Not The Best...

Watching Brokeback Mountain has never been a positive experience for me. Out of many wonderful gay films available, I find Brokeback to be the least influential and entertaining, yet people continue to look to it as the pinnacle of gay films. The movie is based off a short story by Annie Prolux and while the short story is outstanding, the film version is not as stellar for me. The movie is slow, drawn out, and parts boring. Obviously this is because it is extremely hard to turn a short story into a movie of this length, but the filmmakers did. The question for me is, why this short story? The appeal is the two straight acting males falling in love and suffering because of it. Even though it is a movie about two gay men, the movie is also a romance. Now, imagine the plot with a man and a woman…there is no point. The story is now is probably less interesting than other heterosexual romances in the box office. Really, the only thing that makes this movie interesting to the audience is that it is a story about homosexual love. This relates directly to Queer Theory’s study of attitudes towards homosexuality. Social attitudes about homosexuality make this film “interesting” to the average viewer. In reality, Brokeback Mountain is really the gay movie it is perceived to be.