blackvelocities

I swear...

What an amazing four months this has been.

And now things have come full circle.

I went to see Brokeback for the 10th and final time on the big screen last Thursday in Denver. Having seen the movie with family and friends in three different cities (with remarkably different audiences), I saw it for the final time with my dear friend Jamie at the Mayan Theater where I saw it with him on opening weekend. For me, each viewing has been as profoundly moving as the first.

Even though I’ll have the DVD soon and I’ll get to see Jack and Ennis whenever I like, nothing compares to seeing those images hanging huge before you. There is something about the filling of our field of vision that takes us out of ourselves.

The truth is, I have been overwhelmed by this film and this story. I’ve been changed. I look back at who I was when I breathlessly watched the trailer and listened to “The Wings” for the first time four months ago and I see that I am different now. I am more whole. I really am. There’s something extraordinary about being able to pinpoint that moment of change.

And there is more change to come as these feelings – feelings that this story has freed – work their way from the inside out. Sometimes I feel things moving inside of me so strongly – walls and buttresses collapsing – I half expect to hear my joints popping.

For me personally the most important thing about Brokeback was not it’s commentary on the consequences of the closet (which is what I think most gay men who've seen the film relate to first) but its reexamination of the traditional construction of masculinity.

The love shared by these two men - Jack’s searching love and Ennis’ repressed love - is utterly masculine.  Neither Jack nor Ennis know quite what to do with it but it seizes them heart and soul nonetheless. Their love, rough ‘n tumble, tender and passionate all at the same time, is one that men will instantly recognize. And how ever men react to that recognition it will shake them to their very core.

The idea that cowboys could be intimate makes many people, straight and gay, uncomfortable. Gay people cling to and claim as their own the gregarious, urbane aesthete. Straight people cling to and claim as their own the taciturn, steadfast everyman. Often scorned and mocked is he who wanders into the small no-man’s-land between the encampments. There are few places for a gay cowboy to exist. Thus the fictional Mountain.

But as a man who is gay who grew up spending countless hours feeding and corralling cattle and building fence, who spent multiple summers working in an oilfield roustabout outfit or in an auto repair shop I have to say that deep down Jack Twist makes more sense to me than Jack McFarland. The bedrock of my personality – my identity – was laid down in those hard places and those quiet times. For me Brokeback Mountain put me back into direct contact with my soul. And it is helping me become more honest and ultimately it will make me more whole.

OUT magazine recently proclaimed itself representative of the “gay sensibility”. As a gay man I reluctantly acknowledge that there is a sensibility that is commonly recognized as “gay”. And as the years go by that sensibility becomes ever more comic, commercial and commodified. It becomes more contorted. Many gay men identify with this sensibility while others accommodate themselves - contort themselves - to it. I’ll admit that there have been many times in my life when I have fallen in with this sensibility. Looking back I’ve begun to feel that I’ve lost more than I’ve gained from those surrenders. In truth, I’ve lacked the imagination to wander into the land between. Imagination requires bravery and I’ve not been brave.

Brokeback Mountain has much to say to men in general about how the regime of "masculinity" often demands the beating human heart as the first sacrifice.

Brokeback allows us, we men, to declare false and folly the ridged, reactionary tyranny of the cowboy myth. A myth which Hollywood has coddled and perpetuated. We can be emancipated from this myth. The truth is, this mythical “cowboy” is emasculated. The real cowboy finds his manhood in the freedom to say who he is, to be who he is and to make his own way.

Brokeback requires a man to do work. It is honest work - the work of opening your heart and exposing it to the cold mountain air, laying yourself bare as the ice scraped rock. Few have either the desire or the ability to do that kind of work. You have to be brave. But, by definition, bravery is a virtue in limited currency.

Who among us is brave enough to be in the vanguard?

From my vantage here on the Mountain, I swear I can see vast territories to explore. I see that there are trails through the Great American Desert laid down long ago. And I see passes through the peaks.

Go west, young man. It is our Manifest Destiny to be better than we are.

Art as Hammer or Ballot as Tire Iron?

Well after 48 hours of cycling through anger, resentment, indignation, shock and sadness, I’m beginning to feel a bit more clear-headed about what happened at the Oscars. 

I have to say at the outset that I’m a bit disappointed with myself. I’ve never cared about the Oscars. I’ve never watched it. Couldn’t care less about the glitz and “glamour”. Above all, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about Oscar “fashion”. The spectacle of so many women teetering down the red carpet, augmented to within an inch of their lives, momentarily pausing to show their ass and give a puffy-lipped pout to the camera is fundamentally revolting to me.

But this year it was different. I slipped up and allowed myself to care about what happened at the Oscars. It’s because I cared that I now feel the need to rationalize the outcome.

