Gay Cowboy Jokes Punishable By Death

I didn’t get to blog the Oscars (don’t cry) because of computer troubles, but I did watch them. Start to finish. Yes, I yawned a lot. And while I know that most of you realize that there’s no sense in going over many of the details now, I do want to note a few things that I’ve been thinking about.

Regarding Crash
In retrospect, the fact that it was Altman’s night for lifetime achievement should have been an indicator, and I should have hastily tried to beg out of all the bets I made on Munich and Brokeback. While I don’t think that Haggis does the vignette half as well as Altman or even Paul Thomas Anderson, I enjoyed Crash when I saw it. Did I think it was as ground-breaking as, say, Oprah? Nope. And I bet that Danny Glover and Kevin Kline didn’t, either. But I suppose it doesn’t have to be ground-breaking to be great. Yet the company it was in was tough company, gritty company, and overall I imagine that if you’re going to place a lot of importance on the social relevance factor of a film when considering it for an Oscar, you might as well spend your energy on a topic of social relevance that’s a little more relevant now. Movies that break down the barriers of race relations are no strangers to the Academy, but stories that depict homosexual relationships as relationships, not merely “gay relationships” are more rare.

Aside from all of that, Crash hits you on the head just as hard as it can without knocking you out in terms of obviousness and preachery, a quality in films that generally disgusts me. I can’t watch movies like that most of the time, it insults my intelligence. As my friend Robin said regarding the same film,

Yeah, the acting is phenomenal. But the directing’s nothing new or brilliant, the story’s pretty much just Magnolia without frogs and there are so many side-stories that only a few of them really hit you as hard as all of them seem intended to. On top of that, it’s a preachy damn movie.

And enough with the whole “little movie that could” routine. The entire cast was on Oprah, and the episode re-ran recently. That kind of endorsement means a lot in Hollywood, no matter how annoying it is to the rest of us.

Regarding Brokeback Mountain
Honestly, Scott said it best:

I’m glad that “Brokeback” didn’t reach complete and total mainstream saturation so it can retain a sliver of its integrity. In the past four months, America has proved that it has the maturity level of a 12-year-old boy circa 1958. Adding the word “brokeback” before a random object does not constitute brilliant satire.

Seriously. How much can we really pat ourselves on the back as a society in regards to our “tolerance” for homosexual love when even the most sympathetic of us can’t resist a Brokeback joke? After a while, all the joking around demeans the film to a laughable degree and its relevance is diminished, ultimately. That being said, I love the fact that the actors, director and producers all describe the movie as a “love story”, not a “gay love story”. To my mind, eliminating that “g” word goes a lot further to strip homosexuality of culture’s preconceptions than the movie itself.

Regarding the Color Beige All right ladies, I get it. Regarding Ralph Fiennes I’m sorry, dude. I didn’t even see you there, and you deserved to be nominated just as much as Weisz, maybe more so. Tough category this year, though. I would have taken out the sympathy nod to Paul Giamatti (no win for Sideways last year) and nominated Fiennes, but that’s just me. Regarding Clooney Aww. Regarding Three 6 Mafia It only would have been better if “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” was the song representing Brokeback Mountain. FINE, INTERNET, I GIVE UP. THERE’S ANOTHER BROKEBACK JOKE I JUST CAN’T HELP MYSELF. Regarding Jon Stewart While I wanted to kick Hollywood in the pants for their sympathetic but terrified golf clap after your Scientology joke, I have to admit that Colbert’s voice-over attack ads were a hell of a lot funnier than pretty much everything you said. I could tell you were nervous as hell, though, and who wouldn’t be? Jack Nicholson was staring at you all night, and Chris Rock explained all about how seriously they take themselves, so you knew what you were getting yourself into. See Also: Sean Penn. Regarding Bana How did he escape my Freebie List? And Christian Bale? What was I thinking? Regarding Theron’s Bow Should have been nominated for best supporting actress. Regarding JLo Looks like a wax version of herself. Regarding Dustin Hoffman Stayed sober this year. I think.

I’ll give you that the brokeback jokes have grown tired, but a society that insists on taking a social issue seriously is a society i don’t want to be a part of. i reserve the option to demean any film, and deminish its relivence as well. people who insist on taking themselves too seriously are difficult to stomach, a society that insists on taking itself too seriously is even worse. in such a context, brokeback mountain is reduced to a social cause issue - simply by pretending there is nothing funny about cowboys humping.

Eeb,
Ha. I like that. See for me, I couldn’t really go see the movie with a clean mental slate of what it was all about. It was already the “Gay Cowboy Movie” before it even came out, you know? So if there was any part of me that was going to enjoy it as a film AND as some sort of pit stop on the highway of social relevance, I had to put aside all the jokes, first.

And typically, I don’t like to put aside the jokes. In this case, they just stopped being funny (and yet, irresistible, as I’ve demonstrated by being completely unable to abstain).

It’s just that if the Academy is going to make it The Year of Social Relevance, at least pick the topic that’s more up to date and hasn’t been done a million times, you know? Ground-breaking stories about race relations and hidden or not so hidden prejudices aren’t really groundbreaking at all.

My humble opinion, of course.

My recently “merried” gay friends threw an oscar party and they served sausage stuffed rump roast.

all i can say is ditto, ditto, ditto.

yeah, i totally agree with you on Crash. I’ve heard a lot of chatter criticizing the movie for not offering any solutions. this, of course, makes me want to pull my eyeballs out. the artistry of a film should never be subservient to its social activism. of course, crash didn’t do that, it was just profoundly unspactular, but it goes to show you the delicate work that is necessary when you run the risk of making a social activism movie. everyone’s interpretation is going to be loaded with a thousand different things that have nothing to do with the overall creative work and will be unjustifiably forgiving of its flaws. for instance, nobody is willing to say that Upton Sinclair was a horrible writer, but he was. Richard Wright as well. Only James Baldwin was willing to speak and point out that as literary works, Wright’s writings sucked ass. social activism and art make very bad bed fellows.

I was asked to go see “Brokeback Mountain” when it came out (no pun intened), and my response was, “Why would I want to go see a love story?” The hook is that it just happens to be two guys is all. (You may recall me writing those words in my journal at that time. Or not. You’re a busy girl after all.)
And we all seem to joke about it here, gay and non-gay alike. We’re not poking fun at those who are gay though. We’re really poking at those who needed a movie to make this issue one of relevence.

Thank you for bringing up “Grand Canyon”. It has been bothering me ever since I heard about the plot for “Crash”.

I’m glad someone else remembered it.

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