The tension is mounting, as they say on Oscar eve. And there’s one movie everybody keeps talking about. Brokeback Mountain has become a tourist trap for gay writers: Everyone goes there, everyone says the same thing. It’s like a ride in Disneyland: all the dolls nod at the same time and in the same place.
So Nightcharm asked some of our favorite writers, artists and Charmed Life subjects to tell us something we haven’t heard about the film.
And dammit, they did!
Susie Bright
Writer, Editor, Performer, Mommy’s Little Girl, Santa Cruz, CA
My favorite irony of Brokeback Mountain was the doomsday predictions by various Hollywood bigwigs that Jake Gyllenhaal would commit career suicide by playing a man in love with a man — that his core teenage-girl audience would desert him.
As a mother who lives with a hardcore 15-year-old girl, I can testify to the fact that she and her friends are more aroused than ever by Jake’s “gay turn.” Sexually ambiguous young men are catnip to teenage kitty cats.
The naysaying Hollywood producers quoted in Newsweek had obviously never come face-to-face with a pajama party of adolescent femmes. Teenage girls love handsome young gay lovers — perhaps more than even handsome young gay lovers do! James Dean … Sal Mineo … Sigh. The Heath and Jake sandwich fantasy is already a TigerBeat swoonfest for the ages!
Many critics suggest that straight women will be sympathetic to BBM because they’re a bunch of old softies with tender hearts. These critics don’t seem to understand that while tender is fine, for female fans, this movie is arousing. It’s not charity, it’s lust — and romance with a bullet.
There are just as many straight woman hot for gay men in a tight embrace, as there are men mooning over lesbian fantasies. And teenage girls are least likely to keep that a secret!
Don Shewey
Sex Therapist, Pleasure Activist, New York Times Writer, New York, NY
As a sex therapist, I see lots of what sociologists call MSMs — men who have sex with men and who don’t identify as gay. I’ve been wondering what they talk about after seeing Brokeback Mountain. Apparently, they discuss the cinematography.
As much as the movie has given straight guys license to tongue-kiss as a joke (everyone’s seen the Mad TV sketch about the football fans who find themselves inexplicably sucking face), there’s a looming silence in the land between the “bi-curious” guys who haunt Craigslist and the women who must know in their heart of hearts that they married fags. I’m waiting for the meta-media event where Brokeback Mountain as a cultural phenomenon becomes a plot point in some TV show that catalyzes a discussion of the dick-sucking suburban daddies.
Some gay friends have complained about the lack of hot sex in Brokeback Mountain, as if they expected a Titan Media extravaganza. Since when do closet cases make for ideal sex partners? They may be pent-up and ardent, but they’re usually lacking in the proficiency department, accustomed to seconds-long furtive encounters colored by visions of exposure and ruin.
One of the distinctions between out gay guys and MSMs that the movie makes crystal-clear is that MSMs never question the assumption that they will marry women, with whom most of their partnered sex takes place, no matter how much they fantasize about doing it with men. (Among the many cinematic portrayals of nightmarish compulsory heterosexuality, my gold standard is the scene in Last Exit to Brooklyn where the closet case played by Stephen Lang, disturbed to find himself in love with a drag queen, gives his wife a brief, brutal fuck and immediately pitches over onto his side so we can see the look on his face of stark, raving terror.)
I love the way Brokeback Mountain sketches with haiku succinctness tiny pockets of shame-drenched sexuality: the role of Mexican border towns as a refuge for MSMs … the semaphore with which married ranchers signal their availability to one another … the austere body habitus that religious households cultivate.
Just imagine what kind of sex life Jack’s parents had. Ennis’s visit with them is the great under-remarked scene of the movie. While the dried-up stick of a father speaks volumes in his terse interrogation of Ennis, I’m haunted by everything that Jack’s pre-PFLAG mom conveys with her eyes alone: vast acres of warmth, compassion, grief, encouragement, and sexual starvation.
Drub
Erotic Illustrator, Kink Explorer, Food Snob, San Diego, CA
Frankly, all the hooting and hollering puts me off this movie. I hear it’s full of wide-open vistas, sweeping cinematography and throughly heart-wrenching performances. All in all, I think I’ll wait for it to come on HBO. I prefer to do my crying in private.
Richard from Sturtle.com
Writer, Homosexualist, New Orleans, LA
I could lie. I could pretend that I’m a total film buff and that I own every title in the Criterion Collection and that I’ve papered the walls of my bedroom with articles from Cahiers du Cinéma. But the fact is I went to see Brokeback Mountain for the same reason every other faggotini did — to glimpse some hot cock action between Jake Gyllenwhatever and Heath Ledger.
And like the majority of those faggotinis, I was seriously disappointed — not by the movie itself, which was mostly lovely, nor by the dearth of cowboy boot-knocking (though the pickings were admittedly slim). I was disappointed by the convoluted logistics of the one on-screen cornholing.
For both of you who haven’t seen the film yet, I’m talking about the butt sex during Jack and Ennis’ initial fistfight-cum-tryst (a great title for a Titan Media project, IMHO). Allow me to set the scene:
It’s a cold night up on Brokeback, so the fellas share some gut-warming whiskey. Then Jack invites Ennis into his tent, then they start pummeling each other, then they’re kissing for, like, 10 seconds. Suddenly, Jack is presenting his backside to Ennis like a whorish panda. As the camera pans up Jack’s prone body, Ennis dabs some spit on his dick. Cut to closeup of Jack’s face as Ennis presumably penetrates his personal bubble (if we can believe Jake G.’s campy hurts so good grimace).
I know it sounds kinda hot, but sitting there watching it, you can’t help but wonder:
1. Are we really supposed to believe that Ennis is a first-time fudgepacker? He goes after Jack’s ass without batting an eye, like plugging manholes were as natural to him as castrating sheep. In reality, straight men get queasy about straight butt sex, so you’d think that a conservative cowboy like Ennis might hesitate a tad longer before riding his first gay ass, n’est-ce pas?
2. Was I getting popcorn when Ennis revealed that his salivary glands produce Astroglide? Ennis’ implicitly throbbing manhood slides into Jack’s man-oven effortlessly — somehow bypassing the cowboy’s undoubtedly hairy, matted, unshaven hole and the inevitable clumps of waste that must’ve accumulated there after months of shitting in the woods and little-to-no bathing.
3. Did they make Beano back in 1963? Ennis and Jack forge merrily ahead with their butt-burglary despite the fact that the gross-out factor must’ve been unbelievably high — especially for neophyte sodomites. I mean, I think they were on an all-bean diet for weeks.
