More Gay Cowboys

Here's some nice thoughts about the politics of BrokeBack Mountian. The writer makes a good point about the movie being about men, not gay men, but the complex relationships between men, with all the attendant expectation, competition, and unverbalized emotions. In that, I can't help but compare the story to the layered friendship between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin in Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander novels, a real study of the emotional lives of men. They too were in love, though there was nothing "gay" about it. Maybe what is the most powerful things about the film, and the scariest, is how it shows the emotional power men can have over each other. The sex is incidental.