Why Brokeback Freaks Out The Religious Right

There have been lots of films with gay themes, but few have raised the ire this one has on Free Republic and amongst many of the loudests mouths on the religious right.

What is it about this film that touches such a nerve?

To put it simply: it exposes the religious rightwing as liars and it tells the truth about how gay people fall in love.

There is nothing so powerful as truthtelling to expose a long and tortured lie. The lie that the religious right has used against gays and lesbians for years is to reduce their lives to a sexual act. Thus, they succeed at dehumanizing them, turning them into monstrous "perverts," utilizing crooked statistics and phony psychological studies to serve as "proof" for this demonization.

What Brokeback succeeds in doing is showing that two men can and do fall in love with each other as powerfully and deeply as opposite sex couples do. It fully equalizes love. It demonstrates effectively that gay folks are complete, three hundred and sixty degree human beings, with complex emotions and needs, and that sex is but one part of their relationships.

Thus, it utterly and very quietly destroys the Big Lie the religious right has been telling about gays and lesbians for years. It is their greatest fear, you see. The truth is getting out.

the John Wayne stoic, the man of few words, a man's man who always knows the right thing to do and doesn't consider silly women at all until the smooch in the final scene, after "get these women outta here" has been the theme of most of the film.

I'll be glad to see that strong, silent cowboy stereotype bite the dust, and this is just the flick to do it.

movie as a 'gay, cowboy, love affair' issue doesn't help. That being said, I read it's doing well in the box office in places where neanderthals don't live! :eyes: Will I ever escape?

And it's about closeted people with fucked up lives due to oppression and homophobia. I expected a love story, not a tragedy.

Still, I love it if it makes the freepers angry.

YMMV.

:evilgrin:

Doesn't that also make it more realistic? I haven't seen it yet (it's not showing near me yet) but I'm going to. I think it is important for people to see realistic portrayals of how effed up life is for gay people in America because of how we are treated. If these guys live horrid, closeted lives because of homophobia is it not good for this to be shown? Particularly if this movie gets a wide showing, can it not only help our plight more than something that shows a gay couple having a great, hassle-free relationship?

Just wondering.

Tragedy can be a catalyst for change.

Look at the novels of Charles Dickens who let readers see the plight of the poor in London, the "work house" system, the incredible, crushing weight of poverty. His work eventually led to reform because it raised peoples' consciousness. Or Upton Sinclair's The Jungle that helped bring about reforms in labor laws and the meat-packing industry in this country.

Take a newspaper story about some tragedy and most people will think "oh, that's too bad," and then move along to another story. But present the story in dramatic and human form through a book or a play or a film, and people are more likely to be moved.

Logic doesn't necessarily move people ... but emotions do. Perhaps in seeing a story that points out the tragic consequences of homophobia - whether it's from society or the internal kind - people will be moved to examine their own lives and beliefs.

Tragedy can be a catalyst for change.

Look at the novels of Charles Dickens who let readers see the plight of the poor in London, the "work house" system, the incredible, crushing weight of poverty. His work eventually led to reform because it raised peoples' consciousness. Or Upton Sinclair's The Jungle that helped bring about reforms in labor laws and the meat-packing industry in this country.

Take a newspaper story about some tragedy and most people will think "oh, that's too bad," and then move along to another story. But present the story in dramatic and human form through a book or a play or a film, and people are more likely to be moved.

Logic doesn't necessarily move people ... but emotions do. Perhaps in seeing a story that points out the tragic consequences of homophobia - whether it's from society or the internal kind - people will be moved to examine their own lives and beliefs.

And you have a wonderful, peaceful holiday. :hug:

I saw it the other night and, after all the hype, was expecting this REALLY beautiful love story. Was I ever disappointed! Check this review...it reflects just about everything that I felt about this movie.

http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/getting_reel/01044_brokeback_mountain_brokedown_ideas.html

Ledger's character is not gay. He is bisexual. And as much as some people would like to have it otherwise, that's the way it is.

Gyllenhaal's character, Jack, may be gay, but according to some people's standards, he can't be because he's married and, even more tellingly (to them), he has a child. I think it would be more accurate to say that of the two, Jack is closer to being gay.

That's not to say that gays are disowning these characters, it's just the way the story was written.