So as far as plausibility goes, Brokeback’s one sex scene falls somewhere between that A-ha video (there was only the one, right?) and Chi Chi La Rue’s Caesar’s Hard Hat Gang Bang. Which leads me to believe that Ang Lee meant to create a porn-esque sexual narrative untroubled by the realities of either biology or psychology. Either that or the half-conscious cockgobbler he hired as a homosex consultant totally fell asleep at the wheel.
Rich Merritt
Lawyer, Writer, Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star, New York, NY
Brokeback Mountain is a beautiful movie — but I felt I had lived it 10 or 15 years ago. I have to admit I looked at my watch a few times near the end when it seemed to drag. But that’s because the story wasn’t new to me. In fact, the movie really wasn’t for me. Whom, then, was if for?
Straight people? Certainly, many progressive-minded straight people will be shocked by Brokeback Mountain — shocked to realize just how deadly the effect of our casually homophobic society can be on men and women who live in smalltown America. But, no. Brokeback Mountain really isn’t for these straight people either.
Brokeback Mountain is for the 14 or 15-year old young man who may be struggling with himself, who will sit in a safe movie theater and see that his emerging desires aren’t so abnormal after all. Even if he lives on a remote Wyoming mountaintop, he will know that the love that dare not speak its name is silent no more. Our love is everywhere. All we need to do is make ourselves vulnerable enough to accept it, cherish it and keep it. (Read Rich’s full BBM article here)
Virginia Peters
Model, Writer, Tantra Expert, Las Vegas, NV
What nobody is talking about is the sly political subtext in Brokeback Mountain. Dick Cheney (from Wyoming, like Ennis) and George Bush (from Texas, like Jack) are basically in bed with each other — hiding, lying, and doing un-Godly things — in a Red State (the movie is set in Dick’s Wyoming.) They, or their proxies in the film, are breaking the back of the sanctimonious, right-wing (therefore righteous, therefore sexless) posture (bend over!) It made me laugh.
Apart from that, Brokeback Mountain was haunting. The anguish of impossible love resonates with everyone. None of us really get to have what we long for — an idealized love that lasts. Odd as it sounds, such a love may have a better chance of hanging around when it’s not allowed!
Steve Wiecking
Senior Editor, Seattle Metropolitan, Small World columnist, Seattle, WA
Like any red-blooded queer with a pulse in his pants, I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to see Jake Gyllenhaal turn buns up for Heath Ledger. And nothing has made me want to sing God Bless America more than the thousands of movie screens across this country filling up with the image of two men so hungry for each other’s kiss that they don’t have the time to worry if they’ll be caught in the act by someone from Dawson’s Creek.
I have no argument with all the clamoring that Brokeback Mountain is a landmark moment in the treatment of gays in popular cinema — it may well be the first quality mainstream film in which the homosexual protagonists are sad not because they’re gay, but because they aren’t allowed to be as gay as they want.
What’s missing from all the talk, however, is the audience that apparently thinks it has nothing to learn from Brokeback’s honesty — gays themselves. For all the germane conversation about the oppressive bigotry that so tragically suffocates the homosexual community, we seem to ignore that some of that tragedy is our own. There is a real fear of male intimacy, and it’s not just straight society’s oppression, it’s our own oppression.
Let’s be honest: For every Adam and Steve giddily calling caterers for a June wedding, there are scores of Jacks and Ennises incapable of solidifying the union they both crave. It matters little that they roam within the expansive freedoms of West Hollywood in the new century. They might as well be living amid the intolerant vistas of Wyoming, circa 1962.
What Brokeback knows so well is that gay men are men — stupid, childish, and unready when it comes to the world of emotions. Men that are frequently unwilling to grasp love freely given. Men unwilling to walk away from affection stolidly withheld.
The movie’s heartbreak lies in its ability to quietly capture the melancholy of men – a melancholy so primal that it is rarely discussed. Brokeback Mountain’s greatness is not simply that it has the bravery to bid goodnight to ancient stereotypes of male-male love, but that it has the wisdom to acknowledge the mourning we feel at love’s going.
Iain Jackson
Porn Video Critic, Writer, Chicago, IL
I think we have to talk about the goddamn hair in this movie. It was awful. Part of it, I know, was simply the horrible styles of the time. And, yes, I realize that Ang Lee was making a visual statement: as Jack grew less interested in his wife, she became more artificial looking.
But can we talk about the men for a moment? These guys couldn’t grow decent sideburns and mustaches if you paid them — which the producers did. Not since Frodo’s feet have we seen such fake hair appliqués!
Moving along, a whole American Gothic novel could be written about Anne Hathaway’s wigs, which seem to fly in from some totally different and extremely tacky movie, staggering everybody else in the cast, who then try to ignore whatever has just landed on her head. And to top it off, the producers got her hairstyles wrong! If you’re going to be tacky, at least be historically tacky! There’s a reason for the phrase the higher the hair, the closer to God. Sunbelt women of her time would have been ballooning out into exploding beehives.
Patrick Fillion
Artist, Class Comics, Camili-Cat: 20th Anniversary Special, Toronto, CDN
Here in Canada, we wonder if Brokeback Mountain will be just a flash in the pan for you, or the real thing — the start of a Cinema of Gay Romance. In such a world, with thousands of gay love stories crowding the screen, Brokeback will be just a drop in the ocean. One that’s remarkable only because of its strange, very sad, unhappy ending.
You see, in this alternate universe, happy endings will be the rule! And my own Class Comics will no longer be hidden behind counters or kept on top shelves. Marvel will snap us up, and I’ll be drawing my own Brokeback numbers featuring Naked Justice in the arms of Superman!
The success of Brokeback Mountain says to me that maybe that other world isn’t so “other.” The 20-something crowd in the US and Canada seem cool with it. And teenage girls in Japan are going ga-ga over comics about sensitive-looking gay boys in love. Gay romance is finding a home in the marketplace.
Tom Judson ("Gus Mattox")
Porn Star, Big Rig, Hudson Valley, NY
The most discussed virtue of Brokeback Mountain is that the film shows how a love story can be universal and speak to people of all sexual orientations. We gay folks knew that going into the theater. In fact, I found Brokeback a near remake of an earlier film — The Remains of the Day.
In The Remains of the Day, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson play characters whose relationship is almost identical to that of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Unexpectedly finding themselves as co-workers — two servants in an English mansion — the pathologically reserved Hopkins at first resents the ebullient and spirited Thompson who, in turn, is at a loss to understand her very private colleague.
The demands of their job bring them closer together. A distant sort of intimacy develops between the butler and the housekeeper, though neither is willing to breech the wall of formality that stands between them. As the decades pass, they slip into the comfortable rhythms of couple-hood without truly being a couple. Always they maintain a tacit agreement that things can progress only so far.
