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BoysLove: Let's talk about that famous "gay cowboys" movie [1]
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Date: 2025-02-11
You probably know the film I’m talking about. It premiered twenty years ago, it had two handsome actors portraying cowboys, they had sexy times together, and it won three Oscars.
That’s right, we should talk about Bareback Mountain [Editor: Just wait for it. Sooner or later, the dummkopf will realize his mistake].
That’s odd. IMDB doesn’t have an entry for Bareback Mountain and a Google search for “Bareback Mountain Oscars” doesn’t show it either.
Oops, I’ve got it now. I confused it with the other movie supposedly about gay cowboys, Brokeback Mountain. Sorry, my bad [Editor: Told ya so].
Bareback Mountain depicted unbridled lust between two gay guys. Brokeback Mountain depicted … umm … not that. It depicted disturbing cringe with marketing pitches that signaled it was a lusty and profound romance between two gay guys.
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and discuss why Hollywood’s most famous “gay movie” has nothing in common with Boys’ Love productions.
The not-gay-at-all gay movie
Brokeback Mountain starred two heterosexual actors, was produced and directed by heterosexuals, and was based on a story by a heterosexual whose work was turned into a screenplay by two other heterosexuals. Presumably the sheep were straight as well.
Now, let me think for a moment [Editor: Don’t rush him, he has only three neurons and two of those refuse to speak to each other]. Doesn’t it feel like something might be missing from this “gay cowboys story”?
Right, they were really sheepboys, no cows were up on the mountain with them.
The other movie about gay cowboys, except they really were gay (and maybe even herded cows, who knows?)
But, there’s also the whole “gay” thing. It’s nowhere to be found. Which may explain why its porn spoof, Bareback Mountain, was a far more realistic story about imagined gay cowboys.
it’s not that only gay actors can portray gay characters nor that only gay writers, producers, and directors can create gay-themed media. Indeed, many BL series are based on novels or storylines by straight women and many of the lead actors are straight. Moreover, there are armies of straight people working in BL productions — producers, directors, screenwriters, and technical craftspeople — and yet many BLs give us astonishingly vivid and genuine representations of male-male romance and passion.
Look, Brokeback Mountain was a fine movie. The actors did a terrific job in their roles, as written. It was an interesting story [Editor: He’s trying hard to be nice, he really, really hates that movie].
But if you are straight and working on such projects, maybe you should consult a few actual gay people and get their ideas and feedback … and be open to revising your stories and productions to make them better and believable.
Brokeback Mountain wasn’t a story that had anything to do with gay men as we actually are. It was a story created, produced, and told by straight folks for an audience of (mostly) straight folks … and almost certainly had zero input from actual gay guys. Nevertheless it was promoted as a “gay movie.”
Everything that’s broken in Brokeback Mountain
It was never intended, from concept to release, to authentically depict gay love, sex, and romance; it was meant to portray straight people’s projections and imaginings about gay love, sex, and romance.
Let’s quickly look at the glaring red flags in this story [Editor: Put on your goggles and raincoats, I suspect you’re in for a spittle-flecked rant].
It’s 2005 and everyone already knows about homophobia and violence, especially in rural areas, after the murder of Matthew Shepard. Yet we get Ennis flashing back to the brutal torture and murder of his dad’s acquaintance, a suspected gay man
Then we get Ennis flashing forward, imagining the same thing happening to Jack and believing that was the real manner in which Jack died. Terrific, more violent murder based on suspected sexual orientation
Nothing we see indicates that Jack or Ennis were gay. At most, they might be bisexual; 99% of their intimate lives involved women, not each other. We, allegedly represented by Ennis and Jack, are not part of this story
The claimed “can´t-quit-you” passion of theirs was such weak tea that both would marry women, sire children, avoid anything that might possibly cause anyone around them to question their macho manliness, and then hook up every few years for a round of uncontrollable bunny-humping together, but eschew any possibility for actually being together in an ongoing relationship. They managed to “quit you” quite well and quite often. They “quit you” over and over again for decades
It’s the “I’m not into guys really, I’m only into you” trope — which can be done in a way that respects self-realization and self-discovery — but here it plays out as validating repression and self-disgust because it never grows beyond that
Ennis ends up alone, shunned by family and friends, and will undoubtedly die alone and unmourned, if not outright reviled by many of the people in his life. His marginalization was self-imposed, an external presentation of the internal isolation he imposed on his own emotions
This was touted as a groundbreaking piece of cinematic history? It’s the same horror show that Hollywood routinely dished up about gays for its first 80 years, albeit wrapped up in a presentation that was supposed to be sympathetic rather than antagonistic, and thus the acclaim it received for being “revolutionary” [Editor: The Airing of Grievances in 2005 on Festivus will never be forgotten by the traumatized observers].
