Monday, January 23, 2006

AT IT ALREADY

This is letter from the SundayHeraldSun today.

SHAME ON YOU HEATH
Brokeback Mountain is not a film about love - it is a film about homosexual seduction and rape, deceit and heartbreak. It is not what I call entertainment - there is too much of those things in real life. The use of the Marlborough-man image to sell cigarettes caused damage to millions. To now use the same image to sell homosexuality will cause irreparable damage to many young men deceived by the false "love". Heath Ledger and everyone involved in the film should be ashamed of themselves.

Since the film hasn't been released in Melbourne yet, I presume this man hasn't seen it. Nor by his description has he read the story. The young men seeing it don't have to be sold anything, they already know. As for the Marlborough man, he not only came out as a smoker but gay as well.

Now for some really scary stuff. Don't go down to Federation Square on Thursday unless you love bagpipes. 250 of them are going to play in the Australia Day Voyages Concert. There'll be hundreds of other artists there for the concert but 250 bagpipers! Oh, please please make the nasty nightmares go away. I hope the Blight goes and gets a firecracker right up his.....

2 comments:

Gay Curmudgeon said...

If this person had seen the movie or read the short story of Brokeback Mountain, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Let's change the genders for second to see how silly this argument is.

Is it rape if a woman works on seducing the man when she believes the man wants to have sex with her?
Is it rape if the woman consents to have sex and moves her clothing aside for him?
Is it rape if their coupling is rough and passionate?
Is it rape if the man and woman stay together and awake in each others arms?

There is certainly a rough passion to the first encounter between Jack and Ennis. But is that so unusual for a first enounter? Especially one that must also overpower a whole lifetime, a whole society of fear and homophobia? I don't think so.

The whole point is that their love is strong enough to overpower the taboo against gay sex. But the sadness is that it falters under the taboo against gay relationships. It is the public relationship between two men that is most subversive and provokes the most fear.

Rape is a crime of violence and control. It's a crime of cowards, of those whose souls are much smaller than their bodies. It is a crime of the powerless, the threatened and the inadequate.

I think a gay man who can examine the hallmarks and consequences of both love and rape as a real possibility for them is in a better position to judge the truth of this film.

Oh, and having seen the movie helps too.

~GC

JahTeh said...

They don't get that it is about love and the consequences of having to deny and hide that love.