Harry Beshnoff

UNT professor calls cowboy love story a study in how sexuality functioned in a particular place and time

What's the buzz at the 78th annual Academy Awards?

One word: Brokeback.

"Brokeback Mountain," known everywhere as "the gay cowboy movie," has already brought home top prizes from several award ceremonies, including the Golden Globes, the British Academy of Film and Television, and the Directors Guild of America.
It's poised to add to the tally Sunday with eight nominations for the Academy Awards.

With its critical ac-claim and commercial success the film has grossed more than $75 million and was in the top 10 at the box offices for seven weeks since its release in early December "Brokeback Mountain" has been touted as the big gay breakthrough movie.

Heath Ledger gave an incredible performance as a cowboy forced to stifle his love for another man in “Brokeback Mountain,” Benshoff said.

But it isn't the first movie of its kind, said Harry Beshnoff, an assistant professor of radio, television and film at the University of North Texas and the author of numerous books and articles on homosexuality in film.
In fact, it isn't even the only movie of its kind nominated for Academy Awards this year, Beshnoff added.

"Capote," a movie about the flamboyant gay author starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, is up for four Oscars on Sunday. And "Transamerica," starring Felicity Huffman as a pre-operative male-to-female transgender, is up for two awards.

These movies are part of a trend over the last five to six years of queer-themed films that win critical acclaim and at least some financial success, Beshnoff said. But the three, particularly "Brokeback Mountain," owe the most to the pioneering films and filmmakers in the new queer cinema, he said.

Writer and academic B. Ruby Rich coined the term "new queer cinema" in 1992 to describe the proliferation of low-budget, gay-themed independent films that had appeared in the first two years of the decade films like Todd Haynes' "Poison" and Jennie Livingston's "Paris is Burning."

Phillip Seymour Hoffman was great as iconic gay writer Truman Capote in the film “Capote.” But Beshnoff said he thinks Heath Ledger deserves the best actor Oscar.

Rose Troche's "Go Fish" and Cheryl Dunye's "The Watermelon Woman" fit into this genre, as do most films from Christine Vachon, who was producer for "Poison" and "Go Fish," as well as later, more commercially and critically successful ventures like "Boys Don't Cry," which Hilary Swank won the Best Actress Oscar for in 1999.

"This was independent queer movies that were about shaking things up," Beshnoff said.

"These were not the typical coming out stories with happy endings like, say, "'Desert Hearts.' And they weren't the AIDS melodramas that started popping up in the late 90s, like "'Longtime Companions,'" he said.

The movies in the new queer cinema movement also weren't necessarily gay, and neither is this year's phenomenon, "Brokeback Mountain," Beshnoff said.

"You can't really call "'Brokeback Mountain' a gay movie, because it isn't about characters who claim a gay identity. But it is queer. It looks at the nuances of sexuality. It is a study of how sexuality functioned in a particular time and place," he said.

That, Beshnoff said, is one of the reasons it is such an important film.

"This movie invokes the genre of the Western, a genre that upholds that myth of masculinity," he said. "To suggest that there was queerness in the West is more threatening than to talk about drag queens. To suggest that your next door neighbor or your auto mechanic is queer is more threatening than to talk about the stereotypes of drag queens and hairdressers."

Some gay people don't like "Brokeback Mountain's" bitter ending, suggesting that it carries on the old Hollywood tradition of featuring only gay characters who lead sad, desperate lives that end in violence. Beshnoff disagrees.

"This movie isn't about gay people. It's about homophobia," he said. "The significance is that many straight audiences are, for the first time, seeing something that really brings home the significance of the experience of living in the closet. Straight people don't think about the closet. They don't get it.

But this movie shows how an entire culture, a specific time and place, can be so completely wrapped up in expectations about what you can and cannot do."

For Beshnoff, an interesting fact about the most mainstream queer films over the last few years "The Hours," "Far From Heaven," "Capote" "Brokeback Mountain" is that they are all historical.

"They show how sexuality has changed and evolved. They underline the idea that sexuality is socially determined and our understanding of it is constantly changing," he said. "It is an old Hollywood trick, to take a contemporary issue and set it in an historical context. That makes people think about what did happen, and think about if it still happens now."

"It gives people a level of comfort to see these stories set in a different time," he said.

Beshnoff said he thinks "Brokeback Mountain" is "a great film with a great script and great acting." He calls Ang Lee a "brilliant filmmaker" who deserves the accolades he is receiving.

But how will "Brokeback Mountain" and the other two queer films come out in the Oscar count? It's hard to say, Beshnoff said.

"I would love to see "'Brokeback Mountain' win," he said. "But I have been talking to the film critic for the Los Angeles Daily News, and he says there is a groundswell building for "'Crash.' There are still some old-timers in the Academy who wouldn't want to give the best movie Oscar to a gay movie. But they can give it to a movie about race issues."

Beshnoff called the "Transamerica" script "a little formulaic." But he said that Felicity Huffman turned in an Oscar-worthy performance.

Still, "a lot of people are leaning toward Reese Witherspoon," who played June Carter Cash in the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line."
Then there's the big showdown for best actor between Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain" and Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote."

Hoffman was great, Beshnoff said. But Ledger "is just incredible. He deserves the Oscar."

When all the Oscar hoopla is over and attention turns to the new movies coming out this year, will all the successes of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Capote" and "Transamerica" mean a new wave of big-budget queer movies and a wider acceptance of queer culture?

Beshnoff doesn't think so.

"I am a pessimist," he said. "I think we take three steps forward and two steps back. Change is very slow."

The advent of several queer TV channels has the potential to "transform the entertainment landscape" as they produce a lot more GLBT-themed work.

"But it all depends on the way the film industry responds," Beshnoff said.

"Hollywood's bread-and-butter is the blockbuster, and as long as that's the case, we'll keep getting dumb romantic comedies, wookies and hobbits."

Beshnoff said that the queer movies are "the flavor of the year."

"These movies will open some doors for more films like this to follow. But I think it will be many more years before we see another year that is this rich in terms of queer performances," he said. "We are never going to take over Hollywood. The most we can ask for is some parity."

Beshnoff added, "Hollywood is just now moving beyond the token stage in terms of queer characters. If they can finally begin to tell real, interesting stories with some complexity and some dignity and about 5 to 10 percent of the movies include that, then I will be happy."

Beshnoff and his partner, Sean Griffin, associate professor of film and media studies at Southern Methodist University, co-authored the recently released book, "Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film In America."

E-mail nash@dallasvoice.com

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition, March 3, 2006.