The Broke Back Mountain story by Annie Proulx and Ang Lee’s 2005 film Broke Back Mountain are about the love story that emerged in 1963 about two characters, Ennis and Jack, who turn out to be gay. The story and the film illustrate the traditional American masculinity with their gay sexuality. In the story and even in the movie, Ennis is depicted as a man who is eager to continue a very familiar tradition of masculinity. He is portrayed as a responsible, hardworking, ethical, and a physically adept person. Accordingly, Jack is depicted as a young man who is eager to try to match the masculinity of his father that is characterized by dominance, ownership, and rodeo accomplishment. By the end of their teenage years both characters are masculine and trying to retain the customary senses endorsed by their American gender divide. At this stage of their development, the two characters do not hide their alternate identities behind masculine actions. As such, they clearly depict what was expected of the male gender in traditional American societies where males were expected to be tough, dominant and accomplished. The aspect of toughness is shown by their fight which leaves both bloodied.
Further, the story shows that traditional cultural attitudes were intolerant of homosexuality. In spite of their personal desires, Ennis and Jack have internalized the existing cultures that have profound prejudices against homosexuals and homosexuality. Although they know that their desire for each other is intense, they do not refer to it as a “thing”. This is clear when Jack says, “A one-shot thing. Nobody’s business but ours” (Proulx 7). Consequently, they proceed to marry persons from a different gender, Alma Beers and Lureen Newsome, who are women. This can be translated to mean that they try to hide their homosexual desires especially when Ennis says, “I’m not no queer” (7). Further, in the movie, the fact that Ennis resists living together with Jack saying, “I don’t want to be dead” (Proulx 14). Ennis is haunted by a past memory regarding the torture and murder of a man who had been suspected of homosexual activities shows the American’s level of intolerance for homosexuality. The aspect of intolerance is further illustrated when Jack dies; Ennis rightly suspects that Jack has been lynched for suspected homosexual activities. Accordingly, when Lureen informs Ennis about Jack’s death, she seems to be critical of Jack’s idealism and appears unsympathetic regarding the demise of Jack despite the fact that he is her husband.
Proulx narrates Ennis and Jack’s sensual relationship through the perceptions of masculinity. Their first sexual scene takes a hyper-virile form that contradicts the traditional homosexual romance that symbolizes men as weak by way of sentimentality. The two go about it aggressively as they interact. Consequently, before beginning his sexual relationship with Jack, Ennis states that he has intention to marry his longtime fiancée Alma. Another scene where masculinity is depicted in the film is when Jack engages in a dangerous activity as a rodeo bull rider. This sport is only meant for the strong and not the fainthearted. Further, Jack’s riding of enormous farming machinery illustrates his desire to practice manliness in conventional means.
Apart from the aspect of desire that is prominent in the film, it fails to challenge the customary powerful prescriptions regarding the American manliness. However, the film presents a more radical purpose of bridging the ideology that men still perceive between the homo-social and the homosexual desire. Consequently, the film provides emphasis the struggle that men go through in their attempt to embrace traditional masculinity. Jack’s father-in-law’s activities and behavior typifies men’s aspect of disrespect and dominance and that shows that the failure of males was not tolerated in the American society. This is clear when the father-in-law labels jack as a ‘rodeo’ because of Jack’s failure to live up to expectations at the rodeo. In American traditional cultures masculinity was seen as a male’s ability to endure and inflict pain on others.
The main theme of the film is sexual orientation. The clandestine surrounding Ennis and Jack throughout the movie and even in the narrative is their sexual orientation. Ennis engages in emotional sexual affairs of varying degrees with Alma, Jack, and Cassie. However, it is clear that Ennis’s fear of being castigated by the society in which he lives is what makes him hide his real desire for Jack and leads to his bisexual life as he tries to conceal his real sexual desires. This is an important point that illustrates that the society’s failure to acknowledged homosexuality is the key factor that leads to bisexual practices as people try to hide their sexual orientations (Cante 5).
Work Cited
Proulx, Annie, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana. Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay. New
York: Simon and Schuster, Inc. 2009.
Cante, Richard. "Introduction"; "Chapter 3". Gay Men and the Forms of Contemporary US
Culture. London: Ashgate Publishing, 2008.
Proulx, Annie. Brokeback Mountain (First Edition). New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.