To answer my own question - it certainly wasn’t anything as noble as “art as hammer” (that’s as close as I’ll come to trashing Crash in this post) but neither do I think it was “ballot as tire iron”. Unfortunately, lots and lots of people are crying, “Homophobia!” Unfortunate because the charge is so incendiary as to prevent rational discussion. I believe that actual homophobia had little to do with the outcome. I think that what happened was the result of a coincidental convergence of three things: 1) the self importance of the Academy, 2) heterosexism and, 3) the extra time provided by the Olympics for Lions Gate to dump thousands of DVDs on the SAG.  (It should be noted that Nat over at The Film Experience disagrees with pretty much every one of my arguments.)

To elaborate…

1) I think it can be reasonably assumed that the Academy must be filled with a sense of self-importance.  And why wouldn’t they be?  The Oscars marks the end of awards season and is considered by pretty much everyone to be the final word on achievement in American film.  Academy members believe themselves to be final arbiters.  A person in such a position is probably going to have an attitude about it and will be resistant to what they might feel is overt pressure from outside forces (especially if such pressure comes without benefit of bribes or piles of shwag). I believe that the long train of awards and the volume and pervasiveness of Brokeback “hype” was perceived as a threat to the position of the Academy as being at the top of the heap.  Tom O’Neil reported outright hostility. So…

I believe that there was a reservoir of ambivalence, resistance and even resentment toward Brokeback.

2) Heterosexism - the sophisticated, complicated, blue-blooded cousin of brutal, uncomplicated, hot-blooded homophobia. It shows up on the face as the tight smile rather than the sneer. Heterosexism isn’t homophobia per se, but maybe it’s homophobia lite.  As an openly gay person this, rather than homophobia, is what I usually experience. It is why gay people often have the sneaking suspicion that, even by their friends, their relationships are not taken as seriously as those of their straight counterparts. It is why reasonable people are OK with it as long as you don’t call it marriage. It is why reasonable people are susceptible to confusing human rights with “special rights”. And I can’t really blame them considering the popular image that most people have of gay people; an image provided and confirmed by gay people themselves. It is why it is so easy to parody the “gay cowboy”; a parody that leaps immediately into the minds of gay and straight people alike.  It is a parody supplied by gay people.  Heterosexism allows people, both gay and straight, to trivialize a serious, truthful story about the love between two cowboys and not feel guilty or strange about it.  So…

I believe that people aren’t necessarily inclined to take stories about gay people, their problems or their love seriously.

3) And then there is the tactical part of all of this.  The Oscars was put off by almost a month so it wouldn’t have to compete with the Olympics.  SAG gave it’s version of best film to Crash.  Lions Gate saw its chance to dump thousands of DVDs on the largest voting bloc in the Academy in an attempt to shove Brokeback out of its place at the forefront of their attention.  And Crash had things going for it that made that task easier and made it endearing specifically to those people.  It had a large ensemble cast.  It was a production and a story that stayed in LA - their home turf, their backyard, the place where they fight life’s battles.  Crash said something about them and the people - friends and strangers - in their lives.  Lions Gate knew this.  So…

In the line of sight between the voter and the Oscar, Crash stepped in front of Brokeback and the voter liked that view better.

In summation: Crash won Best Picture because voting for it provided the Academy voters with a way to acknowledge a film that they took seriously rather than one that they didn’t and more importantly (in my mind) it allowed for a release of their resentment, reasserted their independence and gave comfort to their egos. Having seen Crash, nothing else makes sense to me.

Did homophobia play any role?  Some, sure, but not much… but the battle lines seem to have already been drawn.

As for me, I’m movin’ on.  Brokeback Mountain has already taken its place in history as surely as it occupies a large part of my heart.  I know that the people whose love for the story brought the film into being know what the film has accomplished. I know that they know that their love has been returned in kind by people everywhere. I don’t believe that Annie or Diana or Larry or Ang or Jake or Heath would want me to dwell on this any longer.  Neither would Jack or Ennis.

Brokeback Mountain changed the way I see my place in the world.  That is enough.

For Jack and Ennis I say...

Much has happened in my life since I last posted.  I have had a lot to say but I’m slow and I can’t type and I can’t get the things out as fast as I think of them.  I have lots of stuff on paper that I was planning to post but here is all I will have to say for a while:

To those in the Academy and in society at large who are:

The heterosexist liberals who couldn’t take a serious film about homosexual cowboys seriously,

The homophobic straight men who turned Brokeback Mountain into a joke,

The straight women who could merely say “Aww, how sad,”

The gay men for whom this was the “gay cowboy film” and wanted to see more skin,

Lions Gate thanks you!

I say FUCK YOU!