Author Topic: TOTW 12/07:Is Brokeback Mountain a 'universal love story' or a 'gay love story'?  (Read 18949 times)

Offline Penthesilea

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Mornin' BetterMostians!  :D

Winter is coming for most of us; it has become chilly outside, so let's talk about something to warm our hearts  ;) - Let's talk about Loooove. Did this get your attention? Fine, so let's start:


Is Brokeback Mountain a 'universal love story' or a 'gay love story'?

We all have heard Ang Lee and other involved persons refer to Brokeback Mountain as a 'universal love story'. But is it?

Offline louisev

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I would say it is a "forbidden love story", to that extent it is universal, because there is more than one kind of forbidden love, depending upon the culture to which the story belongs.  But what has been said again and again about Brokeback is certainly true and cannot be overlooked, Ennis and Jack could not love one another freely or openly, due not to themselves but due to the social environment around them, and this is true of more than gay couples.  However, the forbiddenness of gay relationships is the most prevalant prejudice that persists into the present day.
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I don't think of it as a love story at all.  The concept of "love" was used as mechanism for the central theme of self awareness, self acceptance and yes, I guess self love, so maybe it is a "love" story of a sort, but not in the sense of romantic, soul-mate kind of love.

Offline belbbmfan

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Winter is coming for most of us; it has become chilly outside, so let's talk about something to warm our hearts  ;) - Let's talk about Loooove. Did this get your attention?

It sure did!  :D

Is Brokeback Mountain a 'universal love story' or a 'gay love story'?

We all have heard Ang Lee and other involved persons refer to Brokeback Mountain as a 'universal love story'. But is it?

Yes it is. A tragic love story, but very much a love story. Your question made me think of the review of the movie that Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times. He said it was a movie about love, 'love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully in the heart'. Beautifully said.  :'(  :'(
'We're supposed to guard the sheep, not eat 'em'

Offline jstephens9

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Mornin' BetterMostians!  :D

Winter is coming for most of us; it has become chilly outside, so let's talk about something to warm our hearts  ;)

You can say that again. It seems it might be turning winter cold here. Let's go back to the days of summer  :)

I consider Brokeback Mountain to be a universal love story. For whatever reason I have never really thought of it as a gay love story. It has always felt to me that the attraction, the bond and the love between Ennis and Jack could have existed betwen any two people whether they were two men, two women, or a man and woman. I have just never really picked up the gay theme that strongly in the movie. Sure it is obviously a part of it since they are two men and they feel that the love between them is wrong, especially Ennis, even though there is nothing they can do about the attraction and bond that keeps bringing them together. And like Louise says they could not love each other openly and freely. They had to hide behind the bars of the jail society had created for them even though we all wish they could have realized that maybe those bars were not really that strong.

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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          I have to say my ideas on this have gone back and forth over the past two years..  At first I thought it was
a gay love affair.  That turned into gay love.  I thought that Jack was gay, knew he was gay, and fell in love with
Ennis..  The idea I had of Ennis was that he was bi-sexual.  He never attached the feeling of love to what they
did.  He was homophobic so therefor scared to ever make that move toward anyone else..Jack had to make
that move, for the relationship to happen...He never had the nerve to approach any other man..He did however
like what they did..having sex..This is to me the story of the book.  He would have gone on with his life like it was even before the divorce, if Alma had not herself made that choice..He was not a doer. He was a follower.. 
           The movie I believe made a different view of it.  It showed the men as falling in love, but fear of the
societal influences, including his fathers intervention, made Ennis afraid to admit how he felt, until Jack was dead.
I dont know if he ever let himself believe it was love.  So I guess I am saying the movie made it a universal love story,  unfulfilled and the book a story of gay love unfulfilled.



