Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
brokeplex:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 30, 2007, 11:48:22 pm ---
The problem I, personally, have with the idea that "the story" of Brokeback Mountain--whether "the story" of the short story or "the story" of the film--is not universal is that I see themes in both the story and the film of opportunities missed, chances not taken out of fear--as not distinctively gay themes. They are human themes.
As for Annie Proulx killing off Jack, I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice that "Brokeback Mountain" can be seen as falling into the old stereotype that if you're gay, you either wind up dead (Jack) or alone and miserable (Ennis). I noticed that as far back as 1997, and it always makes me uncomfortable to think about that.
But as for why Annie killed off Jack, well, a story has to have an end. And I would disagree that Ennis's "emotional and erotic isolation ... is complete" when he still has Jack coming up from Texas once or twice a year. The film gives us a crack in the emotional isolation as he agrees to attend his daughter's wedding. We don't see this in the short story, and I don't see Ennis in the story as having that isolation "complete" until Jack is dead.
--- End quote ---
I am going to try to separate Harris's and my analysis of the film on the one hand, and the short story on the other. This is sometimes difficult, but when we fail to distinguish between the two, it can lead to a muddled analysis as the film makes some significant departures from the short story.
There are two major themes of the Harris article which I would like to continue to address - he certainly discusses much more, and I am open to any follow up on those other grounds as well.
1) the anti-gay aspects of the Proulx story and subsequent screenplay as evidenced in among other things the unnecessary killing off of Jack,
2) the heteronorming of the film thru the screen play and the heteronorming marketing of the film.
In his essay Harris questions why it was necessary for Proulx to kill off Jack. Ennis had become emotionally and physically isolated. Does anyone think that Jack would have continued to make trips up to visit Ennis after their last encounter in 1983? Remember what OMT had to say about Jack divorcing his wife and moving up to WY with a ranch neighbor. Does anyone not believe that Jack had given up on Ennis? What other purpose would the drowsy flashback have? Jack was remembering and regretting what never could have worked out between Ennis and himself. In my opinion, Jack was finished with Ennis. Ennis was isolated and alone, there was no reason to allow Jack to be murdered in order to make Ennis a "widow", he already was one emotionally. Doesn't Proulx's decision to kill off Jack fall into an "anti-Gay" stereotype? Could mainstream readers of the short story have stomached anything else?
This segues directly into the film, as Mendelsohn and his excellent article "An Affair to Remember" opines, why was it necessary to heteronorm the boys? Heteronorming occurs in both the screenplay and the pre-release marketing of the film. Look at the advertising of the movie. Why was it necessary to show the family lives of Jack and Ennis in the completeness in which it was shown? Perhaps heteronorming the story and the marketing made it more plausible as a "universal love story". And I can't escape the conclusion that heteronorming the lives of the boys made them more sympathetic in the eyes of straight viewers, who are the overwhelming majority of ticket buyers.
Quoting Mendelsohn, "For to see 'Brokeback Mountain' as a love story, or even as a film about human emotions, is to misconstrue it very seriously - and in so doing inevitably to diminish its real achievement."
In all fairness to Focus Features, Schamus replied, with "Brokeback Mountain: An Exchange", to the charge in an excellent letter to Mendelsohn which can also be accessed along with Mendelsohn's article. (see my first post- I think I paid $3.00 for the full download)
Quoting from Harris, "Ang Lee delivered a sad film, but one which is finally all the sadder for its eliciting pity rather than empathy, tears rather than anger. On some level, empathy is what a film about gay life can never elicit from a straight audience. As media contretemps over dubbing Brokeback 'the gay cowboy movie' have shown, the resonances produced by a slippery text risk undermining, if not overwhelming, its potential as a gay-positive polemic."
"The real achievement of "Brokeback Mountain' is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that is tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it. If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they're not really homosexual - that they're more like the heart of America than like 'gay people' - you're pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed"
See Roger Ebert's review of the movie if you doubt this tendency on the part of many.
brokeplex:
--- Quote from: Artiste on December 31, 2007, 11:15:18 am ---Brokeplex, you do bring up an interesting thread, be it negative (or not) as this subject is: anti-gay!
Harris might be right!! ?? The 2 or more movies I saw on TV, recent ones during the week plus many others this year, Hollywood (other studios too) killed all the gay charators!! It was also meant to become to detest a gay charator!! So you wonder why gay men are murdered in to-day's democratic societies?? The movies tell the general population that we, gay men, are bad!! Unfortunate!!
I am still thinking as to why and how Annie did her book, and why and how the producers and the script writers plus the director did the movie!! All could have done much better, instead of being so negative against gay men, I feel and see!! Guess many of you will now be angry at me again for daring to say that??
--- End quote ---
yes, Artiste you first brought the anti-gay aspects of the film to our attention. I have only recently discovered this scholarly essay which tends to substantiate some of your earlies posts on another thread. I would like to keep this thread here rather than moving it, as I would also be open to analysis of the other essays in "Reading Brokeback Mountain".
