A friend of mine who goes to Indiana University just sent me this link, it's pretty interesting:
http://research.iu.edu/news/stories/0053_brokeback.htmlThe Brokeback PhenomenonSo there really are gay cowboys?
Brokeback Mountain , the movie nominated for eight Academy Awards this month including “Best Picture,” has clearly captured the imagination of the American viewing public. But a gender studies professor at Indiana University Bloomington says he's “astounded” that people are so surprised by the idea of homosexuality and same-sex desire in a rural or non-metropolitan setting.
Colin Johnson, an assistant professor of gender studies and adjunct assistant professor in American studies and history at Indiana University Bloomington, says, “I mean just think about it. ‘Urban' experience, as we understand it, is certainly the exception rather than the rule where human history is concerned. Moreover, heterosociality—which is to say the unexceptional and everyday intermingling of women and men—is also relatively new in many societies. Why, then, should it come as any surprise to anyone that there is a long tradition of same-sex sexual behavior among sex-segregated worker populations in rural settings?”
Johnson's research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in non-metropolitan areas. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the history of homosexuality in rural America . He says Brokeback Mountain has taken Americans by surprise and captured their imaginations partly because the left and the right have “gone out of their way to represent homosexuality as an urban phenomenon—the left because it makes sexual ‘liberation' seem modern and sophisticated and the right for precisely the same reasons, though to entirely different ends.”
Johnson, who also has an interest in film and media, says Brokeback Mountain does ask a number of other interesting questions, particularly about the history of manhood and masculinity in the most general sense. “I think it asks us how and why intimacy between men—whether emotional or physical—has come to seem so unthinkable outside of a strict heterosexual/homosexual binary. I also think it asks us to consider how extensive homophobia's damaging effects actually are.”
Ennis and Jack aren't the only characters who suffer in Brokeback Mountain because there isn't a place for intimacy and desire between men, Johnson says. On some level, their wives and children end up suffering along with them.
“I certainly don't think we should read this aspect of (director Ang) Lee's film as a condemnation of Ennis and Jack's feelings and choices,” he says. “But I do think that it reminds us that affairs of the heart are sufficiently complicated that strict adherence to social convention will rarely cure what ails them, yet will, more often than not, end up producing all sorts of collateral damage.”
For more IU Bloomington perspectives on the Brokeback Mountain phenomenon, including the politics of sexuality, challenges facing gay youth living in rural America , and the heterosexual male's attitudes toward gay concerns, go to
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/tips/page/normal/2929.html .
Colin Johnson wrote an opinion piece about Brokeback Mountain for the Chronicle of Higher Education. It can be accessed at
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i19/19b01501.htm . (Registration required.)
Johnson is one of several new faculty members to join IU Bloomington's Department of Gender Studies, which has launched the first gender studies (as distinct from women's studies) doctorate in the nation. The first doctoral students are expected to be admitted this fall. To learn more about gender studies at IU Bloomington go to
http://www.indiana.edu/~gender/html/ .