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Offline jstephens9

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Janice, you make some very good and interesting points. I can see both sides of where you are coming from and like you say both the book and the movie end up with love unfulfilled. It is interesting to wonder if Ennis really ever did attach the idea of love to the relationship until after Jack was dead. He certainly did know how he felt, but like you say I'm not so sure he could ever admit it to himself. During their last meeting the idea of admitting to himself what he felt for Jack seems to hit the strongest other than at the end of the movie when he discovers that Jack is dead. I also think you are  right that it may have been he would have never divorced or changed anything with Alma had she not been the one to force the issue. In some ways it is even surprising that he saw Jack at all. Would he have ever sought Jack out? Again, it may be that if Jack had not pushed the issue Ennis may have just pushed the whole thing into the back of his mind never to be discovered.

Offline Brown Eyes

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I actually do think it's primarily a gay love story and of course that does fit into the wider category of a "forbidden love" story given the circumstances that we see in the film/ story.  I think anyone regardless of personal sexual preference is capable of finding any good love story compelling and emotionally engaging.  Gay people go to films about straight couples all the time and find those stories moving and important and in this case the reverse happened for the straight audience for BBM.  Ennis's issues particularly are so wound up with the particularly gay dilemmas of being closeted and of dealing with internalized homophobia and to me this seems to indicate that this really is a film/ story about being gay on very complex levels.  BBM delves into deep issues of gay identity in more complex ways than I think I've ever seen in film.  And the Lightning Flat scene and the last scene in Ennis's trailer... both being all about the metaphor of the closet/ what's in the closet, etc. seem to thematize gay issues too.

That said, I think there are many themes and issues within BBM that can be teased out and made very general, broad and perhaps even universal.

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Offline delalluvia

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I'm on the "universal love story" bandwagon.

It's universal because it's about two people who meet, fall in love, but the circumstances of their lives and/or society keep them apart and from expressing that love openly.  This basic tragic theme can fit almost anyone anywhere at any point in time and indeed makes up a great deal of romantic literature modern and historical from all over the world.

Offline nic

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It is about love & love is universal, so it is a universal love story first & foremost.

It is also not just about romantic love in the J & E relationship - there is the love of a wife or unfulfilled partner, and the love (& lack of it) between parent & child.
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Offline tampatalon

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I cannot decide which kind of love story so I just love da story  :)
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Offline JT

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To me, it's a universal love story with a gay touch to it.  To be honest, I don't think there are such thing as a "gay love story" or a "straight love story".  Love is universal regardless of who loves who.  BBM is a love story period.  It just have a tragic end and the lovers just happen to be two men.

Offline Brown Eyes

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Yes, I agree that the love represented is a universal thing... or universally experienced regardless of gender or sexual orientation.  But, the film/story is based on what happens to universal love (love that anyone can identify with) under the specific pressures put on gay men within the specific social conditions of Wyoming and Texas during the time span of the story.  I think it is important to recognize the gay context as a really significant aspect of the story and their struggle to maintain their relationship.  Somehow saying it's simply universal seems too easy to me... I think it's more complex.

And, I'll reiterate that I think BBM examines what it means to be gay... as a complicated personal identity, as a factor in a relationship, etc... in a terrifically nuanced, throughtful and subtle way.  I think BBM does this better than most any film I've ever seen.



the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie

Offline Shakesthecoffecan

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I remain of the opinion it is a story about the effect of rural homophobia, but its effect is the message we nedd to love, and we need to be brave about it sometimes.
"It was only you in my life, and it will always be only you, Jack, I swear."

Offline jstephens9

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I remain of the opinion it is a story about the effect of rural homophobia, but its effect is the message we nedd to love, and we need to be brave about it sometimes.

I'm curious if you mean rural homophobia as opposed to urban homophobia which also existed, and still does exist, in the cities. I believe I posted something in the last topic of the week concerning how BBM would be looked at 30 years from now and I was mentioning how homophobia, although underground, exists in the urban areas even now. I mentioned how "gays" are not looked at in favor by a large part of the FDNY and the NYPD. I mentioned that I did not know how it was viewed by the same type of organizations in San Francisco. If anyone know this, please post it as I am curious. I'm not sure if you have seen "Forever Blue" (an episode of Cold Case) or not, but it was supposed to be about the same time as BBM, but was in Philadelphia and was about two cops who were in love.

