Brokeback Mountain - An Objective Take

I saw ‘Brokeback Mountain’ on Australia Day this year. And I’ve also posted my thoughts on it on a personal level in an another post. Click here to read that post. This post on ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is from a more objective perspective. But before I continue, let me take you back to an experience I had several years ago now.

I was living on my own then, and from memory, I think I was in my final year of university. I invited this friend over for dinner at my place one night. Tim had started coming to my church and I had gotten to know him a bit over the preceding months. We chatted casually over dinner and towards either the end of the night or around the middle of the night – I forget which – Tim suddenly blurts out to me after a silent pause that he was HIV+. I remember feeling sitting there stunned. He was, however, so concerned about the news upsetting me that he asked me if I was OK. On the exterior, I didn’t flinch a single bit nor did I bat an eyelid. But on the inside, I was literally guttered. He must have been only in his mid-20s at the time, not that much older than I was.

The night before Australia Day, I found out via two message posts on this online network of same-sex attracted Christians that two other guys (people that I know of rather than personally) have also recently been diagnosed as HIV+. One is in his early 30s, the other, his early 20s. Once again, I felt guttered. It was with this news on the back of my mind that I saw ‘Brokeback Mountain’. I share this because I want to hopefully be able to offer you a slightly different perspective on this film.

So, Requited Love Equals...?

On a broader level, though, I must confess I watched this movie with the determination to remain as objective as I possibly could. And it is from this perspective that I wonder whether ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is insinuating, albeit very subtlely, that love between any two people should never be restrained, sacrificed or given up; that requited love should be given free rein to carve out its destiny in the lives of those whom it has befallen, and that if our society could only be ridden of its disapproval and hang-ups about homosexuality, then these two men could very well have gone on to live a happy life together.

I also wondered as I sat there if society would still look upon as favourably or with as much empathy towards those who engaged in adultery so long as it is committed in the name of requited love between the parties involved.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying ‘Brokeback Mountain’ should be banned or that it is contributing to a decline in family moral values. Not at all. Neither do I wish to belittle the fact that the emotions and experiences portrayed by Jack and Ennis or suggest in any way that they do not exist in reality. However, ‘Brokeback Mountain’ told as a story of a same-sex couple’s thwarted love is but just that – it highlights and shows that even same-sex attracted people, share the same hopes and dreams and desires to love and to be loved, of wanting to know that you matter to someone. And that matters of the heart are never an easy thing – that it is complex, messy and sometimes outright painful.

In that sense, it humanises the experience of people with same-sex attractions and hopefully raises a higher level of awareness and compassion for those with same-sex attractions based on our shared aspects of humanity – regardless of our moral disposition on the matter.

Sexuality – A New Construct

Our generation – or perhaps the last two generations or so – are interestingly enough, also the first in history to ever construct our self-identities on the basis of our sexuality. And so, today, our society would label Jack and Ennis as ‘gay’. Or perhaps ‘bisexual’ to be accurate. Yet, Jack and Ennis both did not describe themselves that way and did not see themselves as that. Some may argue that it is because of the era that they were in, that people feared to identify themselves that way for fear of recriminations. Yet, the very physical and emotional behaviours of Jack and Ennis indicated to us they were very much drawn to each other.

When Annie Proulx wrote her short story ‘Brokeback Mountain’, on which the movie is named after and based on, it is perhaps to her credit that she never used the word ‘love’ in the original short story despite the fact that it’s there nevertheless. The tragedy of the story essentially hinges on the ambiguities of love and sex by blurring the concept of friendship between men. Are Jack and Ennis gay because they loved each other or is it because they loved each other that they are gay?

Read more about Annie Proulx by clicking here.

Some What Ifs?

The increasing blurring of non-sexual emotional intimacy between men and sexual physical intimacy between men is an unfortunate one. I wonder whether Ennis would have perhaps gone on to be a happily married ‘heterosexual’ man to Alma for all of his life had the initial sexual encounter with Jack not happen whatsoever. And had he not met Jack, who instigated the sexual advance, would he have realised what that nagging emotional hunger (for male intimacy) might have been for?

Death of the Male Friendship?

Perhaps one of the stronger views expressed about ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is that by Anthony Esolen, an English professor at Providence College, Rhode Island, who argues that the breakdown of natural sexual order in our society today - as portrayed in ‘Brokeback Mountain’ -has led to the death of male friendship.

