2005’s great
film about a doomed, socially impossible love affair that ends in death
and despair is not the Oscar front-runner that prompted prominent queer
commentator B Ruby Rich to write of “a grand romantic tragedy, [that joins] the
ranks of great literature as much as great cinema” , and
which prompted gay activist Tom Gregory to spend over one hundred
thousand US dollars on eBay last week to purchase two shirts that were used
on the set. The grand romantic tragedy of the past year’s films was King
Kong, while B Ruby Rich’s “great cinema” with the very
expensive souvenir shirts is the fine but greatly over-rated Brokeback
Mountain.
Every one I know who ‘s seen Brokeback Mountain
has said pretty much the same thing: quality film … no big deal. I
agree. It’s a superbly-filmed drama that hints at making an impact, but
doesn’t. A couple of film critics - all from outside the gay press -
have expressed reservations about what so many others have praised as
the “film of the year”. Stephanie Zacharek, from salon.com, described Brokeback
Mountain as “inert and inexpressive”, Richard Schickel of
Time magazine said that it “fails to fully engage our emotions” and
Andrew Sarris, of the New York Observer said he was never moved and not
even overly excited by the film. Gene Shalit, of NBC’s today Show
provoked a backlash from GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against
Defamation) when he said, amongst other things, that the film was
“wildly over praised, but not by me.” GLAAD labeled Shalit “anti-gay”
and even censured NBC for giving Shalit a platform to air his
“gratuitously offensive comments”. Is this the kind of scuffle
suggested by Phil Villarreal, from the Arizona Daily Star, who
described Brokeback Mountain as “an above-average
film overpraised for its social significance"?
Are Zacharek, Schickel and Sarris talking about the same film that Rich
claimed “changes our perceptions so much that cinema history thereafter
has to arrange itself around it”, one that signals “a shift in scope
and tenor so profound as to signal a new era”? Do you know anyone who’s
really, truly raved about the film? The grandiose canonisation of Brokeback
the gay-cowboy-movie-phenomenon seems to be out of proportion to the
merits of the actual film.
And, can a film that has made just over sixty million dollars in two
months of general release at the American box office (Emma Thompson’s
completely ephemeral Nanny McPhee made about
two-thirds that in two weeks) be the film that the Advocate – America’s
leading gay glossy – said was “deeply moving millions nationwide …
communities sitting together in the dark and emotionally connecting
with this story” ? Brokeback Mountain is not a
blockbuster - it's an art house film marketed towards a cosmopolitan
audience. For it to be changing the world it would need to "break out"
and become a phenomenal hit, like My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Lots and lots of people from different demographics would have to
actually go and see it.
There simply aren't the box office dollars to support the claims that Brokeback
Mountain is "changing cinematic history" and so on.
We might start with the wobbly idea that Brokeback Mountain
is a revolutionary object, a breakthrough – something unprecedented.
Rich believes that Brokeback Mountain takes on
“the most sacred of all American genres, the western, and queer[s] it.”
Does it do this? All I can think of is Christian Haren, the model who
appeared in print advertisements in the 1970s as the Marlboro Man, who
was gay and who died of AIDS in San Francisco in 1996. Or, the
quasi-romantic relationship between Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid. Or, the ride-em-cowboy video clip for “Life At
The Outpost” by the Skatt Bros, Canada’s suede-chaps answer to the
Village People. Or, innumerable gay porn films that are set in a
cowboy/ranch milieu. Or, 1969's Midnight Cowboy,
where John Voight turns tricks with guys in toilets then takes a lonely
trip to nowhere with bosom buddy Dustin Hoffman dead in his lap, or
1954's Johnny Guitar, where Joan Crawford plays
Vienna, a drag-queeny Wild West saloon owner, or 1953's Calamity
Jane, a comedy-musical where Doris Day plays a butch little
cowgirl who sings "Secret Love", a gay anthem. As a letter writer to salon.com pointed
out, “I thought the western was inherently a homoerotic genre. [Brokeback
Mountain]’s probably a bit more explicit, is all."
The gay-clone Marlboro Man cowboy aesthetic is older than my mother,
and speaking of the Village People, wasn’t one of them a gay cowboy?
Brokeback Mountain traces a lineage to “YMCA” or “Macho
Man”, not to cutting-edge 21st century queer culture. In the movies,
the travails of thwarted unrequited quasi-lovers who romance women but
who think of other men are the crux of scores of films from
Ben Hur to Victim.