Offline jstephens9

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To me, it's a universal love story with a gay touch to it.  To be honest, I don't think there are such thing as a "gay love story" or a "straight love story".  Love is universal regardless of who loves who.  BBM is a love story period.  It just have a tragic end and the lovers just happen to be two men.

I like your ideas JT. I tend to have the same feelings towards BBM.

Offline southendmd

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I think it was Annie herself who said the story was about destructive rural homophobia. 

I'm of the opinion that the term "universal" was bandied around to advertise the film and make it more "palatable" to folks who wouldn't otherwise want to see a gay love story.

I think Dan Mendelsohn said the difference between "Romeo and Juliet" and BBM is that Romeo and Juliet didn't hate the way they loved , like Ennis, thereby making it a distinctive gay story, and not universal at all. 

To put them together, it's about destructive, rural, internalized  homophobia.

Offline Brown Eyes

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I think you're right about the internalized homophobia that's so central to BBM makes this story different from a completely "universal" love story. 

Again, somehow I think to say the story is "universal" is too simplified.  There's more to it than that.

I'm now trying to think if I even really understand what's meant by the word "universal" in this type of discussion about BBM.  Clearly, it was a popular way for critics to describe the movie and they usually used it when they wanted to praise the film.

Is it somehow more threatening if it *is* a specifically gay love story?
 ???

What is universal love?  I would guess that lots and lots of individuals experience love in very different ways.  I wonder if people really would be able to agree on a description of what "universal" love is?
 ???

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Offline malina

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Good question, and one I don't quite know the answer to. But here is my reasoning, such as it is...

First, on a personal level...

a) I'm not gay, and yet it spoke to me about love, and I certainly identified with the characters and with the love, denial of love, fear, loss, etc., so perhaps that means it was universal. Except...

b) I have a history of liking gay love stories better than straight love stories, and responding to them more strongly and getting more obsessed and finding the whole thing somehow more beautiful than if it was about a man and a woman. So perhaps that means it was a gay love story. Except...

On a more intellectual (trying to be) level...

I think, like many gay love stories, it is really about forbidden love. And that, in turn, can be and IS universal. Someone very clever explained it to me one time. Some love stories reinforce the societal standards... like Shakesperean comedies where everyone gets married in the end, or chick flicks... and some love stories, the really BIG and more powerful ones, go against the societal standards and transcend them and eventually (but usually not till after a tragedy) change them. And that's what I really think BBM is.

Short answer:

Universal.


Offline jstephens9

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Is it somehow more threatening if it *is* a specifically gay love story?
 ???

I'm curious if you or anyone else thinks that if BBM would have been marketed as a gay love story it would have had a smaller audience? Or for another question, would there have been a larger audience if it would have been marketed as a comedy? Obviously, it was definitely not a comedy, but going by the number of jokes concerning it from the media and talk show hosts some people may have had the idea it was a comical. In other words, a movie in the vein of Will and Grace with the characters acting like Jack (that is Jack from Will and Grace).

Offline Brown Eyes

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Well, I at least commend the BBM marketers for not hiding or diminishing the gay aspect of the love story in the marketing.  I'm hugely happy that the main poster featured Ennis and Jack in that intimate composition.  And, I remember some of my first awareness of BBM (through previews, etc.) involved the image of the dozy embrace.  I remember being sort of mesmerized by the image of that embrace and thinking that there was something really powerful and different about how that encounter was shot and presented even in the preview (all this aside from the fact that the image was of a gay couple).

I really don't know how the marketing impacted or didn't impact the audience.  I think the good word-of-mouth did huge wonders for the reception of BBM.

the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie

Offline Ellemeno

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The phrasing of the question reminds me of Stephen Colbert when he says, "George Bush - great president, or the greatest president?"

Maybe BBM is an "I ain't queer" love story.  :(

Offline serious crayons

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I'm always surprised that this question creates what almost seems like tension between people who all love the movie. I remember once on imdb, early on, a similar discussion in which (mostly) straight people were saying it's a universal love story, and (mostly) gay people were saying it's a gay love story. A gay man said something to the effect of, "Come on, it's the first big love-story movie we've ever had, don't try to take it from us," and I said, "No fair! You got the best one!" and he said, "He he he."

