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Why 'Brokeback Mountain is different'

An article from 'Catholic Culture' by Steven D. Greydanus.
View: Why 'Brokeback Mountain' is different

Stand-out quotes -

'Brokeback Mountain does represent a new frontier in the representation of homosexuality in mainstream culture."

"While homosexual characters have been prominent in pop culture for some time, typically they have been cast in supporting roles (e.g., the best friend), and seldom given onscreen partners, thereby keeping actual same-sex relationships and activity out of the spotlight"

"While this makes the film an obvious cultural rallying point for the mainstreaming of homosexuality, Brokeback is not a politicized plea for "gay rights," nor is it "pro-gay propaganda" of any kind"

"Ennis and Jack each marry, and their ongoing affair is allowed to be at least as morally problematic as any other extra-marital affair"

"Where a heavy-handed director trying to drive home a message would have rubbed our noses in the violence, letting us hear the hate-filled epithets, the murderous taunts, Ang is content to suggest. He doesn't even make it absolutely clear that the fleeting images we see necessarily represent what really happened, rather than another character's guesses or imaginings. The character in question isn't sure what really happened, and neither, perhaps, are we."

"The film allows its sexually omnivorous protagonists to be morally ambiguous, and its straight women can be likable and sympathetic. Yet essentially every straight male character in the film is not only unsympathetic, but unsympathetic precisely in his embodiment of masculinity."

"Other than a passing comment from Ennis about the "fire-and-brimstone crowd," religion is almost totally absent. On the one hand, this means that anti-gay attitudes aren't particularly attributed to Christian teaching or belief"

"The film does not argue, but assumes, that the pain suffered by men like Ennis and Jack and those around them is the result of what is and isn't permitted by entrenched social attitudes of intolerance and hate, which constrain such men from following their bliss, and corrals them into conventional arrangements that are ultimately truly satisfactory to no one."

"Brokeback Mountain is nothing less than an indictment not just of heterosexism but of masculinity itself, and thereby of human nature as male and female. It's a jaundiced portrait of maleness in crisis — a crisis extending not only to the sexual identities of the two central characters, but also to the validity of manhood as exemplified by every other male character in the film. It may be the most profoundly anti-western western ever made, not only post-modern and post-heroic, but post-Christian and post-human."

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