In his ‘A Requiem for Friendship: Why Boys Will Not Be Boys and Other Consequences of the Sexual Revolution’, published in Touchstone magazine, Esolen uses the example of a scene from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ where Sam Gamgee, having followed Frodo into Mordor finds him in a small cell lying half-conscious and cries out, “Frodo! Frodo, my dear! It’s Sam. I’ve come!” Frodo embraces his friend and Sam cradles Frodo’s head. Likewise, when David is told of his friend Jonathan’s death in the Old Testament, he cries out, “Your love to me was finer than that the love of women.”

These days, Esolen suggests, a reader or viewer of either scene above is more likely than ever to question the nature of these friendships and erroneously conclude that they are gay. Yet, Esolen points out that just only a few centuries ago, Shakespeare and many other great authors all spoke of non-sexual love between men in the strongest terms. Alas, what has become of male love these days? To this, Esolen offers a blunt but haunting assessment – “If a man cradles the head of his weeping friend, the shadow of suspicion must cross your mind.”

Click here to also read Albert Mohler's full commentary on this issue.

Romanticisation of the Alternative

The film in of itself does not necessarily romanticise homosexual relationships. Ang Lee certainly does not shy away from showing the damage done by the choices that Jack and Ennis make. Yet, you don’t walk away from the film thinking about the trail of destruction their unfaithfulness, not only to their respective wives but to each other (more so Jack than Ennis), have had on their lives. No, it’s not unrequited love that is the story here. It’s thwarted love that cuts at all of us and makes us want to cheer on for the underdog.

As someone pointed out in one of the numerous articles and commentaries that have been written since ‘Brokeback Mountain’ hit the screens, the film portrays a conventional lifestyle with families as a chore – namely that of crying babies, demanding wives and hard, frustrating work to put food on the table while the sexual liaisons and get-togethers that Jack and Ennis have in the glorious outdoors is so much better. Indeed, the adulterous affair shared by Jack and Ennis is associated with nature, framed by the magnificent backdrop of the Wyoming mountains, of clear blue rivers, horses and camp fires while family life is associated with mundaneness, of financial and emotional pressures to escape from.

A Different Reality

Yet, the realities of life and of gay relationships are far more complex and varied than the one portrayed in ‘Brokeback Mountain’. Granted that perhaps Ennis and Jack could have indeed lived a happy life had they not been restrained by the social mores of their time. But who is to say they may not have eventually broken up either? Of the three to four percent of the general population that may be homosexual, lifelong monogamous homosexual relationships are by and large the exception rather than the norm. Admittedly, there are increasingly more and more same-sex couples in long-term relationships. But then again, the rules that govern same-sex relationships are not a homogenous one but rather vary from one end of the spectrum to the other even within the gay community.

It is also a fact that the majority of new HIV infections in Western countries like the USA, Canada, Western Europe, New Zealand and Australia generally occur among men who have sex with men – people like Tim and the other two people I mentioned at the start of this post.

The number of HIV infections is proportionally higher amongst sexually active gay men than amongst straight men – at least in Western countries - perhaps due to the type of sexual practices and types of sexual relationships that sexually active gay men might engage in: from closed monogamous arrangements to open relationships; from barebacking with individuals other than one's partner to having casual anonymous sex with multiple partners. Organisations like the Australian Red Cross also aren’t ignorant about the statistically higher incidence of various blood-borne diseases among sexually active gay men, including the HIV virus, and this is reflected in the organisation’s standard practice of not accepting blood donations from men who have had sex with men within the past 12 months. (See the Australian Red Cross statement here)

What Then?

I think while it’s important to realise that same-sex attracted people have the same hopes and dreams as everyone else, we must sometimes also consider the broader implications of what we throw our weight behind in support of. We all need love, but it is a tragedy if we begin to assume or believe that the only form of love possible between two men is that of a sexual one. I sincerely think that all men - straight or gay - lose out in the long run when we think that the only way a man can love another man is that via homoerotic expression and no other means. We are poorer when we equate love to eros and forget that non-sexual love can be just as real, legitimate and powerful between men.

Regardless of your moral and ethical disposition towards homosexuality, same-sex attracted men and women all deserve the same love, dignity and understanding as you’d expect to receive from others. My only hope is that deep, intimate but non-sexual love between people of the same gender, such as the love shared between Frodo and Sam and the one between David and Jonathan won't get forgotten, marginalised and made suspect in light of the advances society is making by becoming more accepting and tolerant of same-sex relationships.