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I was reading a few things on lj about Brokeback Mountain today and I realized I was kind of surprised by the views on the movie, especially concerning adultery and it makes me think
Years ago I read this article in GQ that I really liked. It was about the different way that adulthood was viewed today (or in the 90s then) as opposed to the way it was viewed in, say, the 30s-50s, as evidenced by Hollywood, which both reflects the culture and shows you what you're supposed to want. Now of course back then people had their own things they didn’t get that we’d find just as silly. I’m not going to romanticize the past. But the main point of the 50s movies the author talked about was that adulthood to him as a kid always seemed to be presented as being a dangerous—and alluring—ground full of choices and loss. Whatever you chose, you give something up, and that something didn’t go away or die. It was still part of you. He felt this was far more acknowledged in movies back then, where as nowadays if you've got a person choosing between a family and a job--well, he chooses the family. He chooses the family and so becomes totally fulfilled and loves nothing more than being at his kids' Little League games. The parent who disappoints their kid for a job is a bad guy, one who must learn by the end of the movie.
The author specifically talked about all the pictures that used to feature adultery. The 50s is sort of known for being this homey time when Mom cooked dinner and had it waiting when Dad came home from work. The author’s mother was a housewife, but she used to take him to the movies to see all these stories of people living her life who were tempted to throw it all away for passion, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. He felt the movies were acknowledging that no matter how responsible you are, part of you still wants passion or something exciting—whatever the movie’s temptation stands for, for you. There's nothing wrong with wanting it or fantasizing about it, and the movies are a great place to indulge those feelings of wanting more without actually hurting anyone.
So I was just...I don't know, I'm surprised at how many people seem to come down on this idea that BB is wrong because it's adultery!! I mean...yeah? It's not like the movie doesn't present it as hurting other people or as something you could try at home. It just also acknowledges that these people want something and take risks to get it. Meanwhile the other side judges the men for not just coming out like they did when faced with their own conservative town, or for not being brave enough to choose love when love conquers all. And their situation can't excuse it because whatever they're going through the critic has something sort of like it in his/her life and they would have made a different choice.
All this just seems to completely miss the point. First because this is very clearly a movie about a small number of very specific people. There are no Everymen in Brokeback Mountain. Any argument against the movie that starts with, "I would have..." or "why don't they..." I think just misses it because the point of the movie is to look at the choices of these specific people (who are not you at all) and see the meaning in their life. You can take meaning from their story but your story has no relevance to them at all, really. One can acknowledge that Ennis and Jack were affected by poverty or lack of education or homophobia without implying that any of these things spell doom for everyone else. I think you have to do that with this movie, not because it’s just a rule you're supposed to follow but because I think the movie does a very good job of showing the individuality of these two people and their unique reactions. I've honestly yet to hear a solution to the movie that addressed the issues with which the characters themselves seem to be concerned.
But besides that I can't help but think about that article again and the way the author talked about people denying this conflict in life so everyone is always supposed to own their life completely. If you choose a family it's supposed to be totally fulfilling, if you're offered love there's no reason for not grabbing it except cowardice or laziness, in which case you don't deserve to long for what you've lost. Only I think this is a lie and adulthood really still is all about giving things up and wondering about the road not taken. The producers have said they made this movie with one audience in mind--women, and they seem to have appealed to the very things the author of that GQ article talked about--people who crossed the line and reached for that other life, took the risk and usually got punished terribly for it but damn, it was cathartic to watch even if killed them. I guess I just feel after reading so many articles that seem to talk about the movie from the perspective of the viewer's guide to life instead of the characters' (adultery is wrong, period; they hurt their wives and kids, period; they should have risked it all to be together, period; they had other options, period) makes me feel like...have we forgotten what movies are for?
There have always been people, presumably, who made their movie choices based on what they approved of and rejected movies that didn't conform to that. But is the point of The Postman Always Rings Twice supposed to be about not liking the extra-marital affair? Is Backstreet about how great it is to choose the lover over anything else? Oh wait, the guy's married...are we supposed to be siding with his wife and kids we never see instead of our heroine, the mistress? Should we judge Olivia de Havilland's character in All This and Heaven Too for giving up her son? So is it bad to be crying buckets at the end?
I do understand that sometimes you just can’t help but react to the movie as yourself, so I don’t think anybody who doesn’t like BB is stupid. I mentioned Backstreet above and I hated Backstreet. I couldn’t be sympathetic to the idiot woman. But I don’t think that people who loved the movie liked it because they thought it was great to do what that woman did. It probably appealed to a lot of people who felt, on some level, that they could identify with her despite not being in that situation.
I guess I sort of feel like no movie about adultery is really about making a statement about adultery. Or true love. Even in Fatal Attraction, the ultimate anti-adultery movie, the audience must be "with" Michael Douglas during the affair at the beginning just as much (or in order to) be "with" him when he’s being stalked. And even that movie at the time wasn't really talked about as having anything to say about adultery at all, so much as, well, AIDS, iirc.
