Brokeback as an Anti-Gay Polemic : essay by W.C. Harris

[Jeff Wrangler]

    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.

[Clyde-B]

  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.

[Clyde-B]

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.   

[Jeff Wrangler]

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

Aww. ... 

Well, we don't want to take ourselves too seriously. It's bad for the digestion. ... 

[injest]

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...

[Jeff Wrangler]

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.

[injest]

you are right...I did miss your point.

mea culpa?

[injest]

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

 

[Jeff Wrangler]

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. 

[Artiste]

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!!