Brokeback Mountain

I'm going to go see Brokeback Mountain with my friend Anu later tonight. Three sites I found in doing a little preperatory research before going to this movie:

Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis

Out the Bible

God Hates Fags

So, it looks like the church is kind of confused on this issue. I'll let you know what I think of the movie...

UPDATE: Okay, while it's still fresh on my mind:

Okay, so I actually enjoyed a lot of things about this movie. I felt really weird buying my ticket and walking into the theater. I seriously didn't want anyone to think that I was there because this in any way resembled my life. It took me by surprise that I would be so self-concious.

This movie made me think about a lot of things. One of the first things that came to mind is the park by my house and how this movie shows something kind of similar to the "down-low" culture that plays itself out every night in front of my bedroom window. Most of those guys are "straight" outside of the DL environment and just like in the movie, they have wives and kids.

I was very defensive going into this movie because I suspected it was some kind of cleverly crafted plot to get me to be more sympathtic to the gay lifestyle. I think listening to too much conservative talk radio has given me a slight bias against "the liberal media." But I think overall, the message of the movie was that if you are going to express your homosexuality, you are going to pay a high price. And the love story, to me, wasn't all that compelling so I never found myself rooting for them to get together or anything like that, which I'm really glad for. I was just rooting for them to find "inner peace" or something like that. I thought throughout the movie that the best thing for them would have been to leave each other alone. If the writers had made me root for them to get together, I would have felt manipulated. Of course, maybe they knew that and so we got this version instead.

I thought the sex scenes sucked. Not only were they gross, in a sort of "I eat red meat and shower infrequently" kind of way, but they were also just hard for me to believe. I just can't see those guys getting into some violent sex in a tent. Even if they did, I can't see them going all the way to "home base" (although they are playing on a muuuccchhh different field...) in the first thirty seconds. How do you go from "Yeah, I'm a hard ass cowboy" to "Hey, I'm hard. Where's your ass, cowboy?" so quickly? I think that considering all the taboos of cowboy culture, that journey is going to take a whole lot longer than it did up on Brokeback Mountain.

At this point, I should just come out and say that I am an old-school dude and I think that homosexual behavior is just wrong. I'd like to be as open, progressive, PC, etc. as possible, but at the end of the day, I just can't support it. If that's your thing, I will still love you, but I won't ever support it just like I won't support pre-marital hetero sex. The Bible says a lot of whacky things on these topics and I most certainly do not take them all literally. But at the same time, I'm going to have to drink a lot of beer before you can convince me that these were all cultural statements for the people of that time period. So if I'm following the Bible, I'm not supporting gay sex or sex outside of marriage. I think it is intellectually dishonest to try to "Out the Bible," as it were.

Back to Brokeback. I think this movie is very important. Homosexuality is real and I imagine that this story connected deeply with a ton of people. I can't imagine the difficulty and pain involved in being torn by such desires. What I do know is that sex drives people. Sex drives me in more ways than I'd like to admit. If I happened to be attracted to men, I cannot imagine how screwed up my life would be. I have a hard enough time as it is being a straight Christian guy with an active libido. I walk around with shame for having done things that society condones but God does not. If I had both God and society to reckon with, I'd probably be a lot worse for the wear. Is anyone reading this?

I guess this stuff matters to me because I'm trying to understand the people in the park. I'm trying to understand myself. I'm trying to understand this culture. I'm trying to understand my friends. I'm just trying to understand. I find it so strange that sexuality is such a central factor in who we are, what we do, and who we hang out with. But it is. We have gay churches now. Why does an entire church need to be created to serve people who want to have sex with the same gender? Why is this one issue so important that people are willing to kill you if you're a man who, instead of titts and ass, just wants the ass? People get killed for being gay. They get disowned. Fired from jobs. Asked to step down from government office. Booted from the military.

I suspect that Jesus is quite fond of gay people. I think maybe gay is the new black. You used to get killed for being black and now half the crackers out there want to be black. I think it's getting more popular to be gay too, but I don't think we'll ever see the early adopter crowd start sporting rainbows just to be cool. But the fact remains that if you are not a white, straight, Christian man, you are on the short end of some stick. That's just a lousy thing about our world. I think about these people who are disowned by their parents because they are gay and I know that Jesus must love them tremendously. And just because their sins might gross me out doesn't mean that Jesus' death doesn't cover them. When I think about a place like Brokeback Mountain, or Indiana, or Colorado Springs, I think that surely God must have a special love for the gay people out there. They deal with a lot of shit. Surely they don't just choose that to get attention.

Anyway, I can't express what I want to say. I'm just frustrated. At our culture. At reality. Life is difficult and confusing. Often times, there are no easy answers. So I guess that's my impression of Brokeback Mountain. Hardly Siskel and Ebert.