Oscar vs. Baby

If there’s anything that could bring me satisfaction as winter drags on through (begins in?) the dog days of March, it’s the thought of Brokeback Mountain sweeping through the Oscars.

Or not. Like the film, that statement is innocent of many ironies that it should be aware of. For example...

1. I am not known for my passion for things popular. With so many critics shedding a tear in the dark of the screening room, so many column inches, so many award nominations for a film, I would usually be circumspect at best, and (let’s face it) most likely downright cynical. Instead, I’ve been swept up in what’s essentially an old fashioned love story with fantastic cinematography and a beautiful soundtrack. Hollywood cinema that beats Hollywood at its own game. And all the critic boys clap their hands say yeah.
2. Except within that effusive praise is often the snide hint of homophobia, the condescension of straights towards the love that suffers in silence. A gracious (yet manly) nod of acceptance, often accompanied by a history of homoeroticism in the Western to convince the reader of the author’s impeccable liberal credentials. Yuh-huh. Get over yourselves, guys. Until this film hove onto the horizon, the whole debate about the Western was academic. Because there weren’t any to speak of. The West was well and truly won (or lost, I’m not really sure) by the forces of Dairy Queen, Pat Robertson and SUV manufacturers.
3. So God bless Larry H. Miller, owner of the Megaplex 17 in Salt Lake City, Utah, for providing the media with many jokes about pulling out (premature ejection?) of the agreement to screen the film. He’s given the film even more press than it already had, become a martyr to the right and a laughing-stock to the left, even as Focus Features cream off the column inches. Yes, Mr. Miller, you have guaranteed that every curious teenager in Iowa knows that this film is naughty, and therefore worth seeing — even if not a single screen in his state is screening it. God bless you, Mr. Miller, seeing as you believe in him and I don’t, for proving that cinemas called Megaplex 17 will be the death of the cultural imagination in America as long as they program everything featuring a Hollywood star — and can only revitalise the resistance by resisting, refusing. Censorship is like the snake that bites its own tail. Or something endlessly self-generating and equally self-defeating.
4. But maybe success is, too. If Brokeback sweeps the Oscars, then it will be further proof for the conspiracy theorists that the liberal/gay/Jewish mafia "own" Hollywood and the media, and are controlling it to their own ends, possibly to prevent the Second Coming. Late night radio will be spinning the airwaves ablaze with proclamations that the cowboys in Brokeback ride the horses of the Apocalypse (and, later, the pick-up trucks of the Apocalypse). So a win for the film might be a loss for the community — for any community that argues against oppression and for tolerance. Hilary Swank’s Oscar for Boys Don’t Cry led to... well, her Oscar for Million Dollar Baby, a regression for female performers and storytellers, requiring yet another big fat dress on the night, to prove how "feminine" she really is.
5. Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams had a baby a few weeks before the film was released here, to demonstrate the manly straightness of his sperm. Although, hang on, that argument doesn’t exactly work for their characters in the film... But it did give rise to the best headline of the year: "Gay cowboy movie co-stars have baby." Aw, how sweet. It’s got papa Jake’s blue, blue eyes and papa Heath’s steely jaw.

Forget Brangelina Jnr. That would be a headline worth opening the paper for.

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