Re: g_b Annie Proulx Brokeback Mountain - Transgendered Voices - Wyoming

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:20:25 -0800

HI EJ, how can you be so sure that JAcks wife got hime killed. its just your interepretation right (?).. I saw  the film a few days ago and thoroghly enjoyed it...But i wondered if i would enjoy the film as much if the two leads were not as good looking..
On the whole i guess the film is pretty good and  i was rather surprised that 90% of the viewers in my show were straight couples...
cheers
aj

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Annie Proulx -
 
I had the great pleasure of seeing Brokeback Mountain at the 10 AM showing at the Mayan in Denver on Christmas..
 
I feel that your story has been very respectfully filmed in light of the current needs to produce a box office worthy movie..
 
It is with the possible exception of Philadelphia Story the most accessible serious film with gay characters for the day-to-day non-gay public that I have seen...here or in India..
 
As you can imagine of great importance to me are the story's setting in Wyoming...which has been unfairly bashed in the world media...since the senseless killing of Matthew Shepard by simple thieving criminals from families as familiar to you on your side of Laramie as they were on mine...in Iron Mountain...
 
The culture and people of Wyoming are interpreted by the actors in an  honest manner from the two cowboys to Ennis's daughter and to Jack's parents..
 
I felt a little embarrassed by  the awkward representations of murder of gay men in Wyoming in Texas and sadly felt that they had been undeftly edited and placed in the movie to get the greatest buzz from certain members of the public who require gore to validate their own personal preconceptions...but these two murders were not major in the time elapsed and were good foils to help focus attention on the brutal response that can erupt from people unable to understand the objects of their own personal fears...
 
i.e.
 
the rural cowboy population of Jack Twists youth...in which....both you and I know from our friends and acquaintances in Wyoming... homosexual behaviour has always been a private, but common entity that was generally not flashed around as a public ideal in the conservative and family oriented society...just as extramarital sex and prostitution though very common are not given any kudos either..
 
and
 
the frustration of Jack's wife at being excluded from an unknown endeavor that obviously gave her husband Jack a great deal of pleasure..
 
almost certainly she found out about the details of Jacks extracurriclar activities the same accidental way that Ennis's wife and the line boss of the sheep ranch did before her...and had Jack killed and then moved on with her new life with a ranch manager who treated  her better..
 
Jack and Ennis are very much like many of the gay working cowboys that I know today...both in their incredible strengths and fatal flaws...I am happy that the story was told in pre-HIV. 1960s Wyoming...so that the veiwers could focus on the incredible web of interpersonal relationships that even simple people weave around themselves...and to then allow us to objectively analyze both the good and poor choices anyone can make in life...and the frequently disastrous outcomes that can come from a self-centered individual's frequently confused thought process... instead of being diverted by the present war on AIDS that has engulfed much of the gay media and thought..
 
I currently have an order into Amazon.com for three copies of Brokeback Mountain to use in our Bangalore and Calcutta, India programs to show married sex addicts who feel that their compulsive daliences with female prostitutes, gay men and hijara/eunuchs can do to destroy not just the lives of their innocent wives and children...but ultimately themselves as well..
 
India is a patriarchal culture where the women rarely dare to act as Jack's wife did and generally are not given the outlet of honourable and equitable divorce that Ennis' wife chose...the movie thus could be used in assisting the disenfranchised married women of India too.. 
 
Have a great Winter...I feel much like Tom Horn exiled to burial in the cemetery in Boulder, Colorado these days...as I am sure you might have heard that I have sold my beloved Iron Mountain Ranch to facilitate my work assisting the hijara/eunuch population in India...at least unlike Tom I can walk away into a new and intriguing life instead of being dropped into the black hole of eternity at the end of a rope..
 
I will forward copies of this email to Sampoorna an Indian TG group, Sappho a Calcutta lesbian group, Gaybombay a Mumbai gay group and Ashok Row Kavi my icon of Indian social work through his Humsafar Trust..
 
Best..
 
Elizabeth Jeffords
Transgendered Voices
 

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