Baby I'm Only Society's Child

I finally got to Frank Rich’s op-ed in the Sunday NY Times from over a week ago about Brokeback Mountain. It was piled along with all of the assorted things that I’m always trying to catch up on and lugging around with me in the hopes that I can sit in a waiting room somewhere and just read. I actually had a Heckle and Jeckle moment with another traveling mom at the chiropractor’s office the other day, when we both really wanted to sit and read…”you go first”…”, “No, you”…, “No, really, after you…I’ll just sit here and READ!”….
Anyway, I was thinking about his idea that Brokeback is the movie that, with such a strong per screen showing, will in wide release, open up the heartland to the idea that gays are real people who can feel love just like anyone else. Apparently, the movie, which I haven’t seen yet, is a real tearjerker, and acted so well that it’s hard not to get into it and really feel the heartache of these guys. The idea that even a few folks in the red states might shift a little and feel for those that might otherwise be freaks to them, is a big turning point in the culture of the other 50%, if they ever even knew what they were terrified of in the first place; wasn’t it the terrorists and the gays that Bush was gonna protect them from?

So, it’s taken Ang Lee, a guy from Taiwan who somehow has his finger on the pulse of America better than any western director I have seen, to plumb that vein of emotion that is out there but easily manipulated by the conservative Christians who are overrunning our country. If you look at Lee’s credits he has traveled such an interesting path to get to this subject, but somehow it makes sense when you look at someone who has shot movies such as The Hulk, Crouching Tiger, and The Ice Storm, that he would end up right up against us with a mirror.

I love the idea that confused Midwesterners might find themselves in a dark theater not wanting their neighbors to know that they are weeping at this story and understanding a love that can never be…Like The Notebook with two guys…or a Lifetime movie; maybe the L word? Nah, that’s too hip and sharp for the rest of the country, except for the Jerry Springer TV crowd who want to catch a little girl on girl action.

Which brings me back to Bush and how out of touch he is. I keep seeing snippets of a speech from the other day where he was asked if he had seen Brokeback and he gets all flustered and strange, like he is some stupid frat boy who might make a dumb joke but holds back because he’s in mixed company. I’m in awe of how unaware he seems to be of the mainstream of America and the cultural drift back to a more realistic state.

It almost gives me hope to think that maybe with Katrina and all of the revelations of lies and corruption, his stock has fallen enough so that people have lost the knee jerk of following blindly out of fear; fear of being attacked themselves (what I refer to as general fear of death…like lightening might strike you too!) or the social fear of appearing not patriotic enough.

So, I’m gonna try to see Brokeback, even though I don’t go to many movies these days, preferring to wait and rent ‘em or just not to bother at all when life feels too short for anything less than American Beauty. I hope that there isn’t any sex in that sort of thrusting way that they show it lately in these newfangled movies. I don’t like that with hetero movies and I’m sure I don’t want to see Heath or Jake bent over a horse or whatever…ugh…but its not a gay/straight thing. I just don’t like to see people having sex in general. I’d prefer to have it fade to a picture of the incoming tide, lapping waves, opening butterflies, and all that…

Frank Rich has gone on vacation until spring and I’m really going to miss him. I’m trying not to be too mad about him leaving right now because I guess we will need him more in the run-up to the midterms than we do now for downward spiral of this administration….Only a few voices really give me hope: Frank Rich, Jon Stewart, Bill Mahr, Marc Maron….and I suppose that it can get draining to live in the middle of writing about the ever growing corruption over and over…And it must be also a bit of a no brainer these days because we’ve got a president who will actually confess in a speech and then aggressively claim that he didn’t break the law (yes you did, no I didn’t, yes you did, no I didn’t…) And, as usual they feel that if they say it enough, it will become true…..though I would feel rather vindicated, were I Rich or Dowd or any number of these writers. Come to think of it, I do feel vindicated after being one of the few who believed that this stuff would come to this extreme!...and heaven knows that I’ve had my *Impeach Bush* signs out there on the driveway since midway through his first term!…it’s very tiring and it gives me pause about what is inside of people and what they are capable of. The lack of empathy that these guys exhibit and what they are able to bring that out in scared constituents just floors me!

So, hopefully this Brokeback Mountain will stir a bit of empathy in people who might normally look at differences as aberrant behavior rather than just really the same thing, love that everyone maybe might be lucky enough to feel at some point in their lives.