Sometimes He Just Defies Description
By But “wanktastic hackmeister” is a good start:
Guilt-Trip, Incoming! I’m highly skeptical that a movie about gay cowhands, however good, will find a large mainstream audience. I’ll go see it, but I don’t want to go see it. (Why? Sexual orientation really is in the genes. Sorry.) When the film’s national box office fails to live up to its hype and to the record attendance at a few early screenings, prepare to be subjected to a tedious round of guilt-tripping and chin-scratching by Frank Rich and every metropolitan daily entertainment writer who yearns to write about What the Movies Say About America Today. (Wild guess: They say we’re still homophobic!) That will be harder to ignore than the movie. … Maybe if we all go see it, Rich won’t write about it! [He’ll write about it-ed Good point.] 9:15 P.M.
Mickey may be right about Brokeback Mountain failing to find a large audience, although it’s really hard to say. It’s the second sentence that really confounds me; how could one’s attitude towards the genetic determinacy of homosexuality possibly affect one’s desire to see Brokeback Mountain, either positively or negatively? Setting aside the fact that discussion about genetics and homosexuality is hardly finished, I’m just very flummoxed as to how your position on that questions affects your inclination to see Brokeback Mountain any more than it affects, say, your preference for mustard over catsup or your desire to see King Kong.
Honestly, I prefer genuine Medveditism to Kaus’ cynical, too clever by half wankery. “Oh, I’ll see it in order to prove that I’m not homophobic, but don’t forget that it really is a plot by liberal Hollywood to demonstrate that we’re all homophobic. By the way, I’m a liberal, so you should take seriously my critiques of all these other dirty liberals.” Will I see Brokeback Mountain? I don’t know, depends on the reviews. I wasn’t really planning on it, but the preview I saw looked pretty solid, and you can do a lot worse than Proulx and McMurtry.