Brokeback Mountain

Dear Son,

To understand this movie, you have to understand the cultural background in which it was released. And then, if you ever see it, you will realize the depth of its banality.

First of all, the image of the Gay Cowboy Movie as the ultimate in ridiculousness in independent film was firmly implanted in popular culture in 1998 by an episode of South Park. You know you've experienced brilliant satire when the target of the zing didn't even exist yet.

But fast forward. During the Bush Administration, Hollywood has become increasingly hostile to all things conservative. One of the big culture war issues was gay marriage, which a number of states soundly rejected in the 2004 election. But Hollywood was out to convince all of us that gay people are perfectly normal and perfectly healthy, and to do it, they needed a vehicle. And what better than a rousing and moving love story to show that gay relationships are just like any other relationship.

Of course, that's problem number one. Any time you're trying to "teach society a lesson" from a movie, the quality of the movie is going to take a hit. Who wants to be beaten over the head, after all?

The irony is that every time there's a show out there that purports to mainstream and normalize gay relationships, they show it in such a way that reinforces the stereotype that all gays are highly dysfunctional, promiscuous, have terrible relationships with their fathers, etc. The big TV "outing" was a show called Will & Grace, which finally ends this season. It was a good show (before it jumped the shark), but it didn't exactly do wonders for the dignity of gay America. Brokeback works in almost exactly the same way.

Knowing that this was the likely outcome, I had no desire to see it in the theaters. I read a lot about it, though, and it was nominated for Best Picture for 2005. There was a bunch of controversy surrounding allegations that despite its brilliance as a movie, voting members of the Academy weren't watching it because they were all closet homophobes. (Yes. The hordes of closet homophobes in Hollywood. Yawn.) Despite all this, it was favored to win that year, but was upset by another preachy although much better movie called Crash (which at that point was the only one of the contenders I'd actually seen). Then there was much harrumphing about how Brokeback got robbed.

Your mom wanted to see it, and I must confess that I wanted to see it just so I could ridicule it in good faith. So we Netflixed it.

First of all, I have to get out there that the visuals were fantastic. The composition of the images on the screen were artfully done, and achieved the emotional expression that they meant to capture. The landscape was able to capture simple beauty along with a sense of isolation and loneliness that was perfect for what the movie was trying to do. Unfortunately, that's where the quality of the movie ends.

One of the first rules of literature is that you have to have characters people care about. That doesn't mean necessarily that you have to like them, but you have to give a damn what happens to them. This movie broke this rule.

These two guys were pathetic. They cheated on each other, cheated on their wives, made no attempt to get better jobs, were distant and even downright mean to their spouses (yes, they were married, too), and whined a whole hell of a lot. I mean a LOT. And they kept doing it to themselves. Jack (Gyllenhall) visited male prostitutes with abandon in Mexico. They never once learned a lesson. And that equals a flat character arc that makes them uninteresting.

The other problem is that they just weren't believable. When they had their first sex scene - a pretty graphic one - Heath Ledger's character Ennis supposedly was new to the whole gay sex thing. But he didn't look new at it. He went at it like a guy that knew what he was doing - improvised lube and all. And worse, up until then their relationship hadn't gotten to that point. There just wasn't that much sexual tension. Or any tension. If two heterosexual characters had the same kind of interactions, it wouldn't have made any sense either. (Of course, that was the only time the action went too fast - the rest of the time it was slow and incredibly boring.)

But it was more than that. Jake Gyllenhall's hick accent was over the top and contrived. Their interactions with people made no sense. They were supposedly gay (which we're told is immutable), but neither of them had any problem being with women and fathering children. Ennis' wife knew he had a boyfriend, and did nothing for years. Jack is apparently killed at the end for being gay, but by then his character is so selfish, repulsive, disloyal, and slimy, that there's no sense of loss, no emotional impact.

At the end of the day, the tragedy was supposed to be that, "If only society were more accepting, then maybe they could have been happy." But these guys were so incredibly stupid and self destructive that, society's blessing or not, they would have somehow made sure to make themselves miserable.

I'm pretty ambivalent about homosexuality. What grown adults want to do and how they want to conduct themselves is up to them. I think gays should be allowed to get married, but I don't think it's a Constitutional requirement, and I think society should be able to make that decision at the ballot box. I don't think it's a sin, but I don't think it's normal or healthy behavior. I don't think it's a healthy environment in which to raise kids. Whatever you may learn in school, gays are hardly oppressed in our society today - they earn more on average than other people, hold political office, and are completely unafraid to speak out about it without shame or humility. The thought of laws against gay people sitting in the front of a boss or sitting at a lunchcounter is so utterly ridiculous that it defies all logic when they try to paint their "struggle" as no different than the 60's civil rights struggles. I'm glad for this, but I don't know if they are - being a victim can be very gratifying to people with an agenda.

When I was in college, there was a great night club called the Gay '90s. It was so good that straight women who didn't want to be harassed by guys started going there. Then guys who had gotten over any homophobia they might have had realized that the club was not only fun, but that there was a lot of hot girls there with their guards down. The result was that it was completely mainstreamed without losing any of the gay theme. A core group of the local gay community actually wrote editorials being angry because they had achieved what they had demanded all along, and no one really cared about their "struggle" any more. That's when I learned that their real motivation was to get people to feel sorry for them. How sad and pathetic. Once again, the stereotypes were on full display, and any sympathy I might have once had for their "plight" evaporated pretty much forever.

Someday maybe I'll change my mind about all of this. But if I had never considered the issue before, and Brokeback Mountain was my first exposure to what it meant to be gay, it certainly wouldn't engender any sympathy or desire to see it accepted as healthy behavior. And that's the ultimate irony of this already bad movie. It had two objectives, to be a good movie and to teach us knuckle-draggers all a lesson about how we should accept gay lifestyles. But it fails to be a good movie, and teaches shows gay lifestyles as destructive. Tragedy indeed.

It will be interesting to know if you'll even have heard of this movie by the time you read this. And how with 20 years or so of hindsight, what you will think of it, and the issue with which it grapples.

Love, Dad