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Contents:

• GAY COWBOYS? SURE, PARDNER.
• THE REAL GAY WBOYS
• THE 200-YEAR-OLD DIARY THAT'S REWRG GAY HISTORY
• THE DALLAS COWBOYS’ LONG GAY & BI HISTORY: 3 OUT ATHLET, SOME GLORY HOLE, A GAY DATG SE & MORE
• GAY ROOS ARE QUEER SPAC RAL PLAC
• LE GILFORD’S TENR PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY ROOS

GAY COWBOYS? SURE, PARDNER.

Detractors, largely spearhead by right-wg and relig groups, quickly and fervently emed the film’s pictn of a homosexual uple immoral, evince of an attempt to femize men, and even anti-Amerin.

” Other crics acced filmmakers of phg an “agenda” onto Amerins, wh one wrg that “Hollywood screenwrers and producers thk that ’s their duty to teach Ameri that homosexual nduct and cross-drsg are normal behavrs that should be affirmed Amerin culture. In this way, Cooper has embedd an acknowledgement of same-sex love the very heart of Amerin myth, directly ntrastg claims that homosexualy is an unnatural and/or morn ventn. Furthermore, the homosocialy scribed Cooper’s work is not purely imagative, but actually reflective of historil rerds ditg the prence of homoerotic relatnships among wboys the ontier wt, keepg wh Cooper’s assertn that the stori were spired by tal he had been told by actual wboys.

THE REAL GAY WBOYS

This is also nsistent wh fdgs like those Aled Ksey’s notor 1948 study, Sexual Behavr the Human Male, which reported the hight equenci of homosexual timacy to be among men ral farmg muni; probably, Ksey nclud, much like their pneer forebearers the ontier wt. One such source, a limerick that allus to homosexual timacy between wboys, was found by historian Clifford Wtermeier and published his 1976 say “The Cowboy and Sex. As Peter Boag explas, “to intify a homoerotic re s myth about the supremacy of whe Amerin masculy is to imply that Amerin dienc want their ontiersman to practice nonnormative sir as part of their rol natn-buildg” (12).

In other words, if there is somethg natnal about the wboy and if there is somethg homoerotic about the partnerships he forms the wilrns, then there is somethg homoerotic about Amerin natnal inty.

THE 200-YEAR-OLD DIARY THAT'S REWRG GAY HISTORY

This would be somethg seemgly ntradictory to the rercement of homosexualy as Other and anathema to the Amerin/mascule ials the wboy was supposed to reprent. In forcg the dience to regnize a eper nnectn between the two protagonists, one that may reflect feelgs held by many other Amerin men, the dience is pelled to acknowledge the artificial boundary between homosocial and homoerotic that is imposed by homophobia and rerced by the Hollywood Cowboy. As Eric Patterson ncurs, “By lotg love between men wh the inographic system of landspe, clothg, and activi that are fundamental to the Wtern, Brokeback Mounta oblig rears and dienc to beg to regnize how the Amerin natnal fantasy of Wtern adventure and particularly the ialized wboy hero have distorted history and endorsed a homophobic nstctn of masculy” (117).

THE DALLAS COWBOYS’ LONG GAY & BI HISTORY: 3 OUT ATHLET, SOME GLORY HOLE, A GAY DATG SE & MORE

(Image cred: Alamy)The actor Sam Elltt's ntroversial recent ments cricised The Power of the Dog's 'allns to homosexualy', but queer readgs of wterns stretch back s, and Zachariah is a prime example, wr Sean the ialistic 1960s gave way to the cynil 1970s, US cema began servg up creasgly nihilistic and psychologilly plex stori, all wh sour endgs to match. Zachariah ptur the overlap between anti-Vietnam War, rock mic, sexual liberatn, femism, the emergence of gay rights, civil rights, environmentalism – they're all alcg – Gary NeedhamZachariah's screenplay was rewrten many tim.

In all s Firign-fuelled youth-culture provotn, Needham tells BBC Culture, the film "ptur the overlap between anti-Vietnam War, rock mic, sexual liberatn, femism, the emergence of gay rights, civil rights, environmentalism – they're all alcg" wtern was a predomant mo through which mascule performance was tght, pecially to young whe Amerin menThe boys' embrace at the end of Zachariah, then, is an earnt rebuttal of the toxic, vlent mascule mor on which the wtern genre was built.

GAY ROOS ARE QUEER SPAC RAL PLAC

On the homosexual implitns of the iendship, he wrote, "I'm aaid that's all is – iendship, " addg that the film's script leads to the brk of homosexualy only to back away before be explic. In his book Idol Worship: A Shamels Celebratn of Male Bety the Movi (2003), Michael Fergon refers to Johnson at this stage of his reer as "an stant h wh gay dienc", and "sold as chicken feed and pecked at wh light". When Zach first approach Matthew, he’s shirtls and sweaty, wearg ltle but a blacksmh's smock, Fergon wrote: "the homoerotic possibili of this exchange [might] turn to the first gay wtern sce Andy Warhol's Lonome Cowboys (1969)".

Red River (1948), a film laced wh nuendo which John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, a closeted gay man, admire each other's firearms, was labelled a queer touchstone – alongsi Calamy Jane (1953) and Johnny Guar (1954), which also upend genr rol – Vo Rso's 1981 book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexualy the Movi, and the documentary of the same name (1995). "The wboy has always had a lot of currency gay eroti and eventual pornography, " says Needham, who pots also to gay-liberatn films such as Song of the Loon (1970), and gay porn featur such as The Savag (1971), as exampl. Zachariah picts men, even if they're not terpreted as gay, as unbound by the mascule paranoia that surrounds touch, feelgs and emotnsIn 1969, Midnight Cowboy would repackage the them and athetics to ask qutns about Ameri's mols of masculy.

Needham wr his say Hollywood Tra: Midnight Cowboy and Unrground Cema, the film "'outs' post-war gay culture's cultural productn and erotic fascatn wh wboys".

LE GILFORD’S TENR PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY ROOS

That, says Needham, might be part of Zachariah's appeal to gay dienc: bee picts men, even if they're not terpreted as gay, as unbound by the mascule paranoia that surrounds touch, feelgs and emotns. And as Sam Elltt's ntroversial ments regardg Jane Campn's The Power of The Dog's "allns to homosexualy" this week show, 's an archetype that some fd hard to shake. And a claim that is likely to outrage many ral nservativ, they say that homosexualy was an unspoken norm on the Amerin ontier, where men were close and women were srce.