Finally admitting to herself that she wants more from the relationship, Thompson forces the issue with Hopkins. She informs him that she has just received a marriage proposal from another man. Hopkins — crippled by insecurity and unable to express his true desires — allows her to leave. Years later, when he finally realizes the happiness he has lost, Hopkins reaches out to Thompson only to find it is too late for them both. He returns home, fully aware that he has wasted his life by denying himself love.
The Remains of the Day is s a luxurious tapestry to Brokeback’s cross-stitch sampler. It has a richer, more complex plot. The essential similarities are there, however. The crossed lovers of Brokeback Mountain is a theme so universal that it will take more than butt sex in a pup tent to make the movie exclusively gay.
Jop van Bennekom
Editor, Butt Magazine, Amsterdam, NL
One thing puzzles me about Brokeback Mountain: the first sex scene in the tent. Was it anal rape? Consensual harassment? Or just rough sex? I think that aggression charges up the sexual energy in men. And in just a split second every man has the potential to go from intimacy into a nasty butt-fuck. I mean, haven’t we all been in that pup tent on Brokeback Mountain at some point or another?
Matthew Rettenmund
Writer, Boy Culture, New York, NY
Brokeback Mountain has so much to like. Touching love story… great acting … beautifully shot … unimpeachably gay-positive. But the casting bugs the hell out of me:
Yes, Heath and Jake Gyllenhaal are great-looking guys with advanced chemistry. Their frantic first hump is so enthusiastic, no wonder that dang mountain was called Brokeback!
Still, there is something about Jake Gyllenhaal as a cowboy that doesn’t work for me. The moony eyes are perfect, but overall his pretty-boy looks — the suspiciously button nose, the teeth as tall and white as the HOLLYWOOD sign — could not exist in the middle of nowhere after a life of hard work. At least he has chest hair — point to Gyllenhaal.
Other casting elements took me out of the world of the film, as well. Randy Quaid as the ornery boss, was cartoonishly cantankerous. A lesser-known face would have done the trick nicely and invisibly. I admire Anne Hathaway, the star of The Princess Diaries, for taking a role in such a controversial movie — especially one that called for her to bare her breasts unnecessarily. But when she first rode up as a rodeo queen I turned to my partner and mouthed, “I had no idea Anne Hathaway was in this too!” For a grouchy cinephile like me, it was like watching And The Band Played On — famous faces paraded a mile a minute across the screen. Actually, maybe Brokeback was more like a gay Cannonball Run — except, you know, good.
I will give the movie this. Socio-politically, it was both pro-gay and non-preachy. That’s hard to do at the same time!
Bert Williams
Massage Therapist, Hana, HI
I woke up crying the morning after I saw Brokeback Mountain. The night before gay men were hugging each other in the lobby of the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, tears in their eyes. It was opening night, and I could feel the sweep of history all around me:
When my grandmother was born, women couldn’t vote. When my parents were born, African-Americans couldn’t vote. When my oldest sister was born, interracial marriage was illegal in every state of the Union. People couldn’t imagine the progress that would happen in their lifetime.
And so that next morning, I felt, even as I cried a bit, peace and relief. Truth was on the march once again. Brokeback Mountain had been made with an A-list crew, it was up for Academy Awards — most of all, it had captured the imagination of my nation unlike any other gay romance before it, and many people were seeing it. I began to believe in my little heart that gay marriage (once so unimaginable) would become a reality in my country and in my lifetime.
Adrian Ryan
The Stranger Columnist, Tori Spelling Co-Star, Seattle, WA
I refuse to see Brokeback Mountain — but I hate it anyway. Mules wearing atomic roller skates couldn’t drag me screaming into the theater. Why? I had the singular misfortune of finding my big gay self born, and subsequently reared, in that hellish cowboy country called Montana — equaled only in its cowboyness by the likes of Wyoming and one or more of the Dakotas. So please don’t tell me about the virtues of gay cowboys.
The first half of my existence was spent running — literally — from rednecks in shitkickers and 4×4s. The kind that would nervously cram their rugged, leathery, SKOAL-smelling man-parts down your throat, beat you up afterwards and then haul their goaty asses back to misguided girlfriend/wife creatures.
I simply cannot abide big gay fads marketed to big non-gay America. I like to think that my sexuality has a larger role in the universe than to play dancing monkey for the sniffling entertainment of breeders. Fuck breeders. I refuse to be their entertainment, especially in this rabidly conservative political climate, with gale warnings of a neo-fascist cold front rolling in.
Furthermore, there’s the outrageous fact that these fags are played, as usual, by breeders. America can sleep tight in the self-righteous knowledge that Heath and Jake aren’t real fags — heck no! It’s all just movie-actin’. Believe me, if this film had been cast with two out homosexuals, it might have picked up a handful of Glammys, but nary an Oscar would it have seen. Not even an Oscar nod.
I have this nightmare. Fags are all caught up in the glowing romantic wake of this fucking phony film. I see them in droves. Ten-gallon hats … ripped Wranglers … pointy-toed snakeskin boots: Tarted out like fucking gun-toting, Republican-voting, chew-lipped, wife-beating breeders. Wait, isn’t it suppose to work the other way. The straights copy us.
Aren’t all those breeders trying to steal our style under the banner of Metrosexualism? Waxing their eyebrows, accessorizing, bathing in cologne — hell, just that they fucking bathe! Isn’t that the way it’s suppose to be. So please, gay America wake up. Fuck Brokeback Mountain.
KZ from NakedMetalMan.com
Writer, Nightcharm Commenter, Gays Mills, WI
The night we saw the film, my partner said it brought back his years as an activist in the Twin Cities, pushing for gay rights and acceptance. A whole generation of men like Jack and Ennis lived their lives untouched by the gay movement he fought so hard to help start. He could not shake the period feel of the film or a sense of the inadequacy of his work. The gay movement had never been able to rescue those lone men.
I look at Brokeback Mountain and see two heroes who have stumbled onto an impossible love they can neither explain nor ignore. Everything they know in their little world tells them there’s something not right about the only thing that is right. Their willingness to pursue, rather than ignore, their gut feelings makes their romance as heroic as it is clumsy and inept.
By the time it’s done — and done for good — we are left with a handful of haunting images. A figure getting into a beat-up truck and pointing it down a dust-choked road to go someplace he doesn’t want to go. The melancholy comfort of a postcard of a mountain tacked to a closet door. And something one of them once said: If you can’t fix it, you’ve got to stand it.
James Withers
Writer, New York Post, Genre, New York, NY
A friend has seen Brokeback Mountain three times. He has pre-ordered the upcoming DVD and will not tolerate any discussion of the film not filled with hosannas. “One day you will understand,” he says to me in a voice full of pity — and just a tinge of scorn. You see, this friend finds the Brokeback Kool-Aid rather tasty. I’m not really into the flavor.
