2021 Blog Posts

Jack and Ennis’ love story in Brokeback Mountain is a story of gay men yearning for a place within their extremely masculine and exclusionary community. Jack and Ennis were both born in very poor and rural areas in Wyoming. Their occupations require backbreaking and terrifying hard labor- leading sheep through the ridges of Brokeback mountain. The culture they belong to celebrates individualism, hard work, and masculinity- while completely rejecting homosexuality. Both men were apprehensive when realizing their attraction, fearing what this development would mean for their future and safety. The only time they feel safe enough to be intimate is totally secluded from their community and in nature, never able to share their sexuality with those they love.

This interaction between homosexuality and hyper-masculine culture reminds of Eli Clare’s connection to his home in Exile and Pride. Clare describes an environment strongly connected to the land, cushioned between the pacific ocean and Siskiyou mountains. While Clare feels a strong sense of pride in his homeland, he also recounts the rampant homophobia and bigotry that caused him to seek out a more accepting environment. While it is true that Clare faced oppression and violence in his home of rural Oregan, he urges the reader to avoid generalization. Rural America is stereotyped as being firmly anti-queer and conservative, restricting existence for anyone with an identity that isn’t white, cis, and straight. While some Americans may certainly behave in this way, Clare reminds us that queer people were born and exist in these communities. Despite their oppression, queer people from rural America form the same bonds with their environment and culture that straight people do. An appreciation for nature and a tightly knit community will always be a part of them, even if homophobia drives them away.

“In writing about the backwoods and the rural, white, working-class culture found there, I am not being nostalgic, reaching backward toward a re-creation of the past. Rather I am reaching towards my bones”(Clare, 12).

This quote perfectly describes Clare’s dichotomy of resistance and pride. Resistance to the bigotry and trauma he experienced in his hometown and pride in the environment that birthed him. This idea connects to Ennis and Jack relationship’s with their communities and each other. When their relationship first began, both men knew that they had to keep their time together a secret. In their “real” lives they had to work, be married to women, and produce children. Attempting to build a life together was almost out of the question, two men living together could lead to death and violence. Since they could not be together in their community, Ennis and Jack connect through their environment. Their most intimate and happiest times together were spent in tents on Brokeback mountain- totally isolated in the environment that bonds them together in shared connectivity. When ostracized from the communities they were born into, Clare, Ennis, and Jack reach for the embrace of nature, one that would never reject them for their identities. Queer people exist in rural areas and deserve support and representation without being lumped into the stereotype of “bigots” or being excluded from their communities.

We live in a society that loves to put people into boxes based off of specific characteristics. Gender is one of those boxes that is used to classify every aspect of who a person is and their role in society. It is part of our identity as people. But what happens when the gender constructs do not work for every person? How does that shape one’s identity and sense of self? Eli Clare looks at gender and disabled individuals in his chapter “Reading Across the Grain.” Clare states that “To be female and disabled is to be seen as not quite a woman; to be male and disabled, as not quite a man… The construct of gender depends not only one the male body and female body, but also upon the nondisabled body” (Clare 130). He looks at how gender and disability are so tightly interwound in shaping the identity of those with disabilities. Clare opens the chapter with descriptions of different advertisements/ articles featuring people with disabilities. The first is just an empty wheelchair and the second a woman dressed in a sexual manner draped over a wheelchair.

“A manual wheelchair sits half in shadow, it’s large right wheel in a pool of light. The chair is empty, turned 20 degrees away from the camera. The footrests tilt out” (Clare 119).

This first image does not even include a person, yet it says so much about those with disabilities. By not having a person, the image is reducing disabled people to just their disability. They are not seen as people, but a condition. What’s more, by placing the wheelchair in semidarkness the image is emphasizing that disabilities should be hidden from society’s eyes and not talked about.