We could also look at the degree of Brokeback Mountain’s
gay tilt, something that even star Jake Gyllenhaal underplayed when he
suggested that the film was about lovers prevented by their current
circumstances from being together, and not about being gay. Following
Jake’s lead, we see that the film is less about mainstream gay life –
something that by definition is limited geographically to the inner
suburbs of very big cities and which is marked by discos rather than
rodeos – and more about the conflicting needs and wants that turn us
every which way but loose. In this sense, Brokeback Mountain’s
tale of thwarted love is more aligned with “Romeo and Juliet” than
“Queer as Folk”. This timeless sense of romantic tragedy is what should
be applauded about the film – not its potential to boot-lick 2005-06
American big city gay culture.
Or, the attractive manliness of Jack and Ennis, Brokeback
Mountain's lovers. Rich links Matthew Shepard - a
posthumously fictionalised quasi-cowboy figure who was bashed to death
in Wyoming in 1999 – to our fictional cowboy country heroes with a
highly romanticised, almost children's fairy-tale version of Shepard's
identity. Ignoring the facts that Shepard had lived abroad for years
and had only recently returned to Wyoming to escape the fast-lane gay
life of big city Denver, Rich describes a Huck-Finn style waif "who
loved to fish and hunt" and who was cruelly murdered "for the simple
sin of being gay". She implies that via Shepard's fate, Brokeback
Mountain is a timely story of homophobia, but she neglects
to mention that the only reference to Matthew’s alleged outdoor
pursuits was made by his father, who in a statement to the court during
sentencing at his son’s murderer’s trial, reflected sentimentally on
how he’d taught Matthew how to fish when Mathew was a child. Rich
doesn’t mention that Dennis Shepard went on to talk, in the same
speech, of his disappointment that Matthew hadn’t grown up to be the
athletic type, but had pursued acting instead. And how come
Rich doesn’t talk about more recent findings about Shepard’s
background, that he was a crystal meth addict, and that his murder may
have had everything to do with drugs, and little to do with
homosexuality? What if one of our cowboy lovers had been a hairdresser,
and the other, an overweight effeminate playwright drug-addict? Would
we be slightly disappointed in them, like Mr Shepard? Some homosexual
men are landscape gardeners, plumbers, even cowboys, but they are
exceptions. How many gay bricklayers do you know? Vito Russo noted that
"no-one likes a sissy ... even gay men" and we see with Brokeback
Mountain that even highbrow gay film critics like their gay
men to be masculine icons: blue collar, handsome and gruff. The
alternative is a frail, James Dean (also mentioned by Rich) style
martyr who would happily go about quietly grooming his ponies and
casting a line into the creek if it wasn't for all those evil, lurking
violent homophobes. Note that the equally excellent film Capote
is about a gay man, but he's queeny, and so for every gay word spoken
excitedly about Capote, there have been ten
thousand about Brokeback.
What interested me in the story of Brokeback Mountain
was the lead character’s struggle between his love for another man, and
his desire to lead a regular life and fit in with the main. Ennis
(Ledger) is the film's cursed free spirit, doomed to a life of
loneliness when he chooses to avoid any kind of orthodoxy. As
exemplified by Rich's hyperbole, gay cultural precepts are iron-clad
and obligatory. Just as homosexuality is forbidden in cowboy culture,
certain things are prohibited in gay culture, and opposing ideas or
arguments are dimissed out of hand. (For example, if you want to see
someone go red in the face and become instantly angry, ask a gayist
about those dark shadows trailing behind halo-topped Saint Shepard.)
Shoe-horning Brokeback Mountain into a
predigested dialogue about homophobia and the politics of
representation, critics such as Rich who are ostesibly enraptured by
the film pay its core themes considerable disrespect. Complex and
contradictory human conflict is the core of Brokeback
Mountain, but it seems to go unnoticed by the shrill fan
club of the film, who appear to view things only in primary and
politically correct gay-friendly colours.
Brokeback Mountain may win awards, but it
will not change the world. It’s a good film, but not a great one.
Further, it's a small film, along the lines of American
Beauty or Million Dollar Baby, and its
impact will be in proportion to this. The most interesting piece of
spin-off shrapnel is the now-obligatory rush of gay commentators to
throw cliche petals at the clay feet of McIcons, rather than grapple
with interesting, contradictory realms of thought.
