Wednesday, January 18. 2006The Golden Globes: When I say "Brokeback," you say...
Generally, speaking. To preface, I actually liked Brokeback Mountain a whole lot, a lot more than I thought I would (as you can read here). But when all the awards hype was starting - Golden Globe this! Oscar that! - I had some misgivings about the "favor" straight Hollywood was doing for queers (as you can read here). So while I am, on the one hand, happy as a pig in shit scoping out all the farmyard cocks at the four Globes Brokeback took home, I'm also a little peeved by the conspiracy of silence that seemed to envelope the Beverly Hilton. Was it completely and utterly impossible for a single person in that room to talk directly about Brokeback Mountain and use the word "gay?" The film was called everything from universal to controversial to a Western - all of which it of course is. But it is also gay. Not exclusively gay, not even primarily gay necessarily, but gay nonetheless. And considering the amount of straight animal husbandry shown in the montage clips and the amount of queer shenanigans that were well...not, the word, the subject, the very issues the movie was supposed to be bringing down were being held up onstage by Ang Lee, Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry, Gustavo Santaolalla, Bernie Taupin, and Steve Carrell's wife Nancy (just kidding). And that just felt really crappy. I mean, even the people who made the gay cowboy movie are ashamed of it being a gay cowboy movie. Because as straight men and woman they are fighting for love, understanding, and universal empathy - not for lesbians, gay men, and transgendered people. They can dilute their message, manage reception of their movie, and just plain ignore all the queerness without shame because they are not outwardly queer.
Which, I reiterate, is why we should thank non-queers for their generosity and favors (because they are favors), but not get swept up in it all. Truth be told, their movie is making money, and they want it to keep making money. Downplaying the queerness gets butts in seats, and those butts may walk out, but by then they'll already have paid their eleven buck-a-roos. So I'll say what I said before, one last time: we are the only ones who will be proud to be who we are. There may not be a Golden Globe for that, but in the end that pride is what counts. Trackbacks
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About Big Queer |
What do you say? Apparently, nothing specific. Just a lot of highly general things about generalness being generally heart-warming and universal for the general population in a kind of general way.
