Brokeback Mountain, Rated

FoxNews, surprise surprise, files a bizarre homophobic story about the "controversy" which they percieve as pestering the [potential masterpiece] Ang Lee film Brokeback Mountain. This is, of course, another manufactured controversy [paired with the "war on Christmas" they're waging], an attempt to bolster credit and credibility to the conservative culture war.

I am extremely excited for the film for many reasons- but non of which are dependant upon a judgement of sexuality. Fox News, however, has filed a self-depreciating report stating that Brokeback Mountain's gay sexuality deserved a box-office-killing NC-17 rating, at least according to some:

With a modern-day Shakespearian doomed-love tragedy called "Brokeback Mountain" opening this weekend, the debate over this country's ratings system — handled by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) — has once again bubbled over like the witches’ cauldron in “Macbeth.”

The much-blogged-about, critically acclaimed Ang Lee film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger is rated R. But its storyline of two male ranch hands who fall for each other in the early ‘60s and keep their relationship a secret has led some to wonder why the movie didn’t get an NC-17.

“I think the only reason it got an R is because Ang Lee directed it,” said film critic Anderson Jones, referring to the clout of the director behind “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “The Ice Storm” and “Hulk.” “I don’t believe it deserved an NC-17 rating, but I’m surprised it didn’t get one considering the storyline.”

It doesn’t hurt that the movie's studio is Focus Features, the "indie" division of mammoth Universal Pictures. Focus Features co-president James Schamus, the film's producer, said there was no discussion of an NC-17 rating — or a lesser one like PG-13. He said nothing was cut to get it an R.

“We assumed it would be R; it was R. It was totally fair,” Schamus said at a press roundtable discussion about the film. “It’s an adult, grown-up movie. It’s a movie I think young people could see or should see in the context of their parents talking to them about it. That’s an R rating to me.”

But some have blanched at the R as too strict for "Brokeback," since there are only two scenes where the main characters kiss and one short sex scene between them in which more is implied than shown.

"I don't believe it would be inappropriate [as PG-13]," Jones said. "The ratings system continues to prove how flawed it is. It's flawed, and it's controlled by larger studios."

This is the entirity of the debate over Brokeback's rating in this article. The entirity. And it is a self-contained non-debate- not one person in this article says that the film was ever considered, or in its current form, deserving, of an NC-17 rating. Yet the supposition that it somehow culturally deserves one seeps through the article.

The article itself seems to exist solely in a world where the only possibility for homosexuality would be a stern, adults-only rating- preserved in the queer-cinemas; insulating the average American from the possibility of having to deal with the subject matter. If the same story were heterosexual, it could fly with a PG-13. But GAY?!?! Slap it with the Showgirls treatment!

And that is exactly why the source material for the film is brilliant, and why the film is so promising to me. Annie Proulx's series of Wyoming Stories, Close Range, in which Brokeback appears as a short story, do just this. The goal is to resist this sense of over-simplification. Her stories crack through the veneer of how people percieve Wyoming and the citizens of the West. They crack that western mindset of machismo and present characters dealing with specific troubles and conflicting truths. They remove the factor of insulation, through choice or trauma. Brokeback, in particular, deals so delicately with a guarded secret of the west [and of course, by extention, this entire country]- that yes, homosexuals exist even in the most barren, isolated, and difficult landscapes in the country, despite our continued attempts to contain and deny it.

The Matthew Shepard case brought this issue again to the front of the cultural mindset, but there were complexities there as well, which quickly were dilluted and pushed aside. Specifically, as discussed in this interesting piece on Z Commentary Online responding to a 20/20 story which ran in Nov. 2004, Matthew Shepard's murder was more complicated than we understood it.

The power of the Matthew Shepard story rests on his being the innocent victim. His gayness had to be presented in such a way that it was free of all possible homophobic interpretations. He could not be seen in the news reports of his death as being anything but perfect: he was friendly, he was loved by everyone, he had a vision of world peace, he was good looking, he never made enemies, he was the traditional boy next door in all ways—except he was gay. He put a “human face” on hate crimes.

