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.
Can I just say, um... yes!? Like hell yeah right now!
This'll put a crimp on any plan! Some friends and I were gonna go see The Dying Gaul tonight... well... as hot as I think Peter Sarsgaard is he'd have to be white hot to touch this chill!