IPW

Gay Movie Day

I just returned from the mail bag where I found a suggestion that perhaps I am gay. This based on my fascination with the YMCA on 14th street. Let me tell you, gay or not, that place is like a car wreck that you can't tear your eyes away from. Does it make me want to break out in the Gay Anthem of the same name? Perhaps. Does the singing of the Gay Anthem at every baseball game in every baseball park across this homophobic country of ours cheer my very soul? Indeed. The idea that "YMCA" has subversively become a standard played by all the organ grinders of this most American pastime makes me extremely happy. Especially watching plaid shirtted rednecks and their brood dancing in very gay unison to the words: "They have everything for you men to enjoy, You can hang out with all the boys ..." Extending school-yard logic to these unsuspecting folks, if you've ever sung this song, you are gay. The same logic applies to me and Magda. Last night we went to see two movies with gay themes, Brokeback Mountain and Imagine Me & You. So we are gay.

Now that I'm out of the closet I want to compare these movies because they have some similarities and differences that tell much about our culture today. First a synopsis of both:

Brokeback Mountain is the story of two bull grizzlies who in spite of there supposed nature are drawn to each other physically and emotionally with urgency they usually reserve for devouring prey. But in the animal world, procreation is survival and nature abhors an anomaly like animals who act counter to creation's will. The two bulls who have found an eden on Brokeback Mountain are cast out by their foreman who has witnessed (via an act of troubling voyeurism) their counter-natural wrestling matches. Returned to the real world they try to lead the lives that cowboys led in the 1960's which might include some heavy drinking, spousal abuse and lurid bleary eyed glances at other cowboys. It turns out that the personae they adopt is just as counter-natural as their lives on Brokeback and both are ill-suited to deny their true nature. I haven't given away much, and may have slightly misled, but that was a slightly impressionistic review.

The other film we checked, which we might have snuck into, was the extended sit-com episode "Imagine Me and You". It opens with two beautiful people getting married, even though just before the nuptuals the bride spots her actual life partner creeping down an aisle, the Thunderbolt!. Their eyes meet and it's basically downhill from there for her poor husband. Following with our gay theme, the thunderbolt flashes between the bride and the woman hired to do the flowers. Does the blushing bride leave her husband and best friend for the hot and wacky flower pusher? Does she gleefully embrace a life of lesbianism, abandoning her life up to that point as a happy hetro? Does the wacky supporting cast rally around the troubled threesome to help them decide that life is not worth living if true love isn't pursued? Was this movie filmed at the exact time as the angst ridden and emotionally punishing Brokeback Mountain? Yes Yes Yes and Yes.

Brokeback Mountain is about the beginning of homosexual awakenings in modern Western culture (Both Western and Wild Western), Imagine Me & You might be looking towards a time when we are completely awake. When people can lust after comely same-sex persons with the only moral issue being left to decide is whether they should wreck the relationship of the newly married couple. So why then can two movies be made simultaneously, one being hailed as groundbreaking and one not being hailed at all? A non-event. I have theories but no answer yet. So after some pondering I will return to this subject.

Meanwhile, Your Seattle Seahawks just had their pants handed to them following a long tradition of Seattle teams imploding on themselves just before the finish line. It's good that all is still right in the world.

Posted by ian at February 6, 2006 01:40 PM