Author Topic: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris  (Read 45604 times)

Offline brokeplex

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Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« on: December 30, 2007, 09:28:03 pm »
I read all of the essays in "Reading Brokeback Mountain", ed. Jim Stacy. I urge all Brokies to read this book.

Essay # 9 "Broke(n)back Faggots: Hollywood Gives Queers a Hobson's Choice" by W.C. Harris grabbed my attention.

Harris's essay has two themes that interest me:

1) The short story "Brokeback Mountain" is not a universal love story, it is essentially a gay story. But, the film has made a departure from that mode and was heteronormed by McMurtry, Ossana and Ang Lee. Many of the additions added in the screenplay show aspects of the lives of Ennis and Jack that heteronorm the film in order to appeal to a larger audience. Harris sites an excellent article by Daniel Mendelsohn, "An Affair to Remember" appearing in the New York Review of Books on 02/23/06

www.nybooks.com/articles/18712

In Mendelsohn's article he opines that the "universality" of the "Brokeback" story is not only deniable, but also  dangerous. And by accepting its "universality" we diminish its real achievement - a beautiful and distinctively Gay love story, not easily equated with a heterosexual liaison. Mendelsohn's contention is that in denying the gay reality of the story and declaring that it is a "love" story, not a "gay" story, just "pushes them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed."

I urge interested Brokies to read Mendelsohn article, and a follow up from Focus Features James Schamus also on NY Rev of Books (04/0/06)

2) Also in the Harris essay under the subtitle, "An Ambivalent Polemic" Harris advances the idea that "Brokeback Mountain", both short story and film, advances an Anti-Gay polemic.

"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."

Harris asks, why was it necessary to kill of Jack in order for Proulx to make her point?

"Brokeback stands as an anti-gay polemic inasmuch as it depicts, albeit in the tragic register, the deleterious effects of violent homophobia as well as the heteronormative imperatives to marry, to perform one's gender and sexuality in prescribed ways. Likewise, we should be careful to distinguish the brutality of Jack's death, a brutality necessary to Ennis's terrified vision of the world, from the unnecessary brutality of Proulx's decision, as the writer, to kill off Jack, when Ennis's emotional and erotic isolation is long complete, and complete without such a price being paid."

Its an old formula in films and books that appeal to the mass market, at least one of the gay guys has to die. 

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #1 on: December 30, 2007, 11:48:22 pm »
Thanks for that summary, Brokeplex.

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.

Quote
"Brokeback stands as an anti-gay polemic inasmuch as it depicts, albeit in the tragic register, the deleterious effects of violent homophobia as well as the heteronormative imperatives to marry, to perform one's gender and sexuality in prescribed ways.


I'm sorry, but, hunh?  ??? I hope he clarifies that point because I sure don't see how depicting "the deleterious efects of violent homophobia" makes the story an "anti-gay polemic."  ???
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Shakesthecoffecan

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2007, 12:08:16 am »
Lots of good points raised here. Why did Jack have to die?

Proulx has said the story is about the effect of rural homophobia, but viewed from another angle I can see it being an anti gay tale, along the lines of Spegleman's Maus and Maus II could be viewed as anti semetic. Neither is the case however. They speak to a certain time and place for both Jews and Homosexuals, giving glimpse into their worlds and how they delt with the horrors inflicted on them by a larger society.

Why did Jack have to die? Because people sometimes die because they are homosexuals. Matthew Shepard, attacked and left for dead in Wyoming the year following the publishing of the short story, one example.

I think what makes it a tale of hope, and not and anti gay story is that peoples hearts and minds have started to open, can you imagine the same tale being told in the 1950s?  Would there have been crowds applauding Jack's lynching? I don't know. Would it have followed in the tradition of Story Time, showing homosexuals as pathetic and to be pittied? I dunno.
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Offline myprivatejack

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2007, 07:50:47 am »
The story can be seen,effectively,as an anti-gay tale emotionally speaking; I personally am fed up with these stories ending with one of the protagonists dead or,at least,parted with each other-what to say about stories with the stereotype of a effeminate gay or,worst still,a perverted gay?  >:( - .But I also understand that the "happy ending" with an idyllic landscape,flowers growing,birds singing and a marriage in Canada ( :laugh:)would not have had the same effect,let's say, exemplary against intolerance and hate.Hence these two sides;if you can't read it so,it falls into the most seen topics.But if you read between the lines perhaps the denounce would be more effective than  if it ended well,perhaps Ennis would have experimented such a change in the end-change not completely useless by the fact that Jack,his love,was dead;the change would serve for himself,no matter with whom he was from that moment  on-.MHO.
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Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #4 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!

When I did create such a thread as maybe the BM movie was anti-gay, some were angry (or I seem to read that), some were puzzled by such a question I was posing, some did not at all want to dwell on that as a subject...
Now you all seem to be awakened with this... so maybe somehow I was awakening some of you?? The Annie story and the movie does awake us, to pro-gay and/or anti-gay as issues?? Previously, some on Bettermost even told me off when I was using the gay word or gay subjects issues!!

Regarding the W.C. Harris essay, I did not hear nor read it!! I used so far my own brains to analyse the book and movie!! And continue that way... for now.

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??

Was LOVE in a way, the only Hollywood film which was a bit pro-gay?? Anyone seen that movie?? Or was it also a bit anti-gay too??

Famous people can help gays, surely. Inspire us gay men to be gay men!! At least, Jake did try by dressing up with a dress and sing on YouTube thanking us gay men for helping him by seeing the BM movie?? Is Jake G. straight??

Anyway, Harris has maybe a subject that needs to be examined?? !!

Hugs!! May found memories about Ennis and Jake continue in 2007 and 2008 and be wonderful gay ones!! Full of caring and hugs!!





Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2008, 04:25:45 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.
 


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.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2008, 04:37:03 pm »
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??







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".

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2008, 05:28:03 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?

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.

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."

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.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline SFEnnisSF

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2008, 05:42:26 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."



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...

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #9 on: January 02, 2008, 05:47:01 pm »
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!!


Offline SFEnnisSF

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #10 on: January 02, 2008, 06:06:10 pm »

Maybe the BM movie is a mask for anti-gay issues? Dare I ask!! ?? Much can be said... yes??



Hmmm...  I don't think I would take it that far.  

Here's what I think:  Brokeback Mountain is brutally honest, and shows all aspects of the situation.  It's a tragedy.  It's not a happy story, for any of the characters.  It's also told open-narritively and is ambiguous.  What this allows is for many different ways to look at the piece of work.  

If you want to look at it as anti-gay, then it is.  If you want to look at it as a story of infidelity, then it is.  And if you want to look at it as a romance, then it is...   Whatever life experiences you bring to this movie, is what you'll get out of it.

One of my facinations has always been asking folks "What did you see in Brokeback Mountain?  What did you identify with?  How did it affect you?"  etc.   I've never gotten the same answer twice.  ;)

Offline SFEnnisSF

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #11 on: January 02, 2008, 06:09:57 pm »
^^ Excellent post Gary.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #12 on: January 02, 2008, 08:07:04 pm »
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??
....

I am saying--I thought clearly--that I cannot believe that anyone who has read Annie Proulx's essay, "Getting Movied," included in the book Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay, can possibly be serious in believing that either the short story--or the film made from it--was intended as an "anti-gay polemic." To believe that it is intended as an anti-gay polemic is to call Annie Proulx a liar about her own work.

Can I be any clearer?
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #13 on: January 03, 2008, 01:42:16 am »
I am saying--I thought clearly--that I cannot believe that anyone who has read Annie Proulx's essay, "Getting Movied," included in the book Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay, can possibly be serious in believing that either the short story--or the film made from it--was intended as an "anti-gay polemic." To believe that it is intended as an anti-gay polemic is to call Annie Proulx a liar about her own work.

Can I be any clearer?

You are clear, and I don't think that either Harris or Mendelsohn are saying that Proulx or for that matter Ang Lee deliberately created an anti-gay polemic. To sum them up without again offering the substantiating quotations I used in my above posts, I think that they are both indicating that Proulx and Ang Lee are responding to market forces. Proulx by providing the ending expected by a largely straight readership, and Ang Lee / McMurtry-Ossana by heteronorming the story.

You ask how could anyone see an anti-gay polemic after reading "Getting Movied"?  Yes, I read that essay very carefully.

I ask you, have you read the Harris essay and the article by Mendelsohn?  I urge every Brokie to read both. And read all of the other essays in "Reading Brokeback Mountain". These are very thoughtful pieces which shed a great deal of light on the short story and the movie, and it TRUE impact on society.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #14 on: January 03, 2008, 10:16:40 am »
You are clear, and I don't think that either Harris or Mendelsohn are saying that Proulx or for that matter Ang Lee deliberately created an anti-gay polemic. To sum them up without again offering the substantiating quotations I used in my above posts, I think that they are both indicating that Proulx and Ang Lee are responding to market forces. Proulx by providing the ending expected by a largely straight readership, and Ang Lee / McMurtry-Ossana by heteronorming the story.

You ask how could anyone see an anti-gay polemic after reading "Getting Movied"?  Yes, I read that essay very carefully.

I'm sorry, but I'm not clear on what you mean here. Are you saying you do see an anti-gay polemic?

Quote
I ask you, have you read the Harris essay and the article by Mendelsohn?  I urge every Brokie to read both. And read all of the other essays in "Reading Brokeback Mountain". These are very thoughtful pieces which shed a great deal of light on the short story and the movie, and it TRUE impact on society.

I don't read literary criticism, and very little movie criticism, either. Time is limited, after all, and most of my limited reading time is spent reading history. I'm not sure I need to read it to feel that the best person to respond to a charge of "providing the ending expected by a largely straight readership" is Annie Proulx herself. It might also be useful to know more about the publication history of the story, too. Was it rejected anywhere before it was published in The New Yorker? I've been reading The New Yorker for more than a quarter of a century and I see no reason to alter my position that readers of that magazine are far too sophisticated to need a story ending where the gays end up miserable or dead. Considering that Annie Proulx's stated purpose is to tell a tale of the effects of rural homophobia, it's difficult to see how the story could have had any other ending; "happily ever after" would have been implausible, and then it would not have been the story that Annie set out to tell.

I will admit, however, that it might be useful to make sure I have a clear understanding of what these writers mean by "anti-gay polemic" and "heteronorming"--and what it is that McMurtry and Osana and Lee did that they consider "heteronorming."

Edit to Add: Just to explain myself a bit, and at the risk of straying off topic, my attitude toward literary criticsm (and by extension film criticism) was formed when I had to write a paper on Macbeth for my Shakespeare class in college. Even as I wrote it I knew it was nothing more than an intellectual exercise, ultimately signifying nothing--and not just because I was only an undergraduate writing a paper for a professor to satisfy a class requirement. The thought that came to me then was, If this is just an intellectual exercise for me, why should it be any different just because someone is a professional or has academic credentials?

So having read "Brokeback Mountain" so often that at one point I practically had it memorized, and having read Annie's commentary on it (and a couple of interviews with Annie, too), and having watched the film numerous times in the theater and on DVD, my own opinion is that the idea that the story is an "anti-gay polemic," an attack on homosexuality per se--"gay is bad, first thing we do is kill all the fags"--is absurd on the face of it. As for "heteronorming," well, Ennis and Jack are married, they have wives and children. That's the way Annie wrote the story. Are these critics criticizing her for not writing the story they think she should have written?
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Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #15 on: January 03, 2008, 12:22:01 pm »
Wow, wow, wow!! Thanks very much for your comments!! They are food for thought!!

I will come back to those later, since I have to take away snow off the truck and/or car, and bring mother for grocery shopping soon. So remind me if I forget to answer any of your questions, please.

One thing troubles  me a great deal, and still does about the BM movie, which can be seen maybe as anti-gay:
That thing I hate about the BM movie is not only the killing of Jack as if he was murdered or not because he was gay or bi, but mostly the trailer showing what is in that film as too much gratuitous violence especially concerning the murder of the man who lived with the other!! No one talks about that!! No one dares!!

Awaiting your comments,

hugs!! Happy Gay New 2008 Year to all gay men and others on Earth for freedom and peace!!

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #16 on: January 03, 2008, 03:55:31 pm »

I'm sorry, but I'm not clear on what you mean here. Are you saying you do see an anti-gay polemic?

I'm not sure I need to read it to feel that the best person to respond to a charge of "providing the ending expected by a largely straight readership" is Annie Proulx herself.

I will admit, however, that it might be useful to make sure I have a clear understanding of what these writers mean by "anti-gay polemic" and "heteronorming"--and what it is that McMurtry and Osana and Lee did that they consider "heteronorming."

[. As for "heteronorming," well, Ennis and Jack are married, they have wives and children. That's the way Annie wrote the story. Are these critics criticizing her for not writing the story they think she should have written?


