Arts
Brokeback: More Riff Than Review
Movies
Brokeback: More Riff Than Review
by Peggy Luhrs
There
seems to be some controversy about Brokeback Mountain. No, I
don't mean the religious right wingnuts, I mean within the LGBT community.
I neither loved nor hated it. I liked it. It was a good movie, good cinematography,
terrific acting and excellent direction from Ang Lee. That I didn't love
it probably has a lot to do with the fact that I'm a lesbian and it is
hard to see the grunting and grabbing between these guys as a great love
story. Yet by the end you do see it as a great love story. The repressed
emotion is of a piece with the western life these guys are living and
part of the genre to show men's feelings leaking out from their rugged
facades. In fact that seems to be what defines acting for many in the
US, a real macho man letting on to some feeling ala Eastwood, DeNiro,
Wayne, Cooper, Stallone et al. Most of the elements of love and loss are
shown through their deprivation of eachother rather than their connection.
What I did love about the movie, what makes it a groundbreaking film is
how it changes the iconography of the cowboy movie. And likely "I
don't know how to quit you" will go right up there with "you
know how to whistle don't you" and other bits of dialogue that have
entered the American lexicon. It is also centrally a love story between
two men.
What upset the religious
right and made the likes of Chris Matthews, Don Imus and other straight
men so nervous was the idea that cowboys could be gay. I know it's hard
to summon up sympathy for these guys but its sooo distressing to have
your surefire masculinity models brought into question. I first noticed
this at the family Thanksgiving table when I talked about a gay pro football
player. My father's business partner couldn't handle that. He simply refused
to believe it. When Ellen's sitcom died, Bill Maher opined the show had
gone too far trying to make people believe everyone was gay when they
had a gay plumber. According to Maher, everyone knew tradespeople weren't
gay, except just the lesbians.
One commentator even claimed
the movie had raped the Marlboro man. If that's so, I'd say that as the
quintessential American image of granite chiseled dominance, he needed
it. Straight men like to think all gay men are in the nancy boy category.
Taking in the very essential masculinity of men loving men is too scary.
One objection I've heard within
the glbt community is "oh no not another movie about gays where somebody
dies." Yes, it will be truly liberating when gay-themed films just
show us the character's successful struggles in life. But this is a quintessentially
queer story. This is the first time the story has been told in such a
big crossover movie. Homophobia still kills, if not outright, then in
many slow deaths of addiction, depression, poverty and isolation.
Things have changed, but not
enough and not for everyone. This story needed to be told. It makes all
the sense in the world that where the tough guy ethic rules as it does
in the west, a man might suffer the most for disloyalty to the code of
masculinity constructed as laconic, undemonstrative cowboys.
Enjoy the scenery. Huzzahs to Ang
Lee for breaking the mold. Heath Ledger was great but the Oscar goes to
Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Capote.
But if we really want to see a story
about strong men, let's see the one where the cowboys dare to come out
and live feeling and ethically consistent lives.
Peggy Luhrs is a lifelong activist and former instructor of film at Burlington College.