Queering the representation of the masculine 'West' in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (original) (raw)
Related papers
Annie Proulx situates her short story, Brokeback Mountain, in rural America, and specifically Wyoming, between the tumultuous 1963 and 1983. The mountainous landscape that suggests physical harm and disfigurement, the social tensions of the era, the rigid gender stereotypes, and the myth of the cowboy are essential themes in Proulx’s story and their perception can offer an insight on the main issues portrayed through her narrative. In this paper, I will depict both the narrative and the visual techniques that elevate Brokeback Mountain into an incendiary and against normative structures genre. The activism of the examined era, the cultural myths and the pop culture, the emergent Proulxian cowboy are only some of the aspects to be explored in order to question the stereotypical rural American environment.
Journal of Men's Studies, 2007
Ang Lee's big gay tragic historical love story, Brokeback Mountain, was released internationally in late 2005 and early 2006. Lee's film told the story of two cowboys who fell in love while shepherding on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming in 1963. Although the film narrated a demonstrably American story, appeals to a socio-historical connection were widespread in Australia. Indeed, Brokeback Mountain's cinematic release in this country coincided with "Australia Day," a national day of celebration in which beginnings, nationhood, and "settlement" are reaffirmed. In this article, we track the explosion of publicly-audible conversations that took place in Brokeback Mountain's wake in Australia in 2006. On the one hand, we seek to historicize this film; on the other, we also consider the political ways in which it historicized. As the "noise" about Brokeback Mountain became almost impossible to ignore in Australia, we noticed the film tended to be viewed as a cause for celebration. Through an analysis of the politics of historical stories and the gendered politics of emotion, we seek to complicate the notion that this film signified a radical departure from homophobic cinematic and cultural traditions.
" I Ain't Queer " : Love, Masculinity and History in Brokeback Mountain
Ang Lee's big gay tragic historical love story, Brokeback Mountain, was released internationally in late 2005 and early 2006. Lee's film told the story of two cowboys who fell in love while shepherding on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming in 1963. Although the film narrated a demonstrably American story, appeals to a socio-historical connection were widespread in Australia. Indeed, Brokeback Mountain's cinematic release in this country coincided with "Australia Day," a national day of celebration in which beginnings, nationhood, and "settlement" are reaffirmed. In this article, we track the explosion of publicly-audible conversations that took place in Brokeback Mountain's wake in Australia in 2006. On the one hand, we seek to historicize this film; on the other, we also consider the political ways in which it historicized. As the "noise" about Brokeback Mountain became almost impossible to ignore in Australia, we noticed the film tended to be viewed as a cause for celebration. Through an analysis of the politics of historical stories and the gendered politics of emotion, we seek to complicate the notion that this film signified a radical departure from homophobic cinematic and cultural traditions.
Same-Sex Love as Challenge to Cowboy’s Masculinity Presented in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain
NIVEDANA : Jurnal Komunikasi dan Bahasa, 2021
Cowboy and his natures have made contribution to the creation of definite masculinity and love relationship between cowboys in Brokeback Mountain affects how cowboy’s masculinity is further depicted. This paper has purpose to reveal how same-sex relationship in the movie challenges the cowboy’s masculinity by analysing the subtitle. This study applied semiotics theory to identify the available data relevant to the construction meaning of cowboy’s masculinity, myth of romantic love and homosexuality. The result shows that homosexual relationships between major cowboy characters in the movie contest the long-established masculinity of cowboy. The struggle to maintain traditional relationship through marriage does not affect social prejudice towards homosexual cowboy.
Male homosexuality has been historically separated from the notion of traditional hegemonic masculinity yet the film Brokeback Mountain (2005) casts its male love story in a fiercely masculine light. This paper intends to examine how two protagonists in the film (Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist) have been individually and mutually constructing their masculine identities through rediscovering their inner selves and enlivening the dormant parts of their masculinity from a constructionist perspective. Three crucial elements contributing to such identity construction are investigated: nature, gender, and parenthood. Each element is explored based on its relevant text, subtext, intertextuality, and context; interwoven with the analysis of film techniques, cultural theory and literacy/film criticism. First, nature endows men with the power to dominate and control their environment and is employed heavily throughout this film to illustrate the characters' desire to attain hegemonic masculinity. Secondly, the discussion of gender is developed on the binary of masculinity and femininity. The aspect of masculinity is explored in the framework of Judith Butler’s gender performativity (1990) while the aspect of femininity is analyzed within the heterosexual context as a destructive power to masculinity. The third aspect looks into how characters internalize the influence of parenthood—centering on fatherhood—in the early construction of their masculine identities. All of these elements in turn shape the nature of the relationship between these men into one that is shaped by, and in turn redefines, the paradigms of dominant masculinity.
New forms of masculinity in Western films: The end of the Marlboro Man?
Communication & Society
Westerns are one of the most masculine and stereotypical of film genres. In a social and film context where gender equality is increasingly important, it is worth looking at the evolution of the genre in recent years. Especially because, as André Bazin said, the Western is “cinema par excellence” (1966) and its analysis allows a reflection on cinema itself. Taking the figure of the Marlboro Man as a prototype, this study carries out an analysis of three selected case studies: Brokeback Mountain, Jane Got a Gun and Godless, two films and a miniseries with main characters that do not follow heteronormative masculinity. Ang Lee’s work broke new ground not only in Westerns but also in industrial cinema by making homosexuality visible, while Gavin O’Connor’s showed the possibility of a woman playing the leading role in a classic Western. The miniseries produced by Netflix combines both by giving leading roles to female characters, some of them gay, while reflecting on homosexuality. It w...
The Ethics of Alterity: Adapting Queerness in Brokeback Mountain
Adaptation, 2011
The Ethics of Alterity: Adapting Queerness in Brokeback Mountain' addresses issues of audience, asking what happens to an author's intentions for her audience when they are translated into a new medium. My texts here are Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" and Ang Lee's 2005 adaptation, and I focus on the debate in queer studies regarding how queer texts should treat their predominantly straight audiences: ease them into sympathy by stressing similarities between the straight and queer or make them uncomfortable by insisting on the difference queerness makes. Rather than taking a position in the initial debate, I examine instead what Brokeback Mountain actually does. This seemingly simple move leads to new attention to the fact that Proulx published several different versions of her story before the film was made, raising the question of which version the film should be read against. My analysis shows that in each of these different versions, Proulx's purpose is to champion difference, whether that difference is one of sexual orientation or regional affiliation. By contrast, Lee's film initially emphasizes the similarities between straight and queer desire but ultimately invites his implied straight audience to recognize the ambiguity of the protagonists' experiences and to register the gap between the audience's heteronormativity and the protagonists' queerness. In this case, the shift in authorial conception of audience leads to a shift in narrative purpose, but both source and adaptation are highly effective.