I am offering the essay written by Harris for everyone's consideration, and debate. Part of the Harris thesis is that there elements in the short story which constitute an "anti-gay polemic". My own personal opinion is that there is merit to this argument. I do not believe that Proulx deliberately set out to write an anti-gay story, by no means!

But I do see as the murder of Jack as unnecessary in order to achieve a goal of illustrating the destructiveness of the closet and rural homophobia. In fact in many ways, after Ennis's flashbacks to the murder of Rich, the murder of Jack is predictable to the point of formulaic banality. I didn't like that segment in the story or the movie at all. Jack 'giving up' Ennis to live with Randall on his father's ranch would have completed Ennis's devastation in a more believable way for me. Gosh, does a story have to end with the death of the queer in order to make the point about the destructiveness of the closet?  Relatively very few gay men have been killed with tire irons, relatively few have been murdered, but many, many more have suffered the devastation that the closet brings to people like Ennis. Why not tell a more realistic story that would relate more closely to lives of more gay men? Well, it just wasn't in the formula, I guess.

I am very interested in the commentary of Proulx and also have read much of what she has said about the story and the film. But why should we rely on her as a final source of commentary? Doesn't she have a bias?  Shouldn't we balance this out with critics who may be biased in different ways?

The heteronorming comment made by several critics including Mendelsohn is shown in the "fleshing out the domestic life of Ennis and Jack" (McMurtry's words) in the screen play. Why was it necessary to augment the domestic lives of the boys? Proulx's short story was sparse in its treatment of the boys domestic lives, we learn very little about Lureen in Proulx's story. The reason offered by Mendelsohn for the heteronorming of the film is that it made it more marketable. It turned a gay story into a "universal love story". I agree at least partially with Mendelsohn that this is deleterious to the gay story. Making the 'gay experience' seem more normal to mainstream America  is what Mendelsohn refers to as heteronorming the story. By denying that this is a "gay cowboy story" we push their gay experience back further into a closet of the imagination. The story of Ennis and Jack just isn't universal, it just isn't comparable to a straight love affair. The film critic  Ebert has suggested it analogs with an interracial romance. This betrays a lack of understanding as to what really is the experience of being in the closet. The closet teaches young men and women to hate themselves for their natural biological urges that they can do nothing to change, they can only hide it, secretly engage in it, and hate themselves. An interracial couple may have enormous challenges that their experiences bring to the table, but they are not taught to hate themselves in the ways that gays are from childhood onward. 

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #17 on: January 03, 2008, 04:50:25 pm »
Thanks for the clarifications and expansions, bud.  ;)

I am offering the essay written by Harris for everyone's consideration, and debate. Part of the Harris thesis is that there elements in the short story which constitute an "anti-gay polemic". My own personal opinion is that there is merit to this argument. I do not believe that Proulx deliberately set out to write an anti-gay story, by no means!

I'm glad to see we don't disagree on this.  :)

Quote
But I do see as the murder of Jack as unnecessary in order to achieve a goal of illustrating the destructiveness of the closet and rural homophobia. In fact in many ways, after Ennis's flashbacks to the murder of Rich, the murder of Jack is predictable to the point of formulaic banality. I didn't like that segment in the story or the movie at all. Jack 'giving up' Ennis to live with Randall on his father's ranch would have completed Ennis's devastation in a more believable way for me. Gosh, does a story have to end with the death of the queer in order to make the point about the destructiveness of the closet?  Relatively very few gay men have been killed with tire irons, relatively few have been murdered, but many, many more have suffered the devastation that the closet brings to people like Ennis. Why not tell a more realistic story that would relate more closely to lives of more gay men? Well, it just wasn't in the formula, I guess.

Now, this is interesting, and I'm glad to have your take on it. What you see as "predictable to the point of formulaic banality," I see as necessary, not so much to make the point of the destructiveness of rural homophobia, but because of the mythic, or legendary, or folk-tale quality to the way Annie Proulx wrote the story--as I wrote yesterday.

Quote
I am very interested in the commentary of Proulx and also have read much of what she has said about the story and the film. But why should we rely on her as a final source of commentary? Doesn't she have a bias?  Shouldn't we balance this out with critics who may be biased in different ways?

Well, my take would be that we rely on Annie Proulx as the final word because it's her story. As a corollary of my dislike of "lit crit," I also dislike critics who think they know more about a work of art than the artist who created it in the first place. Trust me, I've gotten into fearsome debates on this point on this site.  :laugh: But that's just me.

Quote
The heteronorming comment made by several critics including Mendelsohn is shown in the "fleshing out the domestic life of Ennis and Jack" (McMurtry's words) in the screen play. Why was it necessary to augment the domestic lives of the boys? Proulx's short story was sparse in its treatment of the boys domestic lives, we learn very little about Lureen in Proulx's story. The reason offered by Mendelsohn for the heteronorming of the film is that it made it more marketable. It turned a gay story into a "universal love story". I agree at least partially with Mendelsohn that this is deleterious to the gay story.

OK, thanks, I didn't misunderstand what was meant by "heteronorming." But I do wonder how Mendelsohn would have transferred Annie's brief description of the growing distance between Ennis and Alma to film otherwise than McMurtry and Osana did. I'm thinking, for example, of the line in the story where we are told that Alma disliked that Ennis never wanted to go out and have any fun, versus the scene in the film where Alma wants to "smarten up" and go to the church social, and Ennis just mumbles that remark about the "fire and brimstone crowd. Personally I simply don't have a problem with this so-called "heteronorming," regardless of the effect it may have had on the "gay story," because I think it was part and parcel of the artful realization of Annie's story on film--a very different medium from a short story.

I guess they felt it necessary to create more of Jack's life in Texas to balance the story--make it less of just Ennis's story--though even here I think, for example, you can trace the scene where Jack is demonstrating the combine to Annie's brief description of Jack's work in the farm machinery business.

Quote
Making the 'gay experience' seem more normal to mainstream America  is what Mendelsohn refers to as heteronorming the story. By denying that this is a "gay cowboy story" we push their gay experience back further into a closet of the imagination. The story of Ennis and Jack just isn't universal, it just isn't comparable to a straight love affair. The film critic  Ebert has suggested it analogs with an interracial romance. This betrays a lack of understanding as to what really is the experience of being in the closet. The closet teaches young men and women to hate themselves for their natural biological urges that they can do nothing to change, they can only hide it, secretly engage in it, and hate themselves. An interracial couple may have enormous challenges that their experiences bring to the table, but they are not taught to hate themselves in the ways that gays are from childhood onward. 

This is wise. Is this you, Brokeplex, or Mendelsohn?
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #18 on: January 03, 2008, 07:55:58 pm »
I'm sure that Proulx has many valuable insights, and what she has to say about her own story is well worth considering, but stories come from the subconscious by and large, and the reason writers feel the need to write their stories is because it's a way of working something out that haunts them.  I heard the writer Gore Vidal say in an interview recently that we write to know what we think.  I would add that we write to know what we feel, too.

Since inspiration is often a mystery to a writer it is very possible, even probable that someone else could understand something the writer does not.  And furthermore, stories are interactive.  We don't come to them as blank slates.  A writer writes the story that is in his/her head, but when we read it we make the story our own.  The spin a reader puts on a story can be just as worthy of examination as the story itself.

Sure enough, but I don't think examining what a reader gets out of a story is  the same thing as claiming that the reader understands the story better than its author. As for the rest, it may depend a lot on what, exactly, one is talking about in a particular story. For example, if a writer makes a positive statement about the motivation behind something that a character created by that writer does in a story written by that writer, then I think it's nonsense for some so-called critic to come back and say, "No, that's not why he did thus-and-such. This is why he did it" That's what I was talking about.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #19 on: January 04, 2008, 12:06:39 am »
Gary,

This thread is about the possible motives AP had in killing off Jack at the end of her story, and the motives of the screenwriters and the director for making the kind of film that they did.  It's been said that they were trying to appeal to a straight audience, and they were trying to make their story more profitable, etc.  I find this disturbing, and I don't see any reason to assume that there's any truth to these claims.

On this we agree. 

Quote
But criticism in a literary sense does not necessarily mean a negative, or personal attack.  Even though most of us here are not professional literary scholars, a lot of what we say about BBM is a form of criticism, in the broader sense of the term.  And I happen to like reading what people make of the story, and I think it does have value.  Reading other people's opinions and interpretations has expanded my own view of the story.  For example, it would make my day if I found a post that gave fresh insight into the meaning of Ennis's encounter with the bear.

So your statements about the worthlessness of literary criticism seemed overstated to me, and I didn't want you to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I think you are missing my point, and I'm sorry if I wasn't as clear as I thought I was. If I wasn't interested in other people's opinions I wouldn't be on this site. Go back and reread my little anecdote about the revelation I had when writing a paper on Macbeth for a Shakespeare class. My objection in particular is to professional and/or academic criticism--the sort of stuff written by people who get essays published in volumes of criticism--which I think is little more than an academic con game--though I also simply can't and don't agree that anyone, amateur or professional, can know more about a work of art--or the artist's motivations--than the artist himself.

I didn't overstate my position. I said exactly what I mean. I have no time or use for professional/academic literary criticism.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #20 on: January 04, 2008, 01:21:45 am »

Well, my take would be that we rely on Annie Proulx as the final word because it's her story. As a corollary of my dislike of "lit crit," I also dislike critics who think they know more about a work of art than the artist who created it in the first place. Trust me, I've gotten into fearsome debates on this point on this site.  :laugh: But that's just me.



Hi Jeff, I am glad to see that several people have an interest in essay # 9  from "Reading Brokeback Mountain" !

Like all brokies, I too am  interested in AP's insights on how and why she wrote BM. I can't see however the reasons for treating this work as if it exists in a vacuum. No work of art or literature exists entirely in the mind of its creator, otherwise we could not know it. The creation of BM was influenced not only by the input that AP has chosen to share with us, but by any number of possible inputs she may have chosen to withhold from us, or that she may not even be aware of.

Harris for the short story, like Mendelsohn for the film, is simply "fleshing out" those inputs, and the consequences as their existence.

For me it does not diminish the impact or the beauty of BM the story or the film to realize that both have an anti-gay subtext, and also that the film makers and the marketers of the film have deliberately heteronormed both the film and its post-production marketing. We live in a world that is 95% plus heterosexual. We live in a world that finds it difficult to understand much less empathise with the experiences and lives of homosexuals. We live in a world that is still and will remain for some time yet very homophobic. The anti-gay component in allowing the death of Jack in the story line, and in the heteronorming of the lives of the boys in the film are a logical consequence of the marketing this short story and this movie to general audiences. Otherwise, the film would have been a small art house flick, if made at all.

I'd like to quote from a passage by Harris,

"Brokeback is, in fact, eerily descriptive of the present state of gay Americans. What seems troublingly apropos is Ennis del Mar's sense that, outside of the open spaces "up on Brokeback," there is no place in the world he knows for him and Jack Twist to love one another - no place that is not inimical, hostile, murderous. ...gay men are still vilified by the culture - if not outright, then by the bare fact that, regardless of not everyone taking it seriously, pundits and policy makers are still debating whether or not gays and lesbians deserve human rights accorded to the republic's other citizens."

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #21 on: January 04, 2008, 10:19:41 am »
For me it does not diminish the impact or the beauty of BM the story or the film to realize that both have an anti-gay subtext, and also that the film makers and the marketers of the film have deliberately heteronormed both the film and its post-production marketing. We live in a world that is 95% plus heterosexual. We live in a world that finds it difficult to understand much less empathise with the experiences and lives of homosexuals. We live in a world that is still and will remain for some time yet very homophobic. The anti-gay component in allowing the death of Jack in the story line, and in the heteronorming of the lives of the boys in the film are a logical consequence of the marketing this short story and this movie to general audiences. Otherwise, the film would have been a small art house flick, if made at all.

I think there is a difference between creating the story or film and marketing it, and I question whether the two should be lumped together. In fact, I'm sure I read somewhere that Focus Features deliberately premarketed the film to older women--presumably because they were assumed to be susceptible to a sad love story.

But perhaps what has been eating me for days about all this talk of heteronorming the story or film and making them acceptable to straight audiences is that I don't see these charges as criticizing the work or works of art. No, it's criticizing the artist or artists--and I feel this is wrong. Just plain wrong--not to mention my already clearly stated opinion that both ideas are absurd on the face of it. (I'm trying to be polite here; I might have called them bullshit.  ;) )

For one final time I'll remind readers where "Brokeback Mountain" was first published; a magazine that regularly publishes Paul Rudnick and David Sedaris (who frequently talks about his male partner) does not need to be concerned that gay characters in a story have to end up miserable or dead for the story to be acceptable to its readers. I will also suggest that accusing Larry McMurtry and Diana Osana of heteronorming the story by creating scenes showing Ennis and Jack with their families--scenes that, in Ennis's case at least, are implicit in Annie Proulx's text--argues an ignorance of what is involved in translating a work of art from one medium to another, or a willful ingoring of that just to be provocative and get published.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #22 on: January 04, 2008, 12:28:29 pm »
You surprise me by your last comment Jeff Wrangler!! May I say!!

