[lbo-talk] Re: Brian On "Brokeback Mountain" & "The Reception"

BklynMagus magcomm at ix.netcom.com
Tue Jan 31 08:01:04 PST 2006


Dear List:

I endorse all that Yoshie said. Lee is careful not to show anything outside of a controlled, closed world in his film. According to the logic of his film, being queer is unnatural. Therefore, homophobia is a natural response to an unnatural action. If Lee had wanted to demonstrate that homophobia is a social construct and not a natural response to unnatural desires, he would have had to include a character for whom queerness was not an agony. But he does not do this. I think viewers need to be careful not to read into BM their own understanding of what homophobia is. Lee's understanding of queerness must be gleaned from his mise en scene, not the mind of the viewer.

Also, in my article I point out a key moment -- the transition from the two shepherds having sex to the sheep killed by a coyote -- a consequence where queer sex leads to gory death -- as if nature itself were in revulsion of what had happened in that tent.

As for the hermetically sealed world -- there were gay bars in that part of the country in the '60's. And Jack knows enough to go to Mexico to get laid (note how he and his trick walk into inky blackness -- another imagistic clue pointing to homosexuality's unnaturalness).

Jim writes:


> I think the point is that the "redneck" West wasn't just Ennis' social environment. It was also inside his mind. I don't think he reconciled himself with being gay (or bisexual?). Not even to the extent that Jack did.

There is one piece of evidence for this: you could argue that Ennis' imagines Jack's death as a gaybashing when he learns of it, and that the screen is not a depiction of an actual event, but Ennis' mindscreen. But to say that the entire film is Ennis' mindscreen is a stretch -- there is no visual evidence to support this theory. So we are left with the same problem: if the film is not a mindscreen, why banish all non-negative representation's of homosexuality from the movie?

Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list