Brokeback Mountain

[ankh]

First off, anyone else calling this Bareback Mountain without meaning to? It just sort of slips out.

Secondly, I haven't seen it - yet. I will see it but only because i've stopped reading the press about it.
Here in the UK there are billboards all over the place, same as for any other film. It's being heavily advertised on radio. Not so sure about TV ads because I rarely watch TV. It's just another film. I find the reaction in the US bizarre and it almost put me off the film. The talk of how "brave" the "straight" male actors are. PFFFT! Brave? Oh, I hadn't realised they'd been racing into burning buildings to rescue kittens and orphans; and that shark-wrestling to save a pregnant woman completely escaped me. They're *actors* playing *characters*, they're not required to change their sexuality or set up home together. Funny how I never see actors being called "brave" and angsting about it when they're playing murderers or philanderers. Get on with it, you wimps, and stop bloody whining. Actresses have to kiss men and women they don't fancy so why the big angst-fest over a male actor having to kiss someone he isn't attracted to? Oh woe, the poor actor is required to act. Every time the pair of them witter on about how difficult it was and responding to comments about bravery with anything other than 'I'm an actor, not a fireman' they add to the idea that playing a gay character is something fearful, something uncommon, something that requires a rundown of their straight love life just in case OMFG someone thinks they might not be *acting* gay, something that requires strength of character and heroics rather than simple acting skills. The Christian fundamentalist won't like it? Too fucking bad.

Those things led me to think the film was going to turn out to be a wussy cop-out, with gay characters dying unhappily because you can't be gay and have a happy ending in Hollywood. Oh wait...

I'll still be watching it, for the pretty and because I want it to do as well as any other movie so those wussy Hollywood types jump on the popularity bandwagon, and maybe in a few years playing a gay character won't be seen as something requiring courage but will be just another kind of character and any whining about how difficult it is will be met with "Try acting, dear boy".

Comments

[ankh-lj.livejournal.com]

"What is new is this is the first "major motion picture" to have such an outright gay theme, with well-known actors playing the roles, and a well-known director. If it didn't have Heath, Jake and Ang, it wouldn't have caused much of a stir, because it would have been relagated only to "art house" theaters and never seen the inside of a mainstream cinema."

I guess 'In and Out' and 'The Birdcage' got a free pass because they were comedies. Was there this much hoopla when Philidelphia was shown?

[nialla]

Gays in comedies have been accepted for a while, but a drama, one where the relationship is treated seriously is different.

It's much like black Americans in film. At first it was only acceptable for them to be subserviant and/or comedic figures in "white films," though they could be a bit more dramatic in films designed for "black audiences." (Many theaters were segregated in the American South -- most had special late night showings for black audiences) Nowadays though, no one really thinks a black actor can't do anything a white one can do and vice versa. Maybe one day no one will bat an eye over whether an actor or character is gay or straight.

I think "Philidelphia" was promoted more as an "AIDS movie" than a movie about gays themselves. "Brokeback Mountain" shows real gay people, living their lives, even though the guys themselves don't consider themselves gay or queer. They don't ever say they love each other. They don't know that they can.

I think that's what frightens the conservatives the most. They don't want to see gays as being people just like them. The conservative POV is to focus on their wives, who had cheating husbands who gave into the "temptation" of a gay affair instead of "staying straight." The more liberal POV is if they could have been together without fear of being killed (which, even today, is still a risk), they wouldn't have married and continued their affair.

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking/talking a lot lately about how, in the 70's, we had "Starsky & Hutch" being affectionate and "The Odd Couple" naturally falling into the dynamics of a married couple. Was there subtext that these men were all gay? I don't know. If there was, nobody seemed to care.