Personally, and not to cop out on this, I think it's both. It's a gay love story because Jack and Ennis are gay, and what leads to their tragedy is homophobia. It's a universal love story because anyone with a heart, gay or straight, can relate. So clearly, it's not "only" either thing.

I've always wondered about what it must have been like for gay people through all those decades (and, for the most part, even now), limited mainly to watching movies that focus on straight couples. How hard is it to relate to those movies? To the extent that you do, do you consider them "straight love stories" or "universal love stories"? I've always assumed -- or at least hoped, for the sake of gay friends -- that the emotions of romance and love are universal enough that a well-done movie pushes the right buttons, regardless of orientation or gender. Or maybe it requires a leap of imagination. I don't know.

But I felt -- or at least hoped -- that I got a taste of that experience with Brokeback Mountain. I'm not one of those straight women who's always had a particular interest in romances involving gay men. To the extent they had crossed my mind at all, I assumed I wouldn't be interested because, well, what was in it for me?? Brokeback Mountain took me completely by surprise, and although I find the love scenes erotic I believe my reaction to the movie was less because of slash or homoeroticism than because, well, it's just simply the greatest love story ever.



 



Offline Ellemeno

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Look what I just found in the Ang Ang Ang thread.  Ang answers this very question, his way:

Question: Do you see them [Wedding Banquet and Brokeback Mountain] as gay films?

Ang Lee: That's a hard question to answer. I do what's truthful to my feelings. I brought some universal feelings, whether you're gay or straight, about love, Chinese family drama, about romance. I think I brought a lot of universality that help the two communities. It's a good gay film for people because it's in the middle of the road. I don't squeeze the characters into gay cinema. I think that's what's good...or not so good. I always try my best when I do a film that feels genuine to me. I put myself in the middle to try to make cinema work.

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,13565.msg265475.html#msg265475

Offline serious crayons

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You know, I have nothing but huge respect for Ang. But I'm always surprised that someone who is, let's say, not the most articulate person, at least when speaking in English, can make movies about British or American culture that are so subtle and nuanced and so minutely, carefully, perfectly detailed ... in English.



Offline Brown Eyes

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I still am trying to figure out exactly what "universal" love really means.  It just seems too general of a term to me.  I don't know how we can know what kind of emotion or experience is truly universal.

I started thinking about this "universal" question a little bit while responding to the "Is BBM anti-gay" thread here in Open Forum.  And, I started to wonder about how the audiences of the film tend to feel in terms of identification with characters in the movie.  The whole question of how an audience member identifies with the protagonist/ main characters in any film is a major, major issue within film studies.  And,  I think one thing that the filmmakers of BBM are very, very successful in doing is finding ways for the audience member (regardless of gender or sexuality) to identify with the two main characters and really begin to experience the situation through their eyes a bit.  And, then I sort of wonder, if this ability of a general audience member (or more specifically any audience member who isn't a gay man) to identify with the social position of closeted gay men might then translate into this idea of "universal" love.  In other words, the general audience member/non-gay-male audience member then experiences the love between Ennis and Jack as something that they too can completely identify with... and therefore the emotion is articulated as "universal" as a way of explaining this phenomenon.

Does this make any sense?  Anyway, I think the whole question of how audiences identify with Ennis or Jack (or both) through the course of the film is really important to this issue of how the love story is perceived.

the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie

Offline serious crayons

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I wanted to link and quote Daniel Mendelsohn's famous piece in The New York Review of Books, complaining about the phenomenon of people calling it a "universal love story." Turns out you have to buy the article to see it online. But here's a paragraph about it:

(Mendelsohn) argued that to see it as a story of “universal human emotions” is to diminish its importance as a “specifically gay tragedy” about “psyches scarred from the very first stirrings of an erotic desire which the world around them… represents as unhealthy, hateful and deadly.”

So I think another factor is whether you see BBM as a love story or a psychological drama/tragedy about homophobia. Personally, I thought Mendelsohn's interpretation was too limiting.


