Brokeback Mountain: The Gay Cowboy Story

“Brokeback Mountain,” The Gay Cowboy Story“

A large portion of Americans will hear the phrase “the gay cowboy story” and automatically associate it with “Brokeback Mountain.” Even my lesbian parents praise the original story and its popular film adaptation for being controversial for their time. Indeed, during the time of the creation of both the story and the film, there was very little representation of queerness in any form, thus making “Brokeback” especially controversial. However, since my parent’s generation, LGBTQ+ representation in media and literature has made numerous advancements. In the time of my parents (roughly the past fifty years), having any non-straight characters (“non-straight” at this time defined as mostly white cisgender

Finding your conservative relatives, who are unexposed to non-heterosexual issues, watching and reading Brokeback Mountain, exposing them to aspects of queer life, is positive. Yet, within the LGBTQ+ community, there remains a strong desire to have representation that feels substantial. Any representation is better than none at all, but there remains a need for representation that that portrays the complexity and diversity of the queer community. Mainly, there needs to be more queer works that explore beyond the gay cisgender white male (which does not cover the large spectrum of the queer

In other words, Jack and Ennis don’t seem stereotypically gay. By describing the characters in this hyper-masculine way, the story allows for those queer stereotypes (weak, feminine, gay accented) to deteriorate. To a receptive reader, the appearances of Jack and Ennis sends the message that queerness does not necessarily correlate with outward appearance. Even someone who looks like an “average straight man” can actually be queer. This causes discomfort, though in an ultimately beneficial way, amongst Brokeback’s heterosexual audience and readership, because it deteriorates the subconscious bias that someone has to meet certain requirements, or has to be appear a certain way, in order to be queer. From this perspective, the appearances of Jack and Ennis have a positive effect on the public perception of queer