The wonderful NY Daily News writer Wayman Wong posted this tonight on my Brokeback Mountain Discussion Board, looking back on the Globes ceremony:
I'm thrilled for the movie. I'm thrilled for Ang Lee. I'm thrilled for Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry. But couldn't someone in their acceptance speech even acknowledge the simple fact that the movie is a love story about two guys, and they're thrilled at how audiences have reacted to how universal that story is? Neither the word ''gay'' or ''homosexual'' ever came up. Look, I'm not asking for anyone to read a GLAAD statement or wave a rainbow flag, but something. . .
http://davecullen.com/forum/index.php?topic=285.msg13230#msg13230
Yeah, I was feeling a little of that too.
But I really starting getting irked when the film-summary/mini-trailer they ran for Brokeback a best pic nominee also skirted it. It's been one thing to omit it in the ads--if you're selling something, why grab the one aspect most unsettling to most of the audience and stick it in their face? But this wasn't (supposedly) about selling. This was supposedly a show about awarding the work, not selling it. (I know that's really naive, I know it's not true, but at least it ought to be a mixture of awarding and selling.)
At what point is it both dishonest and implicity copping to a self of shame not to admit what the hell it's about in the damn segment devoted to it?
I'm starting to feel more and more like this is the closeted movie. One of those ridiculous cases where everyone knows the guy's gay, but everyone pretends. In certain circles. Fine to discuss it, awkardly, on talk shows but not in the ads and not on awards shows?
For once they actually showed the clip of the boys getting close to kissing, so it was suggested. Suggested, great. Still, we get shots of the guys kissing their wives and dancing with them, but they still can't show the kiss that's at the heart of the movie? One of the other nominated films showed a bedroom shot and they can't show a kiss?
This really would have been the time. Just show the damn kiss!
One of the many crucial reasons for straights to see this film is to see two guys can kiss without the world coming to an end. For a lot of people out there, it will be the first time they ever see two men kiss. That's a real problem. Millions of us kissing each other every day of the year, but we're still doing it in hiding, so they're still unnerved by it, because it's been sanitized out of their lives.
That part of our lives is still very closeted. Not the sex, not gross PDAs--nobody needs to be seeing that--but the simple tender, everyday moments of happy couples holding hands, exchanged a brief kiss in public without a second thought. For thaty 99% of all gays 99% of the time still closet ourselves.
And it's a fully self-propogating system, because the straight people will always be unsettled by it and rightfully so if we keep hiding it.
Half a billion people watchig, they claim. Show them the damn kiss.
Maybe at the Oscars.
I won't hold my breath. But maybe. At least they'll be all done worry about any effects on the oscar race by then. They'll be worrying about getting the max box office bump out of the oscarcast, though.
And yeah, that's important to me, too. I'd rather see people actually get to the film and be taken in by the whole experience than just see one kiss, out of context, and out of emotional involvement on tv.
So maybe they're right, it's unpragmatic to do it.
Maybe I'm just getting angry again, that the longer this goes on, the more times they have to quake and wonder "should we show the kiss?" "should we mention the gay word?" it just reminds me how damn preposterous the whole situation is that most of the country has been sticking their heads in the sand and pretending millions of men in this country don't kiss each other, much less fuck.
It's freaking annoying. And I know I've been getting ahead of myself, feeling like straight people are finally starting to see it as this film rolls out--and not turning into pillars of salt!--but man, do we have a ways to go.
Which all leads me back full circle to Brokeback Mountain. What a wonderful, wonderful gift to our world this film has become.
Dutton (Penguin) in early 2009. 
