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WAS IT GOOD FOR THE GAYS: ‘BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN’

Tyler Coates
October 2, 2014


If you’re going to make a movie about queer people, you’re likely going to get a divisive response. Does it reinforce negative stereotypes? Does it provide an accurate cross-section of the diverse LGBT community? How many think pieces will it incite? In this regular column, we’ll look at depictions of queers in cinema and ask, Was It Good For The Gays? Today, a look at Ang Lee‘s romantic drama, Brokeback Mountain.

In 1997, Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain” was published in The New Yorker; it earned immediate critical praise, and both Proulx and the magazine won awards for its publication. It was perfectly timed — 1997 was a big year for the visibility of LGBT characters — and the story was eyed for a big-screen adaptation. It took eight years for Brokeback Mountain to hit theaters, although not from lack of trying. Gus Van Sant had tried to direct it (he pitched it to Matt Damon, who turned it down because he had already played a gay man and a cowboy before and didn’t want to do both again); Mark Wahlberg was once considered for the lead, but he turned it down because, duh, it’s about gay guys.

Ang Lee, already having made a name for himself for his stunning adaptations of Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm, took on the project, with a script co-written byLonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry. And then there was the cast of young Hollywood stars: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, and Anne Hathaway would be making serious career shifts, going from teen-centered movies to a serious prestige film (Hathaway was the only one of the four who did not receive an Oscar nomination that year, but we all know her dream eventually came true).

Naturally, the movie’s subject matter caused a lot of controversy. Conservative groups issued boycotts of the film, political pundits accused it of pushing a gay agenda, and it notoriously lost the Academy Award for Best Picture to Crash; many critics accused Academy voters of homophobia, as the film was the best-reviewed release of the year, and, despite the Oscar loss, it was also the year’s most honored film.

And it is a beautiful movie, even if the story is, let’s admit, a little slight. Surely you know the plot: two young ranch hands, Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) spend a summer on the titular mountain in Wyoming herding sheep. One night, after drinking some whiskey, the two have sex, and they pass the rest of the summer paying more attention to each other than the sheep. When the summer ends, they go their separate ways; they get married (Ennis to Williams’ Alma, Jack to Hathaway’s Lureen), but they keep in touch. Throughout the years, they go on hunting and fishing trips (with a notable lack of hunting or fishing), but they obviously can’t stay together because of SOCIETY, MAN. And, as in most gay dramas, it has an unhappy ending: Twist dies, likely murdered for being gay.

It’s influence on popular culture cannot be denied, for better or for worse — nine years later, people are still making gay cowboy jokes. But nearly a decade after its release, how does it hold up? Let’s break it down.

The Pros: In terms of basic visibility, Brokeback Mountain was a huge win for the gays. While the film’s marketing barely alluded to the fact that the cowboys in this movie would be boning in their teepee, everybody totally knew what this movie was about. (Controversy makes for good PR.) And what better way to stoke the classic homophobic fire by making cowboys (OK, technically they’re “ranch hands,” but, you know, they’re cowboys) — the most classic image of good old American masculinity — a little queer? Not just queer, but emotional. These are not your grandpappy and memaw’s cowboys; there are no shoot-outs, no scenes of John Wayne or Alan Ladd mounted on a horse (insert barebacking joke here) and riding off into the sunset. No, these cowboys have feelings.

While the weight of the relationship is a little spotty — we don’t, after all, really see why these two love each other, other than the fact that they’re just there— the film’s third act is an emotional powerhouse. Jack, who struggles with his sexuality even when he’s not with Ennis (he’s linked to two other men in the film: first, a hustler in Mexico, and then another rancher he meets in the town where he lives), is desperate to have a real relationship with Ennis. He brings up the notion of the two of them running a farm together, a means to the end he truly wishes for (a permanent relationship in which they live together). And on their last trip to the together, the two have their first — and only — fight, in which Jack admits how awful it has been for him not to just live a lie, but also to live so far away (geographically and emotionally) from Ennis.

And then there’s the ending itself. Ennis calls Jack, only to find out from his wife that he was killed in a freak accident. Ennis immediately imagines Jack being murdered by a group of men, recalling a memory from his childhood in which a pair of farmers, who lived and worked together, were beaten with a tire iron, castrated, and left to die out on the range — another American image that is, unfortunately, too real.

The Cons: The film’s flaw is truly its uneven script — the first and third acts, which are devoted entirely to Ennis and Jack’s relationship, do not keep the second act from dragging on far too long. Luckily, the quality of the filmmaking and the acting are superb. But is there anything one could actually suggest wasn’t good for the gays in Brokeback Mountain? I don’t remember being too blown away when I saw it nine years ago; watching it again today, I thought, “Well, this is a pretty movie,” and then went about my business. You could make an argument that it does push a “gay agenda” as all of those conservative talking heads suggested. After all, it presents the gay experience as something that is normal and ordinary; the only extraordinary thing about it, in fact, is that there are people out there so disgusted by the idea of men having sex with other men that they take their homophobia to such extremes — either issuing verbal or physical assaults on those they have deemed undesirable because of their own private sexual practices.

I will say, however, that it’d be nice to see a film that teaches lessons about tolerance and empathy but did not also require violent imagery in which a gay man is the victim. Hey, straight people? We’re actually OK. Please stop making fictional versions of us die so you can all understand our struggle.

Plus, there are Anne Hathaway’s wigs…

…although maybe Anne Hathaway’s hair is the proof that a gay man did work on this film, and he had an amazing sense of humor? Then again, Anna Faris’ wig is downright atrocious and that gay man should have been fired for that hairline.

But surely the more egregious offense that Brokeback Mountain committed is its lack of full-frontal nudity from Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. And the one gay sex scene was dimly lit and fully clothed, while Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway both appeared topless. Where the hell was GLAAD when this happened?

The Verdict: Basically, Brokeback Mountain is not for me. It’s a movie about gay people delivered through the lens of straight people, and the straight gaze here is very thick. Then again, it’s probably valuable for people to see it and understand the “normalcy,” whatever that means (however they define it, I guess), of the gay experience. And that’s OK! It’s a beautifully filmed, stunningly acted tear-jerker, and ultimately it does more good than harm, because sometimes I forget, until I do silly things like read the Netflix user reviews of this perfectly fine, tolerable, and harmless film, that there are people out there who believe incredibly stupid and intolerable things about gay people and I am so grateful that I don’t have to deal with them in my personal life:



But to end this sob-fest on a light note, I’m 100% down with this movie’s pro-denim-on-denim agenda. Baby, you’re a firework!

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I first saw this film while dealing with my own first heartbreak after coming out of the closet... I found it to be a wonderful film that spoke to the realities of being gay and afraid to accept it.  

Seeing this film changed me in a powerful way, as I wiped at the tears in my eyes during the screening, I resolved in the back of my mind that I'd not let myself end up like Ennis, alone and filled with regrets having tasted the fruits of love, but then losing the precious desire of his heart at the hands of fear.

"Brokeback Mountain" is probably the greatest film of its genre yet produced and it will always be amongst my favorite films.  Whenever I watch it, I'm transported back to my own misadventures during my awakening to the truth of my own heart.

"Fear Eats the Soul"