Offline Garry_LH

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Not much I can really ad to this discussion... Other than my road killing a few things I mentioned not long after I first time saw Master Lee's interpretation of Annie Proulx's words.

Missouri is not Wyoming, but there is something so familure about the world Jack and Ennis exist within, that I know most of the characters in this film as though they were my own relatives.  The way of speaking, that cadence, that bravado couched in terms as polite as a good horse, and as dangerous as a rattle snake. These characters are ten years older than I am. Then, I remember the world they grew up in. It had it's good points, just as it sure had it's bad ones.

I guess what I can say is, for the first time in my life I have a film in which I don't have to transpose the love the characters have for one another. I don't even have to think about their way of speaking. I grew up with our own rural northern Missouri version of these two good oll boys. And the real hard part, I dam well knew the fear Ennis had of what would happen if anyone else found out. I think for a lot of us older gay folks, that is a whole lot of what kicks us in the gut with this story. It's like Jack and Ennis are two parts of our own soul. The dreamer that can always see the possibilities in life, and the realist that knows just how fast this world can kill you if you make the wrong move.

A universal love story?  Perhaps mixed race couples of that same period would understand why that feels like a bit of stretch for those of us that ended up with this label called gay, and a lot more far less polite terms. Just one more gay tragedy, a friend of mine said. In a way yes, but unlike the plethora of AIDS tragedies and Mathew Shepard remakes, it is the characters themselves that unwind all hope once they leave their piece of  heaven that fall of 1963. A piece of heaven Ennis can never bring himself to name beyond 'this thing'.  Am I the only one that feels a longing in Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack to put his feelings into words. Even as Jack knows, those very words would send Ennis running for his life.

A universal love story?  What other love can so threaten one's own sense of self, can make one question what it is to be a man or a woman, and drive one to deny that what they are feeling is that undefinable madness we call love?  To never speak those words, I love you? If that is universal, this is one scary world we are living in these days.


It could be like this, just like this... always.

Offline louisev

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for better or worse, it appears Ang Lee struck just the right note in his restrained direction of the film, so that gay viewers could find something of themselves in it, and those who did not directly identify, older straight women, could relate to unrequited love, or love denied, or the road not traveled, to make it a critical as well as a commercial success such as had not happened before.

I was thinking about what you wrote, Amanda, and I think that the identification that people have made with the film becomes universal when they themselves, not being gay or not having been denied the relationship they wanted and needed, are able to understand the frustration, denial, and tragedy in terms of whatever loss they experienced in their own life, and that is their means of identifying.

Some purists have condemned the film as "not being gay enough", or for using very attractive straight male leads instead of gay actors, or for restraining the depictions of sex onscreen, but the fact is that this film may have been only as much as America could handle - and maybe that is something Ang Lee would know more about since he comes from outside the US cultural milieu and has had to learn about it.
“Mr. Coyote always gets me good, boy,”  Ellery said, winking.  “Almost forgot what life was like before I got me my own personal coyote.”


Offline serious crayons

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I was thinking about what you wrote, Amanda, and I think that the identification that people have made with the film becomes universal when they themselves, not being gay or not having been denied the relationship they wanted and needed, are able to understand the frustration, denial, and tragedy in terms of whatever loss they experienced in their own life, and that is their means of identifying.

Well put, Louise. The very fact that so many straight people (even a few straight men) DO identify with it -- not as just an interesting story or well-made film but as a transcending experience that was moving,  romantic, tragic, etc., on a deeply personal level -- suggests that "universal" is at least one of the terms that accurately desdribes it.


Offline brokeplex

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Not much I can really ad to this discussion... Other than my road killing a few things I mentioned not long after I first time saw Master Lee's interpretation of Annie Proulx's words.

Missouri is not Wyoming, but there is something so familure about the world Jack and Ennis exist within, that I know most of the characters in this film as though they were my own relatives.  The way of speaking, that cadence, that bravado couched in terms as polite as a good horse, and as dangerous as a rattle snake. These characters are ten years older than I am. Then, I remember the world they grew up in. It had it's good points, just as it sure had it's bad ones.

