Because a lot of gay men (maybe most) just don’t get it that’s why. If you could have heard the queens at the Denver showing you’d know what I mean.
One of the pivotal scenes in the story is when, after four years apart, Jack and Ennis meet again and kiss passionately; Ennis temporarily forgetting that it is in full view of his wife, Alma. When we saw the shocked look on Alma’s face, much of the audience here in Denver broke out in “Oooooooo!”s and “Ohhhhhhh-ho-ho-ho!”s, just as if they were watching a rerun of Dawson’s Creek, licking their lips thinking they had just been let in on the dish. Sigh. With Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana and Ang Lee there I wanted to crawl under my seat.
Anyone who has spent more than a few moments thinking about it and who is smart enough knows that in contemporary parlance the word ‘gay’ cannot be disassociated from political and cultural meanings. Brokeback Mountain, so far as I can tell, has nothing to do with any of those meanings. Are Jack and Ennis in love with each other? Obviously. Are they in anguish because they can’t love each other openly? Obviously. Would they describe themselves as gay? No. It’s 1963 Wyoming.
Still have attitude? Don’t take it from me then. Go to the source here and here.
Annie Proulx didn't write this story to describe what we call gay culture or gay people. Annie and Ang Lee both say that their motivations in writing the story and bringing it to film had nothing to do with gay rights. They simply wanted to describe the lives of these particular cowboys. It must be said however, that in acknowledging the broader theme of love itself they also acknowledge that this film will have broad effects in our cultural discourse. Everyone involved with this film knows that.
Gay people, more than anyone else, have polarized society into ‘straight’ and ‘gay’. It could be argued that this has become a politically necessary distinction but I think a lot of people actually take comfort in this distinction. In the modern sense of the word, being gay means more than having a same sex sexual preference. Given all the political and cultural baggage heaped on the word gay, describing Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist as gay is both an inaccurate and limited description of them. We shouldn’t be surprised when Jake Gyllenhaal uses the word ‘straight’ when explaining for the hundredth time why Brokeback Mountain isn’t a gay cowboy movie. We’ve made sure he can only use two words to describe these guys.
No one associated with this film has said anything that denies the obvious fact that this is a story about the love of two men. That’s why they did this film. That’s what made them interested in this material. They got to tell a beautiful, compelling story that had never been told before.
When Jake and Heath Ledger and Ang Lee try to refocus the discussion and describe Brokeback Mountain as a universal love story I think they are simply trying to do justice to the characters and story about which they clearly care so much and to which they gave so much of themselves. Bless Jake and Heath for simply wanting Jack and Ennis to be able to speak for themselves.
In some senses Brokeback Mountain is “a great American love story”. I hope that it is for a lot of people. Some people seem to feel that describing the film in such broad terms somehow homogenizes the film and is an attempt to deny or distract from its core reality. This is a great American love story specifically about the love shared by two men. It is free of politics. It is free of pretension. It is a forthright and simple love and that's what makes it great and American. It makes no reference whatsoever to what we recognize as gay culture.
Brokeback Mountain is not post-gay it's pre-gay.
We really do diminish the film if we - we in the gay community in particular - think of Brokeback Mountain as “the gay cowboy movie”
Sorry girls, you don’t get to own this film. Please, for the good of us all, remove your claws.
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