Brokeback Mounta is so gay. I don't mean to sult you by statg the obv. One of the movie's better-circulated nicknam is Bareback Mounta, and one lovely, sp-slicked scene after another, earns . But readg some of the New York and L.A. film crics, you might be nfed. The "ostensible gay Wtern," an advance review Variety sniffed. "Jack and Ennis's feelgs transcend anythg as mundane as sexual orientatn," acrdg to the New...
Contents:
- WAS IT GOOD FOR THE GAYS: ‘BROKEBACK MOUNTA’
- THAT “GAY COWBOY MOVIE”QUEER PEOPLE REFLECT ON 15 YEARS OF “BROKEBACK MOUNTA”
WAS IT GOOD FOR THE GAYS: ‘BROKEBACK MOUNTA’
* bareback mountain gay *
WE ARE an all-male clothg optnal bed and breakfast retreat terg to gay, bi, and straight men 21 years or olr. Brokeback Mounta is so gay. The "ostensible gay Wtern, " an advance review Variety sniffed.
"Brokeback Mounta is at once the gayt and the least gay Hollywood film I've seen, " the LA Weekly's Ella Taylor wrote, nonsensilly, "which is another way of sayg that [director Ang] Lee has a knack for cullg universaly om the most specific inti. ) In the New Yorker, Anthony Lane me across pompo and flippant: "This slow and stoic movie, hailed as a gay Wtern, feels neher gay nor pecially Wtern: It is a study of love unr siege.
In Slate the thor David Leavt, somethg of an thory on the subject of gay fictn, ma a tortured argument agast nsirg Brokeback Mounta "gay": "Is Brokeback Mounta, as 's been touted, Hollywood's first gay love story? The answer— a very posive sense, I thk—is y to the love story, no to the gay. " He went on to discs the Annie Proulx short story the movie is based on, sayg don't nform to the tradn of gay lerature, "which poeticiz urban promiscuy and sexual adventurg.
THAT “GAY COWBOY MOVIE”QUEER PEOPLE REFLECT ON 15 YEARS OF “BROKEBACK MOUNTA”
" Leavt's argument is ridiculo: Gay means urban and promiscuo, therefore a movie that is set Wyomg and imag monogamy as an unattaable paradise is not gay. What motivat the reviewers to cry the "gay wboy" label? In downplayg Brokeback Mounta's gay ntent, they're followg the lead of s marketers and attemptg to make the film safe for heterosexual dienc.
For his part, Leavt is tryg—however clumsily—to draw a distctn between a mp athetic and homosexual subject matter. But he succeeds only exaggeratg "all the banali implied the word gay" and suatg that "a paean to masculy" nnot simultaneoly be a film about gay characters.
Brokeback Mounta is a film about gay wboys—that is what 's about—played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Insistg that the film is somehow not gay, or beyond "all the banali" that the word "gay" impli, unrm the central nflict—man vers a reprsive society—that earns Brokeback Mounta s stat as a latter-day Wtern. When crics acknowledge the "gay wboy" label, then divert their rears' attentns toward "transcennce" or "universaly" or a vague "love story, " they're dimishg the specific, sexual power of the narrative.