A Harrowing Affair: Commentary From a Brokeback Mountain Fan by Mark Salamon, March 13, 2006
During the run-up to the Academy Awards Tony Curtis told Fox News that he hadn't yet seen Brokeback Mountain and had no intention of doing so. He claimed he wasn't alone in the sentiment and other Academy members felt the same way.
Furthermore, Curtis contended, his contemporaries no longer alive to speak for themselves wouldn't have cared for the highly acclaimed Best Picture nominee either." Howard Hughes and John Wayne wouldn't like it," Curtis said in an interview.
I am not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but I have seen Brokeback Mountain, and I did like it tremendously--as did millions of others. Our bewilderment over its defeat at the Oscars has been misinterpreted. Would you humor us by considering the following analogy that better explains our position?
Let's simply recast Brokeback Mountain as the story about the intolerance faced by a white woman and her black husband in rural Wyoming in the 1960s. At the end of the film, her husband is murdered in a brutal hate crime because of others disgust over miscegenation.
Now imagine that, before this film even premieres, it is the butt of racist jokes. Conservative news commentators decry its very existence as a mistake, calling it a profane plea for acceptance of the sin that is a mixed marriage. They repeatedly predict--and hope for--its failure at the box office.
The rest of the article is over at AfterElton.com