Brokeback
Q: You’re a rancher, a lot of us here in Kansas are ranchers-I just wanted to get your opinion on Brokeback Mountain, if you’d seen it yet?
Bush: I hadn’t seen it–I hope you go back to the ranch and the farms.
I don’t quite know what that means. Is George W Bush making a cryptic reference to the “Exodus” groups committed to “Reforming Homosexuals” back (or over to, as the case may be) to good Christian Heterosexuality? Or is he simply concerned for the future of American ranching and farming, the homo and hetero sexuality not really factoring into the equation?
Ah well. There is a backlash against Brokeback Mountain, both against its homosexual theme and against a sort of “Afterschool Special” mentality. I muse on this comment:
If it WASN’T about gay cowboys it would get no attention.
My much belated response: If Moby Dick weren’t about a whale hunt, it would be the Old Man and The Sea.
Actually, the comedy comes from right wing radio discussing the matter of the movie, and that darned constant supply of lie-beral themed movies. Good Night, and Good Luck — and you know, Joseph McCarthy gets a bad rap in history… ’cause, He was a good, patriotic American who was mostly right, you see.
I note a genre of nonfiction tossing up unapologetic defenses against the sometimes one-sided culture war battles. (There’s one about the 1960s, another one for the Baby Boomer Generation, and…) Progressive Hollywood. Take it for what it’s worth. I say one-sided because, in the end, I do not believe that there are many people in the nation who wake up in the morning, foaming at the mouth, thinking and breathing “Culture War”.
I note that whenever social conservatives see a movie with a generally conservative message, they clutch their hands around it and wave it as a weapon on how triumphant they are in society. So you have Mel Gibson and The Passion of, and you have Narnia. The effect with Narnia is that I can’t see it, because it doesn’t matter how much I respect CS Lewis, to see Narnia is to throw a victory to the cause of right wing Christianity, and the Right in general — and I say the “Right In General” because, yep, there it is, on the cover of The National Review.
But I can’t go too far with that. Consider Mozart and consider South Park. Here’s the cover of last week’s Weekly Standard:
I looked to the Weekly Standard, hoping the cover feature would be something worth skewering, but… what the heck can I say against Mozart? Everyone gets to claim Mozart, I suppose. Lyndon LaRouche blasts The Beatles and gives his devotees a “classical” education — I don’t know if Mozart fits into the picture, but he probably does.
Meanwhile, a few years ago, some conservative ideolouge discovered that South Park had a generally libertarian bent, and proclaimed that a generation of conservatives were “South Park Conservatives”.
Clutch onto it, and maybe it’ll be true. But I doubt it.