The flip side of this meant that Matthew Shepard couldn’t have problems, couldn’t be a stereotypical flaming queen, couldn’t be promiscuous, and couldn’t even be sexual. In a deeply homophobic culture, the overt brutality of Shepard’s murder could be understood as brutal only in direct contrast to his innocence. This, obviously, is not a problem with Matthew Shepard, but with our culture.

When “20/20” reports that Shepard was a crystal meth user, that he liked to party with the drug crowd, and that he was HIV-positive (during the AIDS epidemic when he would have understood the consequences of unsafe sex), the show—whether they meant to or not—diminished the importance of gay bias crimes. The “20/20” contention that the murder of Shepard was not a hate crime only works because they also repeatedly showed that he was not an “innocent victim.”

Of course he wasn’t. Who is? Even today, after nearly 40 years of second-wave feminism, rape victims are judged by their sexual history, even how they were dressed. In a world that continues to see gay men as sexual predators, disease carriers, criminals, and socially dangerous, its’s no wonder that to get Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder to be taken seriously the truth of his life had to be compromised and misrepresented.

The problem is that gay activists and the mainstream media both agree—for similar reasons—that this compromise is necessary and useful. The original coverage of the Shepard murder would not have been the same (or as extensive) if his HIV status or his alleged drug use was a factor. One of the ironies of the “20/20” piece is that because of the raised public consciousness of gay bias crimes, it is now permissible for his murderers to go on national television and say they were totally fucked up crystal-meth addicts rather than homophobic. Progress, sort of.

The problem was not one invented by “20/20.” It is the result of a world so twisted by hatred of gay people that the only way Shepard’s brutal murder can be taken seriously is to see him as the ultimate innocent victim. Matthew Shepard was human and no one who is human can be completely, perfectly innocent. If the need to define hate crimes and to argue against homophobic violence means we have to extract them from the complicated fabric of everyday life, then we are all in trouble—more trouble than “20/20” can ever cause with this exposé.

The 20/20 show included "revelations" that Aaron McKinney, on of Shepard's killers, had at least some history of homosexual contact himself; and that his motivation was fueled by drugs and robbery. But Z's comments are more correct: the social dichotomy required no complications in Shepard's murder. In fact, it was the perfect hate-crime for everybody involved. In the barren, relentlessly uncompassionate, conservative Wyoming badlands, a gay student is killed, ruthlessly, horrifyingly. And out of this, social change can come... [and it offered an interesting opportunity for the people of Wyoming to show their compassion and goodness, which many and most truly did.]

But again, if McKinney and Shepard's humanism were shown, the story becomes complex and impenetrable. If they remain simple and talking-point clear, it's easy for us to understand where we stand in relation to the story. Unfortunately, this doesn't do whole and complete justice to the victim, or the perpetrator.

Proulx's Brokeback takes at least narratively pre-dates Matthew Shepard's gross torture and death. It exists, however, in a similar social climate- the isolated and hard badlands of Wyoming. There is a significant response, in a way, to the Shepard case: in Shepard's world, the world of truth and reality, we find isolation, torture, pain, solitude, and simplified confusion. But in Proulx's Wyoming, the "ideal" world of literature, we find two men who encroach upon, and must deal with the conflicts of, warmth, connection, and love. It's the same world, but an entirely different world as well.

Brokeback Mountain is not a gay story as much as it is a love story- the story of two humans, men, who build such a spontaneous connection- and that connection itself causes every conflict in their world. It is a conflict against their culture, the landscape, and their concepts of themselves. But it is undeniable [Some would disagree; or at least differ in this opinion. Particuarly, "former gays" saved by the Lord].

It is, of course, this granting of humanism that freaks out Fox News so much. Because if gays become not only two-menorwomen-kissing-in-sin but actual creatures of warmth, love, and conflict, they become dangerous to us [ie the "fabric of society, the moral fibers of family"]. It's the same reporting they take in any sphere- simple, dichotomous, and misleading. And that's why Proulx's story can be revelatory under Lee's sensitive direction- it forces humanism and complexity back into relationships, and forces us to realize that society, actually, is good. Warmth is good. It's part of us all.

They intrinsically attack the film and the story because it is "gay." That's the first concern they can even come close to understanding. But for the rest of us, it'll appeal to us because it's "human." That's more valuable to our culture and our society, anyway.