“A white woman dressed in black–lace bustier, fishnet stockings, stiletto heels–looks straight at the camera. She gives us a red lipstick smile, blond hair piled on top of her head, diamond earrings dangling from both ears. She sits sideways across the left wheel of a manual wheelchair, which is turned so its back faces us” (Clare 119).

As Clare states “To be female and disabled is to be seen as not quite a woman,” which is to say that those with disabilities are almost genderless. This image makes the effort to portray a disabled woman not as such but as the most feminine woman they possibly can, to the point of over sexualizing. By not having her seated in her chair normally and having it face away while she faces towards the camera, there is an effort to erase her disability in an attempt to make her fit the “normal” construct of femininity.

By taking advertisements and breaking them down to their bare bones, Clare is able to show how society attempts to erase disability to make those individuals fit into the traditional genders. If that is not possible, disabled people are just reduced to their disability, no longer worthy of a gender. This mentality shapes how disabled people see themselves and their identity in society. Yes, disability is part of identity, but there is more to a person then their condition.

While reading for another class, I found a portion of the text that discussed the film Brokeback Mountain. After I finished the novella, I read this passage again and found that these concepts tie into the book as well; they explore how Brokeback Mountain subverts historical conceptions of a sexualized wilderness, in which pure, virginal land serve as a place of domination for heterosexual men.

In the book Ecocriticism, the evolution of connotations of the wilderness throughout literature and film are explored. The author asserts that Brokeback Mountain as a novella subverts some of culturally pervasive connotations of wilderness: “The film challenges the heteronormative assumptions underlying both the construction of ‘cowboy’ masculinities and, more subtly, the sexual coding of wilderness as a virile, heterosexual space” (Gerrard 60). The wilderness plays a large role in the film and novella, specifically acting as symbol of Ennis and Jack’s attraction, both sexual and romantic. Historically, both in real life and in literature, the wilderness is often viewed as a place of domination and conquest for heterosexual men. In Brokeback Mountain, it is seen by Jack and Ennis as a safe space for queer sexual acts (though this does not translate into a safe space for queer identities for either of the men). Jack perceives the land as not just providing a space for these actions, but a direct influence on them. Jack says to Ennis, “Old Brokeback got us good and it sure ain’t over” (Proulx 26). Instead of the men having dominion over the land, the land has power over them. Not only does the wilderness influence the men to “transgress” from the “norm” of heterosexuality in regard to their sexual acts, but it also allows for romantic tenderness that cannot exist elsewhere: “What Jack remembered and craved in a way that he could neither help not understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger” (Proulx 43). Ennis can only allow himself to reciprocate Jack’s romantic desire for him in the mountains, away from civilization, where they feel invisible and protected by the wilderness.

“It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.” (Proulx, 52)

I think perhaps one of the most pertinent struggles in Brokeback Mountain is Jack and Ennis’ unyielding desire to remain ‘masculine’ by their own perception, while simultaneously justifying being in a loving homosexual relationship with each other. Considering their station in life, their rural isolated upbringings, lonely laborious jobs, and the general independent cowboy culture that is deeply woven into Proulx’s prose, Jack and Ennis have mutually agreed to completely ignore the contemplation of their own queerness. Although Jack was more forthcoming and emotional about his and Ennis’ connection, supplying daydreams of the two living together on a ranch of their own, the deep guttural fear of queer discovery and resulting violence kept their lives from developing with one another. The shirts signify so much more than just collected clothing, but rather a small crack in a harshly masculine narrative, tangible proof of Jack’s emotional loyalty to Ennis. Ennis finally allows himself to remember Brokeback Mountain, a place and time so far removed, and the desperate burying of his head into Jack’s shirt is both longing for his lover, and a world in which everything was perfect. The secluded and somber nature of the moment, Ennis standing utterly alone in Jack’s childhood bedroom, also is indicative of Ennis’s lack of ability to express emotions of desire, nostalgia, love, and loss. I also believe this is a moment of regret. Regret at his prior inability to truly tell Jack how much he means to him, and how he should have thrown his anxiety about their relationship to the wind, and at least tried to contemplate his queer identity alongside him.