And may I add: In a way or many ways, the film is hetero-norming indeed... I find!! I do not see why we can not accept that, especially not talk about that hetero-norming!! The BM film is not a sacred cow!! Neither do I see why we can not view it that way: hetero-norming; at least discuss it, since we are for freedom, and it seems to me that the film tried to free some charaters of it as well as some of us as viewers!! Have the producers, script writers, its directors and actors, etc., did they try enough; not in my book!! Great is never enough!!

I can see many values in the BM film!! I am seeing it as anti-gay as well as pro-gay... for now.

Even if some of us (and I too) see the BM movie as an bible for pro-gay, that bible is still not finished!!

That film can be seen as an essay? So can Annie's boook as an essay?

Hugs to you and to all too!! May we all be positive for gay living!!

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #23 on: January 04, 2008, 02:32:41 pm »
I think Jeff hit the nail on the head.  You can analyze the story and the film all you want -- even if you do have a Ph.D. after your name  ;) -- but all this talk about heteronorming, and using tired cliches to appeal to straight audiences, and trying to make the story more profitable, etc. seems less of a critique of the story and film and more of a personal attack on the writer and those who adapted it for the screen.  I think that's wrong, and I don't see any reason to impugn the character of Proulx, McMurtry, Osana, or Lee.  I think they gave us something from their heart, and it seems like a true and honest gift.  If you don't like the gift then fine, but there's no need to slap the person who gave it to you.

Thank you, Gary. That's real nice of you to say so.  :)

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I think the way one goes about this sort of thing can make a difference. For example, one could write, "The added scenes showing Ennis and Jack with their wives and children heteronorm the film and make it more acceptable to a wider audience." That's just a statement, an observation and critique about the film; put that way, I'm not even sure I could object to it.

But to write, perhaps, "The scenes added by McMurtry and Osana showing Ennis and Jack with their wives and children heteronorm the film, make it more acceptable to a wider audience, and diminish its significance," in my view, moves from a critique of the film to an attack on the screenwriters, and this I think is wrong.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #24 on: January 04, 2008, 02:35:55 pm »
Some have said they don't understand why Jack had to die.  Well, I hate the fact that Jack died, too.  But as I said in my earlier post, I think Jack had to die so that Ennis could finally accept Jack's love.  I seriously doubt that if Jack left Ennis this would have done anything other than shove Ennis further into the closet, and make him hate himself all the more.  Ennis feels the world despises him, and becasue of that he despises himself.  But there is one countervailing influence to all this in his life, and that's Jack.  If Jack had reject him what hope would there have been for Ennis?
This is an excellent observation, Gary. In all his isolation and loneliness, Ennis at the end at least realizes that he has known true and fully reciprocal love. It is very possible that he may never have known this had Jack merely quit him and moved on. Jack's death can even be seen as an unintended sacrifice that enables Ennis to become truly aware of who and what he is...one of the greatest attainments of an examined life.

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #25 on: January 04, 2008, 05:40:50 pm »
Thanks all of you!!

Gaycottle, you say: No film or story is perfect, or perfectly suited for an individual's tastes or needs.
......

So may I say that the BM movie is therefore, as I see it for now, one which is a bit too much hetero!!
Some viewers even do call the two main charaters (Ennis and Jack) hetero men !!

At least the film is a start to help gay men and others?? !!

Much can be said. The BM movie is possibly our first somewhat sacred cow for many gay men, including myself!! Maybe that is just wishfull thinking on my part??

There are more and more anti-gay issues or ways (or something like that) that I see in it, however. Is that hetero-norming the film writers or director did??

Many questions remain to be asked and to be answered. One must keep an open mind... like you all say. The movie rings some freedom, but for whom mostly: for straights, for ladies, for bi-s, for gays, for children, for society in general??????

I hope and pray that is it not mainly for violence or for homophobia to become worst in our so-called civilisations!! ??

Awaiting your news,
hugs!!  May we allon Earth be helped by the Brokeback Mountain movie in wondrous ways!!

Offline Luvlylittlewing

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #26 on: January 04, 2008, 10:03:18 pm »
I think Jeff hit the nail on the head.  You can analyze the story and the film all you want -- even if you do have a Ph.D. after your name  ;) -- but all this talk about heteronorming, and using tired cliches to appeal to straight audiences, and trying to make the story more profitable, etc. seems less of a critique of the story and film and more of a personal attack on the writer and those who adapted it for the screen.  I think that's wrong, and I don't see any reason to impugn the character of Proulx, McMurtry, Osana, or Lee.  I think they gave us something from their heart, and it seems like a true and honest gift.  If you don't like the gift then fine, but there's no need to slap the person who gave it to you.

Artisti said, "The BM film is not a sacred cow."  That's true.  And no one is saying you have to like it in whole, or in every part or aspect.  No film or story is perfect, or perfectly suited for an individual's tastes or needs.  All of life is ambiguous.  You are free to talk about your reactions and thoughts concerning the story and film, and you're entitled to your opinion.  But so am I.  And I loved BBM and I don't think it's anti gay.     

 

Very well said, Gary.  I have been following this thread for 2 days now, and I agree with everything you and Jeff have said.  I am straight and I think its wrong to say that straight people couldn't identify with BBM without showing both men with their wives and kids.  I think this is just wrong.

Offline Oregondoggie

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #27 on: January 04, 2008, 10:49:05 pm »
I think Jeff hit the nail on the head.  You can analyze the story and the film all you want -- even if you do have a Ph.D. after your name  ;) -- but all this talk about heteronorming, and using tired cliches to appeal to straight audiences, and trying to make the story more profitable, etc. seems less of a critique of the story and film and more of a personal attack on the writer and those who adapted it for the screen.  I think that's wrong, and I don't see any reason to impugn the character of Proulx, McMurtry, Osana, or Lee.  I think they gave us something from their heart, and it seems like a true and honest gift.  If you don't like the gift then fine, but there's no need to slap the person who gave it to you.



Right on!  The structure of the story, the power of the tragedy, would be destroyed, ruined, without the death of Jack.  No trip to Lightning Flat by Ennis and no discovering the shirts.  The whole story is enfolded in those shirts, imprinted in blood.  They are Veronica's veil, as it were.

Secondly, if Jack had simply left Ennis and were living, with or without Randall, I doubt if the panel of the dream would slide forward that opens the short story.  Nor would Jack begin to appear in the dreams at the end of the story, after he finds the shirts.

Sorry W.C. Harris, Brokeback Mountain is not an anti-gay polemic.  You've just got to stand it, Boy.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2008, 02:13:34 am by Oregondoggie »

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #28 on: January 04, 2008, 11:07:09 pm »
     I think this story is a gay story true enough...But it has so much more than that.  It takes all parts of it
to make the impact so strong. When you claim it is just that, it  does a disservice to every one of the people
that are not gay that fell in love with it as well.  I am one of those people.  I can say there are so many layers
to that story, that you can after two years, still find new depths to the meanings in it.
      I am sorry that those that want to claim it for a gay only entity.  They demean all that they may recieve, in
its other ways as well.  It is a very powerful statement of human condition.  It has love and pain and the whole
damn thing in there.  Its not a story to try and say gays are better or worse than anyone else.  I think it is
just telling a story about two beautiful young men, that fell in love.  The pain and sorrow it shows them going
through, is making us see how things should be and could be better for all.  If people could just leave love
to work itself out.  Without, all the negative outside issues other people bring to bear on that love.  Let be, let be.
        I get frustrated  at folks that are unhappy with it not being gay enough.  Or it being too shocking, or not
sympathetic enough to Jack, or Ennis.  Or not paying off the mean people, like Aguirre...It can not in the time frame of a short story or movie, tell every little issue that they wish to cover completely...It opens the
little windows, and moves on, leaving you the ability to look further, if you have the inclination to do so.
It is never going to answer all the questions, or be militant enough for some...And for others it is too militant, and shoving something in their face.
         It is a beautiful piece of fiction and a wonderful film.  Amazingly rendered by the writers, the film makers and the beautiful actors.  It came together at a specific time and place, and built a piece that will live forever.
It is a glorious entity, and we should appreciate it for what it does...not tear it down for what we think it
didn't do, that we as individuals might like to have seen differently.....That is selfish in my estimation.
         I suppose I need to clarify, better.  I too feel that Jack had to die.  I think he was the savior that Ennis
may be redeemed.  I have stated this in other threads before..There are so many references to him being the good shephard...Carrying the sheep on his shoulders, and crossing over the symbolic and literal river...With the
weight on his shoulders, is to me the most obvious.  His helping the lamb with the thorn, and many more that are obvious portrayals...  Without his death, the entirety would have been rather meaningless.  He offered himself up, both figuratively and literally for Ennis's salvation.
          Sorry if this steps on any toes.. 



     Beautiful mind

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #29 on: January 04, 2008, 11:23:41 pm »
The sheer variety of people, regardless of age, gender, or sexual orientation, who have fallen in love with this film and this story, who have had their lives touched and changed and enriched by this film and this story, and who participate in this community as a result of this film and this story, is proof enough of the universal appeal of both "Brokeback Mountain" the story and Brokeback Mountain the film, any academic critic to the contrary notwithstanding.  :)
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #30 on: January 04, 2008, 11:28:37 pm »




    I agree Jeff.  And it rather trivializes the thing to try and compartmentalize it.  No matter how learned the
person making the statement.



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Offline Luvlylittlewing

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #31 on: January 05, 2008, 01:01:35 am »
The sheer variety of people, regardless of age, gender, or sexual orientation, who have fallen in love with this film and this story, who have had their lives touched and changed and enriched by this film and this story, and who participate in this community as a result of this film and this story, is proof enough of the universal appeal of both "Brokeback Mountain" the story and Brokeback Mountain the film, any academic critic to the contrary notwithstanding.  :)

Certainly true!

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #32 on: January 05, 2008, 03:10:51 pm »
Thanks garycottle, and thanks all of you too!!

Gary, you say about the BM movie: it's about two individuals, Jack and Ennis, and they happen to be gay.
..........
Gary, may I wonder of these two were indeedgay?? I do not think that film passes them just as gays!!
Rather, as straights in some or too many ways, plus much more!!

........
If they were so gay, then why so, so many secondary scenes showing them in??

Anyway, food for thought maybe,

hugs!! May Hollywaood do real films about real gay lives!!

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #33 on: January 06, 2008, 12:07:23 pm »
Thanks Gary!

Your comments are very, very interesting to me. They also puzzle me... (you know that is the way I am, puzzled about life!)!!

Since I just got a call from someone saying that her mother just passed away, I am in difficulty in reading you and in answering you. I will try, especially with questions to some of your thoughts, OK?

You say: Of course you can wonder if Jack and Ennis were really gay.  You can wonder about anything you like.  No one needs anybody's permission to wonder.
...
Gary to that: may I say in agreement thank goodness one can wonder, even if a person figures that life is like a prison or even when tortured!! To wonder is great!! My views about Ennis and Jack being gay or otherwise have changed somewhat, even yesterday about one!! I will likely colour that further as I go on finding about them!! (And about myself and others too, of course!!)
...

Gary when you say: But I personally think Jack and Ennis were gay.  You can argue that they were bisexual.  There may be something to that.  I suspect most people are bisexual to one degree or another, even if they won't admit to it.
...
Gary to that, may I say that was, is and, I guess, will always be a puzzle to me: bi-s!! I think too that most persons are bi-s, to certain degress, as you say!! Including myself! Will talk about moi on that later, if you or anyone like, but for now, am puzzled about bi-living!! Why??
....


Gary you add: But it seems to me that Jack and Ennis were primarily interested in one another, and the reason they had wives was because they felt pressure to live up to societal expectations.

.....
Gary: That really puzzles me!!
Gary may I question: I do not really know if it is only society (in our civilisation still) that forces gay men to marry females, as wives!! ?? Of course, many persons expect a straight, bi or gay or other guy to marry a female
... as that continues as the norm, for now... and I question that too. But related to that word expectations is another question: to me, many gay men do also want children and/or to marry a female and have a wife therefore!! ?? Right? And in that range, there are some who are bi-s who also want their gay partner!! ?? Right??
So, maybe there are some ménage à 3??? Which I would find that normal too, and which I would have maybe preferred??
.....

Of course you and others are welcome to comment. I still think that the BM movie is somewhat anti-gay, etc., as well as pro-gay, in some degrees and find much more everyday about that, especially regarding normalizing... too!!
Your other lines, may I comment later. And remind me if I forget!

For now, I do not see why Ennis is not considered OK having married a female to be his wife, and for them both to have children (since he cares for his children and her too); plus have his straight, bi-, gay, or other male lover!!

Hugs!! May we all be enlightened about different marriages  or couplesand wondrous ways of living in comfort, freedom and peace!!!