Years ago I read this article in GQ that I really liked. It was about the different way that adulthood was viewed today (or in the 90s then) as opposed to the way it was viewed in, say, the 30s-50s, as evidenced by Hollywood, which both reflects the culture and shows you what you're supposed to want. Now of course back then people had their own things they didn’t get that we’d find just as silly. I’m not going to romanticize the past. But the main point of the 50s movies the author talked about was that adulthood to him as a kid always seemed to be presented as being a dangerous—and alluring—ground full of choices and loss. Whatever you chose, you give something up, and that something didn’t go away or die. It was still part of you. He felt this was far more acknowledged in movies back then, where as nowadays if you've got a person choosing between a family and a job--well, he chooses the family. He chooses the family and so becomes totally fulfilled and loves nothing more than being at his kids' Little League games. The parent who disappoints their kid for a job is a bad guy, one who must learn by the end of the movie.
The author specifically talked about all the pictures that used to feature adultery. The 50s is sort of known for being this homey time when Mom cooked dinner and had it waiting when Dad came home from work. The author’s mother was a housewife, but she used to take him to the movies to see all these stories of people living her life who were tempted to throw it all away for passion, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. He felt the movies were acknowledging that no matter how responsible you are, part of you still wants passion or something exciting—whatever the movie’s temptation stands for, for you. There's nothing wrong with wanting it or fantasizing about it, and the movies are a great place to indulge those feelings of wanting more without actually hurting anyone.
So I was just...I don't know, I'm surprised at how many people seem to come down on this idea that BB is wrong because it's adultery!! I mean...yeah? It's not like the movie doesn't present it as hurting other people or as something you could try at home. It just also acknowledges that these people want something and take risks to get it. Meanwhile the other side judges the men for not just coming out like they did when faced with their own conservative town, or for not being brave enough to choose love when love conquers all. And their situation can't excuse it because whatever they're going through the critic has something sort of like it in his/her life and they would have made a different choice.
All this just seems to completely miss the point. First because this is very clearly a movie about a small number of very specific people. There are no Everymen in Brokeback Mountain. Any argument against the movie that starts with, "I would have..." or "why don't they..." I think just misses it because the point of the movie is to look at the choices of these specific people (who are not you at all) and see the meaning in their life. You can take meaning from their story but your story has no relevance to them at all, really. One can acknowledge that Ennis and Jack were affected by poverty or lack of education or homophobia without implying that any of these things spell doom for everyone else. I think you have to do that with this movie, not because it’s just a rule you're supposed to follow but because I think the movie does a very good job of showing the individuality of these two people and their unique reactions. I've honestly yet to hear a solution to the movie that addressed the issues with which the characters themselves seem to be concerned.
But besides that I can't help but think about that article again and the way the author talked about people denying this conflict in life so everyone is always supposed to own their life completely. If you choose a family it's supposed to be totally fulfilling, if you're offered love there's no reason for not grabbing it except cowardice or laziness, in which case you don't deserve to long for what you've lost. Only I think this is a lie and adulthood really still is all about giving things up and wondering about the road not taken. The producers have said they made this movie with one audience in mind--women, and they seem to have appealed to the very things the author of that GQ article talked about--people who crossed the line and reached for that other life, took the risk and usually got punished terribly for it but damn, it was cathartic to watch even if killed them. I guess I just feel after reading so many articles that seem to talk about the movie from the perspective of the viewer's guide to life instead of the characters' (adultery is wrong, period; they hurt their wives and kids, period; they should have risked it all to be together, period; they had other options, period) makes me feel like...have we forgotten what movies are for?
There have always been people, presumably, who made their movie choices based on what they approved of and rejected movies that didn't conform to that. But is the point of The Postman Always Rings Twice supposed to be about not liking the extra-marital affair? Is Backstreet about how great it is to choose the lover over anything else? Oh wait, the guy's married...are we supposed to be siding with his wife and kids we never see instead of our heroine, the mistress? Should we judge Olivia de Havilland's character in All This and Heaven Too for giving up her son? So is it bad to be crying buckets at the end?
I do understand that sometimes you just can’t help but react to the movie as yourself, so I don’t think anybody who doesn’t like BB is stupid. I mentioned Backstreet above and I hated Backstreet. I couldn’t be sympathetic to the idiot woman. But I don’t think that people who loved the movie liked it because they thought it was great to do what that woman did. It probably appealed to a lot of people who felt, on some level, that they could identify with her despite not being in that situation.
I guess I sort of feel like no movie about adultery is really about making a statement about adultery. Or true love. Even in Fatal Attraction, the ultimate anti-adultery movie, the audience must be "with" Michael Douglas during the affair at the beginning just as much (or in order to) be "with" him when he’s being stalked. And even that movie at the time wasn't really talked about as having anything to say about adultery at all, so much as, well, AIDS, iirc.
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Now I happen to feel that individual circumstances are everything, and that the moral and emotional landscape of reality is too complex to be tamed with a few magic words like "homosexuality" and "adultery," much less "love," so it's not that I think the "gaywashing" is a despicable cover-up of a repugnant crime. But I did notice it, and ponder.
On another note, totally agree with your summary of how the movie works as a tragedy, though. Sometimes the gods *are* fickle, and while we *can* sometimes do something, there's no guarantee it'll work.....