A Sad State of Society

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2006)

I have written a short essay on my blog which I reposted below on the effects and controversy caused by Brokeback Mountain. None of you need me to tell you how good this movie is, leave that to Roger Ebert. But what is particularly disconcerting to me is the extreme polar "user reviews" of this film. The great ones are based generally on the quality of story, emotional investment, and overall excellent film-making. The negative ones are almost always those of the conservative religious right, expressing their opinions of how Hollywood wishes to "corrupt their children" by "promoting homosexuality" to the masses. This, according to them, is "a movie with an agenda." Since when is a movie review based on someone's religious convictions? Everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion's, but lets save the preaching for church. I get particularly angry when these very same individuals who have such a vehement problem with Brokeback Mountain seem to have far less of a problem with action films filled with gratuitous violence and murder. I guess in their minds two people in love is a far greater atrocity than murder. It makes me immensely sad that a great majority of society feels this way, but it is the world that we live in. I hope that within my lifetime a movie like Brokeback can be seen by all for what it really is: an epic love story; one that reaches past the boundaries of time, challenge, and sexual orientation...
My Essay Regarding the Effects of this Film...
Anthony Lane of the New Yorker magazine calls Brokeback Mountain a "slow and stoic movie, hailed as a gay Western, (which) feels neither gay nor especially Western: (rather) it is a study of love under siege." I could probably spend hours and write pages as to why Brokeback is probably the best movie of the year, and now one of my favorite films, but you can read the praise from every major film critic in the industry. But rather, I feel compelled to write an essay regarding the effects this film is having on us. And not just us who live in Manhattan or Hollywood, but instead, and probably more importantly, the effect this film has on the scared kid in Evanston, Wyoming or the homophobic middle aged man in Evansville, Indiana.
For the first time in my life, and perhaps the first time in history, a story about two men in love has embraced our society. And I say "love" without apology or prefacing it with "gay," because that is what is not what is seen in this film. And although cowboys and homosexuality are certainly parts of Brokeback, what is taken from it is two people desperately and tragically in love.
I have now seen this movie twice, the first time to see it and feel it, and the second time to really embrace it and be moved by it. The first time I saw it in Chelsea the night it was released in limited markets, and of course it was received with praise (the entire audience was gay), but the second time I saw it, I deliberately went to a theatre in a predominately "straight" part of town on the Upper West Side. I wanted to see the reactions of the straight couples and people young and old of all predispositions. I found myself spending as much time looking at the audience as I did at the screen. I also found myself getting anxious in parts that were strongly sexual or romantic between the two men. I feared that audiences in 2005 were still not yet ready to accept two men together. I feared that the story would be rejected, not because of the content, but rather the gender of the subjects. (Rejection in this way I felt somehow rejects me personally as a gay man.) Yet what I saw not only surprised me, but moved me. Albeit a walkout or two, and some odd wide eyed looks from the straight man dragged along by his girlfriend; there was not one snicker, not one offensive remark, not one bit of laughter. To the other extreme, I saw straight men in their 80's sniffle, the man with his girlfriend tear up at moments. I thought to myself, my God, look at where we have come. A film where gay men are not the sexless beings of the past or overdone caricatures of themselves like Jack McFarland from Will and Grace, but finally one with characters who are real, sexual, emotional, threatening even, and still accepted by every person in those seats.
I think back to the days when I was a kid and Reagan was president. The days when gays were only known by their stereotypes or later their "gay cancer." And just 20 years later gay is not just okay, in some circles it is cool to have the token gay friend. I'm not naive enough to believe that one movie can change the world, or too soon to forget that just 7 years ago 21 year old Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in the very same state as the love affair in Brokeback is set in. But the numbers tell all. "Ang Lee's multi-Golden Globe nominated feature "Brokeback Mountain," starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal ponied up a heap of cash over the weekend, spectacularly bursting the six-figure average threshold. The critically lauded film grossed $547,425 from just five screens in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, averaging a whopping $109,485, the biggest screen average.." (IndieWire:Biz) People, and not just gay people are seeing, some for the first time, two men in love in a positive light. Eyes are opening and hearts are changing, and I can say for the first time in a very long time, that I see light at the end of the tunnel and have hope for things to come.