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.