Brokeback Mountain
~

I was quite disappointed that Brokeback Mountain didn't win Best Picture at the Oscars the other night. Part of me isn't really sure why, though. I've never seen the movie. In fact, I've yet to see any of the movies that were nominated in this category. Furthermore, I don't even watch the Oscars. And like a lot of American men, I have -- at most -- only a very mild respect for the whole affair.

Still, I find myself taking a rooting interest in the Best Picture award each year, in spite of being unfamiliar with the nominees almost every single time. (I never even heard of the movie that edged out Brokeback Mountain, which was Crash. This weekend was the first time I ever heard it referenced.) I think the reason I take a rooting interest is sort of the same as what I wrote in my Katrina article several months ago (not the one about hemp and oil; the other one, the one you called "such a crap"*). The media in our culture presents stories and happenings in such a way that you can pinpoint a "good guy" and a "bad guy" in the proceedings -- or at least a protagonist and an antagonist -- and root accordingly, depending on how they affect you.

In 1994, the Best Picture favorite was Forrest Gump. The underdog was a movie called Pulp Fiction. While the odds were universally understood to be in favor of the former, I found myself rooting for the latter as it became more apparent towards Oscar time that the underdog -- the little train that could -- might've had what it took to unseat the favorite. And this was, again, without having seen either of those movies. It's not that it really mattered to me if Pulp Fiction beat Forrest Gump; it's that I understood it was possible, and that gave me hope -- it inspired me to want to see it happen.

I've since seen them each numerous times. Pulp Fiction is fantastic and devilish; a true classic, sordid as it may be. Forrest Gump, on the other hand, tugs on the heart strings. But that being said, it is one of the best and most important American films that I've seen. Using a then-new technique, it portrayed the story of a fictional, mentally underdeveloped man, inserted into real life footage of historical events from the Vietnam era straight through to the 1990s. An excellent film.

The funny thing is, though, neither Forrest Gump NOR Pulp Fiction were quite the Best Picture of the Year, in my opinion. Another movie nominated was Stephen King's Shawshank Redemption, which is quite probably the best American movie I've ever watched. I never knew how great it was at the time, though. Like the other two, I hadn't yet seen it. And so, to me, it was simply a secondary character -- a bit player -- in the Shakespearean drama unfolding between the mighty antagonist, Forrest Gump, and its tragic challenger, which was Pulp Fiction.

This is what things boil down to when all you experience of the world is filtered through television news.

CNN and Fox are more Shakespearean than you -- or even they -- think.

This year I found myself rooting for Brokeback Mountain for a number of reasons. I first heard it was coming out (no pun intended) back in late summer, when the boyfriend of a gay guy who works with my wife told me when I wore a cowboy hat one day that a "gay cowboy" movie was coming out later in the year. I was immediately intrigued (and at the time I had no clue that so-called "gay cowboys" -- a misnomer, since the men in the film were actually shepherds -- were quite common out on the range). Later, when the movie made its release and I started to see commercials for it, I could instantly tell just from those short clips that it was going to be a powerful film, and I began rooting for it to win some awards. I kept rooting for it all the way through to the Oscars, at which time it had already become something of a foregone conclusion that it would win.

To be quite honest, at that point, I really should've found myself rooting against it, in much the same way as I found myself rooting against Forrest Gump without having seen it back in '94. I usually go for the underdog. It's just a natural thing with me. But I kept rooting for Brokeback Mountain anyway, because as much as it was favored to win, I knew deep down that the odds were, in fact, stacked against it. It was "supposed to" win, but, really, it wasn't. This made me want like hell to see it happen. It made me want to see the "little train that could" up-end its competitors. Not because I had any real, valid reason to root for it, but rather because -- as I said in my article about Katrina -- I just sort of wanted to see if it could.

This probably sounds like I'm comparing "the gay cowboy movie" to a hurricane. That's not really my point (just as it wasn't my point that I supported Katrina's decision to be the worst hurricane in American history). I found myself rooting for Katrina because I had heard it could be the worst hurricane ever, and a part of me deep down simply wanted to see if it could do it. And likewise, I found myself rooting for Brokeback Mountain, because I understood that in spite of it being the "odds-on favorite," really, it wasn't. Not now. Not at this time in America. Not even amidst the famously "leftist" Hollywood crowd.

It was all about the struggle, and the story behind it. The movie became the protagonist in an against-all-odds tale, against the real-life odds of whether a "gay cowboy movie" could "do it," could really "win," in red, white, and blue-blooded America.

Which is why I suppose I was legitimately depressed when I woke up the next morning and learned that it couldn't.

This makes the story of Brokeback Mountain -- not the story IN Brokeback Mountain, but OF Brokeback Mountain -- a tragedy, by Shakespearean standards. But maybe this tragedy is comparable to the story of Rocky, who wasn't supposed to win and then, in the waning moments, nearly snatched victory from the rabid, clenched teeth of defeat.

Moral victories are euphemisms for "losses." But sometimes there's beauty in losing. Sometimes it's human. And sometimes we can learn more about who we are and where we stand on this big, stupid planet that way.

(If that's how I feel now, can you imagine how I'll feel when I actually SEE the film?)