I’m going to go out on a limb and speak for the LGBQT+ community: we don’t want sympathy, we want normalization.
Note that in 1985, this was already the 16th pride parade in Chicago … while Ennis and Jack still self-loathed
Lest we forget, although Ennis and Jack first go up Brokeback mountain in 1963, the film spans two decades. Sure, the early 1960s were times of repression and hostility toward gay men but by the movie’s end they were living in the mid-1980s, a period of tolerance, at least, if not outright acceptance.
The times changed but Ennis and Jack did not. There was no growth in their characters, only more self-inflicted pain. That isn’t a message i want to see embraced by gay boys.
By the time the film was released, half a dozen countries already had legal gay marriages but this Hollywood epic wallowed in alienation, violence, despair, sexuality stripped of love, self-loathing, and worse as its messages? If only it had been set in 1993 instead of 1963: they could have tossed in some stuff about AIDS and dying and scored a clean sweep of the “gay traumas” categories [Editor: Bitterqueen? Miss Bitterqueen, party of one? Your table is ready].
The revolution is revolting
In Western media, gay characters are almost invariably victimized or demeaned. They must confront homophobia, condescension, and dismissal or trivialization ,of their romantic feelings as lust devoid of love.
They struggle or fight or put their nose to the grindstone and somehow overcome the hardships weighting down their lives. In doing so, they gain the sympathy of the audience who cheers them on, happy that the downtrodden stay resolute and manage to better their lives.
Whoop-de-doo. It’s a feel-good message for straight audiences, that our lives are a struggle but at least they’re a struggle we can ultimately win. We gain a lot of sympathy among viewers.
Of course, the downside to the heroic struggle-against-odds trope is that dealing with all of that leaves little time or energy for building their relationships and bringing the audience along for that in an intimate, shared journey. We gain sympathy but at the cost of esteem, esteem that is presumptively granted to straight characters whose onscreen lives are not rooted in struggles, based solely on who they are, to gain or hold onto a minimum of respect.
If you want to tell our stories in movies, then tell our stories, not caricatures, tragi-dramas, and emotionally-stunted tales imagined about us. Boys’ Love can show you how to do it right.
Groundbreaking would be treating gays in cinema not as hollowed out archetypes of their sexuality but as individuals with agency, self-direction, and the same range of emotions as straight people. Their characters would learn and change and grow, not simply overcome their “problem” (being gay or derived from being gay) in spite of persecution based on their orientation.
In terms of romance, the focus would be on the relationship itself, the challenges of two people trying to build trust and intimacy between themselves, not on the external burdens imposed on the relationship by hostile society.
As long as Hollywood keeps telling stories about our relationships — typically as struggles and oppression — it won’t be telling stories of our relationships. We get stories about victimization and marginalization, not stories of love and connection.
In other words, Brokeback Mountain might have worked … had it been an entirely different film that embraced the precepts of the Boys’ Love genre.
Hollywood’s angry portrayal of hetero sexy times
Passion in Western media is a timeworn trope of desperate compulsion — ripping off clothes, sweeping everything off a desk onto the floor, and so on — that is lazy, and unconvincing, storytelling. I think of all the women I have ever known and what would happen if they found themselves in a Hollywood-ized moment of raging passion: “You just tore my blouse! My new blouse! I paid a hundred bucks for that last week, buster! And my phone is on the floor, shattered! Get off me!” Your mileage may vary but I don’t see that approach working out the way it does in the movies.
Remember, kids: delaying passion by twenty seconds to clean off the desk will save your screen!
Why is it that even though the woman usually appears to be willing and eager, Hollywood “love” scenes almost always make me feel like I am watching an assault? She gets slammed back against a wall, hard, and apparently finds that excitingly manly of him.
Do you straight people actually do that in real life? And enjoy it?
Must Hollywood do the same to us?
That’s what we also get in Brokeback Mountain, sex that feels like assault, the standard Hollywood trope that supposedly conveys fiery passion. Ennis and Jack could be replaced by a straight couple and the scene would play exactly the same, assault rather than lovemaking.
Yawn. It’s tired, unimaginative, and unrealistic.
I have never met a gay guy who felt that that scene in Brokeback Mountain was erotic or romantic. Someone may come along here in the comments and differ but my friends and acquaintances felt it was boring and unconvincing.
[The sexy times scene from Brokeback Mountain. You may need to click the link to watch it on Youtube because it is considered “mature” content; interesting that often more graphic straight content isn’t similarly restricted]
I am sure you will be shocked … shocked! [Editor: They will not be shocked, do you think it’s Ward and June Cleaver reading this?] … to learn that on one or two occasions, I have seen gay porn [Editor: LMAO, he won Pornhub’s Frequent Fapper of the Year award for three years running]. So, although I haven’t actually seen Bareback Mountain [Editor falls off chair: How was it even possible for this doof to wear out the DVD, for the love of Crom?], experience tells me it is likely a far more realistic depiction of male-male intimacy and passion than what we see in Brokeback Mountain.
