Ah, 2005. The year straight Hollywood decided to play gay cowboy dress-up and called it groundbreaking. Brokeback Mountain burst onto the scene, promising a revolutionary portrayal of queer love. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
I was a wide-eyed 20-something gay man still trying to figure out my place in the world, settling into a theater seat.
Little did I know I was about to witness the straight person’s idea of a gay epic – complete with tragic endings, closeted misery, and enough stereotypes to fill a ten-gallon hat.
It promised to be groundbreaking, a watershed moment for LGBTQ+ representation in mainstream cinema. And in many ways, it was. But looking back now, almost two decades later? Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
The Straight Parade
Don’t get me wrong, seeing Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger – two bonafide Hollywood heartthrobs – play gay cowboys was pretty mind-blowing at the time.
But here’s the kicker: everyone involved in making this “gay masterpiece” was straight. The actors? Straight. The director, Ang Lee? Straight. Even Annie Proulx, who penned the original story? You guessed it – straight.
It felt a bit like watching a group of well-meaning tourists try to navigate a foreign country without a map.
They had the best intentions, sure, but there was always something slightly off, a sense that they were playing at being gay rather than truly embodying it.
It’s like they were trying on our experiences for size, seeing how they fit, before going back to their regular, straight lives.
Tragedy: The Gay Man’s Apparent Destiny
And boy, did they lean into the tragedy of it all. Our protagonists, Jack and Ennis, weren’t just gay – they were miserable, closeted, wife-cheating sad sacks.
The film painted a picture of gay life that was all secret rendezvous and silent suffering. Because apparently, that’s what being gay was all about back then.
Never mind that plenty of queer folks in the 70s and 80s were out there living their best lives, finding community (albeit in hiding, in many places), and fighting for their rights.
Stonewall had already happened, for crying out loud – but in the world of Brokeback, it might as well have been the Middle Ages.
The Obligatory Tragic Ending
And of course, we couldn’t possibly have a happy ending. No, Brokeback had to go full Shakespeare on us.
Cue the random, tragic death at the end – because heaven forbid, we have a gay couple ride off into the sunset together.
It’s like they took every sad gay stereotype, threw it into a blender with some cowboy hats and scenic Wyoming vistas, and hit puree.
But here’s the kicker: while the film is primarily set in the 60s and 70s, it was made in 2005. You’d think that with nearly three decades of progress between the story’s setting and its production, we might have moved past these tired tropes.
But nope, Brokeback still clung to the stereotypes of a much earlier era’s gay cinema. It’s as if the filmmakers time-traveled from the 1980s, bringing with them all the outdated ideas about how gay stories should be told.
In 2005, we had Will & Grace on TV, Queer as Folk pushing boundaries, and real-life gay couples fighting for marriage equality. Yet here was Brokeback, serving us a tragic gay narrative straight out of the past.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need for historical accuracy. But when you’re making a film in the 21st century, even about the past, you have the opportunity to bring a modern perspective to it.
Instead, Brokeback chose to reinforce the old narrative that gay lives inevitably end in misery and death.
The Film’s Impact: A Double-Edged Sword
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that seeing any kind of gay representation on the big screen was a big deal back then.
For a lot of young queer kids, it might have been the first time they saw themselves reflected in mainstream media. And that matters, even if the reflection is a bit warped.
I remember the hushed conversations in gay bars, the excited whispers among friends. “Did you see it yet?” we’d ask each other. It felt like we were finally being seen, even if it wasn’t quite the way we saw ourselves.
But here’s the thing: we can acknowledge the impact “Brokeback Mountain” had while still criticizing its flaws.
It’s okay to say, “Hey, thanks for cracking open the door, but we deserve better now.” We don’t need to settle for tragic figures and doomed romances anymore.
Yes, it’s a bit unfair to judge the film by today’s standards. The world has changed a lot since 2005, and Brokeback played a part in that change.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t aspire for more, push for better representation, and demand stories that reflect the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ experiences.
So yeah, Brokeback Mountain was a moment. It got people talking, it won awards, it made straight people cry into their popcorn.
But as a gay man who was there when it premiered, who felt that initial excitement and then the gradual letdown? I can’t help but look at it now and think: we’ve come so far, and yet we still have so far to go.
And I haven’t even mentioned the nightmare of bottoming after a beans-heavy cowboy diet. Straight people’s gay dream, indeed.