Hollywood has gone bonkers over director Ang Lee’s new film Brokeback Mountain, the story of two rough-riding ranchers who fall in love and then try to hide their homosexual relationship from their wives and families. This week the movie won the Golden Globe award for Best Picture in the drama category, and it will probably sweep the Oscars later this spring. It’s the movie “everybody” is applauding. And it’s
considered politically incorrect for anyone to criticize it—lest they
instantly be labeled a bigot or a homophobe. This movie is the equivalent of a
cinematic sexual assault.
Film critics (the majority of whom have praised Brokeback Mountain for its “artistry” and “poetic dialogue”) have informed us that the film is rated R because it contains nudity, sexual content, plenty of cowboy profanity and, by the way, a “graphic gay sex scene.” I am sure I will be branded a prude for bashing a film I haven’t seen. Even some Christians will say I’m giving the church a bad name for rushing to judgment. But in this case I really don’t mind wearing a fundamentalist label. Some things don’t need to be analyzed. You couldn’t pay me to sit through a movie in which I have to watch two cowboys kissing, fondling each other and reaching sexual climax. God help us. I don’t know what is more tragic about Brokeback Mountain—the fact that American audiences are watching soft-core gay pornography at the local suburban multiplex or that the film industry is giving its highest honors to a movie that glorifies sodomy. I pray that President Bush—a cowboy at heart—doesn’t bow to political pressure and allow this film to be screened in his personal theater in the White House. In the film, the two main characters, Jack and Ennis (played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger) bury their gay affections for each other, choose to live in denial and then marry their respective wives. Later, they meet up again and rekindle their illicit relationship. So Brokeback is a film that not only explores homoeroticism but also celebrates adultery. And Americans are paying to watch it. Christian film critic Ted Baehr, founder of Movieguide, did a six-year study of homosexual content in mainstream films. He discovered that movies with strong homosexual content make 20 times less money than films with a conservative, Judeo-Christian viewpoint. Yet Hollywood executives seem determined to keep pumping out garbage until they can train us to pay big bucks for it. Baehr reviewed Brokeback Mountain and called it “a boring, pointless work that not only promotes a leftist, homosexual agenda, but also mocks Christianity in one scene and portrays heterosexual men and fathers as hateful, domineering, violent, repressive and weak.” What bothers me most about the movie is that Christians who want to be relevant to society—and who don’t want to appear judgmental—will shell out $8.75 each to support this “artistic” film. Besides polluting their souls with images and sounds we shouldn’t see or hear, they’ll pump millions more dollars into a film company so it can launch another moral assault on the country next year. Surely there’s a sequel planned. What are you going to do about it? I’m not asking anybody to stand outside America’s theaters with placards—although in this case it seems some Jeremiah-style warnings are in order. But I am going to plead with every decent American to send a clear message to Hollywood. Please don’t buy a ticket. Brokeback Mountain reminds me of those X-rated e-mails that sometimes slip through our Internet filters. You’re minding your own business one minute, and the next minute you realize that somebody has attempted to molest you sexually with cyberporn. When that happens to me I hit the delete button immediately. I don’t “review” X-rated spam. And in the case of Brokeback Mountain, I don’t care if the musical score is breathtaking or the dialogue is poetic. This movie is the equivalent of a cinematic sexual assault. Please don’t help pay for it. J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma and an award-winning journalist. He writes his Fire In My Bones column for Charisma Online twice a week. Charisma Online is a service of Charisma magazine and Strang Communications, copyright 2005. Strang Communications, 600 Rinehart Rd., Lake Mary, FL 32746 |
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