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: brokeplex on January 02, 2008, 04:25:45 pm ---In his essay Harris questions why it was necessary for Proulx to kill off Jack. Ennis had become emotionally and physically isolated. Does anyone think that Jack would have continued to make trips up to visit Ennis after their last encounter in 1983? Remember what OMT had to say about Jack divorcing his wife and moving up to WY with a ranch neighbor. Does anyone not believe that Jack had given up on Ennis? What other purpose would the drowsy flashback have? Jack was remembering and regretting what never could have worked out between Ennis and himself. In my opinion, Jack was finished with Ennis. Ennis was isolated and alone, there was no reason to allow Jack to be murdered in order to make Ennis a "widow", he already was one emotionally. Doesn't Proulx's decision to kill off Jack fall into an "anti-Gay" stereotype? Could mainstream readers of the short story have stomached anything else?
--- End quote ---
But what are we discussing here, the story or the film? Since 1983 is given as the year, I presume the story is intended, and, yes, I do believe Jack would have continued to make those trips to Wyoming, because in addition to what John Twist tells Ennis about the "ranch neighbor," Annie also tells us that after the blow-up in the parking lot at the trail head, Ennis and Jack more or less "torqued it" back to where it had been before the confrontation: Essentially, nothing changed. Consider, too, John Twist's comment about Jack's plans never coming to fruition: Should we necessarily assume Jack would actually have followed through on divorcing his wife? Should we assume, on the basis of John Twist's comment, that the "ranch neighbor" would actually have been willing to move to Lightning Flat with Jack?
Ultimately the reason Jack had to die has little to do with making Ennis a widow, or anything like that. A long, long time ago, somewhere, maybe even back at IMDb (meaning it's lost), I wrote that "Brokeback Mountain" reads like a story being told orally. There's a mythic or legendary or folk-tale quality to the way the story is told. Since Ennis fears ending up like Earl--murdered--the nature of the form of the story requires that somebody ends up dead at the end, and since the story is basically told from Ennis's perspective, that somebody has to be Jack. Annie's artistry lies in the ambiguity of whether Jack's death was really an accident, as described by his wife, or murder, as envisioned by Ennis.
As to the question of whether "mainstream readers" could have "stomached" another ending than Jack's death, I say, "Yes." Remember where the story first appeared in print, in The New Yorker. By and large readers of The New Yorker are a pretty sophisticated and liberal bunch. Annie did not have to kill off Jack in order to make her story acceptable to those readers.
--- Quote ---This segues directly into the film, as Mendelsohn and his excellent article "An Affair to Remember" opines, why was it necessary to heteronorm the boys? Heteronorming occurs in both the screenplay and the pre-release marketing of the film. Look at the advertising of the movie. Why was it necessary to show the family lives of Jack and Ennis in the completeness in which it was shown? Perhaps heteronorming the story and the marketing made it more plausible as a "universal love story". And I can't escape the conclusion that heteronorming the lives of the boys made them more sympathetic in the eyes of straight viewers, who are the overwhelming majority of ticket buyers.
--- End quote ---
I don't believe the film "heteronormed" Ennis and Jack any more than they were already, in Annie's story--except perhaps in the sense that the screenplay opens things up so that we get a more balanced view of both their lives than we get in the story, which is mainly from Ennis's viewpoint (e.g., the Twist Thanksgiving sequence is a product of the screenwriters, the Ennis-and-Alma Thanksgiving scene comes directly from Annie Proulx). Perhaps what the writer feels was "heteronorming," maybe something like showing the argument between Ennis and Alma as Alma storms off to her job, is simply what was necessary to translate what was in Annie's story to the medium of film.
--- Quote ---Quoting Mendelsohn, "For to see 'Brokeback Mountain' as a love story, or even as a film about human emotions, is to misconstrue it very seriously - and in so doing inevitably to diminish its real achievement."
--- End quote ---
I'm sorry, but from where I sit, this is just wrong. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. ;)
I can't believe that anyone who has read Annie Proulx's essay, "Getting Movied," can possibly seriously believe that the story was in any way intended as an anti-gay polemic.
SFEnnisSF:
--- Quote from: brokeplex on December 30, 2007, 09:28:03 pm ---
"Brokeback is an irreducibly ambivalent work. From one angle, it reads as an antihomophobic polemic against the deforming and stunting impact of homophobia. Yet it takes minimal effort to see "Brokeback's" potential to serve also as an anti-gay polemic, a cautionary tale about homosexuality not homophobia."
--- End quote ---
I have to agree with this. Perhaps the movie was a little too ambiguous for its own good? I remember feeling frustration over this specific point. It's one of the reasons I sought out the message boards...without them, I would have been completely lost...
Artiste:
Thanks brokeplex, and thanks Jeff Wrangler!!
Brokeplex, I am glad that you mention about my previous thread: that about the BM movie being maybe anti-gay, as an discussion!! Be assured that I am also happy that you have this here too!! Negatives in life are nescessary it seems obvious, unfortunately!! Anyway, the anti-gay aspect of the movie need to be talked about and developed to see how much of it can be viewed that way!!
.....
Jeff, are you saying that about the BM the movie a viewer can possibly seriously believe that the story was in any way intended as an anti-gay polemic...
........
or not??
....
Maybe the BM movie is a mask for anti-gay issues? Dare I ask!! ?? Much can be said... yes??
Hugs, hugs!! Happy New Year for desired gay joys for gay men and all others on Earth bringing peace to all too!!
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