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #34 on: January 06, 2008, 12:38:49 pm »



   Ok Artiste, I will try yet again to find out exactly where you are coming from...

   Do you think that men or women for that matter if they are gay, should be allowed, nay encouraged to
   marry, and even have an extra partner if that is available to them....
   
   Then when that is not allowed, nay encouraged if the gay person desires it...then that person that stops that
   from happening is then anti gay?



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Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #35 on: January 06, 2008, 01:31:41 pm »
Thanks ifyoucantfixit!

There are indeed things in the BM movie which are anti-gay as well as pro-gay, and, plus for straights as well as for bi-s...others, so far??

Ifyoucantfixit, you say about the constant challenge about life: Then when that is not allowed, nay encouraged if the gay person desires it...then that person that stops that
   from happening is then anti gay?
 
 

....
May I reply then, if I understand you right ifyoucantfixit - since you puzzle me by your question , then yes possibly or likely - for that time or moment, and maybe will change mind set with education about living mutually in order to accept others persons living differently - if loggically that person does not allow such an ménage à 3!! - maybe at first thought unembraced. Another example maybe: It goes without saying, that if, for instance, a gay female or gay male, who refuses  a straight lady and a straight man, to marry, is anti-straight, likely, right - as imperfection for now??
...
Why not grab life as opportunities to love in wondrous ways - may I say? I see that in Annie's story and in the Brokeback Mountain movie!! Is it deliverance?? Talks are about needs!! WE all need comfort and to love and be loved!! May I add!! Sure, humans are imperfect, at least we hope for love as exential and can fix things... somehow in loving others and ourselves!! ?? Different forms of love - 3 forms in Greek terms; children understand love as relationships, like boyfriend and girlfriend; eros, sexual love, or like one is friendship, and the other agape (?) above all other love like God's love!! Critically important is to love ourselves, others and Infinity!! - it seems to me!! To you?? To you all?? Sure there are and will be problems; they are always to be solvevable, with mutual help... love being significant!!
....
If youcantfixit say:
Do you think that men or women for that matter if they are gay, should be allowed, nay encouraged to
   marry, and even have an extra partner if that is available to them....
   

....

To reply to you if I think that two gay men should be alllowed to marry as gay me as a couple, I say: yes!!  Either marriage or as civil union, that is debated still in Canada, maybe also in England, France, Spain... and parts of the USA?  Civil unions are legal now as gay marriages in Canada! Two or so years ago when I was on a gay internet site in England, I was for gay marriages and I was replied by a member that they were working on that - he said he was a Lord (therefore, able to add such law), I do not know if he was straight, gay, bi or other! I think, I read that gay civil unions are legal in England now, is that so?

As to have an extra partner, I do not see that as extra, I just see it as 3 persons in love!! Possible, I think so!! You think so??

Your nay word confuses me - but I think that I understand it?

Awaiting your news, if love your neighbour as yourself - is to be, be- as motto (is that it, the phrase?)

hugs!! May marriages or civil unions be legal as persons want... for freedom and peace


Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #36 on: January 06, 2008, 01:35:02 pm »
May I add again:
While I tried to post this, I noticed that time ran out and was forced therefore to re-start this: hope this is OK?!! In reply to melb_boy88 thread concerning COMFORT:

Thanks Sandy, thanks injest, thanks melb_boy88!!!

Thanks for the condolences Sandy! The lady who passed away was the mother of the wife of one of my straight brothers. She did seek comfort in her ways. But became diabetic! Since it is hard to be one with that, maybe on a thread that can be talked about in order to help and prevent that even?? This seems to be more and more common, and discomforting to live with!!

Like you Sandy, I would love to have seen much more love scenes... even sex ones too!! I wonder why not a 69 one?

....

Sandy, as affection: holding hands would have been so great!! Possible, where and when??

...

Injest, one or more love-affection scenes like which to be added?? Detail one or more, please??

.......

Melb_boy88, yes more 2nd tent scenes?? Others like you can detail as affection during 16 years??

Awaiting your thoughts and descriptions if you care too do so too,
hugs!!      May affection scenes be with you in it, often!!                                 


...........

Hugs again too to you and to all!!

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #37 on: January 06, 2008, 06:05:54 pm »
Augmenting my earlier remarks concerning the "antigay" subtext discussed in essay #9 by Harris "Broke(N)back Faggots", I would like to consider essay #5, "The Gay Film That Wasn't: The Heterosexual Supplement in 'Brokeback Mountain'", by Lisa Arellano.

This excellent work by Ms. Arellano sheds light on the motivations behind the heteronormative transformation of Proulx's essentially gay story into the essentially heterosexual film of Ang Lee / McMurtry-Ossana. The motivation being the desire to accede to market pressures to transform a gay story into a universal love story.

Paraphrasing Arellano, the screenplay expands the "spare original text" of Proulx with the addition of "multiple narratives whereby Ennis and Jack are made intelligible through their reintegration with the heterosexual economy."

Let's look to the difference between how Proulx sparsely and grimly depicts the Delmar household and homelife on the one hand, and on the other hand the vastly expanded theater of the Delmar household constructed by McMurtry-Ossana.

Quoting Proulx,

"In December Ennis married Alma Beers and had her pregnant by mid January. He picked up a few short-lived ranch jobs, then settled in as a wrangler on the old Elwood Hi Top place north of Lost Cabin in Washakie County. He was still working there in September when Alma,Jr, as he called his daughter, was born and their bedroom was full of the smell of old blood and milk, and baby shit, and the sounds were of squalling and sucking and Alma's sleepy groans, all reassuring of fecundity and life's continuance to one who worked with life stock."

This short, grim, "shitty" characterization is vastly expanded by McMurtry-Ossana as a major part of the 69 extra pages added by the screenplay. Page after page is given over to describe the heterosexual life of Ennis : the wedding, recreational trips with Alma, Alma's household work, and other scenes. The image of the love of Jack and Ennis disappear and their heterosexual lives predominate.

For whom did McMurtry-Ossana create these expanded and elaborated images of Ennis's heterosexuality?

These additions were placed in the screenplay by very savvy screenwriters to make the mainstream film viewer more comfortable. These images invite the general film goer to identify with Ennis and understand him as familiar and more importantly for them to see the film as a universal love story.

Arellano continues,

"In the screenplay, Jack and Ennis are carefully redrawn as competent and caring father figures, reassuring audiences of their all but normal masculinity and their but for an aberration, sexual normalcy. The screenplay's 69 additional pages are comprised of precisely these types of heteronormative re-framings of the characters, resulting in a film that is centrally about heterosexuality and committedly resistant to the characters sexual 'misconduct'."

This segues neatly with the manner in which "Focus Features" promoted this heterosexualized film.

In Mendelsohn's article, "An Affair to Remember" he writes,

"Because I am as admiring as almost everyone else of the film's many excellences, it seems to me necessary to counter the special emphasis in the way the film is being promoted and received. For to see "Brokeback Mountain" as a love story, or even a film about universal human emotions, is to misconstrue it seriously - and in so doing inevitably to diminish its real achievement."

"Simply because a narrative has universal appeal that doesn't mean that the story it tells is universal."

"Brokeback Mountain" is a story of the tragedy of the closet. This is a real tragedy that is unfolding around us right now. Real lives and relationships are damaged in real time, not just on the silver screen. The closet is a "specific gay phenomenon" and the misery it produces affects everyone a closeted person contacts.

Mendelsohn continues,

"A distinction that sorely needs to be made in the current cultural climate (between universal appeal and a gay story), one in which everyone wants to lay claim to everyone else's pain. To say that the story of 'Brokeback Mountain' is universal because in some general way it concerns love is to say nothing at all; its like saying "Schindler's List is a universal story because we all know what its like to lose a family member."

The sad tale of Ennis and Jack shows how the misery of the closet taints their lives and offered them no permanent solace or refuge from the hatred of the general population.

Mendelsohn again,

And, "if Jack and Ennis are tainted, it is not because they're gay but because they pretend not to be, this the lie that poisons everyone they touch."

Another tainting poison is the misunderstanding that "Brokeback Mountain' is a universal love story. And this is a muddle with dangerous consequences in the real world.

Pretending that the film "Brokeback Mountain" was not heteronormed in order to provide larger audience revenue for the film and its later spinoffs has no real consequences for the majority population. But for the tiny minority of gays struggling through the minefield of hate, deceit, and identity questions, not fully understanding the truth of a closeted life and society's heteronorming pressures exerted at all levels has disastrous consequences.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #38 on: January 06, 2008, 06:52:46 pm »
Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to share these writers' thoughts with this community, Brokeplex. I won't be coming back to this thread, however, because the musings of these academic twits make me so angry I could chew nails, not to mention not know where to start to respond to them--and I simply have no wish to have my spare time poisoned by the likes of these writers.

I haven't tried to find any information on Mendelsohn, but I googled Lisa Arellano. She teaches women's studies and gender and sexuality issues at Colby College. She also writes as if she has no clue how you go about transforming a short story into something that can actually be acted out on film. Maybe she would have preferred a slide show of Annie Proulx's text to an actual movie?

The attitude these people have of presuming to know why something was done by Proulx, McMurtry, Ossana, or Lee--and they seem to think that why is "to make money"--I find offensive in the extreme. Oh, sure enough, you don't make a movie to lose money, but to imply that profit is the only motive is, I think, cheap.

I wish I could convince myself that these people are just playing academic games, that they don't really believe some of this stuff they're writing. I've already made pretty clear my position on academic literary and film criticism. These people write as if they believe this film has done more harm than good.

In the words of one of the characters from another of my favorite movies, "Who are these guys, anyway?"
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #39 on: January 06, 2008, 06:56:58 pm »
Daniel Mendelsohn, "An Affair to Remember," New York Review of Books, 02/23/06

www.nybooks.com/articles/18712


Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #40 on: January 06, 2008, 11:54:30 pm »
Thanks brokeplex and thanks Jeff!!

What can one say?? !! Movies do spark things, one's life sometime, right??  Some art critics or other ones, as well as we of the general public, try to do so too, at times; at least trying to understand life and to live with some comfort, with or without the Brokeback Mountain movie or Annie's story!!

What about the saying: that there are two sides to every coin?? Should we hid that?? I prefer freedom of thought, of speech and of living!!! Homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or other!! To try joie de vivre, yes joys of life for all, somehow that can be possible, I say!! Annie and BM movie teaches or educates that in many wondrous ways?? !! I think so!! I learn from it and from you all everyday, here!! At times, it's hard to do so; other times are understandings which are simple or been forgotten!!

Much has been said even with critics!! Much more needs to be said still, I figure... and from you all here too!! Why not to try to help one's life and that of others too?? With understanding, love as comfortable or new actions!!

And hugs!!

Hugs to all too!!

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #41 on: January 07, 2008, 12:01:45 am »
Thanks garycottle!

I had not seen your comment. Just saw it now!!

Excellent!! I wish I had written that!!

Awaiting more from you,

hugs!!

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #42 on: January 07, 2008, 12:42:11 am »
 
(Roads in BBM can be said to represent established patterns and civilized life.)


I think that it’s wonderful that straight people can watch this film and see that Jack and Ennis are in love, and that their love should not have been denied.  I think it’s wonderful that they can relate to the love Jack and Ennis have for one another.  It’s true that straight people can’t relate to being in the closet, but a story like BBM can help them understand how the closet works, and on coming to know the terms they can imagine what it must be like to have to pretend to be someone that they are not.  What’s so bad about that?

As someone trained in Geography at the university level, I was curious about your thought that "roads" represent "established patterns and civilized life". Transportation infrastructure has long been seen as an indicative pattern of civilization. What we can see looking at Earth from space other than the lights of cities are the civil engineering projects (Great Wall of China, etc).

Do you feel that Ang Lee is deliberately using roads in the fashion of establishing visual order in the boys life? If so, I like that thought, and I will look at the movie somewhat differently because of it.

I share your delight that many from the heterosexual majority have taken "Brokeback Mountain" to heart. On a personal level, this movie has indirectly lead to a type of reconciliation with my sister and her tentative acceptance of my relationship with D.L.

What Arellano, and for that matter myself, are trying to say is not that heterosexual participation in the "Brokie" experience is a bad thing. She is pointing out the degree to which the screenplay was changed to encourage just such empathy, it was thoroughly heterosexualized. In fact I don't see it as a evil thing that the producers and marketers of the movie chose to further heterosexualize the movie in order to make larger profits. But it is a dangerous thing for gay men and women to close their eyes to the heteronormative impulses and compulsions which caused the changes. These heteronormative compulsions exist throughout society, everywhere, at all levels. And, as a tiny minority on shaky political grounds we are foolish to not always be on the alert as to just how powerful these heteronormative impulses can be, even when the net result is a beautiful film.