The concept of ‘two skins’ vaguely gestures at the idea of soulmates, which is yet another truth that Jack’s sudden and violent death has forced him to process. But everything, Jack, the shirts, and all high-altitude fucks considered, leads back to the mountain. The mountain and it’s haunting, inescapable ‘imagined power’. The shirts are a historical relic of an era that is hungrily remembered and insistently chased after, it’s a memory of when their relationship was acceptable, because nobody was watching. Ennis’ belief that homosexual love and masculinity are not mutually exclusive is distilled within the depths of the mountain, as their private, uninterrupted love was what Ennis could handle, and perhaps more importantly, what society could allow.

 

 

“Ennis …hit the ground on his knee…But before [Jack] was out of the truck, trying to guess if it was heart attack or the overflow of an incendiary rage, Ennis was back on his feet and somehow, as a coat hanger is straightened to open a locked car and then bent again to its original shape…” (Proulx 42-43; I leave this sentence hanging unfinished here).

The writer Ocean Vuong posits that a metaphor is a “detour” from the original subject, leading to “discoveries” in order to “transform” and/or “amplify” the meaning upon our return (Vuong). A “strong” metaphor, which can work without context, demands simultaneously a “sensory connector” and “clear logical connection” between the original subject and the “transforming element.” In Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx crafts a powerful metaphor (in bold above) that magnifies Ennis and Jack’s emotional and corporeal relationship by connecting their bodies to the materiality that shapes them, i.e. the “transforming elements” of “coat hanger” and “locked car.”

The bolded image demonstrates a sensory and logical connection between Jack and Ennis’ rural male bodies and “coat hanger[s].” The coat hanger, as Ennis later discovers in Jack’s closet, is made of “wire” (51). “Wire,” in texture, is a hard and tough metal, like the “cowboy” masculine performative skin these men put on: “I’m not no queer,” says Ennis, “Me neither,” says Jack (15). However, this thin wire can be “bent,” like their sexuality and bodies: they oscillate between a certain sexuality with each other and their public sexuality. Proulx even illustrates this sexual oscillation in their last names: “Twist” already denotes bendability and “del Mar” in Spanish means “of the sea,” which conveys a vast body of volatile indeterminate water, volatile literally in shape and texture. The wire hanger also carries their clothing, another layer of their social skin/status. It carries both their shirts “like two skins, one inside the other, two in one” (52). This convergence of skin conjures their sexual intimacy, their practiced anal penetrative sex, as one skin enters into/”inside” the other. Proulx grounds Jack and Ennis’ intricate sexuality within the materiality that shares the texture of their identity and their life.

While “coat hanger[s]” deepens our understanding of their performative and private sexuality with each other, they are the tools to open also another component of Proulx’s metaphor: “a locked car.” Bending a coat hanger in order to “open a locked car” announces the stealthiness or the illegality of such action, or, of Jack and Ennis’ intimate and illicit encounters. However, this stealthy and illegal act also enables mobility, security, and survival: they enter the car, contain themselves within a larger and safer metal skin, and drive away to temporarily escape their hapless lives. But after all, they must come back to rebend themselves to their “original shape.”

Employing “coat hanger” and “locked car,” Proulx puts us on a “detour” towards the materials that allow us to touch the texture of Jack and Ennis’ reality, to feel the metal and its bending to a breaking point (in the case of Jack). These are also the materials that mark their rural and class identity, such as their cowboy clothing and their pickup trucks, which ultimately trap them where they are. The metaphors satisfy both the sensory and logical connection between the original subject (Ennis and Jack) and the transforming element (coat hanger and locked car). Proulx has successfully “recalibrated the traditional mode of value” placed on Jack and Ennis’ (homo)sexual oppression by expanding their private and public bodies with their defining materiality (Vuong). She shows that we cannot think about Jack and Ennis’ tyrannized (homo)sexuality without examining the materials that situate and trap their lives and bodies. All in one perfect and succinct metaphor.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17888013988759825/      This is a theoretical mini-essay by Ocean Vuong posted and saved only on his Instagram story highlights. If you have trouble accessing it, let me know.