I guess what I can say is, for the first time in my life I have a film in which I don't have to transpose the love the characters have for one another. I don't even have to think about their way of speaking. I grew up with our own rural northern Missouri version of these two good oll boys. And the real hard part, I dam well knew the fear Ennis had of what would happen if anyone else found out. I think for a lot of us older gay folks, that is a whole lot of what kicks us in the gut with this story. It's like Jack and Ennis are two parts of our own soul. The dreamer that can always see the possibilities in life, and the realist that knows just how fast this world can kill you if you make the wrong move.

A universal love story?  Perhaps mixed race couples of that same period would understand why that feels like a bit of stretch for those of us that ended up with this label called gay, and a lot more far less polite terms. Just one more gay tragedy, a friend of mine said. In a way yes, but unlike the plethora of AIDS tragedies and Mathew Shepard remakes, it is the characters themselves that unwind all hope once they leave their piece of  heaven that fall of 1963. A piece of heaven Ennis can never bring himself to name beyond 'this thing'.  Am I the only one that feels a longing in Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack to put his feelings into words. Even as Jack knows, those very words would send Ennis running for his life.

A universal love story?  What other love can so threaten one's own sense of self, can make one question what it is to be a man or a woman, and drive one to deny that what they are feeling is that undefinable madness we call love?  To never speak those words, I love you? If that is universal, this is one scary world we are living in these days.




Thanks Gary for your post! I was affected in the same fashion as you by Brokeback. The feeling you are expressing are also mine.Like you I grew up in a small rural town, mine is here in Texas. I am about the same age as you are. I immediately related to the story of Ennis and Jack and felt that I understood them both. I'd like to also have a try at the discussion as to whether Brokeback, both the short story and the movie, are either "Universal" or a "Gay Love Story". And I have a message of hope for men like Ennis who have known a great deal of fear and frustration their entire lives.

At its heart Brokeback is a story of two closeted rural Gay men and their unhappy love affair over the decades. The film and the short story have universal appeal, but at its heart it is a love story of two Gay men. I don't mean to put words in your mouth but I think that like you, I experienced the closet, rural homophobia, and various states
of denial and acceptance thru the years. Like Jack in Brokeback, I had an long running affair with a deeply closeted and homophobic man. I won't go into the details here, but perhaps one day I'll discover a thread on Bettermost that makes me comfortable with relating my decades long love for Chris up to his death in 1999. I read the short story before I saw the movie, but it was the movie that liberated my feelings. I knew immediately that at last I had found "our" story. The story of men who grew up like Ennis and Jack. I most definitely do not deny the elements of universal appeal in Brokeback. I recall watching heterosexual love stories involving frustrated couples in doomed love affairs and I felt for them. An example would be David Lean's 1946 masterpiece "Brief Encounter". I felt so sad for the couple when at their last meeting in the train station before he leaves for S. Africa they knew that they would never meet again.I can relate to them even though I am not heterosexual, and I did not live in a middle class environment in 1946 Britain. But, if I were a woman, or man, who had experienced the strictures that couple encountered at that time in that environment, the movie would have a far greater punch for me. It would be my story, like Brokeback is my story. One of the liberating bi-products of my strongly emotional Brokeback experience is that I now experience movies like "Brief Encounter" much more intensely than I did before.

Now to the hopeful news! What I have found over the last year plus 6 months is a growing number of older gay and bisexual men who grew up in rural homophobic circumstances ,and who have been or are still deeply closeted, that have grabbed on to the Brokeback experience and are now for the first time in their lives able to relate their deepest feelings. I have encountered a number of such men here in the DFW area and also during my summers in Montana. Slowly, these men, because of both Brokeback and their advancing ages are speaking out and seeking each other out. When I speak with these men I always urge them to go online and browse the Brokeback web sites. I am partial to Bettermost and highly recommend it for them. I have noticed over the last 3 months increasing numbers of these previously silent men are joining the ranks of us Bettermostians. Annie Proulx made an interesting comment in her intro to the book / screenplay combo published last year. To paraphrase her, she noted the the highest suicide rate in Wyoming is among single men over 60. There is a very good reason why, many of that number are closeted Gay men, who like Ennis, have lived a life of fear and frustration.Finally, they "just can't take it any more". I believe Brokeback is quietly helping to heal the broken hearts of many men who were previously leading silent frustrated lives. I will retire in December, but I don't intend to sit idle. One of my projects will be to help network and reach out to these many forgotten, largely silent men, who now at long last are finding their voices.

