. Belize could have been a bellwether amongst a host of other gay characters that changed the landscape that paved the way for same sex marriages. His monologues remain gems of the stage and screen. With Kushner’s words, he speaks of a city:

“Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, fierce gusts of gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens….”

The richness of the words is imbued with the spirit and wisdom and candor of Mr. Wright’s powerful acting.

Once you see someone with so much humanity and empathy, you might think there’s a human with the lisp or the head jerking or the finger snapping. Jeffrey Wright showed me how a straight man can play a gay character and banish the idea that one can’t play the other and vice versa. My whole perspective became revolutionized at the very thought of Wright’s words and actions in the play (so I’ve heard) and on the small screen. The comfort and security within his own heterosexuality allowed him to portray a gay man without trepidation or second-guessing himself. This permitted me to look at the LGBTQ+ community as individuals and not a mob of flesh huddled together like a herd of sexualized deviants. Mr. Wright brought about a notion of how it is to be a gay man in America in the twentieth century. Now, in the twenty-first century, there is a great acceptance of human beings.

The wonderment of his Belize is that he delivers every line with conviction, even when he says something icy and sardonic. There is still, underneath, a sense that he is conveying his mind to the audience and how he truly feels about whatever situation in which he finds himself. There is a strength and might to his speech and deeds that surpasses all of the rhetoric and nonsense that comes along with interacting with people who just might be a different orientation than myself.

Too often we bicker and whine about how someone lives their life instead of looking at a human level. From watching this excellent production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play on television, it felt more personal although I did not see living, breathing people demonstrate their immense talents. With help from actors like Al Pacino and Meryl Streep, the show actually more than sufficed. Jeffrey Wright should definitely feel immense pride for his efforts in creating Belize all for himself in this adaptation. His way of delivering those lines gave me the chance to see something that I really wanted to investigate. My family members are guys and they’re not effeminate. This allowed me to better comprehend that everyone is individualized. It’s okay to be effeminate and gay…or not. It is finally up to the discretion of the particular person and their demeanor.

Wright, who would also go on to play Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and remains a part of the Wes Anderson Universe, broadcasts his depth of acting skills. He is an outwardly straight man like myself and that sustains me to this day. To know that talent outweighs any constraints on the ideas of gender or sex truly guarantees this fine actor to shine. I would say that he is the reason why I am able not to tolerate others, but engage with them and meet them as individuals.

I can only have rational hope that performances like Mr. Wright’s resonates with other people. I hope people come out of the proverbial closet to welcoming arms like earth angels caressing their minds and easing them. I hope that there are straight men who can see themselves not as allies but as just humans greeting another human who may not be like them. Belize is a character that holds onto his truth and never shies from displaying it. I know that other actors have played Belize, and I’m sure they offered laurel worthy performances as well. But just the slight lisp, and the subdued makeup, and bald head of Jeffrey Wright’s rendition add to his earthy and poetic disposition.

I would encourage everyone to go see Angels in America the HBO miniseries. It evokes the gladness and the sadness of the era where many people succumbed to the scourge of HIV/AIDS. Wright never wallows in pain or really triumphs in glory. He has a steady hand on a car of empowerment that gives him the edge to talk to anyone and everyone with great thought. Belize reminds the audience that he is someone who must not have felt the same way gay black men feel today. In the past, there were blacks who had to be “on the downlow.” This should still be a thing of the past as gay men in glass closets shatter that glass and walk with great self-regard forward into the shining of the day.

Belize will forever be a character that has the power and not the permission of other people to live how he wants. Wright injects this in his way of holding his hands and how he remains consistent throughout the miniseries as a man of conflicted feelings, searching for a moral compass. I think he finds some sense of morality in his role as a nurse. Although this story takes place in the eighties, male nurses who happen to be straight have increased. Ironically, I think it is the character of Belize and Jeffrey Wright’s acting skills that inspired a generation of nurses, straight or not. His honesty, deprecation, and barbs against men in denial of their disease like Roy Cohn make room for him to illustrate on a canvas of ideals of pure truth.

Jeffrey Wright must reap the fruits of his labor when he looks back on the part that most likely put him on the thespian map. His Belize brings to light the majesty of the gay man in society. As a straight man in real life, he still showed his ability to stress that it is all about the way we treat each other. We should be like traders, each one lifting the other up despite our differences. When I think of Belize, I may have understood how a black man in America who is not straight must carry the burdens of race and sexuality. I, instead, don’t see these as burdens. They just are. LGBTQ+ members represent all kinds of races and ethnicities. What’s most important is the individualism which lies in how they carry themselves. Mr. Wright does this to the grandest and still subtle and also bombastic way. Belize leaps off of the screen and extends a hand. He is warm and funny but prickly if you push him the wrong way.

This is all the power of art. A way for us to communicate our joys and pains and how to better understand life is the function of any work. There’s a philosophy to Belize that no other character truly exhibits. With his sharp-tongue and crackling wit, he produces a superb amount of humanity.

In every scene he is in, there exists a reality that educates without being pedantic. I know that’s from Mr. Kushner’s pen, but I also know that Mr. Wright had to summon his own consciousness in order to give life to those extraordinary words.

Just thinking about the preparation and education that Mr. Wright had to go through to create Belize still amazes me. Belize is a matador. He is a fighter and lover and the essence of what it means to be truly human. As he wrestles with Cohn’s delusional self, he puts into perspective the thoughts behind being queer and contrasting with Cohn’s negations. Without sentimentality, Mr. Wright has to weigh and measure each line with the fast motions of a bullfighter. He brings greatness to the role that could have been played with eccentricity and inauthenticity. Rather, he steps into Belize’s mind and occupies it. What is he afraid of? What excites him? What makes him whole? Mr. Wright had to do all of these things and more to enliven this most spectacular character.

To champion the idea of Lin-Manuel Miranda, “love is love is love is love,” few places are this evident than with Belize. He may not dote on his patients or his friends, but there is a reservoir of pain he draws from to make the task of living still a joy and something to love. With Wright as the consummate professional, he gives Belize the opportunity to be a man. It doesn’t matter his sexuality. He is a man of great wisdom and abilities. Wright shows that love is the binding force that treats men and women and non-binary individuals with the patience and grace that love affords. To know there is a pinnacle of human emotion presents us with the sense that I can love people who are unlike me in a certain way but in every other way, the same. I always looked at gay men with a certain amount of curiosity and questions, always questions. Why do men like men? Why don’t they like women? I’d ask the winds. Once I found Belize, the answers seemed to fall into place. Love, according to philosopher and author Ayn Rand, is that emotion that calls for the recognition of the highest values you can discover in a person. If someone could find that in someone else, who cared what gender they were? This powerful revelation led me to be a man of substance, respecting those in the LGBTQ+ community and preserving my own heterosexuality at the same time. That is what makes Wright’s performance so profound to me. It gave me a window into the ways and behaviors of all people, straight or otherwise. I knew that I could still love my family members no matter whom they chose as a romantic partner.

I know that Jeffrey Wright’s representation of Belize in Angels is what truly grounded me and then allowed me to soar at the same time. To understand the exemplary performance is one thing. To get to know that Mr. Wright poured out such a way of living as a human is something totally special. I may not be the man I am today without his stellar turn as Belize. It is just too much to disregard as something not worthy of exploring. That’s why roles like Belize retain the essence of glory.