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BY PEGGY LUHRS

here seems to be some
controversy about Broke-
back Mountain. No, I don’t
mean the religious right wing-
nuts, I mean within the LGBT
community. I neither loved

nor hated it. I liked it. It was a
good movie, good cinematog-

 

Bl‘llI{Ellllt|{:

more Biff than nevi

phy of the cowboy movie. And
likely “I don’t know how to quit
you” will go right up there with
“you know how to whistle don't
you” a.nd other bits of dialogue

— that have entered the American

lexicon. It is also centrally a

love story between two men.
What upset the religious

right and made the likes of Chris

’’If we really want to see a story about
strong men, let's see the one where
the cowboys dare to come out and live
feeling and ethically consistent lives.”

raphy, terrific acting and excel-
lent direction from Ang Lee.
That I didn’t love it probably
has a lot to do with the fact
that I’m a lesbian and it is hard
to see the grunting and grab-
bing between these guys as a
great love story. Yet by the end
you do see it as a great love
story. The repressed emotion is
of a piece with the western life
these guys are living and part
of the genre to show men’s feel-
ings leaking out from their rug-
ged facades. In fact that seems
to be what defines acting for
many in the US, a real macho
man letting on to some feeling
ala Eastwood, DeNiro, Wayne,
Cooper, Stallone et al. Most of
the elements of love and loss
are shown through their de-
privation of eachother rather
than their connection. What I
did love about the movie, what
makes it a groundbreaking film
is how it changes the iconogra-

Matthews, Don Imus and other
straight men so nervous \. as the
idea that cowboys could be gay.
I know it's hard to summon up ..
sympathy for these guys but its
sooo distressing to have your
surefire masculinity models
brought into question. I first no-
ticed this at the family Thanks-
giving table when I talked about
a gay pro football player. My fa-
ther’s business partner couldn't
handle that. He simply refused to
believe it. When Ellen’s sitcom
died, Bill Maher opined the show
had gone too far trying to make
people believe everyone was gay
when they had a gay phunber.
According to Maher, everyone
knew tradespeople weren‘t gay,
except just the lesbians.
One commentator even

claimed the movie had raped

the Marlboro man. If that's so,
I’d say that as the quintessential
American image of granite chis-
eled dominance, he needed it.

 

 
    
  
  
   

Straight men like to think all gay 5
men are in the nancy boy cate- ‘V _
gory. Taking in thevery essential }»
masculinity of men lovinggngen ism“
too scary. 

One objection I’ve heard _
within the glbt community is “oh ,,_
no not another movie about gays-
where somebody dies." Yes, it y
will be truly liberating when gay-
themed films just show us the
character’s successful struggles
in life. But this is a quintes-
sentially queer story. This is the —
first time the story has been told ‘ '
in such a big crossover movie.
Homophobia still kills, if not out-
right, then in many slow deaths
of addiction, depression, poverty I
and isolation. _ '

Things have changed, but not
enough and not for everyone.
This story needed to be told. It
makes all the sense in the world
that where the tough guy ethic
rules as it does in the west, a -
man might suffer the most for
disloyalty to the code of mas-
culinity constructed as laconic,
undemonstrative cowboys. 

Enjoy the scenery. Huzzahs to
Ang Lee for brealdng the mold.
Heath Ledger was great but the
Oscar goes to Phillip Seymour
iioifnian for Capote.

But if we really want to see a
Story about strong men, let's see
the one where the cowboys dare”
to come out and live feeling and 

  

 

.;

ethically consistent lives. V  .

Peggy Luhrs is a lifelong ac-
tivist and former instructor of 2
film at Burlington College