Fellow Travelers spoilers follow.
As much as we might love the idea of Hawkins Fuller and Timothy Laughlin loving each other in real life, both Fellow Travelers and the book that it's based on are almost entirely fictitious. Well, the characters are, at least, but that doesn't mean what they stand for isn't important.
History is always told by those in power, which means LGBTQ+ people and other marginalised groups are often marginalised in the history books. Yet the queer community has always existed in one form or another. We've always been here, and we certainly aren't going anywhere.
Thomas Mallon's book smartly grounds Hawkins and Timothy's love in historical touchstones that connect what they represent to real-world events. Not only does that make their connection feel more real, it also shines a much-needed light on chapters of queer history that aren't taught in schools.
Hawkins and Fuller's romance swept across numerous decades, but let's start with where it all began when they met during the height of McCarthyism in the 1950s.
McCarthyism and the Lavender Scare
When Hawkins and Fuller first meet in 1952, they end up working closely together within the US government. Their affair remains secret though, and not just because people were generally less accepting back then.
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In 1953, President Eisenhower's administration created a new policy where gay men and lesbians working for the government were investigated, interrogated and systematically removed from their jobs. Similar to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare campaign, which targeted communists, the Lavender Scare was equally as damaging, although it's not as well known now in comparison.
Employees under suspicion were viciously harassed and forced to give up the most private, intimate details of their lives because it was believed that queer people could not be trusted with government secrets, thereby making them a security risk. There was no evidence to support that notion, of course, but moral and political fears around the "other" were deeply entrenched in American society by then, regardless of the truth.
That's why Hawkins and Fuller always took female dates to their parties, to avoid looking like the "deviants" that their colleagues in the government were hunting for. Gay women were targeted too as seen in the show when the lesbian couple are investigated a few episodes in.
"Not much in the way of cosmetics," points out one official when the investigation into their shared home begins. At Hawkins' request, Laughlin writes a love letter to one of the women so they can take some heat off everyone involved, which ends up being used against her partner.
Later on, we see Hawkins himself investigated. Despite his many war medals, too much evidence has mounted up against him, so he prepares by thinking of old women when he gets sexually aroused in order to trick the polygraph.
"You pass with the absence of guilt," Hawkins later tells his friend Marcus. "Guilt cranks the machine." But not everyone was able to suppress their guilt and shame like Hawkins did.
As one of the administrators proudly reveals to Hawkins, their investigation team was averaging one resignation a day and one suicide a week. It's a horrifying moment on so many levels, but what makes it all even worse is that countless men and women did resign in real life as well, and it's also true that many killed themselves rather than face the shame of being outed and losing their jobs.
It's no wonder that American schools don't tend to mention that America's government once drove its own queer employees to suicide, but they absolutely should.
AIDS crisis and ACT UP
The AIDS crisis that began in the '80s is perhaps the most widely discussed chapter of queer history there is, to the point where some argue that we should talk about it less in order to prevent these countless tragedies from becoming our defining legacy. However, it's vital that we still always remember the millions of lives lost to prejudice and the government's ambivalence during that time.
In Fellow Travelers, the impact of HIV is integral, not just because of the role it played in our shared history as queer people, but also because of how it's used as a framing device for Hawkins and Laughlin to reconnect in the "present-day" '80s. Watching Laughlin slowly lose his life to the disease is harrowing, just as it was to see so many loved ones die in real life.
As of 2018, it was reported that around 700,000 people have died of HIV/AIDS in the United States, and in the '80s, it became the leading cause of death for young men. And that's without us stepping back and taking an international perspective on the disease's wider impact.
Fellow Travelers doesn't really take that into account, choosing instead to tell a more intimate story of one man's rapid deterioration due to AIDS. What's important about this is how the show doesn't shy away from the mental struggle that comes with this disease.
When Laughlin collapses naked on the bathroom floor, too weak to hold up his own weight, his feelings of shame and helplessness are painfully made tangible in this moment. And when Laughlin suffers from seizures towards the end, we feel that too. There's no romanticised notion of powering through. AIDS is a vicious, cruel disease that robs people of their dignity.
Dignity can still be found though, in the way that Laughlin and others join together to protest the government's ambivalence towards HIV and AIDS and its reluctance to help find a cure.
"We’re not dying from AIDS," chant the protestors at a highbrow party. "We're dying from indifference."
These chants could have been ripped directly from the mouths of real-life protestors, especially those who form the international group known as AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).
Created on March 12, 1987, in New York City, ACT UP continues even now to improve the lives of people with AIDS through action and advocacy in a bid to improve legislation.
That fight was particularly brutal in the '80s, so the group did their utmost to be as loud and visible as possible in each of their often highly publicised protests, often at great personal risk to themselves.
Harvey Milk's assassination
The penultimate episode of Fellow Travelers takes us to 1978 where real-life news clips announce the death of Harvey Milk. In case you haven't heard of him or watched Gus Van Sant's Oscar-winning biopic, simply titled Milk, Harvey was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
More than that though, Milk was a visionary who pushed for equality at a time when it was painfully hard to do so. His promising career in politics was cut short when Dan White, a former city supervisor, assassinated Milk and Mayor George Moscone on November 27, 1978.
White was acquitted of first-degree murder just six months later on May 21, 1979. Instead, he was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter of both victims with a reduced sentence that led to outrage in the streets of San Francisco.
The White Night riots that followed led to great civil unrest and police officers even attacking patrons of the Elephant Walk Bar on Castro Street, the gay area where Milk had unofficially been known as "Mayor". Milk's protégé Cleve Jones witnessed the assaults and he's seen in Fellow Travelers at one point on TV where he decries Dan White's manslaughter charge.
Milk has become both an icon and a martyr in the years that have followed, making him perhaps the most important LGBTQ+ official ever elected in the United States. Laughlin briefly touches on this at one point, explaining that Milk "was a beacon", and that legacy is explored further by what comes in the final moments of the show.
Cleve Jones and the AIDS Memorial Quilt
Milk's protégé Cleve Jones has achieved so much in the decades that followed Harvey's assassination, but perhaps the most enduring aspect of his own legacy is the AIDS Memorial Quilt that we see Hawkins visit in the show's very last scene.
In 1978, Jones helped organise a candlelight march every year to honour Milk and Moscone. While planning the march in 1985, he asked other marchers to writes the names of their loved ones who had died from AIDS on placards that were taped to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building.
Inspired by seeing this patchwork assortment of names all together in one place, Jones and his friends decided to transform this idea into a physical quilt that would honour the names of people history would try to forget. The very first panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt was created by Jones in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman.
Today, the Quilt has become a 54-ton tapestry that honours 110,000 people with nearly 50,000 panels. Hundreds of thousands of people helped make this project so it's incredibly moving to see their work on the Quilt and all those names featured so prominently at the end of Fellow Travelers.
It's there that we see Hawkins come to remember Laughlin's life and the love they shared together. It's also there that Hawkins finally feels inspired to come out to his daughter, telling her that Laughlin wasn't just his friend. "He was the man I loved."
In its own way, Fellow Travelers adds another patch to the AIDS Memorial Quilt by celebrating the enduring power of same-sex love across multiple decades and even after death itself. So while these characters might not be real, what they represent is vital.
Fellow Travelers is streaming on Paramount+.
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After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