The novella Brokeback Mountain contains themes of homophobia in rural America and the consequences of being openly queer in a society where this is not accepted. The themes of being queer in a rural area are also shared in Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride, in which Clare shares about being queer and disabled within a poor working-class community.
Although Brokeback Mountain is a novel about the experience of being queer in a rural American setting, it rarely actually talks about queer identity. In fact, the only time it is ever really brought up using language about queerness is when Ennis said that he “ain’t no queer” and Jack responded with “me neither” (Proulx 15). However, was also a scene in which Ennis states that he and Jack cannot live together through sharing that a gay man in his childhood town was beat to death with a tire iron. He used this story to portray his fear for the violent and rampant homophobia in working-class rural communities. Throughout the entire story it is made very clear that they could be killed for being openly queer.
Exile and Pride relates to Brokeback Mountain through its discussions of being openly queer in rural areas. Although Clare also speaks of feeling as though he was exiled from his hometown community for being a “dyke in a straight world” several times throughout his book, there was one specific example of queerness in a rural setting that seemed different than the other stories he shared. Clare reflected on attending his grandfather’s funeral and seeing his aunt’s partner considered as a part of their family. He says that “I am quite sure that my aunt has never introduced Barb to Uncle John or Aunt Esther, Uncle Henry or Aunt Lillian as her partner, lover, girlfriend. Yet Barb is unquestionably family, sitting with my grandfather’s immediate relatives near the coffin, openly comforting my aunt” (Clare 33). By sharing this, Clare was explaining the complexities of racism and homophobia within the white working-class community – a community similar to those in Brokeback Mountain. Clare continues that “in this extended working-class family, unspoken lesbianism balanced against tacit acceptance means that Barb is family, that Aunt Margaret and she are treated as a couple, and that the overt racism Barb would otherwise experience from these people is muffled. Not ideal, but better than frigid denial, better than polite manners and backhanded snubs” (34). However, Clare later shares in the chapter that he would be concerned for the safety of a queer person in his town who had not known the residents for decades.
The example of Clare’s aunt and her partner shows the delicate balance of what will be tolerated by that community. However, it also shows a lot about how queerness is only tolerated if it is never spoken of as an explicit thing. His family was only okay with his aunt’s relationship because she had never shared the nature of the relationship overtly but rather allowed to be an assumed thing. In the same nature, Jack and Ennis refused to call themselves queer because of the consequences of being overtly queer, even though they were having this conversation while discussing their sexual relationship. The ideas reflected in both stories is that rural queerness is something that can only be handled in small amounts and if it follows the idea of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of keeping something ambiguous – although even this does not always stop the violence of homophobia that is seen both in Brokeback Mountain and other works as well as in tragic real-life instances.

Within the LGBTQ+ community, internalized homophobia is something that can be considered a universal experience, feeling, or sometimes, (unfortunately), a way of life. In both the T.V. series “Atypical” by Robia Rashid, and “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx, all queer characters experience this sense of internalized homophobia, which hinders their relationships.

For those that are not familiar with “Atypical”, it resembles a show where Sam, a teenager on the spectrum, decides he is ready for finding a serious relationship. With the help of his therapist as well as family, Sam is able to explore the inner-meanings of what it means to have a crush and feel for someone. Along with Sam, the show follows the older sister Casey and her relationships. (Note: Bridgette Lundy-Paine, who plays Casey, goes by they/them pronouns, but the character uses she/her). In the beginning of the show, Casey has a boyfriend. Throughout the entirety of the first two seasons, she seems somewhat distant towards him, but nonetheless, continues the relationship. It isn’t until the most recent season released (season 3), that she has the opportunity to attend a private school due to her athleticism in track and field, On her team, is a member named Izzie. At first, Izzie is apprehensive of Casey, and ultimately, is not as kind to her as expected. However, later within the season, their friendship grows, and eventually, blossoms into something more. Casey eventually breaks up with her boyfriend and pursues this newfound relationship. While Izzie and Casey develop feelings for one another, Izzie has a difficult time accepting her sexuality.

