The Backlash Against the Brokeback Mountain Backlash
by Michael Jensen, March 8, 2006
Author Stephen King says he knew Brokeback Mountain wasn't going to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
“Brokeback is about enduring love and fierce sexual attraction between two men,” he writes in his latest Entertainment Weekly column. “The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, at bottom as conservative as the current U.S. House of Representatives, gave Ang Lee one Oscar (which surprised me), the writing team of McMurtry and Diana Ossana another...and with those bones thrown, felt free to move on.”
King is hardly the only one to express the idea that the movie industry isn't nearly as tolerant as it claims, or as its right-wing critics insist. Call it the backlash against the backlash, but by naming Crash as the upset winner of the Best Picture award, many critics are suggesting that Hollywood has committed its biggest blunder in years, or perhaps ever.
Over at MSNBC.com, the headline on their latest Oscar article reads, “Crash and Burn:
The Academy takes yet another step toward irrelevance with its latest pick.”
Ouch!
A Google search turns up dozens of similar articles, all wondering how a movie like Crash with so many mediocre reviews, a middling box-office take, and a paucity of awards could have won Best Picture, especially over Brokeback Mountain, which, Academy Awards aside, may very well be the most honored film of all time.
Other articles point out how laughable the idea is that Hollywood has ever had a pro-gay agenda.
“Gay actors can't even come out of the closet,” says Gene Stone at YahooNews. “Gay executives and agents stay in the closet. There isn't a more closeted business in the country, except, perhaps, the National Football League.”
Hollywood's self-congratulatory claim of tolerance is now being challenged more than ever before. During Sunday's awards ceremony, George Clooney lauded the Academy for having long been “out of touch” with mainstream American on issues of social justice. But in fact, Hollywood often produces and honors social justice films long after society itself has resolved the issue in question.
Mainstream Hollywood didn't address AIDS in film until Philadelphia, in 1993, ten years into the epidemic when much AIDS-phobia had subsided. Gandhi won Best Picture in 1982, after Gandhi himself had been dead for more than thirty years. Schindler's List won nearly fifty years after the Holocaust. The Hollywood establishment is often “progressive” only after it's very safe to be.
There are, of course, individuals in Hollywood who are very progressive on current social issues. Clooney is one, as are other conservative whipping boys such as Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand, and others. But such individual progressives exist in any industry.
Brokeback Mountain's loss to Crash, a movie about racial intolerance, only serves to underscore the point that, when it comes to current hot-button issues, Hollywood often gets cold feet. After all, which issue most divides the country right now: civil rights for racial minorities, or civil rights for gays? There are, of course, no states that are currently trying to ban inter-racial marriage, inter-racial adoption, or to remove racial minorities from anti-discrimination protection. Yet all of those battles are currently being waged against gays and lesbians all across the country.
WHAT COMES NEXT
Some Brokeback Mountain fans aren't taking the Best Picture loss lying down. Since the shock of Sunday night, the anger and indignation has been palpable. (Meanwhile, folks were celebrating the defeat over at the right wing website, Freerepublic.com.)
Here are just a few of the quotes from the live Oscar thread over at Dave Cullen's Ultimate Brokeback:
“To quote an Oscar-winning actor, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more.”
“Turns out homophobia is a force of nature.”
“You need to burn with a cold, hard, intense rage. And you need to take that rage to the homophobes wherever they hide. Remember: we bash back.”
In fact, the folks at Dave Cullen's site are even taking an ad out in a newspaper or trade publication, most likely Variety.
At first, there was talk of making the ad a rebuke to Hollywood, especially those straight white, older men (like Tony Curtis, who reportedly couldn't even be bothered to see the movie). But cooler heads prevailed, and the ad is now much more likely to be civilized in tone, thanking all of those involved, as well as listing all of the awards Brokeback has won.
This is shrewd because it not only let's the gay community look reasonable, but still subtly points out that Crash in no way compared to Brokeback Mountain's stature. Brokeback fans have already donated $8,000 toward the cost of the ad.
THE FUTURE OF HOLLYWOOD?
In the end, Hollywood has pleased few, save those who actually loved Crash. Conservative America is unlikely to stop blasting television shows they find offensive, or complaining about the sex and violence in movies showing at their local cineplexes. Hollywood would have to do far more than distance themselves from gays and lesbians to satisfy the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Indeed, the religious right needs Hollywood to keep their base angry, activated, and donating cash.
Hollywood may have hoped to avoid controversy by choosing Crash over Brokeback Mountain. More than once during the Oscar telecast mention was made of Hollywood's declining box-office revenue. By distancing themselves from Brokeback's gay themes, the voters may have thought to spare themselves further decline in ticket sales, as well as attacks on their supposed moral “agenda”.
But in trying to appease right-wing critics, Hollywood has just alienated another key group of movie-goers: gays and their supporters, who, incidentally, have often defended Hollywood against right-wing criticism. More than one person posting during Dave Cullen's live Oscar thread expressed the sentiment that it would be a cold day in hell before they paid nine dollars to see another movie.
In other words, by trying to prevent some feared outcome, Hollywood may have just made their problems worse. It's such a predictable ending that filmmakers, such practiced storytellers, should surely have seen it coming.
National gay groups have been measured in their response to the Academy Awards, declining to accuse anyone of homophobia. Neil Giuliano of GLAAD said both Brokeback Mountain and Crash were worthy contenders and deserved credit for addressing intolerance. But the reservoir of goodwill is clearly running dry.
Indeed, by snubbing Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture, the Academy has hung a dead albatross around their necks that will stink for decades to come. When people talk about Oscar injustices, such as Chariots of Fire win over Reds, or Rocky's over Network, Taxi Driver, and All the President's Men, there will now be a new gold standard of Oscar absurdity: Crash's win over Brokeback. No other Oscar upset has involved breaking as many precedents or ignoring criteria long valued by the Academy in choosing their Best Picture.
Hollywood insiders have long claimed that while much of what they produce is mindless schlock created solely to make a buck, the Oscars prove that Hollywood has a soul, and that it can, therefore, make and reward relevant art. But Sunday night that bright image flickered and burned. From now on, Hollywood must live with the notion that it is at best cowardly and at worst homophobic.
Can they redeem themselves in the end? It's another perfect Hollywood ending, of course. Alas, it's one that has yet to be written.