Something about Brokeback seems so false to me. Ennis is an uncommunicative fuck (although his love for his daughters is pure and golden.) He resists Jack’s attempts to move beyond their 3-times-a-year excursions. I kept wondering why Jack kept trying or even cared.
Now I know what’s being said out there, and the hype is coming fast and furious. Slate columnist Mickey Kaus has convinced himself that Brokeback is a position paper on same-sex marriage. I doubt the movie will translate into either policies or politics. It will command the stage for a week or two, then be forgotten. All the breathless words will be given a break until the roll-out of the next big gay topic.
Here’s what troubles me about all this: A little over a year ago a 19-year-old kid here in NYC was killed. Rashawn Brazell’s body parts were strewn all over the city; to this day his head has not been found. The boy was gay and there are neither suspects nor viable leads. His story is tragic, but we all know more about two film cowboys than a young gay kid who walked among us.
This says more about our culture, and us, than I care to admit. Brokeback Mountain is a movie; I’m glad people enjoyed it. But I wish we gave as much attention to the harsh tragedies of the real world as we do to the ups and downs of a mountain-side love — that’s really not all that.
Matthew Stradling
Artist, London, England
As a British man who knows nothing of cowboy culture except by way of Hollywood, the concept of gay cowboys seemed kind of cute and ridiculous. Straight-spined, taciturn cowboys like the young Clint Eastwood were already one of the biggest gay fantasy cliches, so I entered the theater not expecting much. But all my misgivings were swept away when I began to watch what turned out to be a universal story.
Brokeback Mountain is about the choices we have to make in life, and how we, as gay men, have to trust our instincts and at some point fight for our right to love. I suppose in America the cowboy aspect of the film has great resonance. I saw that it quickly fell away, and that the fear of persecution that hovers over Ennis and Jack is something that could be — and is — experienced in any culture.
The film left me with a sadness that did not leave for many days. Yet I found something wonderful about Brokeback Mountain as well. At least, the two cowboys did find each other, did realize their love — how many people have ever gone that far? There was an intensity to the short time they could be together — and I imagine great passion in the love-making.
There was also a meaningfulness to the relationship, a true intimacy. Ennis, who rarely spoke, opened up to Jack, the way you do with someone you trust and love. Now, that is something to celebrate.
Again as an English person who has a love of wild, natural countrysides bred into my bones, I was wowed by the beautiful scenery. The cowboys were playing out their love against the most beautiful landscape in the world, rugged snow-covered mountain ranges, big sturdy forests of fir. What a relief to see a gay romance presented in such a majestic natural world, rather than the usual locale of a grimy big city, with its cliches of urbanity, club culture and brittle gay cynicism.
I am pleased that the film seems to be breaking down taboos in America. It’s also having an impact on a wider international audience. Slowly, inch by inch, beauty and tolerance will invade Middle America and all the sad little pockets of ignorance around the world! After all, we are not the demons of popular rhetoric. We’re simply human beings, who search for love like everyone else.
John Calendo
Executive Editor, Nightcharm, North Bergen, NJ
I read that Brokeback was banned in parts of West Virginia and Utah — jeez Louise, you’d think these Bible-bangers would have learned by now. Ban something and it will start whizzing and fizzing with all sorts of dark allure.
Utah, I’ve learned, has a comic history of banning gay films. In an interview with the screenwriter of Making Love, an 80’s film that was Brokeback’s Hollywood precursor, Barry Sandler, the screenwriter and only out gay man on the 1982 production, was asked if his film had run into similar roadblocks.
“No,” he told interviewer Brent Hartinger of The Big Gay Picture. “The right wasn’t really formed yet. It was the early Reagan years. But here’s a funny aside. Salt Lake City. The highest grossing shows there were during the lunch hour. They were always filled — all these single guys with wedding rings! The night shows, forget it. But the lunch shows, watch out!”
Brokeback, we know, sells out its night shows. As satisfyingly good as the film is, though, it’s not Brokeback that’s changed things; Brokeback is merely taking the temperature of the times. The same way that black leading men were once a hard sell but now are no big deal, gay people have become acceptable, accessible vehicles for people’s fantasies.
And we have reality television to thank. Reality shows were the true pioneer of gay visibility. Not the minstrels shows like Queer Eye or Project Runway. Oh, they’re tons of fun, but minstrel shows nonetheless, exploiting — rather than exploding — flashy misconceptions and colorful half-truths.
What paved the way were less frantic exercises like MTV’s Real World, with its sincere out kids, and The Amazing Race, with its in-shape boyfriend teams that often won the contest.
David K. tells me he sat next to a guy and his girlfriend at a Brokeback showing in Seattle, and when the lights came up, the guy was sobbing. This is not an isolated incident. I’ve read reports on gay blogs that straight couples look wiped out after the film and immediately need to talk with the first gay person they can snag. Compare this to the visceral disgust that Sandler reports at test screenings of Making Love:
“When we [test-marketed the film] with straight audiences, it was the same thing every time the guys kissed. People didn’t walk out, but there were groans, a real audible reaction. So we knew that people were uncomfortable with that.
“The fourth screening was an all-gay audience. And at the moment of the kiss, the place just broke out into applause and cheering. Totally contradictory reactions.”
We have yet to hear a groan during the much more literal butt-fuck that pops up abruptly a half-hour into Brokeback. Because of the emotional investment of straight audiences in the characters of this film, we hear vacuous statements like Brokeback isn’t really a gay film. It is, instead, simply a romance. What a preposterous assertion!
What else is this movie about if not the enduring sexual passion of two men? On what pivot point does the plot turn if not the torment of the star-crossed cowboys, who, like Romeo and Juliet, are held apart, not by warring families, but by the deadly male code of the West.
Here’s the deal: Brokeback is a gay film and a universal love story. The terms are not mutually exclusive. The sold-out audiences know that, if fatuous critics do not.
David K.
Publisher, Nightcharm, Seattle, WA
Brokeback Mountain made me miss my father in a way that hurt deep. The father I longed for, in a passionate way, when I was a kid. Watching Jack and Ennis try to make their connection work was like reliving all the torment I felt, especially as a gay adolescent, trying to understand the frightening mix of love and fear that I came to associate with my father.
Mothers are usually solid, in place for their children. They’re driven by elemental forces to bond with their creations. But fathers? Most fathers have the lure to seed and flee. To roam. And if they’re not roaming, they secretly feel conflicted about their domestic confinement. Brokeback Mountain, in true tragic form, shows what happens when the masculine impulse is confronted with the riddles of love, surrender and commitment.
