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