Ye gads, the Oscars are finally over and with it, hopefully, goes a lot of the hype over Brokeback Mountain.
Yeah, that's right...a gay guy being indifferent about Brokeback. I have my reasons.
First of all, I saw Crash and I really liked it. Honestly. Did it deserve to win Best Picture? I definitely thought it deserved Best Original Screenplay and I haven't seen the other nominees for Best Picture to see how they measured up.
I've managed to avoid seeing Brokeback Mountain, and it's a movie I've been actively avoiding for a few reasons. Number one, the whole plot line just doesn't appeal to me. I don't care about cowboys, I don't care about cowboys shagging each other then getting married then pining away for their lost love. I just don't care. It doesn't interest me.
However, this puts me at odds with the rest of the gay community. See, there's tremendous pressure in the gay community to give up your personal identity and be exactly like every other gay person out there. You must wear Abercrombie and Fitch, you must go to the gym, you must shave your body, you must love certain music and certain actors and actresses otherwise you just aren't one of the REAL gay people. There's a complete mob mentality in the gay community that you must be like the Borg on Star Trek....resistance is futile, individuality is frowned upon and you must be part of the Gay Collective.
So when one of my favorite blogs to read each day, Towleroad, began running coverage every single day of whatever inane Brokeback Mountain factoid had shown up that day ("Shirts from movie auctioned off", "Read Heath's 12 millionth interview about Brokeback!"), I knew the gay community was off on another one of their rants. For some reason, the gay community had chosen Brokeback Mountain as its champion of all things good about gay love and damn you to hell if you didn't drink the Kool-Aid and lay down with the other Jonestown queers.
At first I laughed. After all, there were all these gay people falling in love with a movie written originally as a short story by a straight female author, adapted to the screen by two straight authors, directed by a straight director and starring two straight actors playing gay-for-pay. This was what they wanted to claim as their own? What's so gay about the movie? Just because two guys fall in love, have sex by a river and stay in love it's a gay movie?
So of course I experienced major backlash when I started talking about how I didn't care one big fig about the movie. My gay comrades were FURIOUS. How dare I turn my back on an IMPORTANT MOVIE. This movie was GAY and A POLITICAL STATEMENT and NECESSARY VIEWING. I said the movie was $8.50, had guys chasing sheep, cornholing each other and I'd still have to get up for work the next morning.
So when Brokeback lost tonight, I knew all hell was going to break loose, and boy did it ever. Everywhere I turn gay people are FURIOUS. The Academy supposedly deliberately ostracized and discriminated against this IMPORTANT MOVIE. It shows they hate GAY people and by voting against it they were making A POLITICAL STATEMENT that gay people will never be accepted, and that members of the Academy should have made Brokeback NECESSARY VIEWING. Kee-rist. Almost enough to make me want to go straight.
Guess what folks, it's a MOVIE. I'm glad you liked it, but you don't have to watch it just because you're gay, nor do you have to accept it for the same reason. It's called free will for a reason. Not all of us want to be gay clones. Some of us want to live our lives our way, enjoy the movies we want to enjoy and don't feel the need to have our lives justified on-screen. Every day I come home to a wonderful man who loves me and you know what? That's all the validation I need.
By the way, you notice how the NAACP isn't protesting because "Hustle and Flow" didn't win more Oscars? Are Katie Couric and Matt Lauer going to go on the Today show tomorrow morning and protest and say Hollywood is discriminating against news reporters because "Good Night and Good Luck" didn't win? Are the Israelis rising up in protest because "Munich" didn't win? Nope folks...it's just the gay people on a tear again about how awful it is to have THEIR film denied.
Guess what folks....when your movie is made by straight people, it ain't a gay film. And if you didn't pony up the bucks to finance it, it ain't YOUR film either. It's just a movie, like hundreds of other movies that will come out this year and the year after and so on. Forget the hype, be your own person.
On Tuesday, Luis and I are going to go to the movies. We haven't decided what we're going to watch yet, but I can tell you one thing for sure. It's going to be a movie we WANT to watch, not because we're pressured into watching it. And afterwards, I'm going to come home, snuggle up next to him, tell him I love him more than anything in the world and hold him all night. That's VERY IMPORTANT. That's GAY LOVE. That's my POLITICAL STATEMENT. And I don't need either straight actors or a gay mob to get my point across.
Perhaps others should learn to do the same.
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