I wonder if Annie Proulx was channeling her story? It has a pristine quality about it that makes it feel plucked whole from the same mystical garden where Dickens and Shakespeare found their inspiration. Not to say Proulx has a similar style — she doesn’t. But her short story has the same truth-telling quality — the same poetic potency that infuses really terrific art.
Amazingly, Ang Lee found a way to translate this truth-telling quality into cinema. And this is why all kinds of people take a seat for Brokeback Mountain: to see the truth. Truth is always more interesting than titillation.
The strongest truth in Brokeback is that when the object of love is irreversibly gone, love really starts to bloom. Death hurts, but in the end, loss gives us a bigger capacity to love.
In the sequel in my mind, I see Ennis eventually learning to love deeply, to give himself to another man. He has nothing left to lose. At the very least he shows signs of becoming a better father at the end of the film when he promises his oldest daughter that he won’t disappoint her, that he will, after all, attend her wedding. Finally, one of the characters is going to get what she longs for: a husband and a dad.
Our opening illustration Brokeback: American Gothic
is by Curtis, the newest member of our
Nightcharm staff.
Curtis draws, paints, types code and
makes deep trouble in the Deep Deep South.
Be sure to visit his website.
See also The Towleroad Guide to Brokeback Mountain
Well, about Jack and Ennis kissin’, People (straight guys in paticular, as I think weamon like it,) make such reactions not because they are disgusted. In fact, there is nothing to be disgusted by. They are frigtened to seem gay towards others, which is stupid. As you all will know, no one is one hundred percent straight, which means no one can really be disgusted. It is love, very true and deep love, finding it’s way out through a kiss, or two…
I really am dying for the movie to come to my theater in the Netherlands. And hope you guys’ll have enjoyed it, or will enjoy it, as it is a must for all of you.
Ever yours. D.A. Becker
There have been lots of mainstream gay flicks before this. It isnt that big of a deal seems like everyones got lots of extra time.
After many weeks of still feeling the lightening bolt to the heart that BB Mountain left me with …I am touched, changed and deeply grateful for the insight and experience, that I as a straight woman in her 50’s, have received from this movie. My gay friends (hard to categorize as just “gay”) and their deep, gutsy, rich and real passion that was so beautifully and respectully given leaves me wiser and moves me closer to the boundarylessness that we are are moving towards.
I kind of avoided Brokeback for a while. I wasn’t sure why. At first I was afraid that the reason was because I live in a really conservative area, and I didn’t want to risk it.
But then when I heard my boss and coworkers talking about it favorably, I had to ditch that excuse and admit that maybe as ‘out’ as I am, I’m still conflicted, and okay with being gay in public so long as it has nothing at all to do with sex (you know, TV-style gay, where it’s about wearing good clothes and enjoying pop music, but certainly nothing to do with anything to do with anything like actual sex).
I knew from previews and hype that Brokeback was probably going to confront me with that.
Even for the most confident gay man alive (I’m not sure who that is, but I’m probably glad I don’t know him), I bet Brokeback is confrontational in a certain way. One thing is for sure, if you’re in anything but the most kinetic electrifying relationship, Brokeback will make you ask yourself what you’re doing and why.
My boyfriend and I haven’t said it out loud, but I think that watching it together has opened up the door to a more truthful and passionate understanding. You’ll probably either go that way, or break up pretty quickly after the movie.
Great sampling of comments. Thanks guys! I really can’t remember any other film that’s generated so much commentary and discussion - obviously Brokeback has struck some pretty deep nerves and as this sampling proves, not all of them the same nerve.
Because of the immense amount of commentary surrounding Brokeback I’ve found myself digging in even deeper into my own feelings about it. I need it to continue to be for me what it was before all the commentary began, which is a beautiful, haunting and exquisitely crafted film that rocked my world in a lot of different ways. Sometimes I still feel the need to cry for my past and Brokeback, echoing my past, let me do that.
I suspect that when all the dust around Brokeback has settled I’ll still be feeling grateful that it came along when it did and that I hadn’t become too cynical to enjoy it.
BTW, my subscription to Nightcharm is one of the best non-essential investments I make every month. On the one hand I have cum dripping between my fingers and on the other hand a smorgasbord of food for thought. I need both and it’s nice to get both of them right here in one place. Thanks!
Kudos to the comment by Richard from sturtle.com, concerning the mechanics of the sex between them. The way you can tell that a gay sex scene is conceived and directed by a straight filmmaker and acted by straight actors is when it is as brief, and as aggressive as the tent scene in Brokeback Mountain.
To quote a line from a different movie, I’ve been to the rodeo, and not even a veteran of buttfucking does it as quickly and as easily as them two Hollywood cowboy’s did it. This was a flaw in Proulx’s original story as well.
I also enjoyed the comment by Iain Jackson about the hair. Jack’s moustache made me laugh out loud in the theatre. Here we had this really good movie and they turn the guy into every homo I ever saw in a gay bar in 1979. If that was a cowboy, then I’m an astronaut. Matthew Rettenmund of Boy Culture was spot on when he said Jack was too pretty. I was wondering whether those were his eyelashes or whether it was a product placement for Maybelline.
But I pretty strongly disagree with Rettenmund’s criticism of Randy Quaid’s casting. By and large, I’m not really a movie star sort of person. I wasn’t even sure who it was until we were talking about it afterwards and I asked someone else. Quaid was great. In fact, now I think we know who they should cast as Dick Cheney. Talk about your full-on protrayal of a scary, soul-dead asshole. Quaid nailed the role.
James Withers of The New York Post and Genre makes a good point about how people care more about celluloid cowboys than the real thing. But come on, Mr. Withers, aren’t you being a bit naive? One of the reasons people go to movies is because they are NOT real life but commentaries on it or escapes from it.
I think Withers made a better point when he called the Ennis character an “uncommunicative fuck.” Spot-on, Mr. Withers. To me, the message of Brokeback Mountain is that the Marlboro Man act is a fraud, and even more so when two guys are playing it with each other against the reality of their love. The Marlboro Man commands American males, both gay and straight, to freeze their emotional growth at the age of 10. The movie is about the consequences; the fact that two guys are the romantic leads really only serves to sharpen the point.
So, to me, I guess I’m a bit disappointed by the lack of commentary (other than from Mr. Withers) along those lines. People have been too willing to see Ennis, in particular as a pure victim. Well yeah, he was a victim, but plenty of victims have risen above it. On the other hand, there was a real honesty in the story. It didn’t reach for the Hollywood feel-good ending, and I respect that. But the reviewers who made this into a gay manifesto in many ways missed the most important point of the movie.
Skip the movie - watch this version instead.
Concerning the criticism I have read in many places (including from Richard, above, of whose blog I am a regular reader), I wonder just how many people have read Annie Proulx’s short story on which the movie is based.