The writers and director apparently thought “two horny guys” meant that it must have uncontrollable frenzy, like two feral animals copulating. Sure, have them instantly f**k like bunnies that are mainlining meth-and-testosterone speedballs, a double-down on Hollywood’s clichéd (fake) urgent passion between a man and a woman.
It’s not just Brokeback Mountain. I have seen the same “frenzied assault = passionate love” staging in many Western productions about gay couples. It’s the sheer laziness of it that annoys me the most: “No need for us to even think about how gay passion works, we’ll just drop two dudes into our classic representation of straight boinking.”
The entertainment industry has been known to employ a few gay people [Editor: Clck your heels together three times anywhere in Hollywood and you’ll hear an entire Mormon Tabernacle choir’s worth of voices begin chanting “There’s no place like home”]. You’ll find advice about authenticity in portraying our relationships readily available … but ask if they have any ideas other than the status quo.
Here’s a sample from a modern film — Red, White and Royal Blue — that shows nothing has changed in the past two decades, even when actual gay people are involved.
If you keep asking the same gay people who have adopted Hollywood clichés wholesale, you’ll still make unrealistic schlock like the scene above. It was produced and directed by gay men who apparently just couldn’t “quit you” of the tired conventions of straight coupling they must have seen a thousand times.
How Boys’ Love shows male-male sexy times
Now let’s see how a Boys’ Love series, Cutie Pie, handles a similar situation. Lian and Kuea have been dating for years — chaste all that time — compared to the mere weeks that Ennis and Jack have passed together. So, if anything, the sizzling desire between Lian and Kuea should be burning all the more hotly than that of Ennis and Jack.
[Sidebar] Note that this is happening in episode 8. We, the audience, have been bonding with these characters for more than seven viewing hours by this point. We know them and we understand their longing for each other with a depth and emotional connection that Brokeback Mountain was never able to achieve with its viewers.
Let’s watch what happens [Editor: You can put down the smelling salts and step away from the fainting couch. This is Youtube, after all; it won’t show anything more graphic than hot kissing]. Will it double-down on the Hollywood trope of frenzied pseudo-passion or will they try for something authentic?
Before the start point that I marked [Editor: Skip to the 10:00 minute mark if the clip fails to start there], Lian had checked with Kuea to be sure he is willing and sober (they had gone to a nightclub earlier). As the segment begins, he carries Kuea into the bedroom, gently lays him down, verifies that Kuea is totally fine with what they are doing, kisses and caresses Kuea to build their passion together, and notes his responses to ensure they are in sync.
[Click the CC button and/or Settings for subtitles]
Can someone please open a window and cool this place down? Thanks. [Editor: I gotta agree with Bozo on this, that scene was fire]
Even with the “distractions” of confirmation and consent, this scene has orders of magnitude more heat than what we saw in the Brokeback clip. With Ennis and Jack, it seemed like it hardly mattered who the other person was. By contrast, Lian’s and Kuea’s eyes tell us all that we need to know; they can’t rip their gazes away from each other, the love of their life. It was loving and respectful at the same time that it was smokin’ hot.
That’s how you show love, desire, and passion between men. Writers, once you pick your jaws up off the floor, take some notes; they’ll come in handy on future projects that portray male-male passion.
The pictures tell the stories
Notice the difference in the promotional posters for each production. Cutie Pie’s poster shows Lian and Kuea gazing into each other’s eyes, lost in love. The Brokeback Mountain poster shows Ennis and Jack lost in their own private dramas, not even looking at each other.
Kuea and Lian in Cutie Pie (left) and Ennis and jack in Brokeback Mountain (right)
One is a story of love and bonding; the other is a story about alienation and loneliness. One is a story of us; the other is (allegedly) a story about us.
Good BLs are journeys with the characters. As they build and transform their relationships with each other, our relationships with them also grow. Whether drama or comedy BLs, it is the inexorable yearning to emotionally connect that drives their journeys and ours.
The screenwriters, rather than constantly asking themselves “How do we move the plot forward?” as their Western counterparts do, ask themselves “How do we move the characters forward?” In Hollywood films, plot points attempt to capture and hold our attention; in BLs, character and relationship changes draw us deeper into the tale.
Brokeback Mountain failed, in my opinion, because its central characters didn’t grow. Isn’t that kind of the point of life itself?
If you assumed that BLs are just Asian versions of Hollywood’s films that occasionally and supposedly depict gay relationships, now you know: Boys’ Love eats Hollywood’s lunch, every day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year.
It’s not even close.
Hmm, I have this nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something before I sign off.
Oh, yeah. Editor, bite me.
[END]
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