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #43 on: January 07, 2008, 09:11:59 am »
    I don’t know what heteronormative means.  It sounds like one of those soundbyte words that get invented when people are trying to make a name for themselves and concoct their own vocabulary to gain attention.  If you have a simpler term, I would appreciate your using it.  It could cut down on the confusion.

   When it came to expanding Brokeback Mountain for the screen, there weren’t a lot of options as to where to do it.  If you expand the romance, you risk changing the entire story.  If you expand their work lives, you risk adding a lot of irrelevant material.  This is a story that is about intimate relationships, not careers.  So they chose to expand their home lives.

    When I see the scenes of them in their home lives, I don’t feel they are at all normal.  Both Jack and Ennis have a fish-out-of-water, stranger in a strange land feel to them.  They simply don’t belong there.  Ennis at Thanksgiving doesn’t look like himself, doesn’t talk like himself, he’s a guest in his own life and eventually winds up getting chased out.

     The same with Jack at Thanksgiving.  His father-in-law is also trying to force him out of his own life and take over.

     I think these added scenes are purposely written in such a way that it feels like they don’t belong in these normal lives.  They belong with each other.  And that feeling does not detract from the gay experience, it adds to the understanding of it.
 

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #44 on: January 07, 2008, 11:50:28 am »
Thanks Clyde-B, thanks brokeplex!!

Interesting!! Both your comments!!

Clyde-B, you must be a movie producer or writer? Talented!

Likewise brokeplex such talent you have and show!!

The BM movie starts with roads and ends with the road (his daughter) coming to him!!

More please guys,

hugs, hugs!! May all roads lead to gay freedom!!

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #45 on: January 08, 2008, 01:41:57 pm »

 I don’t know what heteronormative means. 

   
   

In the quotations which I sourced from Harris, Mendelsohn, and Arellano, they all use that term "heteronormative". I also used it in my text simply because I couldn't think of a simpler term to use that describes the process of turning an essentially gay short story into a much more heterosexual film.  Or the process that a gay man uses to fit into a closeted existence, it seems to me that such closeted men become heteronormed. 

I am not by training or background a sociologist or a scholar in gender studies as some of the authors of the essays in "Reading Brokeback Mountain" are, so I am not qualified to carry on an academic discussion of the proper usage of the term. Sorry if it sounds like a pretentious sound bite.

Happy Trails!   

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #46 on: January 09, 2008, 12:01:57 am »
Brokeplex, you give us good examples.

Thanks!

Hugs!

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #47 on: January 13, 2008, 10:52:56 pm »

In the quotations which I sourced from Harris, Mendelsohn, and Arellano, they all use that term "heteronormative". I also used it in my text simply because I couldn't think of a simpler term to use that describes the process of turning an essentially gay short story into a much more heterosexual film.  Or the process that a gay man uses to fit into a closeted existence, it seems to me that such closeted men become heteronormed. 

I am not by training or background a sociologist or a scholar in gender studies as some of the authors of the essays in "Reading Brokeback Mountain" are, so I am not qualified to carry on an academic discussion of the proper usage of the term. Sorry if it sounds like a pretentious sound bite.

Happy Trails!   

I don't understand how scenes that show gays are out of place trying to live heterosexual lives or how uncomfortable it is to try and pretend you are something you are not "normalizes" anything.  If these scenes do anything, it is to emphasize that Jack and Ennis belong together and not with their wives.

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #48 on: January 13, 2008, 11:53:48 pm »
Clyde, may I say that I do feel that the BM movie in some ways does make Ennis and Jack lives like they are heteros... indeed!

Do you see that both Ennis and Jack got married to females??

Their marriages are not gay-males-ones!!

There is a danger here, by making such film, instead of more gay-oriented or gay-something to more heteronormed!!

I have a sample, one of my former friend... you want to hear it??

Anyone else too want to do so??

Hugs!!

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #49 on: January 14, 2008, 12:20:53 am »
I don't understand how scenes that show gays are out of place trying to live heterosexual lives or how uncomfortable it is to try and pretend you are something you are not "normalizes" anything.  If these scenes do anything, it is to emphasize that Jack and Ennis belong together and not with their wives.

The film as compared to the short story is heteronormed.

This is the point made in the essays and articles in question. Whether for good or ill, the heterosexual life of Ennis and Jack are emphasized over what we read in the short story. The question raised by the authors of the essays and the articles which I noted is : why does the screen play emphasize the heterosexual life of the boys more that the short story?

The conclusion of all of the authors is that this made the film more marketable to the general public. I agree with their conclusion.

Why then did this make the film more marketable?

Because of the heteronorming pressures in this society, most straight viewers would not empathize as fully with scenes drawn from only the gay elements in Ennis and Jack's lives, but would be able to empathize fully with showing those scenes linked to their heterosexual scenes. 

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #50 on: January 14, 2008, 12:27:59 am »
Brokeplex, as your last paragraph states, that is so... I find.

But the script writers could have made that movie more gay oriented... in some ways.

Let us not forget that that these screen writers are female and male, straights??

And the director said he was straight?

Would that make a difference, towrds more hetero-normalizing?

Hugs!!

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #51 on: January 14, 2008, 12:31:36 am »
The film as compared to the short story is heteronormed.

This is the point made in the essays and articles in question. Whether for good or ill, the heterosexual life of Ennis and Jack are emphasized over what we read in the short story. The question raised by the authors of the essays and the articles which I noted is : why does the screen play emphasize the heterosexual life of the boys more that the short story?

The conclusion of all of the authors is that this made the film more marketable to the general public. I agree with their conclusion.

Why then did this make the film more marketable?

Because of the heteronorming pressures in this society, most straight viewers would not empathize as fully with scenes drawn from only the gay elements in Ennis and Jack's lives, but would be able to empathize fully with showing those scenes linked to their heterosexual scenes. 

The movie contains more scenes of Jack and Ennis's family life than the short story.

The family life scenes show that both Ennis and Jack are out of place.

How does this make the film more marketable?

Please explain without gobbledygook.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #52 on: January 14, 2008, 12:38:40 am »

Let us not forget that that these screen writers are female and male, straights??

And the director said he was straight?

Would that make a difference, towrds more hetero-normalizing?
Hugs!!

None, the reason the film was heteronormed had nothing to do with the sexual orientation or gender of the screenwriters or the director. The film was heteronormed over the short story because it made the film more marketable. In fact I would argue that the film would never have been made if the screen play had not been extensively heteronormed.

Focus Features is a business, businesses are about making money. If the films producers planned to market the film to just the roughly 3% of the population that is gay, then the movie would have been made much more closely to the short story and would not have been mass marketed. But then it wouldn't have grossed 200 million plus world wide, and would have cost much more than it made. We live in a world that is overwhelmingly heterosexual, any mass marketing must naturally appeal to their tastes and sensibilities.  


Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #53 on: January 14, 2008, 12:48:51 am »
If they were only interested in making money, where are the marketing tie-ins?  Many of us here have complained of the absence of BBM merchandise and have even resorted to making our own.

Also where are the sequels?  I personally wrote to Annie Proulx and begged her to complete the saga of Ennis's life and she politely refused.

Larry McMurtry was asked if there would be a sequel and was reportedly quoted as saying that was the stupidest idea he'd ever heard.

It's been two years.  They have the track record and the clout, and yet there is still nothing in the pipeline.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #54 on: January 14, 2008, 12:59:05 am »


Please explain without gobbledygook.


What does the above term mean?

Do you mean to say that extensively showing the scenes of the heterosexual life of Ennis and Jack does not enable straight viewers to more completely identify with the two characters?

If not for that reason, then why would the screen writers add those scenes? Its just not a good enough explanation of the additions to say, that it "fleshes out the home life of the two characters", as McMurtry and Ossana have said.

OK, why "flesh them out" at all ? And why "flesh them out" in the fashion in which they were fleshed out?

If the screen writers are going to INVENT scenes wholesale, why not show more of Jacks philandering with Randall, or his undoubted cruising for sex in other area such as parks, bathrooms. Hey I'd like more of the scene with the Mexican hustler.

Why not show more of Jacks's cruising time  when he was bullrider? We can go on and on.

There has to be a reason for the extensive additions over the screenplay, and emphasizing Jack's closeted sexuality does nothing to market the product because I doubt that most mainstream viewers would not be interested in those hypothetical scenes.

But they just loved Ennis's scenes with Alma and the girls. And Jack's scenes with Lureen.

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #55 on: January 14, 2008, 01:00:29 am »
Thanks Clyde!

Many or most films have no tie-ins as Walt Disney figurines did, and others!! You want a rubber Ennis  or Jack?? Life size, I would want them!! You have good ideas about making your own!!

Concerning Annie not making more, she is straight female?? Why did she really make that story?? Really?? She is afraid
 in some ways!! ??

Larry would not want likely to continue since he made his money and does not prefer to think of giving his money away now?

You have my thanks for contacting Annie.


Maybe now we can make our own BM II ?? Did you see so many, even gays, refused that when I mentioned it: that I wanted sequel, or BMII??

Except for copyrights, a similar film can be done. Who will have the guts to do so?? Gay ones, I hope this time...

what do you say? An less anti-gay one!! ??

Hugs!!

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #56 on: January 14, 2008, 01:02:51 am »
If they were only interested in making money, where are the marketing tie-ins?  Many of us here have complained of the absence of BBM merchandise and have even resorted to making our own.

Also where are the sequels?  I personally wrote to Annie Proulx and begged her to complete the saga of Ennis's life and she politely refused.

Larry McMurtry was asked if there would be a sequel and was reportedly quoted as saying that was the stupidest idea he'd ever heard.

It's been two years.  They have the track record and the clout, and yet there is still nothing in the pipeline.

I personally would love a completion of the story. The lost years before Ennis and Jack met, the lost years in between, the lost years after Jack's death. Perhaps there is no sufficient market to justify the expense. Perhaps the writers have lost interest.

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #57 on: January 14, 2008, 01:10:05 am »
Yes, brokeplex, so would I, but who has the guts: straights again to do that?

Why do we gays always let straights do OUR work??

Maybe we gays, could turn this film around from anti-gay somewhat to become more pro-gay?

Hugs!!

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #58 on: January 14, 2008, 01:15:59 am »
Can the "Brokeback Mountain" universe be franchised, like the "Star Wars" universe was by Lucas? If so, there will be writers at work more fully completing the saga.

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #59 on: January 14, 2008, 01:19:44 am »
Brokeplex, Star Wars were a serie of books!

So far Annie created ONLY ONE BM story!! And refuses to continue... it seems.

So what will/would you do??

Keep on with this essay as possibilties?? As... such, as for movie potential?

Hugs!

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #60 on: January 14, 2008, 01:50:34 am »
The vast majority of peoples’ lives are a long road of happinesses, sadnesses, let downs, successes, failures, and all the other contrasting emotions and occurrences you can think of. I personally heartily disagree that tragic episodes in own’s life makes his life a tragedy. It has been stated on this thread that BBM is a tragedy; 20 years of a loving relationship a tragedy? How many couples have the wonderment Ennis and Jack had? Just because it wasn’t perfect does not make it tarnished or lessen its value. No way. To me, the story is a love story, enriching and positive in many ways that caused me, for one, to wish I was one of those two men. I am neither a sadist, masochist nor suffer from depression; I seek only positive aspects to life; give me Ennis without any changes to the story from 1963 to 1983 and my life would seem complete.

Ennis and Jack didn’t “have to hide from the world”. They made choices that actually worked out well for a long time. I am quite sure they were not the only two gay men in WY in the 60s and 70s. They had a deep and lasting relationship and considering all the people in their lives, their choices seemed to have been good ones.

In terms of “heteronorming” to have made the story more palatable, and hence perhaps, causing my own positive feelings, maybe. Fact is that the vast majority of “adapted” screenplays that were originally in book, story, or stage script form are always changed for film treatment. Yes, it is generally because of the much larger and more demographically dispersed movie going audiences and the producers want to cater to everyone’s likes and dislikes. In doing so with BBM, I think it became a better communications device. Ennis and Jack in the story were unattractive guys. I’m sorry, but replace any of Julia Roberts roles with an unattractive woman, and her films would have gone nowhere, likely. Same is true with BBM.

But, this, along with the bi-sexuality tending to soften the outright gayness of the film is fair game in my opinion. And I do not see this as anti gay, rather a means by which massive amount of global discussions were propagated on the subject of gay mens’ relationships and how they work in a way most people never imagined.

When the mass gay movement came out of the closet in the mid-late 70s or thereabouts, it was not unexpected for mainstream folks to want to see whatever gay life was to be more ‘heteronormed’. Why not? Isn’t that a major part of the immigration issue today? When people come into the fold, so to speak, the larger group tends to expect assimilation (and over the ages most people coming into a larger group do assimilate). How many Germans, speaking German in their lederhosen have you seen lately? And I know that gays bought into such; many now live is suburban neighborhoods with white picket fences, dogs and in many cases, kids. This was NEVER predicted in 1978.