What Ang Lee has managed to do in collaboration with the screen writers is to make a movie that is both strong in itself and perfectly in sync with Proulx’s austere style and spare storytelling. Many gay men, including a large number in my circle, went for all the sex they thought they’d see. It’s not there because it’s not in the story. And the one sex scene that IS in the movie is played exactly as Proulx wrote it. I don’t remember exactly how many sentences she uses to tell the tale of Ennis and Jack’s first fuck, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t even ten.
The whole point of “Brokeback” isn’t sex, per se. It’s the disasterous consequences of of what happens to two men who dare to love in a society that regards them with arrant contempt, after having made sure their upbringing and education leave them with no vocabulary or thought process adequate to understanding who they are separately or together.
Wonderful array of comments. I find, however, that David K’s observations resonate most with me.
Wow, this is one of the finest features you guys have ever pulled together on NC. Thank you!
I wanted to share a couple of articles I came across recently, two stellar pieces that glow with the same kind of thought-provoking commentary you’ve offered here.
Enjoy!
http://tinyurl.com/z9fw6
and
http://www.slate.com/id/2131865/
I myself have not seen this movie and Im simply making an observant statement on it. I think that instead of focusing on every little fault of the movie we should try to focus on the positive and what this will do for the gay community over all. Put aside your views on “breeders” , and “clichue gay cowboys” and focus on the fact that this movie is pushing us out their so people will get to know what this gay thing is .
Im not saying this is an accurate descripton in no way, but what Im saying is that let’s respect it for what it can and will do for the gay community. Also dont think so In depth about secret political propaganda’s and stuff . Acceptance is usually the first step before someone will get to know anything about gay people in general so let’s at least respect it for that.
IEven though Im young and Only 18 but I hope that by llonking at it in a bigger picture that I can help people see what’s really important. Not that I dont respect any of your opnions.
Jay
Be sure to come back here and share with us your experience AFTER you have seen the film. We’d like to hear your point of view then.
David K./Publisher
david….
great to see that you’re still making a vibrant effort. enjoyed the varied and poignant posts regarding the film as well as other recent listings. with so much out there, i was astonished and now amused that some supposed queer youth that i’ve encountered — are so angry. reminded of the work that some have been doing for quite awhile until NOW maintains the breath of fresh air that it’s always been.
best — until then
Jay Virella, from my perspective I’m past the point where I view every movie with a gay character as being a manifesto or an educational tool. Sure, they can serve as those things, but I look at Brokeback Mountain in different terms.
See, not only did I read the story at the time The New Yorker published it and send it to friends at the time, but there were some elements of it that I lived. Not that I was a gay cowboy or anything. In fact, truth be told there aren’t too many cowboys left in America, gay or straight.
The frontier was closed about 150 years ago, and “the West” has been mythology for at least 100 years. So it wasn’t a movie about gay cowboys, it was a movie about archetypes of American masculinity. Having two of them fall in love with each other was, in many ways, a plot device that should have focused everyone’s attention on the thing itself, i.e., the masculine archetype as we define it.
Gay people who turn this into a manifesto are missing the point just as much as straight people who protest (or sympathize with) what they perceive as a manifesto. I live a life, not a manifesto. I watched that movie and thought about the time I fell in love with a guy who could have been the Ennis character. My Ennis knew he was gay and could talk about it, but never about love. The next time I met someone I made damn sure he could talk about love, too.
All of which makes me remember something I had intended to say about what James Withers wrote. Mr. Withers, you’re right that Ennis was a jerk and that Jack should have run the other way. But you’re looking at it rationally, and if you can really be that rational about love then I might be so bold as to suggest that you either haven’t really experienced it or that you’ve been fortunate enough to love someone who loved you right back. Trust me, it doesn’t always happen that way.
alberta’s wyoming was gorge,
enough to make you go out and buy a sleeping bag.
tho heath might say it was the liquor, methinks twas the fullmoon.
seems both ang ‘n heath have no past as Mo’s,
otherwise the pitched-tent scene would’ve played different.
quick edits def cut some dick, also some fore stuff.
no way in tarnation would heath have dived right on in there that jake.
and with one round of spit to boot.
dangnabit, they’d oral a spell before they’d go chute diving.
come to think of it… the cornhole scene wouldn’t play the first nite, period.
and cowpoke jake sho’nuff took it dry no hollarin’…
betcha that bullrider’d pork’d squeal deliverance-style.
all i’m saying, they should’ve had a gay consultant for the tent sitch.
abit’o foreplay, abit’o fumblin’round, abit’o ouch… just sayin’.
the days apres, that horseplay was golden… till spied in the dirt.
then spied again by that brokeheart dawson-crik chick,
tho me doubts the guys wood’ve makeout in the driveway.
all those fishin’ trips, and heath never went for the hook, line, and sinker.
twisted jack grew bucked-off that action, and fished elsewheres.
wondering if heath figured the bash, or fell for the flat story.
alone in his private trailer, with a stained shirt, a still foto,
never to “roll ‘em” with jake again…
and onto the next script.
David’s, Steve’s, and Tom’s comments align the best with my feelings about the movie. I came out of the theater reliving my experience of “A River Runs Through It”, another story about men in the West who are unable to fully express their love to each other. In both cases, I was an emotional wreck. The Western mythology of the rugged individual (which applies to women as well as men) blocks people brought up that way from expressing themselves. I come from a Western family on both sides: my mother’s ancestors were pioneers in Washington territory dating back to the 1850s, and my father’s family has been in Utah since Brigham Young. My father had the sense to leave when he was young, and he and my mother traveled the world. But that emotional climate never left them.
People came West to escape their pasts, and then built up a society where you didn’t question others about their feelings or their hopes and fears. I read an interview with Annie Proulx where she pointed out that Jake and Ennis weren’t cowboys, they were farmhands; and not very good ones at that (if they’d been any good, no need to isolate themselves at Brokeback Mountain). They just didn’t have the emotional equipment to deal with their love. A constant theme in her work is the West, so it really comes down to that for me.
BTW, the movie wasn’t banned in Salt Lake. One theater refused to show it, but it did play in at least one other. Oddly, I have Salt Lake to thank for improving my relationship with my brother. He went there, joined a liberal church, and they educated him in a way that I never could about the emotional and social cost of our attitudes about gay people. I do think Brokeback should be used to advocate for gay marriage. The strongest arguments in favor are the lives destroyed by Ennis and Jake not having a socially acceptable outlet for their love.
#16, the point about the characters being farmhands and not very good ones raises something else that I had thought about. In the movie particularly, both characters were more fully formed than you’d expect them to be in the beginning. Okay, they were denying they were queer, but you got the sense that it was out of pure fear as opposed to the mixture of half-formed feelings that you’d expect from a couple of 19-year-olds, which is the age they were supposed to be in the tent.
