By Rawlins Gilliland, KERA commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-494068.mp3
Dallas, TX –
Many refer to "Brokeback Mountain" as the "Gay Cowboy" movie. That's like dismissing a Charlize Theron film as a "pretty girl" picture.
While I watched the film, something enormous was before my eyes: a story that was less about being "gay," and more about longing and loss in a world that is threatened by human nature and nature itself.
I forgot I was watching two men in a love story, even in love scenes. I instead reflected upon something I recognized long ago: That one secret code of male behavior is: "If no one saw it, it didn't happen." I learned about this secret code talking with men in my 20s when, for four years, I hitchhiked around the globe. Driving from Denver to Chicago, or hiking outside Istanbul, strangers open up to strangers. You may never know their name, or ever meet again, so they reveal and confess secrets they tell no one.
What makes this movie trailblazing is not that it is about two men in love, but rather, that the protagonists are traditionally masculine characters at odds with what the public believes to be quintessential gay manhood. Certainly, many gay males are in the hair, fashion and decorating industries. On terrific break-though shows like "Will and Grace" or "Queer Eye", the homosexual men you see are gentle harmless wisecracking de facto "girlfriends." They are also, arguably, eunuchs. But gay stereotypes in the media are a valid representation of but one urban ilk, the tip of an anthropological iceberg. The iceberg's larger underwater homosexual male masses are different, and remain invisible because they can, or they must. There is fear and loathing danger for rural workmen, many professionals, teachers, an athlete or cowboy to acknowledge their orientation. Even to themselves.
"Don't Ask, don't tell" damages more lives than it protects. Speaking to an openly gay male audience? Try asking three questions: How many served in the military, how many have been married to women, and how many have children? Minimum, one-third to two-thirds of the hands go up. Now think about men such as we see in this movie, who have no knowledge of, nor relevance to, metropolitan gay cultures. Factor in those numbers and you have a ready made rebuttal to those who insist that only a minute fraction of our populace is same sex oriented.
My Dad had a niece in The Women's Army Corps. At her funeral, there was a woman alone who, I was told, was "off and on" the dead woman's "vacation" buddy. Clearly, it was her love of many decades. "Brokeback Mountain" could just as easily be about them. In other words, it doesn't matter if the lovers are gay or straight. As in Longfellow's "Evangeline": Lost love, and its lost opportunity, is universally tragic.
I've said for years: if the undetectable, unobvious bulk of the same-sex oriented iceberg, men submerged below the gay sonar, had told the truth in 1240, 1510, 1890 or 2004, "Brokeback Mountain" would be a landmark movie simply because it is beautiful to see, masterfully written, costumed and acted. As it is, it marks a turning point far larger than we know.
Rawlins Gilliland is a writer from Dallas.
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