I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, but I’m already glad it won the Golden Globe for Best Drama. Why? Because it will upset people such as the conservative politician Fred Nile, who in this story on (Australian) ABC radio spoke out against the film.
But he has our interests at heart: he’s trying to spare us from confusion. To quote from the ABC’s story:
FRED NILE: I think it’s causing a great confusion to have two homosexual cowboys after all the popularity of the cowboy theme in American themes [sic].
To avoid such “confusion” (by which I suspect he means “deep-seated torment about how to reconcile homophobic views with message of love promoted by Jesus”) we should stick to traditional old-fashioned westerns like, say, Calamity Jane. Of course, we’re safer if the film can only confuse us on video:
DANIEL HOARE (Reporter): Christian groups led by New South Wales upper house member Fred Nile, from the Christian Democratic Party, say Brokeback Mountain should be released on video for the gay community rather than be released on the big screen…. [Later in report, to Nile] So you don’t think this movie is suitable for a mass-market audience?
FRED NILE: No.
DANIEL HOARE: How do you think it should be distributed?
FRED NILE: Well not distributed at all, I suppose. But I imagine if it’s on videos, and people from the homosexual community would hire copies of it, or purchase copies of it.
Well, obviously only people from the homosexual community would want to see the new film by Ang Lee.
Or is the concern that if it’s seen by heterosexuals, it will somehow convert them to gayness? If that’s Nile’s concern, he might be barking up the wrong tree in terms of calling for no distribution, or limiting it to video, or only showing it to over 18’s. Surely the real answer is a mandatory double-bill. Brokeback Mountain could be the first item, but then before we all go off to enjoy some show tunes and interior decorating, they could immediately put on a good old-fashioned movie about real blokes, like Dirty Harry, to heterosexualise us all again.
Like the ABC, I’ll leave the final word to Margaret Pomeranz. Given Pomeranz is one of those suspicious left-wingers you keep hearing about from Andrew Bolt, you might have suspected she would have directly attacked the bigotry underlying the attacks on Brokeback Mountain. She probably did, but what the ABC chose to close with instead was this great quote:
MARGARET POMERANZ: Do you know what I thought when I saw it? I thought, someone’s making movies about romance again, you know, all those great Bette Davis, Joan Crawford films about true love of the ’30s and ’40s, you know. I mean, we seem to have forgotten those, because everybody’s so cynical. But this is a film, really such a romantic film.
Thank you. I love this quote, because it seems calculated to mess with Nile’s head. I can see him struggling to reconcile it now. Romantic? Old-fashioned? Gay?
That, I suspect, is what Nile finds confusing.