For those of you who missed the homoerotic awesomeness...
Filed under: Gay & Lesbian, Awards, Politics, Oscar Watch
If you foolishly skipped the first 10 minutes of the Oscars last night, you missed by far the
best part - the opening with all the former hosts and then Stewart
and Clooney
in bed, combined with the reel of
"real cowboys" set a standard that the rest of the show just couldn't meet. The "real cowboys"
bit featured wildly homoerotic moments from a bunch of old westerns, thus proving once and for all that Brokeback
Mountain is new only in that it doesn't have the production code to drive everything into subtext. I'm sure some people were wildly offended by this "out-of-context" dirtying of the Real Men of Yore, but here's the thing: most of that stuff is just as gay in context. I mean, have you seen Red River? The tension between Montgomery Clift's and John Ireland's characters (they're the two early in the clip where the guy says "Nice. Awful nice." about the gun, while the pretty one adjusts himself.) is so obvious that you wonder how it slipped by the censors. No wonder Monty's so awkward with Joanne Dru. And the stump scene in Shane? Loaded with subtext, more than a little of it gay. It's not Jon Stewart's evil, liberal fault, people - the stuff has been there for 60 years.
[You may need to be a Salon subscriber to use the link - try getting a day pass, it's well worth watching.]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-06-2006 @ 11:44AM
Renee' said...
On the contrary, it is just proof that the cinema can be manipulated into a montage any way it desires just as long as the eye of the filmaker is achieving its goal and point of story. We all know that old westerns are opposite homosexualism. The originality of Brokeback Mountains stands alone. Crash deserved its acadamy award based on the ability of the persception of the director intertwining several lives that with one key item they were all linked together.
Reply
3-06-2006 @ 1:00PM
Sam Van Eerden said...
I thought the opening shots of the past-hosts and (hopeful) hosts were great. Mel Gibson's was the best, IMHO, and Stewarts was the worst (in bed with Clooney), because it dragged out too long.
George's acceptance speech was quite good, though.
Reply
3-06-2006 @ 9:32PM
Gilbert Davis said...
You wish some people would have been 'wildly offended' by the stupid attempt to take classic cowboy movie clips and provide a nonexistent homoerotic context to them. Having actually seen most of the movies that were clipped all I saw was a sad little juvenille attempt to get attention. Sad actually. An attempt to belittle a whole genre of movies which only belittles the movie and the message the movie in question was trying to put forth. So instead of being taken seriously as a relationship movie which happened to have a man/man relationship instead of the usual man/female movie we get one big joke. So the result is that you insult middle america while reinforcing their prejudices. Yup, another step forward for tolerance and justice.
Reply
3-06-2006 @ 9:34PM
David Putney said...
C'mon. I'll be the first to admit that Westerns have had a gay subtext, but that was just a weak montage of a bunch of scenes taken out of context.
Reply
3-07-2006 @ 12:43PM
Karen said...
Oh, please, commenters. If you've ever seen the entire scene between Clift and Ireland from "Red River," it's got homoeroticicm dripping from every line. And that's IN context.
Grow up.
Reply