From the Wilderness into the Closet: <i>Brokeback Mountain</i> and the Lost American Dream

In the film Brokeback Mountain, Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) tells Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), “I ain't queer.” Twist responds, “Me neither.” With these faltering but defiant words begins a personal pilgrimage into a wilderness at least as terrifying, as uncharted, and as destabilizing as the one initiated by early explorers of the American West. Like the medieval quests upon which much of Western literature is based, this particular epic journey in search of self-knowledge ends in paralyzing loss. Overwhelmingly, film critics have analyzed the challenge to heterosexual norms implicit in the film. While they are correct in doing so, the film succeeds for reasons that are largely unrelated to sexual orientation. It succeeds not only because it challenges preconceptions about gender identity but because it forces us to contend with the fears and limitations that make our being able to choose a richer, more passionate, more imaginative life impossible. The possibility of a rich, restorative, and expressive life spent in the Wyoming wilderness comes to nothing; instead, in the final scene of the film one of the central characters stands silently in the closet of his trailer. Set in Texas and Wyoming and shot in Alberta, Brokeback Mountain is a tale propelled by contradictions, oxymorons, paradoxes, and oppositions. Drawn from Annie Proulx's short story by the same name, Brokeback Mountain juxtaposes the wilderness with settled communities, wild animals with civilized townspeople, the poor with the privileged, the uneducated with the intellectually elite, women with men, rural life with city life, the innocent with the corrupt, and, yes, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals with their heterosexual family members, neighbors, and friends. However, the landscape of Brokeback Mountain is endlessly suggestive, and its heteronormativity is but one stop on the journey. Although the text does, in fact, challenge what we think we know about sexual orientation, it more importantly becomes the site of a struggle between what is expected and what is possible, between what we long for and what we actualize, between what we dream and what is. If considering how we prevent ourselves from achieving what we most desire is not unsettling enough, Brokeback Mountain goes beyond even that, suggesting that we have a responsibility to ask ourselves why we make decisions that provide us safety, security, familiarity, and responsibility even when they deprive us of joy. Viewers and readers don't have to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual in order to recognize the miles that separate life in a dingy kitchen—with clothes left in heaps on the floor, with a sink full of dirty dishes, and with weeping children demanding attention—from joyous fulfillment. In a particularly powerful scene in the film, Jack and Ennis leave stultifying domesticity behind and leap from a ledge into icy waters, shouting, intimately connected, and fully alive. Jack fantasizes about a “sweet life” and tells Ennis, “You know, it could be like this—just like this—always.” In this simple statement, the audience is asked to engage universal themes of need and longing and desire. When Ennis responds by saying that there is “no way” two men can live together and then utters the now famous line—”If you can't fix it, Jack, you've got to stand it”— readers and viewers must contend with whether the situation cannot be “fixed” or whether Ennis lacks the will or the template to “fix” it (and whether we lack that will or template, too). That Ennis's life experience has not prepared him for the possibility of loving a man—that the cultural discourse has not given him language for his desire—makes choosing Jack as his life partner impossible for him to imagine. But the choice is not impossible, joy is not forbidden, and life does not have to end in a trailer on the edge of the dream. The open, verdant Western landscape of Brokeback Mountain stands in stark contrast to the apartments and strip malls and bars of the town in which Ennis and Alma (Michelle Williams) make their life together. Brokeback Mountain looms, mythic, majestic and impenetrable, a 14-hour drive and a universe away from rodeos and a Texas ranch where Jack and Lureen (Anne Hathaway) are raising their son. The film disturbs and unsettles us, not simply because it suggests that love between two men is as rich and as viable as love between a woman and a man but because it demands that we confront the lives we could have lived if we had crossed the invisible divides that separate us from ecstasy and the fulfillment of our deepest desires. Brokeback Mountain demands that we consider the societal paradigms that help us to define ourselves at the same time that they limit, constrain, and immobilize us. The tragedy of the tale is not that Jack is dead—killed as he changed a tire or murdered by those who despised him for being gay. The tragedy of Brokeback Mountain is not death but a long life lived cautiously and guardedly. The tragedy is not having lost one's life but having wasted it. In fact, although set across the continent from the Long Island Sound, Brokeback Mountain evokes thoughts of the “last and greatest of all human dreams” and “the transitory enchanted moment” (182) of The Great Gatsby. By doing so, Brokeback Mountain becomes reminiscent of classic American narratives about profound and enduring loss. Inevitably, the film has been analyzed for its portrayal of love and sexual expression between two men; lauded for its cinematic accomplishments; celebrated for the universal themes that it addresses; and analyzed for its vision and revision of the mythology of the West. In fact, all of these critical approaches enrich a study of the lost American dream in Brokeback Mountain by reminding us that love and passion are not restricted to heterosexual couples; that a film about two men in love can be compelling and artful; that a text fails or succeeds because of the emotions it evokes; and that unreliable stereotypes of the vanished West include not only savage Native Americans and kind-hearted prostitutes but cowboys without emotion and without an ability to express themselves through language and through touch. Simply stated, Jack and Ennis stand in sharp contrast to many prevalent stereotypes of the contemporary American cowboys. Reviews that followed the release of Brokeback Mountain sometimes highlighted the homophobia of journalists and editors. In a statement without support and without context, Sean Smith wrote (in a review published in the March 6, 2006, issue of Newsweek) that Brokeback Mountain “could get a boost if it wins Sunday night [Oscar night], but for some Americans, it seems a same-sex love story is still too much, no matter how many trophies it wins” (8). And under a photo of Ledger and Gyllenhaal in the January 30, 2006, issue of Time magazine is the following phrase: “exactly the type of scene most straight guys usually don't want to see” (60). What follows the phrase is an analysis of gay themes in Brokeback Mountain entitled “How the West Was Won Over.” Even if we allow for editors who need to find a clever phrase to captivate readers (“How the West Was Won Over”) and if we allow for the straight men in America who might not want to see two straight actors portraying same-sex desire, it still bears asking: Why would one of the nation's top-selling news magazines suggest that a photo of two men fully dressed and standing close together is “exactly the type of scene” that heterosexual men would find offensive? Why would the editor then add “most straight guys,” as though she or he has conducted a reliable poll? And, finally, why would the editor include the qualifier “usually?” Are there “unusual” times during which straight men might be open to a narrative about same-sex love? In the phrase “exactly the type of scene most straight guys usually don't want to see” lies the first topic of importance to this study: Are “straight guys” presumed to be homophobic? Are they expected to be homophobic and therefore considered unlikely to attend Brokeback Mountain either alone or with a group of other “straight guys?” Are they both homophobic and expected to be homophobic? Is it true that most men who attended the film in the company of women were more open to the idea of same-sex desire, as some critics have suggested? The answer to these questions must be, “We don't know,” followed immediately with the acknowledgment that Brokeback Mountain enjoyed significant box office success and critical acclaim in spite of contemporary stereotypes about gay and heterosexual men. Certainly, Brokeback Mountain is not the only successful and widely distributed “gay film.” The Crying Game (1992) netted $63 million; Philadelphia (1993) netted $77 million and earned Tom Hanks his first Oscar; The Birdcage (1996) netted $124 million. William Hurt won “Best Actor” for his portrayal of a gay prisoner in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) and Hilary Swank won her first Academy Award for her portrayal of a transsexual character in Boys Don't Cry (1999). According to USA Today, by February 12, 2006, more than 12 million Americans had seen Brokeback Mountain, and the film had taken in $72 million. Brokeback Mountain led other films released in 2006 with eight Academy Award nominations and was widely regarded as the favorite to win the Oscars for “Best Picture” and “Best Director.” The film also earned more than the other films nominated for “Best Picture” in 2006: During the month before the Academy Awards, Crash had earned $53.4 million; Munich, $45.4 million; Good Night, and Good Luck, $29.3 million; and Capote, $22.1 million (2A). Certainly, box office and critical successes are not the only measures of a film's impact. Some critics suggest that the import of Brokeback Mountain actually will be determined individually—in private living rooms during private screenings. Poignantly enough, one such person is Judy Shepard, mother of murdered college student Matthew Shepard. Shortly before his 1998 death, Matthew gave his mother a copy of the story that inspired the film. She suggested that when viewers could rent Brokeback Mountain and view it alone, they would understand its message: “I think they'll see it how I see it,” Shepard said, “as a story that's trying to say that you can't help who you fall in love with. If it opens just a few eyes to that, then it's done a good thing” (Bowles 2A). Both the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Human Rights Campaign, organizations that advocate equality for all people, seem to agree with her. GLAAD provided an online resource guide to accompany the film, and through press releases and other efforts, the HRC widely encouraged small group discussion of the issues in the film. (The importance of the film to conversations about gay rights is suggested by the fact that director Ang Lee won an “Equality Award” from the HRC in New York in the spring of 2006.) For some, focusing on the controversy the film was certain to ignite was largely a marketing ploy. In “Backbreaking Bid to Create a Controversy” (December 28, 2005), Neil G. Giuliano, the former mayor of Tempe, Arizona, and the president of GLAAD, argues that Americans are much more open to the idea of same-sex love than stories about the release of Brokeback Mountain indicated. In the article published by The Arizona Republic, he writes: Boy, how we love a story that divides. So in addition to the near unanimous acclaim this movie has received, we're encouraged by the nation's leading newspapers and television news outlets to ponder, “Is America ready for this film?” Was America “ready” for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner or Philadelphia? Why does America need to be ready for any film? It's a movie, not a If you want to see an powerful and love see it. 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Brokeback Mountain as an but it into a from the to and the and in its of Western Brokeback Mountain is a film that the open that are as much a of the Western as It one and standing in two a closet in his and a closet in his trailer. 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I been at on the a other What the they Jack, the of their to one ain't no that's he And in the he was doing all but he Ennis sometimes to make him The two know that their time together is and the of their was by the of time what Brokeback Mountain with other Western films cowboys as central a portrayal of a in a particular However, more it with and the and other that upon an of how we how by the and we know, how by our Even so, I would that Brokeback Mountain have more in with The Great than it does with other film of the American West. Like The Great Brokeback Mountain is about an at least the film and movie is because it the of two and their the long of The lost and dream the a that upon and And it is the lost and dream that Brokeback Mountain in the company of American films about whether those films are set in the American West or about dream must have close that he could to But the dream and ends his with the now famous we the into the For Ennis in the final scene of Brokeback Mountain, the is a an of the that is to the of his closet us that the possibility of a life lived under the Wyoming has in and

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