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 in the arts
from February 2006
The start of a new year offers the opportunity for reflection about the directions we want to go in the future. Two films now on release give radically different perspectives on what it means to follow a queer lifestyle.
The Producers - a remake of the Mel Brooks’ original - is a slapstick musical comedy about a couple of unscrupulous Broadway impressarios who aim to put on a guaranteed flop show and thus pocket all the money raised by subscribers. They decide to go for an all-time tasteless musical, ‘Springtime for Hitler’, which will offend just about everybody. It features a show- stopping number featuring a formation dance team of goose-stopping Nazis. The producers hire the most outrageously camp director with a high quotient of failed shows and his equally queeny assistant. Matthew Broderick plays Leo Bloom, an accountant turned wannabe producer, somewhat fey and wimpish. He is clearly wearing capacious boxer shorts as his rather ample jewels rattle about!
Unfortunately, ‘Springtime for Hitler’ becomes as Broadway hit as post modernist irony rules OK. This stage view of Hitler is seen as particularly cuddly - no mention of Auschwitz and the pink triangles here. Somehow the satirical element in Mel Brooks’ version is missing. Homos are fun and frightfully amusing. Nazi uniforms are basically theatrical costumes - Prince Harry would find himself in congenial company. In terms of the public image of a gay life style we seemed to have moved little further on from limpwristed British sit com closet queens. But then you don’t get queer bashed if you are so utterly camp.
Brokeback Mountain offers an altogether bleaker vision of the gay lifestyle set in Wyoming in the early 60s. Two down-at-heel cowboys (or more accurately, shepherds) find themselves camping in the outback on Brokeback Mountain keeping an eye on gazing sheep. With nothing much to do after a dinner of baked beans and a harmonica for company, they fall for each other — brutal kisses, rough anal sex and macho wrestling. After this idyllic summer on the hills, their lives move apart as neither is able to articulate the right words of proposing that they set up life together. The liberated 60s in the American West doesn’t include public toleration of gay relationships. One guy, Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, becomes an exhibition rodeo rider before embarking on a platonic marriage with the daughter of a homophobic farm equipment salesman. Ennis, played by Heath Ledger, is the archetypal silent, introverted one. He too marries and becomes a jobbing stockman. Neither wives can understand the gayness of their husbands. Jack and Ennis eventually make contact again and take to enjoying annual fishing trips back in the mountains - nothing is caught but they have manly fun in log cabins, skinny dipping in chilly lakes and generally making out. Inevitably both marriages collapse because of the lack of emotional commitment. Jack is queer bashed and dies. For the first time, Ennis expresses real feelings and tears.
The messages in the film are mixed: you can’t challenge ingrained social prejudice; you need to seize the moment whilst you can; don’t bottle up your feelings. Part of the great American myth is undermined: gay cowboys is an oxymoron. Brokeback Mountain is an epic of two wasted lives led largely in the closet. Victims of social prejudice move against a backcloth of ravishing mountains and sunsets. The homoerotic glance is very obvious - apart from the raw sex action, the guys are distinctly hunky. It would be nice if Jack and Ennis did find utopian happiness but life is rarely so simple.
Your average suburban gay, of course, is neither a showbiz fuelled screaming queen nor moody macho denim and Stetson wearing cowboy. But sometimes we move towards the glitter of the local scene or suppress our feelings, staying within the closet.
Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories movingly expresses this latter approach. We need to be ourselves, free from self-loathing and attitude. But it is necessary to have a supportive environment that accepts a range of different lifestyles. If you are planning a civil partnership in 2006, you need to decide whether it’s the sober morning suit or pink stretch limo that defines the occasion.
Nick Tyldesley
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