Jimmy Akin

The fiasco over the "gay cowboy movie" Brokeback Mountain had me wondering what real cowboys thought about the film. As I suspected, the common answer is "Not much."

"Jim-Bob Zimmerschied is not a happy cowboy. ‘They’ve gone and killed John Wayne with this movie,’ he says angrily, beer in hand. ‘I’ve been doing this job all my life and I ain’t never met no gay cowboy. It wouldn’t be right.’

[…]

"But away from the bellicose posturing, a more subtle view emerged. Dave Miller, 48, a rancher in regulation black cowboy hat, leather waistcoat, blue jeans and boots, said: ‘It’s not the sort of movie that I’d go to see, but this is America and people can watch whatever they want.’ Nonetheless, he repeated the common refrain that he had never encountered a gay cowboy. ‘Well, not that I knew,’ he added. ‘I just don’t think our way of life is conducive to them.’ And like many others, his concern was that the film would give the wrong impression of life in the West."

My favorite reaction:

"Lee Hagel, 47, who was herding cattle there last week, had his own objections to the film. ‘They aren’t even cowboys — they’re sheep herders,’ he said witheringly. ‘You can’t just put a hat on someone and say they’re a cowboy.’"

GET THE STORY.

(NOTE: The article, although written for a mainstream newspaper, contains some crude language that may not be suitable for all readers.)

(JIMMY ADDS: JimmyAkin.Org rates the newspaper piece L for limited adult audience, articles whose problematic content many adults would find troubling.)

King Kong may have thrashed Aslan in a Google Fight, but at the box office, where it really counts, Aslan proves that he remains the King of the Beasts:

"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe snatched the box office crown from King Kong during another fierce four-day holiday battle for the top spot.

"Old acquaintances met again: Less than $2 million has separated Kong and Narnia the past two weekends.

"’We edged out Kong. It’s been neck-and-neck,’" Buena Vista’s Dennis Rice said Monday. "’These are two great movies in the marketplace that are doing great business.’"

"Narnia took in an estimated $32.8 million during the Friday-through-Monday period, nudging Universal’s King Kong out of the No. 1 spot and into second with a New Year’s weekend take of $31.6 million."

GET THE STORY.

The review of Brokeback Mountain at the U.S. bishops’ Office of Film and Broadcasting has been heavily edited.

THE REVISED REVIEW IS HERE.

Most of the edits are in a positive direction. Many of Harry Forbes’ over-the-top gushy raves about the gay cowboy love story have been removed. For example, his opening remark that the movie "arrives at last" has now been snipped.

The review still gives the moral aspects of the film a back seat (not even getting to them until late in the review), but some of the deficiencies previously noted have been fixed. For example, the review’s discussion of Catholic teaching on homosexual behavior now reads:

The Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality is unambiguous. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered" and the inclination itself is “objectively disordered.” At the same time, homosexually inclined persons “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” (#2357 and #2358).

That’s a dramatic improvement over the original, which read:

As the Catholic Church makes a distinction between homosexual orientation and activity, Ennis and Jack’s continuing physical relationship is morally problematic.

The bottom line moral assessment of the film is better, but still a bit perplexing. It reads:

Use of the film as an advocacy vehicle to promote a morally objectionable message that homosexuality is equivalent to and as acceptable as heterosexuality does a disservice to its genuine complexity. While the actions taken by Ennis and Jack cannot be endorsed, the universal themes of love and loss ring true. The film creates characters of flesh and blood – not just the protagonists, but the wives, girlfriends, parents, and children — who give the film its artful substance.

However, the physicality of the men’s relationship and the film’s inherent sanctioning of their affair necessitate an O rating.

The opening statement that "use of the film as an advocacy vehicle . . . does a disservice to its genuine complexity" is perplexing. Talking about "use of the film" in the passive voice makes it sounds
like homosexual activists will be "using it" contrary to the true
"complexity" of the film. This generates a "Huh?" reaction.

As noted previously, the film sounds eminently suited to be an advocacy vehicle–and an especially dangerous and destructive one because it is made by a talented director (Ang Lee) who has imbued it with artistic qualities that enable it to better deliver its morally offensive payload to the audience.

Also perplexing is the statement that "the physicality of the men’s relationship and the film’s inherent sanctioning of their affair" are what necessitate an O rating.

Earlier the review cited two morally offensive grounds: (1) the homosexual nature of their relationship and (2) the fact that they commit adultery with each other after having married women.

The review goes out of its way to assert that the adultery aspect is "just as offensive from a Catholic perspective" (an assertion that is quite open to question; St. Thomas Aquinas would not concur), and so it’s no surprise to see the adultery aspect showing up in the justification for the O rating. But notice what’s changed: Previously it was noted that both homosexual behavior and the homosexual orientation itself are problematic (as are any sinful behaviors and sinful orientations–regardless of what the sin in question may be).

This has been downgraded in the final assessment to just "the physicality of the men’s relationship" making the movie morally offensive. As if it wouldn’t be offensive if the film communicated the message that it’s okay for two men to have an intense, romatic relationship as long as it doesn’t get physical?

This sounds like whoever is editing the review is still foot-dragging.

It’s not the physicality of the relationship that is the source of the problem, it’s the homosexuality of it.

At least, though, we now have an unambiguous O assigned to the film, without the finger-pointing at the Catholic News Service audience and the hinting that the film really still deserves only an L and that the OFB is being forced to assign it a rating other than what it believes the film deserves.

As you can see, not all gushy remarks about the film have been deleted. For example, there’s still the sonorous remark that in the film "the universal themes of love and loss ring true."

There’s are also the remarks that "The performances are superb" and "Australian Ledger may be the one to beat at Oscar time." The former may be true, and the latter probably is true–given Hollywood’s current tendency to reward iconoclastically morally offensive films at Oscar time (Cider House Rules [abortion], Million Dollar Baby [euthanasia], Boys Don’t Cry [transsexualism]).

It is not clear who is making these revisions, whether it is Harry Forbes or someone else. The OFB reviews do not carry bylines and the edited version of the review does not seem to appear on Catholic News Service (where Forbes’s byline was removed when the rating was changed from L to kinda-maybe-sorta O).

What is clear is that whoever did the edits has seen the film. In fact, there is new information in the review about the content of the film, including some that should have been given to the audience the first time.

The review is still flawed and still retains elements of Harry Forbes’ initial gushy rave review, but it’s a lot better than it was.