There have been many comments made over the last two years on this site and Cullen about Ennis’ failure as a man because of his adultery and non commitment etc. This is way off and I won’t get into an Ennis speech here, but I find such negative attitudes to be actually anti gay. Gay men do have to tweek the mainstream lifestyle to live; they do have to make adjustments and choices that perhaps straight folks may not have to make. To criticize Ennis or gays for making such choices is to me the anti gay possibility.

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #61 on: January 14, 2008, 01:55:15 am »
What does the above term mean?

Do you mean to say that extensively showing the scenes of the heterosexual life of Ennis and Jack does not enable straight viewers to more completely identify with the two characters?

If not for that reason, then why would the screen writers add those scenes? Its just not a good enough explanation of the additions to say, that it "fleshes out the home life of the two characters", as McMurtry and Ossana have said.

OK, why "flesh them out" at all ? And why "flesh them out" in the fashion in which they were fleshed out?

If the screen writers are going to INVENT scenes wholesale, why not show more of Jacks philandering with Randall, or his undoubted cruising for sex in other area such as parks, bathrooms. Hey I'd like more of the scene with the Mexican hustler.

Why not show more of Jacks's cruising time as a when he was bullrider? We can go on and on.

There has to be a reason for the extensive additions over the screenplay, and emphasizing Jack's closeted sexuality does nothing to market the product because I doubt that most mainstream viewers would not be interested in those hypothetical scenes.

But they just loved Ennis's scenes with Alma and the girls. And Jack's scenes with Lureen.

The original story was not long enough to make a two hour movie.  Two hours is the average movie length today.  Some material had to be added.

The scene with Jimbo the rodeo clown does not exist in the short story.  It was totally fabricated from the line - "Shit no," said Jack who had been riding more than bulls, not rolling his own.
 
The scene with Jack going to Mexico after driving to Riverton doesn't exist in the short story either .  It was also an addition to the screenplay.  Mexico was only mentioned in the short story in the final confrontation.

Likewise, Randall didn't exist in the short story at all.  John Twist mentions an unnamed ranch neighbor a his from Texas that Jack was going to bring to Lightning Flat, but there were no scenes with this unnamed person in the short story.

So you are asking for things to be expanded upon that didn't even exist in the short story.  These elements of gay life were fabricated by the screen writers and added also.

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #62 on: January 14, 2008, 02:34:49 am »
Clyde, may I say that I do feel that the BM movie in some ways does make Ennis and Jack lives like they are heteros... indeed!
Do you see that both Ennis and Jack got married to females??
Their marriages are not gay-males-ones!!

Jack and Ennis weren't gay (the term was queer in 1963). Gay has become to mean way more than a guy who wants to be in the arms of another guy. A way to dress and decorate. A way to vote. Political correctness at all cost. Relating to females more than men. Rainbow flags and parades. In later years viciousness and resentment. Youth and sex.

Jack and Ennis weren't that back when they was young, no more than they would be that today. If J&E were together today, they would not be considered gay by any standard.

Jack and Ennis were like a lot of closeted guys are today. They didn't/don't fit in to the gay mainstream lifestyle. They choose to live their lives behind rings and kids and fullfill ( so sad ) their sexual desires like Jack did or find love like they both found in a very similar way to the story of BBM.

Brokeback isn't a gay love story. It's about guys who love other guys but aren't 'gay'. They are very similar to their hetro brethern with only one exception--who they wanna fuck. Ms. Proulx understood this more so than most gay men can comprehend. The result, Brokeback Mountain.

The story was ment to be anti-gay.

Brad
   

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #63 on: January 14, 2008, 02:50:43 am »
Jack and Ennis weren't gay (the term was queer in 1963). Gay has become to mean way more than a guy who wants to be in the arms of another guy. A way to dress and decorate. A way to vote. Political correctness at all cost. Relating to females more than men. Rainbow flags and parades. In later years viciousness and resentment. Youth and sex.

Jack and Ennis weren't that back when they was young, no more than they would be that today. If J&E were together today, they would not be considered gay by any standard.

Jack and Ennis were like a lot of closeted guys are today. They didn't/don't fit in to the gay mainstream lifestyle. They choose to live their lives behind rings and kids and fullfill ( so sad ) their sexual desires like Jack did or find love like they both found in a very similar way to the story of BBM.

Brokeback isn't a gay love story. It's about guys who love other guys but aren't 'gay'. They are very similar to their hetro brethern with only one exception--who they wanna fuck. Ms. Proulx understood this more so than most gay men can comprehend. The result, Brokeback Mountain.

The story was ment to be anti-gay.

Brad
   

Most of the homosexual people I know use the term gay as synonymous with homosexual.  The only people I know that seem to think gay is a lifestyle are some straight people.

There are as many variations in homosexual (gay) lives as there are in heterosexual (straight) lives.  I don't know of a gay lifestyle anymore than I know of a straight lifestyle.

pnwDUDE

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #64 on: January 14, 2008, 03:00:52 am »
Most of the homosexual people I know use the term gay as synonymous with homosexual.  The only people I know that seem to think gay is a lifestyle are some straight people.
The homosexual men I know think gay is a lifestyle and don't consider themselves 'gay'. The straight people you refer to are right.
I say this to make the point that when one lumps everyone into a catagory of 'gay' just because he is a homosexual is a mistake. Back to Jack and Ennis. They don't fit.

Brad

pnwDUDE

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #65 on: January 14, 2008, 03:04:48 am »
::)

Wouldn't expect anything less. Made my point, thanks.

Brad

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #66 on: January 14, 2008, 03:06:44 am »
The homosexual men I know think gay is a lifestyle and don't consider themselves 'gay'. The straight people you refer to are right.
I say this to make the point that when one lumps everyone into a catagory of 'gay' just because he is a homosexual is a mistake. Back to Jack and Ennis. They don't fit.

Brad

Well, none of the homosexual men I know think gay is a lifestyle.  So which one of us is right?  How do we decide?   

pnwDUDE

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #67 on: January 14, 2008, 03:12:13 am »
Well, none of the homosexual men I know think gay is a lifestyle.  So which one of us is right?  How do we decide?   

Clyde, neither of us is right or wrong. That's not my point. It is that all homosexual men don't think alike. There are so many out there that don't feel they can surface (come out) because they don't fit into what it is to be gay. This is what Brokeback Mountain is all about.

Brad

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #68 on: January 14, 2008, 03:20:34 am »
Clyde, neither of us is right or wrong. That's not my point. It is that all homosexual men don't think alike. There are so many out there that don't feel they can surface (come out) because they don't fit into what it is to be gay. This is what Brokeback Mountain is all about.

Brad

??? ??? ???

Coming out means admitting you love someone of the same sex, or want to love someone of the same sex.  How does coming out mean you have to follow any given style of life other than who you get involved with emotionally?

Offline Nevermore

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #69 on: January 14, 2008, 04:00:15 am »
Film Quarterly devoted an entire issue to Brokeback last year, full of essays written by Cahiers du Cinema types of the ilk skewered by Jeff here:

I haven't tried to find any information on Mendelsohn, but I googled Lisa Arellano. She teaches women's studies and gender and sexuality issues at Colby College. She also writes as if she has no clue how you go about transforming a short story into something that can actually be acted out on film. Maybe she would have preferred a slide show of Annie Proulx's text to an actual movie?


...I wish I could convince myself that these people are just playing academic games, that they don't really believe some of this stuff they're writing. I've already made pretty clear my position on academic literary and film criticism. These people write as if they believe this film has done more harm than good.

  Gawd, a gender-studies professor gets her fingers on Brokeback--will anyone even recognize it from the description?  I would say that what made the short story and the film work so beautifully was that it was the very type of slim, stripped-down tale that good English teachers gently try to steer their students toward when they are hellbent on being the next Dale Eggers or chuck Palaniuk or whatever. It is a classic story that has been told over and over, because it works--two star-crossed lovers.  They meet, fall in love, are forced apart, meet secretly until tragedy befalls one, leaving the other to mourn and the reader/viewer--and by extension, the society that separated them--to contemplate what convention drove this tragedy to its inevitable conclusion.
  It works because of its simplicity and the verity of the characters.  It is universal--who hasn't experienced irreversible loss?--but also very specific, because it involved two men, and of a type not familiar to gender-studies professors, hence the consternation it caused the critics in Film Quarterly when Jack and Ennis refused to squeeze into their boxes.


Right on!  The structure of the story, the power of the tragedy, would be destroyed, ruined, without the death of Jack.  No trip to Lightning Flat by Ennis and no discovering the shirts.  The whole story is enfolded in those shirts, imprinted in blood.  They are Veronica's veil, as it were.

Secondly, if Jack had simply left Ennis and were living, with or without Randall, I doubt if the panel of the dream would slide forward that opens the short story.  Nor would Jack begin to appear in the dreams at the end of the story, after he finds the shirts.

Sorry W.C. Harris, Brokeback Mountain is not an anti-gay polemic.  You've just got to stand it, Boy.

  I would add to this, as someone who has done a bit of writing, Proulx may have begun with the intent of exploring the effect of "destructive rural homophobia" (see her own, Getting Movied essay), but as a writer, she has a certain repertoire of classic literary devices that she employs because, as before, they work.  Jack dies as an indictment against the homophobic culture that formed him, just as Hardy's Tess d'Urberville has to die at the hands of hypocritical, class-bound Victorian England, while her tormentors, though they survive, are forced to reflect on what they have made to happen.
  Proulx, a straight woman, writes about two gay men, because conflict is the essence of drama, and how much conflict is there, really, in a story of two heterosexual lovers?  You have to be more and more inventive, or resort to a period piece, to make such a story resonate--see Titanic or The Bridges of Madison County.  As the obstacles that separate men and women progressively fall, a tale of two men still has the power to move readers, where the same story about a man and a woman would be a test of a writer not to make hackneyed and trite.  So it might be as simple as Proulx wanting to stretch her legs as a writer.

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #70 on: January 14, 2008, 01:08:13 pm »
If they were only interested in making money, where are the marketing tie-ins?
Money and profit were clearly not the only motivations behind the creation of either the short story or the film. Proulx and the filmmakers were also interested in creating a work of art (with the added desire, certainly, to earn income from their efforts), and it is out of fear of tarnishing the completed works of art that they decline to add to or further exploit the story. Lee and Schamus won't even include the deleted scenes in the DVD versions of the film, an otherwise typical strategy in DVD production and marketing.

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #71 on: January 14, 2008, 01:42:15 pm »
Moremojo thanks and thanks to others too!!

Replying to you moremojo, since you say that Annie and the film-makers decline to add to or further exploit the story, of course that is so, but does not need to be, I say as I think that it can still be bettered!!

When I create a painting on canvas, I continue most times so that it becomes a work of art, really!! I usually refrain to tackle again those compositions which are great as museum pieces... to add to each, but some (rarely) I do, or could!

When a composition is good or great, but I consider it still can go further, I restarted or keep on that one, and sometime succeed much better, some becoming master pieces there too!!

Shakespeare, Tolstoi, hugo... and many more, continued their story or stories.

Anything can be made better, even a masterpiece! Con artist or copy-makers copying Renoir and others made better, at times since they dared!!

Annie could enlarge her BM story, right?? The filmakers too, right?? We, gay men and others) need more in the BM story!! Instead of anti-gay, more pro-gay!! ??

Hugs!!

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #72 on: January 14, 2008, 01:55:19 pm »
This is what I've always thought it meant, too, Clyde.  I abhor stereotypes, and I've never met one person yet who adequtely fulfills a stereotype.  People should be viewed as the individuals they are, no matter what their sexuality is. 

If there are gay men out there that feel they can't come out because they don't identify with the boys on Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, then one shouldn't blame a segmant of the gay communtiy for projecting that image of gay men and ignoring all other examples.  It is pop culture that is constantly giving us this flat, two-dimensional portrait of gay men, not gay men themselves, or a portion thereof. 


Gary   

Jeeze...it only took almost two years for someone else to say that!!!  Thanks Gary!

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #73 on: January 14, 2008, 07:29:33 pm »
On the other hand, every one is stereotyped, right??

Even each person stereotypes daily himself or herself??  Right??


Why?? Does it help always or sometimes, or never??

Hugs, hugs!!

Offline RossInIllinois

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #74 on: January 14, 2008, 09:52:08 pm »
Thanks for that summary, Brokeplex.

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.
 

I'm sorry, but, hunh?  ??? I hope he clarifies that point because I sure don't see how depicting "the deleterious efects of violent homophobia" makes the story an "anti-gay polemic."  ???

I too feel the story and even more so the movie is anti gay. The screen play was "Hollywooded up" with more hetero relationship garbage to make the movie more saleable to the masses.  Its a shame how much the movie pulled away from showing more closeness kissing holding etc. between the two men in the later years, What was shown was very highly edited not to show to much "gayness", and thats a shame.

