[DavidMn]

Originally Posted by sparky

POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILER ALERT


For God's sake someone see this damned thing so there is another opinion !
One extremely annoying and predictable development is the politically correct gay cynic response I have read a few times. Some jackass columnist wrote about the movie and was absolutely unable to see it in historical context. The guy literally expected the two main characters to mount some kind of Stonewall revolution and become gay pioneers in Wyoming. What the hell are two high school dropout ranch hand/rodeo types going to do in the midwest in the 60's ? Listen to Judy Garland, read Proust, wear ascots and sip tea while deconstructing rare Virginia Woolf essays and smoking imported Parisian cigarettes ? These guys probably never ever heard the WORD gay. Then, he went on to talk about how terrible it was that Focus Features was marketing it to get a straight female audience, that Focus is owned by NBC, which is in turn owned by GE. Of course, GE is evil, so you should not go see the movie because to do so would be to contribute to furthering the agenda of one more evil conglomerate.

So short sighted. On top of that, the maniac movie reviewer Michael Medved actually said nice things about the film, but had to comment that one scene that implies gay bashing was a questionable suggestion of a "political agenda".
They say these things with NO attention to the fact that the film is based on source material. Proulx had no agenda in her story. It is a story. Period. It is a time capsule love story. This is one reason I stopped pursuing academia - the constant second guessing of the intention of a writer - the insistence on assigning unintended meaning and deconstructing the psychology of the artist. And it is so often done to further the agenda of the analyst and not the artist. Of course art is a platform for larger discussion, and BBM is a rich subject that can inspire many political, social and sexual discussions. However, people so rarely are able to do that without dragging the writer or the characters over the coals comparing them to some ideal that they think society should live up to. I fail to understand why so many are incapable of employing art as an inspiration for dialogue without sucking the soul out the piece of art. It drives me nuts.

I look at it this way, see the movie for what it is, brilliant, leave all the other bs out of it and judge it on it's own merits.