20 years later, Jerry Falwell is seeing homoerotic subtext in "Teletubbies". You wanna run that one by me again? Americans are seeing it freakin' everywhere, the same way they were seeing terrorists everywhere after 9/11, and a perfect example of the attitude is PDL snarking in the Orpheus commentary that "some people" think if he frames Jack and Daniel together in a shot, that's why some fans think they're lovers. Uh, yeah, that's what did it. :D

Still, even though there might be some small risk of the actors being beaten up by angry homophobes, I think "brave" is a real stretch. ;)

Honestly, the US viewed as a collective entity qualifies for borderline personality disorder, I do believe. But the good news is, just here around town, in real life, I've noticed a sudden very gradual upward trend of guys who give every appearance of being pals hugging each other in public the way women friends often do. So there may be hope yet.

[nialla]

Was there subtext that these men were all gay? I don't know. If there was, nobody seemed to care.

I think it may be more that people didn't know to look. It wasn't until relatively recently the topic of homosexuality was openly discussed at all. Would someone living in a rural area during 1963 have any clue? They were lucky if someone told them about the heterosexual birds and the bees before they got married.

PDL snarking in the Orpheus commentary that "some people" think if he frames Jack and Daniel together in a shot, that's why some fans think they're lovers. Uh, yeah, that's what did it. :D

Well, those "some people" kept trying to put Sam and Jack together to make some fans think they were lovers. Goose. Gander. Good. ;)

Honestly, the US viewed as a collective entity qualifies for borderline personality disorder, I do believe.

I think it's partly because religion, especially the evangelical type, held such sway over many people, especially in rural areas, for so long. You just didn't question it. Ever. Now people can without becoming a total pariah, but yet there's still a lot of fear.

I rarely bring up religion or politics, and try to sidestep it if the person bringing it up is completely opposite my beliefs. I still have a niggling fear that someone will have a religious freakout that I'm not Christian and go after me to have me fired, though they'll probably use some other excuse. I doubt it will happen, but the threat is still there. I think that lingering threat of possible retaliation is keeping some people from speaking up and/or keeping them publically agreeing, but privately not.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

think it may be more that people didn't know to look.

I think that's true. My husband I both watched Starsky & Hutch when we were teens (together! *g*) and neither one of us thought they were gay. It seemed like a perfectly normal friendship to us--maybe more intense than most, but not "gay" or anything. I can see that now, but I also don't think that two men hugging or loving each other the way that they did means they're gay. But I've also wondered about this as well. Are we more homophobic now because we see it everywhere or less because we see it and accept it? *confused*

[ankh-lj.livejournal.com]

"I think that's true. My husband I both watched Starsky & Hutch when we were teens (together! *g*) and neither one of us thought they were gay. It seemed like a perfectly normal friendship to us--maybe more intense than most, but not "gay" or anything. I can see that now, but I also don't think that two men hugging or loving each other the way that they did means they're gay. But I've also wondered about this as well. Are we more homophobic now because we see it everywhere or less because we see it and accept it? *confused*"

I think it's less a case of seeing it everywhere and more a case of more people seeing it as an option and possibility. That, for me, is one of the key elements that will result in a less homophobic society, because when the general audience sees a man and a woman in an intense relationship (facing danger together, emotionally close) it's perfectly acceptable to wonder if the relationship is or could be of a sexual/romantic nature. Heck, sometimes there's speculation when there's very little to go on beyond working together and the odd smile here and there. Treating a male/male or female/female relationship the same way is one big step forward.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

So this is a good thing, then. :-) That makes sense. I like this. :-)

I was wondering about that only because I tend to think that people are hyper aware now of sexual abuse and child abuse, too, and tend to see that everywhere so that people are afraid to hug a child. I can remember my friend saying she went against the rules and hugged a child when she was a counselor at an overnight camp because the child was homesick and crying in the middle of the night--and it just seems sad that there needs to be rules about such things (and, actually, I don't think there should be).

But you're right in this, I think:
Treating a male/male or female/female relationship the same way is one big step forward.

That makes sense. Thanks for giving me a clearer way to look at it. :-)

[ankh-lj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the discussion. :-)

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

I think it may be more that people didn't know to look.

Sure. But I also like to think that maybe every tiny scrap of physical affection wasn't sexualized then like it is now. I mean, we have manuals telling employers just where on the arm they can touch employees and for how long.