I will say that despite the gains gays and lesbians have made (such that they are) in the film industry, and despite the excellence of this film, it is disappointing (in a general sense) that Hollywood continues to produce mostly tragic stories with regard to gay characters - they always die at the end. I guess heterosexual audiences are unable to sympathize with successful, happy, gay characters.

"suppose the idea is that these characters only know how to be violent -- that this is their only way of having sex with each other."

The very second love scene had no violence in it whatsoever.

The guy who wrote that review has an agenda.

Ennis Del Mar had one year of highschool. Did you expect him to be talking about molecular biology and political history?

My rural cousins talk like that. My very first long term SO talked like that. Men in the sixties certainly didn't discuss their delicate feelings (mine was in the 80's). That smug self-serving review annoyed me almost beyond words. It was criticizing a lyric poem for not being a limerick. The story was entirely believable in my experience and I would invite anyone who has an "opportunity lost" story to post one. I have two of my own. I think the critic is very short sighted and not very experienced in the way of people, not a very "rich" person himself.

What makes the story plausible is that story of the two guys who bought the ranch and got killed by their neighbors. I don't know if that particular story is true but I certainly know OF a story like that, told to me by my father about a "bachelor" farmer in a tiny little town in the midwest. What kind of pressures would that put on one person to avoid commitment?

I know not everyone can like this movie. If you grew up out, if you were never soul-blasted lonely on a farm out in the middle of bumfuck, if you don't remember kitchens from the sixties and brown shag carpets and water heaters in your living room, if you dont have cousins or know anyone from the country, you likely won't connect. Ennis del Mar was not good to his wife. He was prone to solving problems through violent confrontation. He wasn't spectacular with words. He was a flawed human but a perfect character.

And because of all those things, he was consistent and believable. Jack Twist - I know a Jack Twist. I knew an Ennis del Mar, with three little red headed daughters. I know how easily this story is true.

http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/letters_to_the_simon/01047_our_readers_respond_brokeback_talkback.html

From the same source.

and it was a tragedy. Wasted, ruined lives always are. Maybe there won't be quite so many in the future.

lust is a part of love. I know you're wrong.

If it was about lust, then Ennis del Mar would have just got him some elsewhere too, and certainly if it was just about lust, he wouldn't have gone to see the Twist family later. You don't think he was lusting after a bloodstained shirt do you?

It belittles it to say it was just about lust. Bridges of Madison county was just about lust too in that case. So was Love Story.

The characters were so obviously in love, they couldn't wait to see each other, and the whole point of the movie was how wonderful it would have been if the world were different and they didn't need to hide their love. It was very much like that style of Japanese theater where two people fall in love, but are forbidden to be together because they each have a duty to marry someone else. Or like Romeo and Juliet minus the suicides.

Tucker

... is that it removes all the trappings they are used to associating with "gay" from the equation ... well, except for the emotional aspect.

Give the freepers something like "Queer As Folk" with its settings in the "gay ghetto," and it becomes safe because they can see it as far removed from anything remotely associated with their lives. But set a film in a setting where they don't expect it such as the West and with characters that don't do makeovers, wear the latest Abercrombie & Fitch fashions, or break into Broadway show tunes at the drop of a hat, and it completely freaks them out.

The freepers response reminds me a bit of Homer Simpsons line "I like my homosexuals flaming" when Marge tells a character voiced by John Waters is gay.

As long as gay characters are portrayed as "flaming," the freepers can laugh and feel superior, but when they are portrayed as being "just like us normal folks," then they panic because they realize that anyone they meet could be gay. (And that's just too much for their warped little minds to take in.)

those two images colliding, melding is one of the dark fears of american male self image.

subculture in general are *inventions* of heterosexuals. It gives them a way to think about gays. For that reason the Brokeback characters are more subversive than most others that rise to the notice of popular culture.

They defy easy categorization.

which is that many (most? all?) of those complaining are bisexuals who have suppressed the side of their sexual orientations which seek same-sex encounters. Seeing bisexual men on-screen who are giving expression to that side of their sexuality unsettles those who are closeted or closet that side of their sexuality.

But I plan to. I don't care what people say in reviews, it's a start & thats ok with me. Doesn't matter if it's good or bad at least it's on the big screen.