blackvelocities

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!

Listen to the Brokeback Mountain Soundtrack

Stream the entire soundtrack.
Sounds good even at 64 kbs.

Via Arjan Writes.  Thanks Arjan!

Brokeback Humor I Actually Like

Via Film Experience Blog
Thanks Nat!

Some of the best bits from other reviews

ModFab On...Brokeback Mountain

"While many will talk about the universality of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, let me be the first to say: it simply isn't true. Oh, I'm sure heterosexuals will have a great time watching the film, but this isn't their story, and to water it down with claims of universality is to do it a great disservice. This particular tale could not have happened to anyone but two men...it is a hard, spare story, albeit one told with eloquence. (Their lovemaking is often undistinguishable from boys' roughousing, and occasionally ends in fistfights.) Ennis and Jack lack the vocabulary and the life experience to process their desires; brutality and roughness sit comfortably in their psyches alongside tenderness and gentility. Unlike any other film you can think of, BROKEBACK offers up a wholly masculine vision of homosexuality; these are men thousands of miles from any major urban center, who do not recognize themselves in the stereotype...who have never heard of Judy Garland, and don't want to."

Love, Actually.  Reviewed by Karen Durbin in Elle

"It's impossible to imagine these two country boys in the claustrophobic confines of a big city, where they could live together and be somewhat safe. With understated eloquence, Gyllenhaal and Ledger give Jack and Ennis such specific life that we understand not only how deeply they belong to the rural West but also how deeply they belong with each other."

Cowboys in Love... With Each Other.  Reviewed by Karen Durbin in the New York Times

"When Annie Proulx's short story about two cowboys in love appeared in The New Yorker nearly eight years ago, it was so startling and powerful that for many people, the experience of reading it remains a vivid, almost physical memory. As for those shirts, the image is unique and indelible: hidden years earlier in the back of a closet, they hang from a single nail, the outer, denim one, bloodied by an old blow, the second, a torn and dirty plaid, carefully tucked inside the first, its sleeves worked down into the other's sleeves, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. It's an emblem of love so plain and homely that it could only be true."

Why Brokeback Mountain isn’t a gay film

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.

Another document of their lives - Further thoughts on Brokeback Mountain

Well it took me a few days to reconcile what I saw in the film and what I knew from the short story.  I walked out of the film feeling a whole range of emotions.  No surprise there but along with all that I had this funny feeling that I didn't feel quite right about something.  It took a few days for the major emotions to kind of calm down before I could start to see these smaller more elusive emotions more clearly.

One of the friends I went to see the film with and I were discussing it afterwards and we both agreed that we came away wanting more time with Ennis and Jack.... just Ennis and Jack.  We both agreed that the film had spent less time showing the growth of their friendship than the short story.  While we felt somewhat disappointed in this we also agreed that a more thorough look at the beginnings of their love was traded, in the interest of time, for the elaboration on their time apart which mostly had been only referentially or obliquely described in the story.  I had read a review in which the reviewer had come away with the impression that Ennis and Jack had essentially fallen in love only after they had sex.  It's easy to see how, without having read the story, someone could have come away with that impression.  I don't like the idea that someone would have that impression about Jack and Ennis.

And there were other differences between the story and the film.  The elaboration of Jack and Ennis' time apart showed us even more clearly just how unhappy they were when they were apart. Jack is frustrated and desperately lonely.  His life seems a sham.  He grows resentful and you can see the hope that sustains him flicker.  Ennis too is desperately lonely and he withdraws even further.  He never completely comes to grips with his love and the anguish this causes him is sometimes expressed in anger and violence.

I began to see that these differences between story and film could be understood when I thought more about the influence of Larry McMurtry as screenwriter.  In his own stories McMurtry rarely gives his characters a break.  Everything is presented in an unvarnished state.  Read Streets of Laredo and you'll see what I mean.  McMurtry never holds your hand.  You are left to feel how you feel.  You come to like or love or respect his characters because of what they do not because you are being lulled in that direction by McMurtry.  I like that about his writing.

I have come to see the film as another document of Jack and Ennis' lives.  It's a stunning, beautiful, eloquent document and I am so thankful for it.

As with the story, I will need to see the film again and again.  What did people do when they couldn't own a film on DVD?

Impressions of Brokeback Mountain

I was privileged to be able to attend a special screening of Brokeback Mountain last night in Denver.  It was the closing night film for the 28th Denver International Film Festival.  Ang Lee, Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana were in attendance and Ang Lee was awarded the DIFF Lifetime Achievement Award.

Before I discuss the movie I need to discuss my feelings about the short story.  When I read the story back in 2002, by which time it was a part of the collection Close Range, it left an indelible mark on me.  I come from a family of Texas cattle ranchers and spent my formative years in Texas and in rural southwest Colorado.  As a westerner but more particularly as a person with my family and childhood history, the story struck a deep resonant chord within me.  Brokeback Mountain really changed me.  It put me back in touch with things that I thought I would be separated from forever.  I have come to relate to this story as if it were true and its characters real.  I feel as if Ennis and Jack are people I know.

This led to my overwhelming concern about the film adaptation.  Namely that it give full respect to Jack and Ennis and that it give honor to their love.

Now it must be understood that concerning most things where people are involved, I am a cynical person by nature.  Given the soulless pabulum that has been the chief export of Hollywood for too many years now, I was truly frightened when I heard that Brokeback would be put to film.  I was preparing for the worst and to be very angry.

Then came the reviews from Venice and Toronto.  I was reluctant to believe it at first but then came to accept that Ang Lee had been careful with the story and exactingly faithful to the text.  Let it suffice to say that my relief was almost boundless.  I wept when I read those first reviews.  I also felt somewhat chastened.  I felt I should have had more faith (something which doesn’t come to me naturally) in the director of “The Ice Storm” and in Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.

So about the film.

Please, read the story. But expect to come away from the film with different impressions and understandings.  Be prepared to think differently about Jack and Ennis.  Be prepared to understand them more fully. 

Like Annie Proulx’s writing, the film was by equal turns rapturous and devastating.  Both exquisitely beautiful and gut-punched painful.  Do not go to this movie thinking that Ang Lee has thoughtfully sprinkled in some magic movie dust that will leave you feeling good.  You will walk out feeling emotionally drained and conflicted.  The conflicted feeling will last for days.  My explicit advice is that the film be seen in an environment that will promote a feeling of intimacy.  See it with someone you love.  You will willingly bear your heart.  You will feel vulnerable.  Try to find a time and place where you are not left feeling too cold.  Because that need not be the feeling you are left with.

Heath Ledger fully becomes Ennis del Mar.  He is wracked by pain, frustration, fear and guilt that never completely leave him.  Jake Gyllenhaal fully becomes Jack Twist.  He has a kind of hopeful joy you feel you can drink in great healing gulps.  But Ennis cannot be completely healed, he can only be temporarily relieved and the anguish that this causes in Jack is fully realized through Jake.  Ennis’ and Jack’s love is made fully evident by Heath and Jake in actions and expressions both great and small.

The music of Gustavo Santaolalla is pitch perfect and the screenplay of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana was flawless.

I don’t feel the need to elaborate on the performances of Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway or the cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto.  They were each exceptional and have been praised elsewhere.  They were not the focus of my concern although if they had not been so exceptional the film would have been crippled.

I am honestly grateful to Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ang Lee for so lovingly giving Ennis and Jack and their story to us and I will write them to say so.

You will be changed by this film.