There was no sense in the movie that they were two kids dealing with something bigger than either one of them. From the start, each of them had “figured it out” with his own fully formed strategy. Not that it was the “right” strategy, but each of them had a strategy nonetheless. I never got the sense of either of them struggling to figure out what the hell just happened. No wavering, no swinging between reactions and emotions.
Yet, they were essentially two failed or failing farmhands, i.e., not the brightest bulbs on the porch, and it was 1963 where there wasn’t a name for what they were doing. To be more succinct, not only was there no physical fumbling around there really wasn’t any emotional fumbling around, either. That’s another flaw in the movie, and in Proulx’s story too, although to a lesser degree.
CK…
I don’t know about your first sex with a man but mine was at 20 and I knew nothing about nothing then - had never had sex with anybody except myself at that point. And damn if all the parts didn’t fit just fine. No physical fumbling around and no emotional fumbling around either. It was the most natural thing I’d ever known and was as beautiful as any sex I’ve ever had since.
So for me, Proulx’s story rang true and wasn’t for a moment flawed the way it was for you. I found it to be a perfect reflection of my own sexual and emotional experiences as a completely uninformed and virginal twenty year old. My first night of sex I had no idea a guy could fuck me in the ass but it took all of about six seconds to say yes when his cock came a knockin’. And boy did I love it. I still love it. I’ll always love it.
Sorry. Where was I?
Oh yeh…
Based on my first sexual experience with another man I’d say that there doesn’t always have to be emotional and physical fumbling around followed by wavering and swinging between reactions and emotions. Sometimes it all just comes together smoothly and easily. Nothing in my life has ever been as right and as natural and as satisfying as making love to another man. Right outta the chute even. No instruction manual needed…
I totally agree that the sex scenes in the movie are not dragging it down. The movie is no porn-film, the way I hope you guys saw it too, so the guys that came there to get some porn, of course were disappointed. I must admit I hoped it to be more sexual too, but I’ve read the short book by Proulx, and I knew not much was gonna happen.
So all you guys who like to drag this movie down, are just unsatisfied for the porn (which, of course, has some importance), or are just bored, and like to argue about nothing. I think the movie is wonderfull, the story is buetiful, and the sex, well, you guys judged it well enough. And Tom, that’s a very nice last line you’ve placed there.
No instruction manual needed.
lol
Well, we will see what political blindness tonight’s award show will offer. One thing is for certain, this is not our Halle Barry moment. No one, who is actually gay, will be accepting an award for BBM.
Having listened to KCRW’s interview with Annie Proulx (link)
I am pretty much seeing the whole BBM thing as a purely co-optive move from its very inception. Given the Yaoi invasion of America, I think this will only continue, and as with most things, it will have good and bad influences.
The one thing it will definitely do–is reify the gay male body, and in this way, we (gay male here) are the new Sambo figures.
Tom, I’m glad it was so good for you, but methinks you’re the exception to the rule. In any case, I liked Proulx’s story and the movie very much. My observations are in the manner of thoughts inspired by them as opposed to arguments against them. I have yet to read the “perfect” story or see the “perfect” movie.
#20, you seem to regard all culture as an invention of a committee that meets in secret on the third Tuesday of every month.
First, I should mention that I feel this is a great movie. The direction, the acting, the cinematography, the score: all top-notch. And the screenplay is an excellent study in isolation and alienation, though it is relentlessly grim.
That said, I don’t think it’s a very moving story about a frustrated relationship - and I don’t even think it’s all that “gay” (and far from being any class of a “landmark”). In short, it is a terrible adaptation of Annie Proulx’s incredibly moving story.
The major problem in this regard is that, unlike the source story, the central characters seem to take no pleasure in their relationship. Their few moments together over the course of many years are as desperately gloomy as the sex they have with their wives - and there is little sense that their lives together are significantly different than their lives apart. The very few lines of dialogue in Proulx’s short story often relate to the physical pleasure of the relationship: “it got a be all that time a yours ahorseback makes it so goddamn good” and even Ennis’ terse “gun’s goin off” from their first encounter. Their physical bond is as important as their emotional one - and is that much more exceptional in that their time together marks the only bright spots in otherwise dreary and unfulfilling lives.
These lines are excised from the screenplay. In the film, there is NO pleasure, even when the two are together. This makes the story much less about the relationship and more a character study of Ennis del Mar - a man so alienated that he cannot connect with anything - or anyone. As a portrait of a sad, desperate life, Brokeback Mountain succeeds admirably - and Ledger’s performance is effectively understated. As a “landmark film” about gay relationships, however, it is a signal failure. This makes it a rather chilly and distant film and it effectively removes the emotional core that made the short story almost unbearably moving.
CK also makes a good point: “There was no sense in the movie that they were two kids dealing with something bigger than either one of them.” In fact, there was no sense in the movie that they were two kids, period. When Jack and Ennis meet (in Proulx), they are SEVENTEEN. Gyllenhaal and Ledger look wizened from the first shot. Their first encounter does not arise from youthful exuberance, but from some sort of desperate - and very adult - need.
As a final note, I am sick to death of reading about the “brave” performances in this film. John Kerr was “brave” in 1959’s Tea and Sympathy. In 1961, Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine were “brave” in The Children’s Hour, Dirk Bogard was “brave” in The Victim, and Murray Melvin was “brave” in A Taste of Honey (and, at least, Bogard and Melvin were gay. Claire Bloom was “brave” in 1963’s The Haunting, Beryl Reid and Susannah York were “brave” in 1964’s The Killing of Sister George, Marlon Brando was “brave” in 1967’s Reflections in a Golden Eye, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton were “brave” in 1969’s Staircase. In 1970, everyone was “brave” in The Boys in the Band. And so on - and on. By 1985, William Hurt won an Academy Award for his “bravery” in playing a gay character - very badly - in Kiss of the Spider Woman.
About every five years since, there has been a new “landmark” film in which a couple of allegedly straight actors pretend to be gay and actually kiss or something. Big deal. Playing a queer is no more challenging for a straight guy than playing heterosexual characters has been for gay actors for centuries. There have been central gay characters in films for decades now and it takes no special skill to play opposite a man instead of a woman. The fact that Ledger and Gyllenhaal can’t or won’t convincingly play two characters who take pleasure in their relationship (or that writer Larry McMurty or director Ang Lee chose to spin the story in that direction) strikes me as being rather cowardly. Can we give this “bravery” idiocy a rest?
Wertz said:
“In the film, there is NO pleasure, even when the two are together.”
