Brokeback - one step forward or two steps back?

Update: as is evident from the final paragraph, this piece is way too shrill. An anonymous commenter pointed out that Hari has already devoted columns to certain negative aspects of gay culture, so my posturing has been exposed. For some reason, I felt compelled to post a piece on Brokeback and I have to say that Hari's unincisive doom and gloom review struck me as not quite focussing on what is culturally significant about the movie. My shrillness and failure to really take on Hari mar even further this rather lame post. Nevertheless, read on, if you wish!

Back at the beginning of the year, Johann Hari took issue with the film Brokeback Mountain, challenging the widely held belief that it marks a milestone in the gay struggle for acceptance into the mainstream.

In his article, published in the Independent on January 3, Hari argues that Brokeback is just one more in a long line of Hollywood movies to retrieve from the back of the stock-character closet, the stereotype of the tragic, self-loathing gay. He says that, like other movies dealing with gay themes to have gotten full studio backing (Philadelphia, for example), Brokeback Mountain shows its audience that if you're gonna engage in some homo-action, then death or a life of suffering is all that awaits. For Hari, Hollywood's other stock gay character, the chaste gay, is exemplified by the character of Will, from Will & Grace, who is happy, successful, fun and yet - strangely for somebody combining these attractive attributes - very, very single.

Hari may have a point but I think that as well as labouring it a little, he's guilty of ignoring certain salient facts to make it stick. Brokeback is a milestone because it is the first serious film about a gay relationship to get full studio backing. It is also a milestone because it has managed to fill cinema screens across the United States, not only in gay-populous metropoli such as NYC and SF, but in crucial "middle-America" cities and towns in Texas, Kansas and Ohio*.

The film needs to be taken in its context. With sex more and more banished from big Hollywood productions (see the original Batman and last year's Batman Begins for a good example of changing times), it would be churlish to complain that scenes of physical intimacy were kept to a minimum in order not to alienate any viewers. Philadelphia, probably the last full-budget Hollywood movie with a gay man as its central character, was not a gay movie. Rather it was a variation on a well-worn Hollywood fave: heroic man's struggle and eventual triumph against injustice. Brokeback is too a variation on another universal theme. But this time the theme is love. Hollywood churns out countless films about tragic love. This time it just happens to be about two guys. The homophobia and self-loathing don't bother me. They strike me as pretty accurate given that the characters are from small towns and meet in 1963. Anyway, really only Ledger's character is homophobic and self-loathing.**

All in all, I think Brokeback Mountain is having a very positive effect on mainstream perceptions of gays. Its box-office success reflects the significant integration of gays into conventional society achieved in a short period of time, and I don't doubt that it will succeed in challenging the attitudes of many social conservatives who end up viewing it.

Personally, I objected to Annie Proulx' tale when I read it because I thought it fed into a gay tendency towards fatalism. I was fed up hearing gay people championing this "beautiful and tragic" story of gay love. Nevertheless, I could see its merits as a literary tale. For me, the movie dragged in parts (I assume because I'd read the book)and I thought Ledger's wife was too passive. I remember her as much more of a sexually-frustrated bitch in the novella.

I find it interesting that nobody ever complains about portrayals of gay characters by novelists. What is it about images that they can provoke us so much more? Hari would do better, I feel, chastising his fellow travellers instead of Hollywood. Doubtless, there is still a lot to be done in terms of moving gays more into the mainstream (aside from the argument about on whose terms and what gays stand to lose from this embrace of convention). It is still necessary for straight actors to play gay roles and it is impossible for gay men to play straight roles. There's the rub, if you ask me. Also, as evidenced by Ledger's and Gyllenhall's childish antics while introducing Brokeback at the Screen Actors' Guild Awards earlier this month, it's clear that gays still have a lot of work to do in getting straight people to see them as equal (possibly related to the arguments mentioned in the parenthesis above). Nonetheless, Brokeback Mountain is, I believe, a decisive step forward for gay acceptance into the mainstream. I hope Hari will see fit to dedicate an entire column in the Independent to an excoriation of the tendencies in the gay world which will inevitably produce a porn equivalent entitled Bareback Mounting!




*Incidentally, its box-office success appears to have been worldwide, even in Ireland, where only 8 years ago the Department of Health's safe-sex campaign trailer in Irish cinemas would provoke vocal wretching and loud expressions of disgust from many audience members when two out-of-focus naked man were shown caressing.

**The homophobia and self-loathing evident in the original British Queer as Folk TV series strike me as much more worrisome. This was a programme whose script writer was given carte blanche and which was supposed to champion gay life. The overwhelming message, though, was that gays were inherently dysfunctional and incapable of healthy relationships. It took the producers of the US version to introduce a little self-esteem into the series by setting about writing completely new episodes from the second series on. While they also managed to deal with all the relevant "gay culture issues", they didn't compromise the overall message that gay people are as capable of happiness and mature relationships as breeders.