Have a great week!

Offline notBastet

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i finally realized what has been nagging me about this topic all week (apologies I haven't read the previous posts, and I just want to quick say this while the light bulb has clicked on) - can't it be both? A universal love story and a gay love story?  does the question imply that gay love is not universal or vice versa?

okay i'll go read what everyone said now.
“It can be a little distressing to have to overintellectualize yourself” - Heath Ledger

Offline notBastet

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I still am trying to figure out exactly what "universal" love really means.  It just seems too general of a term to me.  I don't know how we can know what kind of emotion or experience is truly universal.

I started thinking about this "universal" question a little bit while responding to the "Is BBM anti-gay" thread here in Open Forum.  And, I started to wonder about how the audiences of the film tend to feel in terms of identification with characters in the movie.  The whole question of how an audience member identifies with the protagonist/ main characters in any film is a major, major issue within film studies.  And,  I think one thing that the filmmakers of BBM are very, very successful in doing is finding ways for the audience member (regardless of gender or sexuality) to identify with the two main characters and really begin to experience the situation through their eyes a bit.  And, then I sort of wonder, if this ability of a general audience member (or more specifically any audience member who isn't a gay man) to identify with the social position of closeted gay men might then translate into this idea of "universal" love.  In other words, the general audience member/non-gay-male audience member then experiences the love between Ennis and Jack as something that they too can completely identify with... and therefore the emotion is articulated as "universal" as a way of explaining this phenomenon.

Does this make any sense?  Anyway, I think the whole question of how audiences identify with Ennis or Jack (or both) through the course of the film is really important to this issue of how the love story is perceived.




yes, what you are saying makes sense to me... 
“It can be a little distressing to have to overintellectualize yourself” - Heath Ledger

Offline notBastet

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Not much I can really ad to this discussion... Other than my road killing a few things I mentioned not long after I first time saw Master Lee's interpretation of Annie Proulx's words.

Missouri is not Wyoming, but there is something so familure about the world Jack and Ennis exist within, that I know most of the characters in this film as though they were my own relatives.  The way of speaking, that cadence, that bravado couched in terms as polite as a good horse, and as dangerous as a rattle snake. These characters are ten years older than I am. Then, I remember the world they grew up in. It had it's good points, just as it sure had it's bad ones.

I guess what I can say is, for the first time in my life I have a film in which I don't have to transpose the love the characters have for one another. I don't even have to think about their way of speaking. I grew up with our own rural northern Missouri version of these two good oll boys. And the real hard part, I dam well knew the fear Ennis had of what would happen if anyone else found out. I think for a lot of us older gay folks, that is a whole lot of what kicks us in the gut with this story. It's like Jack and Ennis are two parts of our own soul. The dreamer that can always see the possibilities in life, and the realist that knows just how fast this world can kill you if you make the wrong move.

A universal love story?  Perhaps mixed race couples of that same period would understand why that feels like a bit of stretch for those of us that ended up with this label called gay, and a lot more far less polite terms. Just one more gay tragedy, a friend of mine said. In a way yes, but unlike the plethora of AIDS tragedies and Mathew Shepard remakes, it is the characters themselves that unwind all hope once they leave their piece of  heaven that fall of 1963. A piece of heaven Ennis can never bring himself to name beyond 'this thing'.  Am I the only one that feels a longing in Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack to put his feelings into words. Even as Jack knows, those very words would send Ennis running for his life.

A universal love story?  What other love can so threaten one's own sense of self, can make one question what it is to be a man or a woman, and drive one to deny that what they are feeling is that undefinable madness we call love?  To never speak those words, I love you? If that is universal, this is one scary world we are living in these days.




This makes sense to me, too.

(how about 'story of gay love unfilled due to homophobia, with universal elements'?)

