The legacy of Brokeback Mountain

[Chris James]

I left my comments following the article:

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2014/12/annie-proulx-i-wish-id-never-written-brokeback-mountain/

The story was something I had to read after the film came out since I was unaware of it before that time. Hard fiction to absorb, but then as I said real life is not about happy endings. I am sorry that Annie Proulx feels the way she does about her story but she wrote it for all the right reasons, and as we all know, some readers just can't handle the truth.

[Guest Dabeagle]

I think there are any number of times we wish things had gone differently. While I think her correct, I don't fault people for wishing it had been happier. If anything, she can't seem to see that and comes across as a cantankerous gal who can only allow one vision. The short was powerful and just as sad as the movie. I cried, made me think of how my dad must have felt.

[Cole Parker]

Once we've finished our writing and it's out in the world, it's difficult to fault readers for not understanding or misconstruing the point we were making with it. If that's anyone's fault, it would seem to be ours for not being clear with the message.

Obviously, with any complex stories and even simple ones, different people, coming at a story from different background experiences and having different perspectives, will see things that the author didn't intend. But they're not wrong in doing this. They just have a different, unique-to-themselves filter.

If some people like a story a lot but want to make it different from what the author intended, that's their privilege. I've had readers rewrite some parts of my stories and send them to me, and I take that as a huge compliment. I've lit a fire in their imaginations. My story and characters inspired them to wish to contribute to it. I don't see how that can be a bad thing.

C

[colinian]

There's no rule that a film has to have a happy ending. I thought the ending was perfect. I thought the story WAS about homophobia. Most of my friends who've seen it say it's a love story like Romeo and Juliet. A few said, like me, that it's about homophobia. I was 16 when I saw Brokeback Mountain.

Colin

[DesDownunder]

It was different for me because my formative years were affected by a host of films that attempted to reveal homosexuality as something that should be liberated from persecution by the law. Most of them did this by showing the intimate relationships as ending in tragedy for at least one of the characters. The other side of this was that the prevailing censorship of the time deemed the tragedy as valid and sanctioned the films with an R rating (for over 18 year old audiences only) because the characters got what they deserved; thereby actually, reinforcing the condemnation of homosexuality in the society in some people's eyes..

So, in my experience, Brokeback Mountain was just another movie of the tragedy of homosexual characters. I will admit that modern audiences suddenly found it okay to discuss such a movie, and its subject, and even to give it the Oscar, but for me it was nothing new.

If it helped raise awareness of the injustice of homophobia, I can take some comfort in that.

[Lugnutz]

Never seen it.

[Bruin Fisher]

I think it's worth seeing, Lug! I haven't read the short story, but I remember the film being a little unsatisfactory because of its unclear message about homosexuality.

[Nigel Gordon]

I would recommend anybody to read the story, it is so much better than the film.

[Cole Parker]

Isn't that how it almost always works?

C

[Rutabaga]

Isn't that how it almost always works?

C

The one notable exception that comes to mind is the classic MGM filmed version of "The Wizard of Oz," which turned L. Frank Baum's political screed about the gold standard into a truly entertaining and coherent story with memorable characters and scenes. For example, a comparison of the film's scene where the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion receive their promised rewards with the book's version of that scene shows just how imaginative and creative the screenwriters were.

R

[Cole Parker]

Yeah, but they changed the story! Their version was full of messages. Baum's was simply an imaginative adventure. Of course, he wrote in the language of the day. To call it flowery doesn't come close to describing it.

C

[DesDownunder]

Books and films are different. Sometimes the book is best, sometimes the movie goes beyond what a book can do.

eg. 2001:A Space Odyssey,

Sometimes they are just not comparable, think about the book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and the movie, Lawrence of Arabia.

I've always found it best to appreciate each for their own attributes.

Yes, there are travesties of good taste and accuracy in both, but my problem is with movies that are nothing more than previews of video games. Vary rarely are they worth sacrificing my life on planet Earth.

[Graeme]

Books and films are different. Sometimes the book is best, sometimes the movie goes beyond what a book can do.

eg. 2001:A Space Odyssey,

2001: A Space Odyssey is a special case. In most cases you either have a book first and then a movie based on it, or a movie that is then converted into a book. 2001: A Space Odyssey had both being written/filmed at the same time. I read an article many years ago where Arthur C. Clarke remarked that he had rewritten some scenes after seeing what the screenwriters had done with it.

Sometimes they are just not comparable, think about the book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and the movie, Lawrence of Arabia.

One such case I encountered recently was How to Train Your Dragon. I saw the movie and decided to have a look at the book to see if it was appropriate for my boys, as I was looking at ways to encourage them to read more. Apart from the names of a couple of the characters, and the fact that both movie and book had a huge dragon at the end, there really isn't anything in common between them. It's an example where a movie was inspired by a book concept, but the movie had nothing to do with the book itself.... Out of the two, I think the movie was better.