Breaking my back to see Brokeback
so tomorrow, amongst my mad dash of things to do (like real work that is!), i will be screening the hot new film, Brokeback Mountain here at harvard, with the special treat of a Q&A with the producer. well, not that that really matters to me, but still, it has a nice pizzazz to it. of course, my viewing at erudite and elistist harvard shall probably be imcomparable to robert's undoubetedly colorful chelsea viewing (whoo, that there some hot shit!!). anyways, when my friend patty informed me that the short story of Brokeback Mountain which the film is based on, was indeed a SHORT story, i was like...gots to read that shit. but of course, this means that the movie is going to fall short but who knows, maybe the graphic sex scenes will make up for it. let's bring some popcorn.
.
anyways, funny enough though... patty was saying how he really liked the story and was looking forward to the movie with great zeal. after reading it, i began understanding why. my friend patty is like ennis del mar in some ways. let's just say this... if you tell this gay man that he's very "straight-acting" he'll have a few words with you indeed. tread carefully my unawares breeder, or homo for that matter. anyhow... before i stray too far from my intended point, let's said i read the short story, was engaged, but honestly felt it sort of... predictable. but the story is short and sweet and to the point... but at times you wonder... god, how backwards these boys were.
.
which brings me to what i want to talk about shortly. robert, in his beloved blog, Robert and the City, speaks briefly about a Village Voice article that critiques the film. robert quotes the Village Voice, "The relatively recent repackaging of homosexuality as an arrangement of committed couples takes the arrangements of heterosexuals for granted as ideal....Not everyone wants to be in a family, or a 'relationship,' or any kind of marriage, and not everyone wants to love whomever she or he happens to be having sex with."
.
now i'll preface this by saying that i am now too tired to actually read the Village Voice critique, and so have not, but after reading the short story, i am a little curious at exactly what this specific quoted blurb was saying. is it saying that the movie itself repackages homosexuality in an "ideal" heterosexual arrangement? hmmm...i dunno. ok, so maybe i will lose my rainbow card for what i am about to say, but what's to say your a "homo" because you happen to fuck guys? i mean, strength to the "community" in trying to create a sense of solidarity based on the very thing that has excluded "us" from "normative" culture...this sort of taking back of the very methods of derrogation... but maybe that's also part of the problem... this assumed concept of "normative" culture and our consciously "anti-normative" stance to it.
.
another preface... being an LGB minor back in college, i probably argued a few "theoretics" that always ultimately lack the visceral strength of "lived" experience, but still, as food for thought, makes you think. point one, the whole dichotomy of gay and straight...or to even simplify it more, the dichtomy of "normative" and "non-normative"... ultimately does it do more harm than good to a vision of some kind of permeated social "tolerance" (which i assume naively is the goal of "normal" people)? if there is always this notion of us versus them, on one hand, yes... we define "us" because we are unlike "them", but on the other hand, if we allow ourselves to shed our socially constructed notions like gender AND sexuality, aren't the distinctions just as artificial as how the gym teacher picked teams in grade school ("count off by fours everybody... straight, gay, lesbo, bi.... fuck the questioning"). of course, this shedding of socially constructed notions is like telling us to peel our skin off... because that's what it is... a skin. we're never completely naked, we are born wearing the regalia of our situations in life.
.
saying all this makes me think of patty's comment that he doesn't like the term straight (or gay) "acting" because he doesn't see it as an "act". in a similar stance, and in my more pontificative moments, i have to honestly say i have distinct distaste for the terms gay and straight (although, in living "life", i have found the distinction thoroughly useful).
.
and going back to the story of Brokeback Mountain then, i am curious if the film really was "repackaging" homosexuality through a hetero-normative arrangement seen as "ideal". if anything is "ideal" as espoused by the story, in my view, was this idea, of having a chance (yet not taking it, hence the sadness of the story) of living a life with someone you truly loved. granted, the arrangement was a conventional two-person pairing, but beyond arguments of polyamorous possibility, i personally found it actually kind of unhelpful to consider the relationships in the story as gay OR straight.
.
granted the whole tension of the story is that one type of relationship, the relationship that supposedly leads to a "real", "happy" life is also the one violently dis-allowed by "society", and that the other relationship, seen as "normative" takes its place. but first a question to answer, and excuse those who i will spoil the movie for... preface, don't read on if you don't like that happening... another same-sex relationship from either ennis or jack is never really encountered (there is a slight notion at the end that jack "moved on")... and on multiple occasions this whole forced identification of a certain sexual identity is always sort of negated... i am not "queer"... but that is what makes me wonder.... to call this a "gay" relationship counter-positioned by a "straight" relationship...to me... in the context of this story... seems like it misses the point.
.
instead the story is less about what the sexual identity of the relationship was, because indeed, sexual identity really was something almost imcomprehensible to ennis and jack, and more about a the folly of life that you often fall in love with someone that other people may not want you to fall in love with. honestly, to me, i see this more in the classic sense of a romeo and juliet story... two star-crossed lovers, whose "societies" did not want to see together. so maybe that's where gay and straight come in, the consequence of society. but in some ways, focusing on sexuality, for me takes away from the simple beauty of the story... which is about having love in front of us, and being unable to accept it... and the consequence of regret.
.
an excerp from the short story, that i think hits it right on the nail in describing the moment of "silence" that defines everything. something complete devoid of sex... and sexual identity. simply just the notion of quiet "love"... and yet the story reminds us, that these two star-crossed lovers... never ever fully embrace that moment though... yet it's still not a bad moment to have.
.
What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.
.
They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis’s pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis’s breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight, and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still usable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, “Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you’re sleepin on your feet like a horse,” and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words “See you tomorrow,” and the horse’s shuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone.
They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis’s pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis’s breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight, and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still usable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, “Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you’re sleepin on your feet like a horse,” and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words “See you tomorrow,” and the horse’s shuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone.
.
Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.
Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.
.
well, can't wait for the movie.
.
.
.
posted by faux chink @ 1:26 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home