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #75 on: January 14, 2008, 11:18:24 pm »
  Using the same kind of logic that’s being used to say BBM is an anti-gay polemic, we could mount an equally cogent argument that ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is actually a cautionary tale for teenagers illustrating the dangers of fraternizing with your family’s enemies.  After all they both wind up dead in the end.  I think that argument would be just as perverse and preposterous.

   It’s true that Annie proulx’s story looks like it belongs to the forbidden love genre.  The intent of that genre of course is to caution people from straying beyond society’s boundaries.  To stay within and uphold social mores.  At the end the audience looks at each other and thinks, “See what happens when you do that?  See how it winds up?”

   I didn’t hear the audience say that at the end of BBM.  What I heard were things like: “Why did Jack have to die?”  “Why couldn’t they have had their happy life?”  “Why did it have to turn out like that.”  Statements that indicated the audience would rather see the old mores abolished and new mores established more favorable to Jack and Ennis.

   What Annie Proulx has done is use the formula of the forbidden love story, but Jack’s death doesn’t prove society right.  Jack dies so that Ennis will finally realize that he loves Jack.  She has used the forbidden love format to write a traditional tragic romance.

     All artful literature can be interpreted in more than one way.  If it’s well written, it’s like real life where the meanings aren’t all spelled out.  I think the majority opinion of BBM is that it is a tragic romance illustrating the destructive effects of rural homophobia.  It can be interpreted other ways, but I believe the majority opinion is correct.  Just like the majority opinion is correct for ‘Romeo and Juliet.’

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #76 on: January 14, 2008, 11:47:21 pm »
Thanks Clyde-B!

You say: It’s true that Annie Proulx’s story looks like it belongs to the forbidden love genre. 
...


Clyde and others: May I reply that Annie could have had at least one (either Jack or Ennis) not marry a female?? I wish!! But no, the story and/or BM movie slides only like Romeo and Juliet,  a cheap trill I say!! - is that such hetero-lizing... even gays as well as straights, bi-s or others?? The issue does not focuse on homosexuals... as a main concern about gays?? Or even about about advancing society in order to get it more and more civilized regarding gay life or lives?? In many ways, the film is anti-gay!!

What long term solution, if any, since always gays get to be murdered because they are gays!! That is not news, just copycatting, I say!!

Awaiting your news and hopes,

hugs!! May gays be safe!!

Offline RossInIllinois

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #77 on: January 15, 2008, 01:28:11 am »
In the begining the movie appears to break new ground until the last 1/2 hour then it starts looking like a stereotypical gay subject matter  movie where something bad has to happen to the gay guy. Not unlike the movie As Good as it Gets, and many many others. Its to bad this story/movie could not have been more of a clean slate and broken some new ground. BBM has more "gay is bad"  stereotypes and situations than the positive im afraid even for 1963. The message BBM sends is two men can fall in love and get each other off but nothing good will come of it and you will never be really happy if your "gay".  IMO this is a very anti gay film with a very good disguise as a love story to soften the blow. (no pun intended)

Offline Oregondoggie

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #78 on: January 15, 2008, 01:54:19 am »
Romeo and Juliet is a great anti-love story then? 

Offline RossInIllinois

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #79 on: January 15, 2008, 02:11:21 am »
Romeo and Juliet is a great anti-love story then? 

Its simply forbidden love of a different type.  In BBM the love between two men is looked upon many times as negative NEVER positive such as.. "Jack Nasty"  "Stemmin the rose"  "I don't have a job for you" and the rodeo clown scene and still another scene that was filmed but cut from the final film. All subtle anti gay innuendos. Why do you suppose the producers didn't hire a gay director? Think about it.

Offline Oregondoggie

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #80 on: January 15, 2008, 05:52:58 am »
Its simply forbidden love of a different type.  In BBM the love between two men is looked upon many times as negative NEVER positive such as.. "Jack Nasty"  "Stemmin the rose"  "I don't have a job for you" and the rodeo clown scene and still another scene that was filmed but cut from the final film. All subtle anti gay innuendos. Why do you suppose the producers didn't hire a gay director? Think about it.

Guess you weren't around in 1963.  As for the producers not hiring a gay director?  That's a non-sequitur.  Gus Van Sant was not available.  But why would a gay director with any integrity handle the story much differently?  "Stemmin' the rose" wasn't subtle at all, it is part of the horror.  It is what Annie Proulx wrote.  Yes, I agree the tragedy of this story has overwhelmed some folk.  Poor things are unable to see the lesson of Brokeback Mountain.  Unable to be empowered by it in their own lives.  Instead, they feel betrayed.  They want a happy happy ending.  A trip to Disneyland.  No matter to them that this story is about the effects of fear and hatred in two poor boys' lives.  Why the homophobes must be gloating. The theater must have been packed with bigots who came away saying it was the best anti-gay film ever made!  Cow sure do have wings...

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #81 on: January 15, 2008, 07:49:39 am »
    From Aristotle on the highest form of literature as art has been tragedy.  Annie Proulx is a literary artist and she does not do heroes, she does not do happy endings.

    Social change is necessary today, but social change is not brought about by stories with happy endings.  It is brought about by stories that provoke outrage in their audience because they ended badly.

    It is quite clear to most people that the ‘villain’ of BBM is homophobia, not homosexuality.  Because the sympathy at the end of the movie is with Ennis, not with the moral standards of society.

Offline Shakesthecoffecan

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #82 on: January 15, 2008, 09:01:00 am »
IMO this is a very anti gay film with a very good disguise as a love story to soften the blow. (no pun intended)

IMO it is a film about two guys confronted with a part of their identity they were so unprepared for they funbled it. If it were an antigay film, then I think it failed, miserably. We have the luxary of living in the 21st century, where we are free-er than perhaps any other time in history to live our lives as we should. 1963 was not like that, nor was 1967 or 1983, especially in a rural setting. I don't see it disgusied as a love story either. It is a tragedy, showing the consequences of conformity and sublimation of self in order to remain "safe".
"It was only you in my life, and it will always be only you, Jack, I swear."

Offline Shakesthecoffecan

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #83 on: January 15, 2008, 09:07:24 am »
Harris asks, why was it necessary to kill of Jack in order for Proulx to make her point?


And yet the death of Jack is ambigous. We are presented with the POV of Ennis, his prophacy of an Earl type murder possibly fulfilled, but how he died is left up to the reader to decide for theirselves, as Harris has obviously done. More to the point is that Jack died and as a result Ennis was left alone. With Jack's death, the door of possibility closed for him, and he was left only with his dreams.
"It was only you in my life, and it will always be only you, Jack, I swear."

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #84 on: January 15, 2008, 10:00:35 am »
I too feel the story and even more so the movie is anti gay. The screen play was "Hollywooded up" with more hetero relationship garbage to make the movie more saleable to the masses.  Its a shame how much the movie pulled away from showing more closeness kissing holding etc. between the two men in the later years, What was shown was very highly edited not to show to much "gayness", and thats a shame.

It wouldn't have been "Hollywooding up" the screenplay for McMurtry and Ossana to write scenes of "closeness, kissing, holding, etc." that aren't in Annie Proulx's text to begin with?
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #85 on: January 15, 2008, 10:01:59 am »
If there are gay men out there that feel they can't come out because they don't identify with the boys on Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, then one shouldn't blame a segmant of the gay communtiy for projecting that image of gay men and ignoring all other examples.  It is pop culture that is constantly giving us this flat, two-dimensional portrait of gay men, not gay men themselves, or a portion thereof. 

Bravo, Gary, and Amen!
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #86 on: January 15, 2008, 10:21:55 am »
Jack and Ennis weren't gay (the term was queer in 1963). Gay has become to mean way more than a guy who wants to be in the arms of another guy. A way to dress and decorate. A way to vote. Political correctness at all cost. Relating to females more than men. Rainbow flags and parades. In later years viciousness and resentment. Youth and sex.

Jack and Ennis weren't that back when they was young, no more than they would be that today. If J&E were together today, they would not be considered gay by any standard.

Jack and Ennis were like a lot of closeted guys are today. They didn't/don't fit in to the gay mainstream lifestyle. They choose to live their lives behind rings and kids and fullfill ( so sad ) their sexual desires like Jack did or find love like they both found in a very similar way to the story of BBM.

Brokeback isn't a gay love story. It's about guys who love other guys but aren't 'gay'. They are very similar to their hetro brethern with only one exception--who they wanna fuck. Ms. Proulx understood this more so than most gay men can comprehend. The result, Brokeback Mountain.

The story was ment to be anti-gay.

Brad
   

Well, no--and a little bit yes.

This is probably not far wrong as a description of how many in mainstream hetero America perceive what it means to be gay. But this is an extremely limited view, fostered by the mass media (particularly television and movies). I'm not completely enamoured of the term gay myself, but, like it or not, in common usage in the language today, any man whose emotional attachment (love) is to other men, or who has sex with other men (especially to the exclusion of women), or who settles down and leads a partnered existence with another man, is gay. That's just what we're called today, and while it may not be ideal, I do think it's an improvement over queer or fairy or pansy or any other such term. It just seems to me to be a waste of time and energy to insist that one is not gay because one doesn't fit a media-fostered stereotype (which, in fact, like all stereotypes, has its roots in the reality of the lives of some men but by no means all who are sexually orientated toward other men).
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #87 on: January 15, 2008, 11:49:00 am »
RossInIllinois, may I applaud your comment:
In the begining the movie appears to break new ground until the last 1/2 hour then it starts looking like a stereotypical gay subject matter  movie where something bad has to happen to the gay guy. Not unlike the movie As Good as it Gets, and many many others. Its to bad this story/movie could not have been more of a clean slate and broken some new ground. BBM has more "gay is bad"  stereotypes and situations than the positive im afraid even for 1963. The message BBM sends is two men can fall in love and get each other off but nothing good will come of it and you will never be really happy if your "gay".  IMO this is a very anti gay film with a very good disguise as a love story to soften the blow. (no pun intended)
.......

RossINIllinois and to all too: may I say that the BM film does some cutting edge, but mainly for other issues, including some too rare gay ones. It would and could have been much much pro-gay, but only some anti-gay (if needed).

I agree with you Ross... that much more could have been done to break new grounds for gay living. And I still think that Annie and the BM producers/filmakers/screen writers still could, as one or many reasons I want an BM II, yes 2nd or serie, at least. However, similar stories to that of BM can be done by us gays, you think so too Ross and all of you??

Hugs!!

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #88 on: January 15, 2008, 12:07:58 pm »


        If my statement now is OT just let me know and I will remove it to my own blog.  But as to the question, "Is BBM an Anti gay Polemic.  ??
        I have to ask the question, is then the movie an anti-marriage polemic.  Or is it a anti-hetero marriage polemic.
Because as I see the picture, it  portrays all forms of human connection .  Gay connection, hetero connections and marriage, as a polemic.  It therefor shows that all are doomed to fail.  Through either heartbreak, or death, or apathy.  Leaving all
who partake of those behaviors, subject to every form of human pain..Including child abandonment, and a slow and
painful death alone.
        This movie was not a documentary.  It meant not to show that you have this happen, if you do this or that.  It
was simply I believe a small window into these peoples life, showing the things that caused them to "end up here."
The women except for actual death.  Sufffered just as surely and just as painfully as the men.  They had one thing
also to battle that the men didnt.  They had no ability to stop or change the things that were happening.  Either by not even
being aware of the things that were happening.  or if they did know..They too were uneducated and ill prepared to
know what to do about it.  Alma had tried to ignore it, im sure in hopes it would run its course, and her husband would
finally return to her...That not happening she then gave it up.  She turned to some new form of a life.  But I dont think
that makes BBM a movie that is an anti-marriage polemic.  It is just the fact that bad things can happen to good people.
That ignorance is its own reward.  On all its various guises...Homophobia, or love, how to deal with an unhappy marriage..
They all are in a gordian knot of pain and unfamiliar territory..With no real equipment to deal.



     Beautiful mind

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #89 on: January 15, 2008, 12:22:28 pm »
Thanks ifyoucantfixit!

Wow, wow, you sure bring news when you say:[

i]is then the movie an anti-marriage polemic[/i]

Or is it a anti-hetero marriage polemic
.....

Ifyoucantfixit, may I say no as an immediate answer to those those 2 questions you pose.

However, may I also think more about that?? You could be right!! In some ways.. or totally... I feel somehow.

Awaiting news on this anti-gay polemic by you and by others, as to more research, more comments or feelings,

hugs!

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #90 on: January 15, 2008, 12:34:20 pm »
Thanks again ifyoucantfixit!

Re-reading your comment, may I say that it (the many questions you pose within your brave comment) depends on the light or lights you put about the movie.

You want further details? As examples?

Your views are new to me and they are appreciated greatly by me. May I ask you many questions?

Hugs!


Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #91 on: January 15, 2008, 08:56:24 pm »
It wouldn't have been "Hollywooding up" the screenplay for McMurtry and Ossana to write scenes of "closeness, kissing, holding, etc." that aren't in Annie Proulx's text to begin with?