I'd rather have gay text than gay subtext, anyway. And getting back to Brokeback Mountain and the whole "brave" thing, wasn't there some of that "brave" talk about My Own Private Idaho, just b/c the actors were :shock, gasp: Hollywood?

Well, those "some people" kept trying to put Sam and Jack together to make some fans think they were lovers. Goose. Gander. Good. ;)

I very much agree. But how mindless do they think we are, that camera angles are supposed to imply certain types of relationships? Two characters don't even have to be on the same SHOW to get slashed/shipped in fanfic. What camera angle brought that on, dumbasses? :D

I rarely bring up religion or politics, and try to sidestep it if the person bringing it up is completely opposite my beliefs. I still have a niggling fear that someone will have a religious freakout that I'm not Christian and go after me to have me fired, though they'll probably use some other excuse. I doubt it will happen, but the threat is still there.

You're in TX, right? I grew up in TN in the 80's, and I knew people who were seriously harrassed and drummed out of schools for being *Democrats*. I can't imagine what adding gay or non-Christian to that rap sheet would have called for. I don't know if it's improved, but it was seriously warped.

L.A. is rather tolerant about that stuff, partly because religion and politics are still considered personal topics here, and there's really no dominant group. We may lean more Democrat than Republican, but I'd be hardpressed to tell you what the majority religion is around here. Money, I think. :D

[ankh-lj.livejournal.com]

"I very much agree. But how mindless do they think we are, that camera angles are supposed to imply certain types of relationships? Two characters don't even have to be on the same SHOW to get slashed/shipped in fanfic. What camera angle brought that on, dumbasses? :D"

It seemed to me to be the typical reaction of someone who doesn't get slash. 'You do realize hugging and touching doesn't have to be sexual?' Add to this that he's a male PTB and I suspect the idea of viewers creating something from the show that has little or nothing to do with what was deliberately put into the show just boggles their minds. Slashers (and shippers for that matter) don't need camera angles and physical contact. They don't even have to be on the same show or even have visuals (I'm into the Good Omens fic, that's based on *one book*). They don't get it so they try to explain it in a way that satisfies them. 'Oh, it's because they've misread two-shots, subconsciously responding to our directorial choices, not realizing the actors have to stand close to fit the frame!' Er...no.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

LOL This is probably true, though. We all try to make sense out of things we don't understand. It's unfortunate that in any articles that I've read about slash, they always get it wrong, even if it's not entirely negative.

[ankh-lj.livejournal.com]

Ah, those articles that insist on trying to pigeonhole every slash fan in existence, as if slashers were one big mass with one mind and one reason why same gender fic of whatever preference pushed their one big button? 'You like slash because of reason X!' Well, sure, I might, but slasher over there might like it because of reason y and, actually, elements of reason z sometimes have a bearing. :-) The reasons are as varied as why some people like writing fic of any kind.

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

Add to this that he's a male PTB and I suspect the idea of viewers creating something from the show that has little or nothing to do with what was deliberately put into the show just boggles their minds.

I think a lot of producers embrace fan interaction, and realize it can only help their franchise. Unfortunately, a lot don't.

The sad thing is, we (US) live in a society where simulated straight sex and rape scenes are accepted in prime time (and day time), but a chaste same-sex kiss or a male-male rape would be something people would expect to be warned about. It's just a huge double-standard, based on beliefs that homosexuality is unnatural, but rape is a perfectly normal extension of a healthy sex drive. With that level of ignorance, I'm amazed we ever get anything half-right.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Honestly, the US viewed as a collective entity qualifies for borderline personality disorder, I do believe.

Bwah! Too true. Very true. If I didn't know people online--specifically you people and a few others--I'd just think I was in the twilight zone, quite literally.

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

You know, I thought the US was too polar and weird when I was a kid, but it's actually gotten worse. I'm seriously looking for somewhere else to live someday, if I ever get my online portable income shaped up.