Today's topic of discussion.

[hackthis_archive]

In today's Variety there's an article on Brokeback Mountain, one of many that have come out over the last few months and which will doubtlessly be followed by many more. I mention this because in reading it this comment caught my eye,


I don't believe they would have ever allowed an openly queer director to make this movie, nor do I believe that actors of this calibre would have signed on. In a long line of ironic outcomes, it took these guys [Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger] with impeccable heterosexual credentials to make this kind of breakthrough.
-Critic and author B. Ruby Rich

Do you lot agree with that?

Discuss.

Comments

[babyofthegroup.livejournal.com]

I think the movie could have been *made*, but I don't think it would have been *seen*. The wide release Brokeback Mountain is going to receive would be inconceivable for a queer director and/or queer cast. It would have immediately run into the "too gay" label (uh, what's gayer than gay sex on screen?) and it would have either turned into a gay cult classic or never have seen the light of day.

Which sucks, but that's Hollywood for you.

[smonsterbite.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much my thinking as well.

[deepsix.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

Though I also agree that a queer director and/or cast would have made it "too gay", because I don't think the story is about gay people, per se. It feels almost anachronistic to me to refer to the characters as gay, given their time and place -- much like, say, Alexander the Great, or someone. Jack and Ennis (iirc their names? I suck) obviously love each other and want to be with each other the way gay people do, but there's no real "gay" construct within their culture that they'd recognise or identify with. So, I doubt that I'm expressing this very well, but I think that if the production had been overtly queer, everyone, from the actors to the audience, would have gone into the movie expecting it to be about two gay guys who love each other very much, when in fact it's just about two guys who love each other very much. It's not about love qua gay love, but love qua love, period. I think making the movie with an (apparently, stereotypically) straight cast is just about the only way to remove the gay construct from people's understanding of the story, which is I think the only way to fully appreciate it for what it is.

YMMV, of course.

[babyofthegroup.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. The real problem is that the concept of "gay" keeps evolving (apparently we're now heading into "post-gay" times, whatever the fuck those are; "mom, I'm post-gay" just doesn't have the same ring...) and different people have different conceptions of what that means. So as Ennis says in the story, he's "not no queer" (see [here (http://www.queervisions.com/arch/2005/09/brokeback_mount.html)] for the full text of the story), but he's certainly deeply in love with Jack. Maybe because we as a culture are so preoccupied with sexual orientation now (and for good reason, I think, given that people want to marginalize others based on it), the only way to cast that aside is to use non-queer director and cast.

(FWIW, the only reason I can remember their names is that I think "Jack Twist" sounds ridiculous and "Ennis" is missing a "D".)

[deepsix.livejournal.com]

Maybe because we as a culture are so preoccupied with sexual orientation now..., the only way to cast that aside is to use non-queer director and cast.

I'm pretty sure that's what I meant to say, in a v roundabout way. *g* I think it's exactly our preoccupation with sexual orientation that makes it important to remove as much "gay"-ness from the movie as possible. The characters don't really have a sexual identity -- I mean, if Ennis isn't queer, what is he? Does it matter? What I take away from the story is that one's personal sexual identity is ultimately unimportant; but this is forever at odds with one's social sexual identity, which is paramount. It's only by removing the audience's preconceived notions of Jack and Ennis as gay (which the audience would have, if the movie had been an overtly queer film) that one can see the tension between personal vs social as it affects them, and how utterly ridiculous (and dangerous) that tension is.

Um, anyway. *shuffles off to watch hockey*