In one particular scene, both partners are discussing their hangout from the night before. Izzie states, “Wait did you tell Sam about us?”, to which Casey replies, “Not really”. Casey then says, “Well I didn’t tell him anything, he just saw us at the door. Wh-what would be the big deal? He’s my brother.” Izzie then becomes visually upset and frustrated, as she states, “The big deal is that I don’t feel like broadcasting my personal business to the world”. A second instance of Izzie’s internalized homophobia is that at a small party, Casey tries to kiss Izzie. Despite being with Casey, and having feelings for her, Izzie is apprehensive of being public. In the scene itself, Casey moves closer to Izzie as they are both dancing together. Izzie quickly asks, “What are you doing?”. “Nothing I’m dancing”, Casey laughably replies. “We talked about this. I don’t need to advertise my personal business to the world”, Izzie states. “I’m not trying–“, Casey then starts to state. “I just, I need water”, Izzie finally replies.

Alike, in “Brokeback Mountain”, both Ennis and Jack are unsure of their relationship at first, and ultimately, cannot accept their feelings for one another. After having sex for the first time, Ennis states, “I’m not no queer,” and Jack jumped in with “Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody’s business but ours” (15). In this instance, both characters are seen as having a sense of internalized homophobia as they cannot accept their actions from the night prior. While Izzie’s sense of internalized homophobia in “Atypical” is more in the sense that yes, while she accepts her feelings towards Izzie, she is unsure of making it knowledge to the public, on the other hand, Ennis and Jack develop a sense of internalized homophobia at first because they do not accept their actions with a partner of the same sex. In this exact moment within the novel, both characters are not worried about their appearance in public (yet), as they have not even accepted their feelings for one another at this time.

 

“As it did go. They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, “I’m not no queer,” and Jack jumped in with “Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody’s business but ours.” There were only the two of them on the mountain flying in the euphoric, bitter air, looking down on the hawk’s back and the crawling lights of vehicles on the plain below, sus­pended above ordinary affairs and distant from tame ranch dogs barking in the dark hours.” (pg 15)

Although Ennis and Jack had such an intimate relationship, their own ego’s and internalized homophobia kept them apart. Their relationship was so organic and didn’t need to be clouded by conversations of what it meant or what they were. At first their sex was only in the tent as a one off way to release steam. As they became more comfortable with each other and their desires, their locations for sex became more and more visible. It was love in such a way that the location did not matter but rather the act itself. They believed they were invisible to the outside world as well as invincible. The secluded nature of Brokeback Mountain allowed for their intimacy to flourish without the harsh gaze of society. Ennis was quick to say that he isn’t a queer, asserting that what they had done was only some sort of release with no emotional meanings behind it. Ennis avoided the labels that he considered dirty, not from his own experiences but from what society had to say about gay individuals. His aversion to being blatantly gay was also seen when he embraced Jack from behind (42). He could not face his own demons and ideas that he couldn’t physically face Jack. These moments of intimacy as well as tension are extremely visible in the movie as well as the novel. Seeing the movie after reading the book made it a much more emotional experience for me. Being able to see their feelings rather than just reading the words on the pages made it so much more powerful. Not to mention the star studded cast that portrayed these characters so well. The ending scene of the movie/the first pages of the book were so raw and emotional in an almost tangible way. You could feel the hurt radiating from Ennis as his child is soon marrying and his own love has passed away without being able to say a final goodbye. 