Brief though it may have been, the second night in the tent showed profound pleasure, warmth and loving between the guys. Horsing around and wrestling each other to the ground in the scene that followed made it pretty clear they were having fun and totally enjoying each other’s company. The snuggling and afterglow conversation in the motel after four years of being apart gave us a glimpse into the intimacy and contentment the guys were sharing. The flashback towards the end of the movie when Jack is falling asleep on his feet and Ennis comes up from behind and wraps his arms around Jack, also tells us a lot about their happier times together. Riding along silently on their horses through the mountains together could also easily indicate a very real pleasure for them.
Personally, I found a lot of pleasure being shared between the guys in both the film and the story. It’s a pleasure however that could be easily overshadowed for a lot of people by all of the sadness, frustration and heartbreak going on in the story.
Not arguing your thoughts Wertz - I just saw something different than you did.
For what it’s worth, I think Proulx has indicated that the guys were nineteen when they first met in front of Aguirre’s trailer.
Wetrz, that’s a really good, and original, observation about the lack of joy between them. Your comment really opened up a whole new angle in my mind, and may well have put words to why, in spite of liking it quite a bit, I also think BBM stopped well short of being a “great” movie.
It’s almost all grim from start to finish. Only flashes of affection here and there, but no real bond between them. I guess it’s that Hollywood subtlety again, isn’t it? They don’t want anyone to think that this thing is going to be anything other than a Sad Tragedy. Frankly, it would have been a whole lot sadder if the love had been more fully formed and therefore credible.
And yeah, I am just as tired of hearing about “brave” performances. It ain’t brave for two guys to screw around on screen anymore. Not that I’m suggesting the following, but “brave” would be a movie where the guys get it on like dogs for a while, and one of them goes back to women and never looks back.
That does happen. One of these days, a “brave” movie’s going to show that and all hell will break loose on both sides.
I finaly saw it. Very sad movie. What a huge step forward! I thought I’d never in my life see a large production gay themed movie. Its good to see change. Its kind of reminds me of my reaction to all these shows staring or co-staring gay people or peopel acting gay at least. Even though many as I was told did not act gay fo-real, whatever that is.
Awww, what a let down. Brokeback lost the Best Picture Oscar. Anyway, it still has already made a large cultural impact. Usually, the importance of a best picture win is to bring a movie to the attention of people who would not otherwise see it. But Brokeback generated all the publicity it needs to catch people’s imagination. It may not have the award, but it has had a positive effect.
I agree - it’s a disappointment but Brokeback still is what it is and nothing the academy voters can say will ever change how I feel about the film. It’s significance and its impact are clear and as Diana Ossana said, “The film will continue to find its way.” It was obvious in her tone of voice that she was disappointed. So am I.
But hey, that second night in the tent when Ennis and Jack made love? That’s worth everything…
Thank you, Wertz, for putting into words much of what I have felt was the problem with this movie.
When I first read the story, it did give me a lump in my throat, but I didn’t give it a lot of thought afterwards, as it was a pretty standard-style New Yorker story (all gloomy and disconnected people).
All of the press that this film has created as “the great gay movie” bothered me even before I saw it. Why so many people are finding affirmation in it is beyond me. The story is about two people who live in the closet, meet clandestinely, and one of them is violently killed in the end (if Ennis is right, and Jack’s wife’s demeanor in the film confirms this). This is something we want the whole world to see and absorb into their thinkig towards gay men?
Techinically the film is beautiful, the pacing is just right (I don’t mind slow films), and I did get a little choked up at the end, wishing that these two guys could have had a happy life together. But damnit, Ennis is totally to blame for his rotten, miserable life — ANYTHING would have been better, and sometime during that 20 years of fishing trips, he should have come to grips with that. I have no respect for that character. At least Jack knew where to go to get his rocks off, and in the end DID find someone to share his life with — only he died before he could enjoy it. That part doesn’t get much play in the press that I have seen.
I don’t hate the movie, but I don’t recommend it to anyone, either. For once, I wish a film adaption hadn’t been quite so good — a so-called “Hollywood ending” would have been much more preferable to what we got.
WE WAZ ROBBED!
(Beautiful speech by Ang Lee, though.)
Tom: You’re probably right about the ages - I was going from memory. *blush*
For those who are disappointed in the Oscar outcome, Best Dirctor and Best Screenplay are nothing to sneeze at. And I was delighted that Santaolalla won for his evocative score.
22, I do not follow you, but I think not. All in all, BBM and TM will perform cultural work. The question becomes what cultural work are they peforming. This will vary from person-to-person, but if we are to push beyond the individual culinary sense of the films, both of which I personally enjoyed, I think we find a fulcrum from which we can gauge the cultural work being peformed.
Art is representation, but we should remember, respresentation is not presentation. As much as I appreciated Ang Lee’s geture toward how “love functions as a grand theme,” I find this a largely universalizing move, and it threatens to overlook the specific cultural complications that result in the marginalization, which lies at the heart of the very film he made. This is in keeping with my concerns about the Proulx interview.
This would be like saying, slavery is really just about man’s inhumanity to man. I think this gives a pass to racism, class and gender structures, economics, imperialism, nationalism, etc. All of which are why the institution of slavery is not a simple universal issue of mankind’s inhumanity toward other men.
This was my only point re: the co-optive impulse and its dangers.
Decker, you originally wrote that, “I am pretty much seeing the whole BBM thing as a purely co-optive move from its very inception.”
The reason I made my comment #22 is that you seemed to imply that there was a political motive from the get-go. The “inception” of BBM was a story by Annie Proulx, published by The New Yorker in the late 1990s. Are you thinking that Annie Proulx wasn’t writing a story but making a “purely co-optive move?” That the director wasn’t directing and the actors weren’t acting, but were making a “purely co-optive move?”
Now, I’m not an academic but what the hell, I’ll play one on the Internet. I think deconstruction of the sort you’re engaging in has a place, just like Marxism has a place. They are critiques. But they really don’t explain the underlying impulses, because they deny individual actions. They put motive, context and group identity at the center of culture, and in doing so completely obliterate the role of the independent individual. That’s why, in my view, they are never anything more than critiques, and usually more in the realm of musings.
You also mentioned in message #20 “the Yaoi invasion of America,” referring to Japanese comics with homosexual themes. I’d hardly call it an invasion. In fact, it doesn’t even qualify as a blip.
And I simply don’t understand the following comment: “The one thing it will definitely do–is reify the gay male body, and in this way, we (gay male here) are the new Sambo figures.”
I actually had to look up the word “reify,” it not being one that I’m accustomed to seeing or using. Webster’s says this of the word “reify”: to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing. So, tell me, how does this apply in the case of either Japanese comics or Brokeback Mountain. And what do you mean by “Sambo figures,” and how are gay males “Sambo figures” because of Japanese comics or Brokeback Mountain?
I’m asking th