printLetters received in response to “Brokeback Mountain Revisited” demonstrate that, to a difference in opinion, liberals mainly (only one conservative got nasty) respond with ad hominem. They can’t seem to argue, but boy, can they whine, vilify, and psychologize. I’d be ashamed to write the bunk they have written me, a complete stranger.
Contra conservatives, who demand that cultural products be primarily “moral,” I ask that they be good—there are objective standards by which popular culture or art can be judged. “Brokeback Mountain,” in my opining, didn’t meet these. So what’s the big deal?
A “homophone” would not have written this about another film—albeit a good one—involving sexuality and love:
‘The Crying Game’ is a truly unorthodox love story. Directed by an Irishman, and starring Stephen Rea, the superlative Jaye Davidson, Forest Whitaker, Miranda Richardson (Queenie of “Black Adder”), and Adrian Dunbar—the 1992 British drama/thriller was everything Brokeback wasn’t. There was no accompanying advocacy, only an achingly bare and beautiful love story with a twist, against the backdrop of terrorism and intrigue.”
Here’s a note from Roger Lord, who says he is an academic. This is the face of academia (and it’s not unique: read more about the exploits of liberal academics here). The gist of his Rumpelstiltskin’s rage is that I’m a fraud and a homophobe because I disagree with him. And this simpleton teaches? Can you imagine what he inflicts on dissenting students?
Hello,
I’m a University Professor in Canada. I read your pretentious comment on Brokeback Mountain on-line and find it totally stupid and ridiculous. I think you’re way off track… as well as an obvious homophobe. [Is that why I wrote that the love scene in “Midnight Express” was “artful and achingly sad”? There you have it: he lobs insults irrespective of the evidence against his thesis]
So you happened to see Brokeback Mountain on an airplane screen during a flight!? And you find that you have the right to make a judgement!? You can’t be serious! It’s like judging the quality of a pizza by eating the advertising flyer that was put in a mail box. You’re obviously simply a fraud.
….I think that Brokeback Mountain is undeniably one the best and most important films in recent years… nothing short of a true masterpiece! Surely, one of the most moving and well paced films I have ever seen in which silence speaks louder than words… love speaks louder than words.
Brokeback Mountain might have simply been too subtle, too true, simply “too good” …. yes, the feelings expressed in BBM are probably much too sincere and too profound for you.
I won’t bother reading your column again…
—Roger Lord
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James J. Barker also didn’t like my take, but for the opposite reason. He declares me “as perverted as the ‘Brokeback’ crowd,� bolstering his claim with passages from the Bible, after quoting these few lines from the column:
“…the artful and achingly sad … scene in ‘Midnight Express’â€? and “Once interesting and iconoclastic, all gays seem to crave now is the State’s pension and seal of approval.”
“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” (Leviticus 18:22).
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:13).
“Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (Romans 1:24-28).
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Here’s another fit of pique. It starts by articulating perfectly reasonable differences, then descends into insults:
“I am a middle-aged, life-long heterosexual Englishwoman: “Brokeback Mountain” changed my life. I have never been a particular fan of the sort of exhibitionist gays who go on Gay Pride marches and thrust their sexuality down everyone’s throats, making claims for themselves as a group who should be specially privileged, but this movie had nothing to do with them. Some of the scenes had the most amazing beauty of composition and content; the story itself is an authentic tragedy. I find your views to be insensitive, ill-informed and altogether typical of those with a pre-detemined [sic] agenda. How sad to be cut of [sic] by closed-mindedness and the desire to make cheap, supposedly entertaining, points.”
—Jan Thomas
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Writes Lyle Palaski (and I’ve disposed of the worst personal insults):
Dear Ilana Mercer,
I read your “Return to Brokeback” article. What “you” returned to was spouting your own fears and prejudices. For people of any stripe, who cannot look at a great piece of art like Brokeback Mountain, and relate it to their own lives in some way is very sad.
…I know that writing to you is futile, but it’s more sad [sic] to me that there are people like you in the world, although it helps me understand why it’s in such a terirble [sic] mess as well…I suggest you look in that mirror and see what is reflecting back to you.
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There were others, but this is quite enough of a sample of what passed for discourse these days.—ILANA