After reading Brokeback Mountain, I was interested in how the book portrays male homosexuality. I’m interested in the portrayal of male homosexuality in the book and the film connected to some recent articles about The Golden Globes that took place this past Sunday night. 

When The Golden Globes nominations were announced, there was quite a bit of backlash against James Corden’s nomination for his role in the film The Prom. For those who haven’t seen The Prom, Corden plays a gay Broadway actor who goes to a small town with some other Broadway performers to help a high school girl go to prom with her girlfriend. The backlash surrounding Corden’s nomination had to do with the fact that he is a straight man playing a gay man and, therefore, many argued, played his gay character in an “‘offensive'” and “‘stereotypical'” way (Zac Ntim, Insider Magazine). 

I have several questions relating to this criticism. Yes, Corden does play his character in a flamboyant way that calls upon inaccurate stereotypes of gay men, and it probably would have been better if the part had been played by someone who identifies as gay. However, many people who are critical of Corden’s performance fail to mention that the director, Ryan Murphy, is a gay identifying man. It seems as though Murphy’s role as the director of Corden’s performance should place some of the criticism on Murphy or should make people think about what it really means to portray a gay man in a film. 

Looping back to Brokeback Mountain, we talked a bit in class about the connection between “masculinity” and how it relates to the images of cowboys. A cowboy in America is someone thought to be strong and weather-beaten. These are stereotypical characteristics linked to the idea of “masculinity.” Proulx does not portray Jack and Ennis as flamboyantly gay men. Instead, they appear to embody those stereotypical “masculine” traits that one might not associate with homosexuality. These same traits seem to be echoed in the bits of the film I’ve seen. 

The film was well-received when it first came out in 2005. I wonder if it was easier for audiences to swallow because Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are straight men and because they didn’t act flamboyant like James Corden. I would think that even though these films are separated by many years now that people would have been just as upset that two straight men were playing two gay men. However, since the portrayals are so different, one considered more “masculine” than the other, maybe viewers didn’t see anything wrong with Ledger and Gyllenhaal’s performances because they don’t act “un-masculine.” 

As you can see, I don’t really have any answers to my questions, but I do think it’s essential to think about what should be considered the “correct” way to portray male homosexuality in books and films. It seems as though there should not be one right way, other than to have someone who identifies as whatever one is trying to portray, play that part.

The stories of LGBTQ+ people vary across cultures around the world, but they also are wildly different even within the same country. The experiences of queer folx vary within the United States due to the disparities between middle America and the LGBTQ+ community in cities or on the coasts. Samantha Allen’s book Real Queer America tells a selection of the stories of those who lived happy and fulfilling lives fighting for LGBTQ rights in conservative states. Her own life has been characterized by years lived in these “red” states that queer people stereotypically want to run away from. She resisted that compulsion to flee, instead opting to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights within those southern/midwest states. Eli Clare told a similar story in his novel Exile and Pride. He felt a deep love for his home in Oregon, despite the homophobia and transphobia that pervaded the culture of his town.

While Allen’s account of her time in middle/southern America is explained by wanting progress and change, she does not go in depth about why this area of the country deserves “saving”. Yes, LGBTQ+ people are everywhere in the United States, but why shouldn’t they just move? Why do we need to push back and populate the towns where many are likely to be hostile to us? Clare’s emotional account gives a clear answer. The beauty of the landscapes and the quality of life that could be had in these places are sometimes worth the pain of not being accepted. Eli Clare expressed that the memories made in middle America are unlike those people in cities share. People in cities often live lives of privilege. They benefit from the struggles of the working class. These struggles are what Clare experienced early in his life. He could not relate to people in his community because they lived in the upper class most of their lives.

Memories, experiences, and beauty are what make up conservative America. Clare’s accounts clearly prove that we cannot leave behind the “Real Queer America” that Allen tells us about.

Picture By Guzzler829 – A self-edited version of the file found here, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80458825