Yup!  A happy ending would also have been very Hollywood. 

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #92 on: January 15, 2008, 10:30:43 pm »

 It has been stated on this thread that BBM is a tragedy; 20 years of a loving relationship a tragedy?

Ennis and Jack didn’t “have to hide from the world”. They made choices that actually worked out well for a long time. I am quite sure they were not the only two gay men in WY in the 60s and 70s. They had a deep and lasting relationship and considering all the people in their lives, their choices seemed to have been good ones.

There have been many comments made over the last two years on this site and Cullen about Ennis’ failure as a man because of his adultery and non commitment etc. This is way off and I won’t get into an Ennis speech here, but I find such negative attitudes to be actually anti gay. Gay men do have to tweek the mainstream lifestyle to live; they do have to make adjustments and choices that perhaps straight folks may not have to make. To criticize Ennis or gays for making such choices is to me the anti gay possibility.


But, Herr Kaiser I think that BM is a tale of the unique type of tragedy which affects gays in the closet.

To me,the Brokeback story is a tragedy of unfulfilled potentials. The potential of happiness for Ennis and Jack's life was prevented by homophobia and a closet created by an intensively heteronorming society. The Brokeback story is about two fictional characters, but it can reach deeply into the lives and hearts of real men and women who have had their happiness thwarted by the closet. I can't watch the film without painful regrets over what might have been between Chris and myself.

Yes, Ennis and Jack did have to hide from the world and from each other.

They were forced to hide their feelings because of not only the judgement of a homophobic world, but also because of their own relentless internal judgements.
"I'm not no queer."  "Me neither."

I agree with you that many of those who have been harshly critical of Ennis are copping out on facing the real challenges in his life.

From the fictional character Ennis's point of view, he had no choices at all. He couldn't fathom another life path. Only from our point of view in 2008 are we able to see the alternatives. Now that I am retired, I am making it one of my missions to help closeted men see that there are really can be choices. Why?
I survived that type of closet and lived both to tell the tale and to love again.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #93 on: January 15, 2008, 10:49:53 pm »

The original story was not long enough to make a two hour movie.  Two hours is the average movie length today.  Some material had to be added.

So you are asking for things to be expanded upon that didn't even exist in the short story.  These elements of gay life were fabricated by the screen writers and added also.


Yes Clyde, it is very clear the Proulx short story is not long enough to fill out a 2 hour screen script for a major motion picture.

Of course the screen play had to be expanded over the short story, the question posed here concerns not the expansion, but the choices the screenwriters made in creating the expansion. And, I've been working part-time/off-and-on in the screenplay vineyard for some while now. Because of the length issue, turning great short stories into great screen plays can sometimes be a job of delicate cuttings and massive slathering pastings. Also, many scenes will read well in literature but fall flat on the camera, back stories have to be told in some fashion, hopefully other than the 'voice of God' over-narration - not every director can be as resourceful as Billy Wilder in handling a run thru narration.

But, what a screenwriter chooses to cut and especially what he or she chooses to expand may make statements about their predispositions towards certain subjects, or it may tell us what is their target audience.

You and I will disagree about the Arellano essay, and that is OK as we both see BM as a powerful film.

Clyde, you bet I'm aware of the divergences the screenplay makes from the short story, I'm kind of obsessed with it in fact.

In offering examples of potential additions to the dialog in the screenplay that were not used, I offered Jack's closeted life (away from Ennis) only as a counterpoint to the vastly expanded scenes of his heterosexual life. Choices were made by these screenwriters to only lightly touch on Jack's closeted life (away from Ennis), but to emphasize his life with Lureen. Those decisions speak of something beyond what is immediately obvious.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #94 on: January 15, 2008, 10:58:11 pm »

Gay has become to mean way more than a guy who wants to be in the arms of another guy. A way to dress and decorate. A way to vote. Political correctness at all cost. Relating to females more than men. Rainbow flags and parades. In later years viciousness and resentment. Youth and sex.

   

Brad, I think that you may be talking about much more than just labels and word choices here, am I right?

Or are you just saying that your choice is to not label homosexual and bisexual men who do not adopt the lifestyle you describe above as gay?

Help me with your thoughts here. I may be very close to your point of view, but I have chosen for convenience sake to use the word gay to describe all homosexual and bisexual men.

Is this perhaps not the best choice to make when describing men such as you talk about in your essay in "Beyond Brokeback"?

Are we in fact doing them a disservice by labelling them as gay?

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #95 on: January 15, 2008, 11:02:33 pm »
Choices were made by these screenwriters to only lightly touch on Jack's closeted life (away from Ennis), but to emphasize his life with Lureen. Those decisions speak of something beyond what is immediately obvious.

Personally I don't think they speak of anything more than the obvious intent to balance the scenes of Ennis's life with scenes of Jack's life.

And to tell the truth, I've long thought that wasn't really a very imaginative way to construct the movie. I think it's pretty obvious, actually.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #96 on: January 15, 2008, 11:03:25 pm »


Gawd, a gender-studies professor gets her fingers on Brokeback--will anyone even recognize it from the description? 

 

When I purchased "Reading Brokeback Mountain" I noted the bios of the authors of some of the essays and thought - Oh well, this is going to be a tiresome journey down PC lane, "pass me the Tums!"

I was surprised to be very moved by most of the essays, including Ms. Arellano's. So, I wanted to share some of their observations about BM.

I won't hold it against her that she labors with all of that "gender study" weight on her shoulders. She still did a great job!

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #97 on: January 15, 2008, 11:11:07 pm »

  Using the same kind of logic that’s being used to say BBM is an anti-gay polemic, we could mount an equally cogent argument that ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is actually a cautionary tale for teenagers illustrating the dangers of fraternizing with your family’s enemies.  After all they both wind up dead in the end.  I think that argument would be just as perverse and preposterous.

   

Romeo and Juliet?

Tragic 'star-crossed' lovers. Their families feuding, their relatives dueling, inner conflicted, floundering on teenage hormones and lack of mature judgement.
Some of that does sound a bit similar to Brokeback.

But here is the difference.

Romeo and Juliet never hated themselves. Romeo and Juliet were not taught from little on to despise themselves because of their immutable feelings.

Heath Ledger said about the character Ennis, "Fear was instilled in him at an early age, and so the way he loved disgusted him."

Several film critics who are advocates of BM being considered a 'universal love story' have compared Romeo and Juliet with Ennis and Jack.

Sorry, no dice with me.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #98 on: January 16, 2008, 09:52:12 am »
Several film critics who are advocates of BM being considered a 'universal love story' have compared Romeo and Juliet with Ennis and Jack.

Sorry, no dice with me.

It's easy to see the superficial similarity. In both cases, the principals are really kept apart by social forces. But I agree, when you dig a little deeper, it doesn't quite wash.
« Last Edit: January 16, 2008, 02:38:49 pm by Jeff Wrangler »
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #99 on: January 16, 2008, 11:11:23 am »
It's easy to see the superficial similarity. In both cases, the principals are really kept apart by social forces. But I agree, when you did a little deeper, it doesn't quite wash.

    I agree as well.  My using 'Romeo and Juliet' as an example was only to show that you could take a classic love story and force some pretty strange conclusions on it if you wanted to. 

     I intended no comparison beyond the fact that they are both tragic and involve romance. 

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #100 on: January 16, 2008, 02:40:35 pm »
    I agree as well.  My using 'Romeo and Juliet' as an example was only to show that you could take a classic love story and force some pretty strange conclusions on it if you wanted to. 

     I intended no comparison beyond the fact that they are both tragic and involve romance. 

Another of the superficial similarities.  ;)

And thanks for your contributions to this thread, Clyde. I enjoy reading them.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #101 on: January 16, 2008, 06:25:06 pm »
  The comparison of BBM and 'Romeo and Juliet' had been made in other reviews.  While I didn't think it wholly accurate, I figured I could use 'Romeo and Juliet'  and force a perverse interpretation on that story, similar to the anti-gay idea that I believe has been forced on BBM.

   Since the majority of sympathy in BBM winds up in Jack and Ennis's corner, I don't see how you could consider it an anti-gay polemic.  If it was intended as an anti-gay polemic, then Larry McMurtry, Dianna Ossana, Annie Proulx, and Ang Lee (a group which includes three Oscar winners and two Pulitzer prize winners) sure did an incompetent job of it.

Offline Clyde-B

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #102 on: January 16, 2008, 07:47:09 pm »

And thanks for your contributions to this thread, Clyde. I enjoy reading them.

Thanks Jeff, I enjoy your comments here and other places as well.  Everything from the serious ones to the smiley faces.   ;D

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #103 on: January 16, 2008, 07:52:32 pm »
Thanks Jeff, I enjoy your comments here and other places as well.  Everything from the serious ones to the smiley faces.   ;D

Aww. ...  ::)

Well, we don't want to take ourselves too seriously. It's bad for the digestion. ...  8)
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #104 on: January 16, 2008, 08:08:42 pm »
Well, no--and a little bit yes.

This is probably not far wrong as a description of how many in mainstream hetero America perceive what it means to be gay. But this is an extremely limited view, fostered by the mass media (particularly television and movies). I'm not completely enamoured of the term gay myself, but, like it or not, in common usage in the language today, any man whose emotional attachment (love) is to other men, or who has sex with other men (especially to the exclusion of women), or who settles down and leads a partnered existence with another man, is gay. That's just what we're called today, and while it may not be ideal, I do think it's an improvement over queer or fairy or pansy or any other such term. It just seems to me to be a waste of time and energy to insist that one is not gay because one doesn't fit a media-fostered stereotype (which, in fact, like all stereotypes, has its roots in the reality of the lives of some men but by no means all who are sexually orientated toward other men).

but the 'mass media' does not set up the parades....they DO focus on the more 'exotic' members of the parade....but they don't get actors out there and make them walk on all fours with a leash. That is 'gay' people doing it themselves. There is a much louder group of gay men that encourage that kind of behaviour and the people like Jack and Ennis simply will not be associated with it so they stay hidden. (of course the vast majority of people do not do this...but you can bet the cameras are going to focus on those few and IMO it does everyone harm.)

Most people aren't interested in broadcasting the particulars of their sex lifes or what exactly they want to do in bed.


this post was a response to Jeff's comment that the stereotype is caused by TV and movies...
« Last Edit: January 16, 2008, 09:33:04 pm by injest »

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #105 on: January 16, 2008, 11:52:45 pm »
this post was a response to Jeff's comment that the stereotype is caused by TV and movies...


I'm not looking to argue with you, Jess, but you take a look at my post again. I did not say the stereotype was caused by TV and movies. I said it was fostered, I meant it's spread by TV and movies, movies like The Bird Cage, and TV news broadcasts of Pride parades, and so forth.

But even that wasn't my point. My point was that however much these "people like Jack and Ennis" may "stay hidden" and may not like it, in the eyes of any straight people who know who and what they are, they are gay--if their straight family and friends feel a need to attach a name to what they are--because that's just the common use today, whether or not it conjures up images of outrageous drag queens or swishy decorators or bare-butt boys in motorcycle chaps, so these people like Jack and Ennis ought to just save their time and energy denying that they are gay, because in the eyes of the world, if they love other men and have sex with other men, they are gay.

And I sure hope their straight friends and families aren't calling them queers and fairies and pansies behind their backs.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

injest

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #106 on: January 16, 2008, 11:57:27 pm »
you are right...I did miss your point.

mea culpa?


injest

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #107 on: January 16, 2008, 11:58:38 pm »
hey, I don't need to be spreading my opine up in here...it is not my beeswax...you guys have fun...I will leave you to it

 ;)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #108 on: January 17, 2008, 12:05:05 am »
you are right...I did miss your point.

mea culpa?



You don't need to mea culpa about nothing in my opinion. Your point about it being gay people, and a certain population of loud and out-there gay people, who do the things the media focus on, is a good point. It just wasn't my point, that's all.  :)
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #109 on: January 17, 2008, 01:27:48 am »
There is a lot of fear in the BM movie... would that make it partly anti-gay?

I have spoken about the violence in this BM movie, which I find too much, but no one seems to talk about that except to find that it seems to me as normal which puzzles me. Why?

Hugs to all May gay men be safe and all others too in the whole world!!

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #110 on: March 25, 2008, 04:50:47 am »
Moderation notice:

The rest of this thread was off topic in the Open Forum and has been moved to the Current Events Forum. You find it here under its new title "Political discussion of gay rights, 'gay lifestyle' (was part of Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic)"

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #111 on: April 04, 2008, 04:34:23 pm »
I repeat:

There is a lot of fear in the BM movie... would that make it partly anti-gay?
 


.........

Since this is important !!

Surely ??

Do tell... as you please!!

Offline Artiste

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Re: Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris
« Reply #112 on: May 15, 2008, 10:25:22 pm »
This is an important subject !