info at pulpculture.org wrote:
>
> Queer love seems to be on a pedestal in Brokeback, it seems to be
> center stage, but it isn't really queer love that we're watching: it's
> Lee's project on a universal Love with a capital L, a Love that is
> simultaneously erased, tacitly accepted as the norm, the standard,
> that no one needs to question. It just is -- precisely because it
> cannot be.
1. Medieval romantic love is not the same as 19th century romantic love. The best that can be said of the medieval trope is that a love that can't be consummated by two individuals (Beatrice and Dante) is transformed into a love that feeds an entire community (The Divine Commedy). I guess you could call it sublimation for short.
2. Romantic love -- the object is always unattainable, satisfaction is impossible, death is inevitable -- is the 19th century comprehension of desire and satisfaction and their tragic collision with the social order, which is so corrupted that no sublimation into it is possible.
3. Are you upset with Lee because one of his arguments is that love is not socially constructed -- because that is implicitly what he is saying in the movie. Though I also take him to say that the capacity for love may be. Because, after all, the two men in BBM love each other despite every barrier, external and internal.
Joanna