I guess what makes it 'universal' is even for folks that have not lived the lives of Jack or Ennis, not dealt with love unfulfilled due to homophobia (internalized or otherwise) there is still something deeply personal, emotional, intimate, about their story - that lets them say "I am Ennis" or "I am Jack." I can see (I think) how that may seem trivializing to someone who has more specifically lived the lives of Ennis and Jack, but I still think that is where the universal element comes in...  (I think I am saying the same thing Amanda said, in a more blubbering way...) 

(Addendum - as usual I should have just read ALL the posts before blubbering away.......)
“It can be a little distressing to have to overintellectualize yourself” - Heath Ledger

Offline serious crayons

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i finally realized what has been nagging me about this topic all week (apologies I haven't read the previous posts, and I just want to quick say this while the light bulb has clicked on) - can't it be both? A universal love story and a gay love story?

Yes, my opinion is that it is both. I think the motivation for the topic is that this has become a contentious question for some people (I don't mean here, necessarily -- I'm thinking of Daniel Mendelsohn and others).


Offline Garry_LH

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There is no doubt that Brokeback Mountain has hit a lot of folks in many diffrent ways. My first time, I got to the theater as the previous showing was letting out. Straight couples, of the age Jack and Ennis would be today, with this numb look of near drained shock on their faces. A few women completely falling apart in tears. A group of women, who I would have labled as the 'academic film going club, silent with looks of deep thought on their faces. A cluster of teenage girls, one of them gushing about how she thought Heath was just the hottest guy there is... And those lone men... Many of them looking more at their feet than the world. Like they were just trying to get one foot in front of the other to get out to their cars and pickups. Just hanging on, cuse men don't cry... especially in public, or at least not outside of a darkend theater.

I guess I too believe that that the closer a theatrical experience comes to the reality of our own lives, the more potential it has to move us far beyond what we could have imagined before we experienced it. Even as, such a masterpiece will touch the hearts of all who are at a place in their own lives where they will allow it's Spirit to touch their souls. What ever Brokeback Mountain is, it is a gift from Spirit for those that are ready to see, hear, and feel its power in their own lives. It is for me nothing less than sacred.
It could be like this, just like this... always.

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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         I have only this short...it will be,,,heheh....thing to say..I think what makes it universal, is the universal truths it
shows.  How all people can be affected in these kinds of ways that are depicted.
         I so happens that the two protagonists are gay, which added an extra dimension, that the gay population could,
readily connect to.  It I think is a universal story, with a gay core.



     Beautiful mind

Offline jstephens9

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Am I the only one that feels a longing in Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack to put his feelings into words. Even as Jack knows, those very words would send Ennis running for his life.

Garry,

You have some excellent thoughts about the movie and the question. I wanted to answer that yes I did feel the longing in Jack to explain the feelings in words to Ennis. But instead, he had to make things seem as less threatening as he could. I believe he feared that by going too far he would destroy what they did have. It wasn't even a quarter as much as what Jack wanted, but it was something. Feelings to preserve what you have with someone can many times lead to not telling them completely what is on your mind.

Offline Bucky

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I think Jack and Ennis' love story is both a universal love story and a gay love story.  I think that when Jack and Ennis worked for Aguirre on Brokeback Mountain that both of them had experienced lonely childhoods with dads who were unfeeling and Ennis had no parents at all after a certain age and had to be raised by his sister and brother.  Somehow Jack and Ennis had found in each other something special that they both understood.  On Brokeback Mountain they could be themselves and love openly but after they came down from Brokeback Mountain reality had set in which was harder for Ennis to cope with it seems to me than Jack.  The reality was that because society was as it was that their love could never be so Ennis married Alma and Jack eventually married Lureen.  Yet their feelings for one another on the inside was as strong as ever and in reality they loved each other more than anyone else even though Ennis spent enough time trying to deny it.  It was a strong love but a forbidden love and after Jack died Ennis spent a lot of time in regret for a life time of denying that he loved Jack and what might have been.

Offline Artiste

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More news ??

Or is it a hate-crime story because these, one or more are gays (homosexual or bisexual men)?