Posted on 03/05/2006 7:29:59 AM PST by Joe Republc
f all goes as expected at this Sunday’s Academy Awards, Brokeback Mountain will win in the “Best Picture,” “Best Director,” and perhaps even “Best Actor” categories. Even if it doesn’t do as well as expected, the film is already being hailed as a “breakout” event, a kind of cultural watershed of sorts—which it almost certainly is not.
By “breakout,” I mean the idea, most famously advanced by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, that the movie would do well in the “heartland,” and that this, in turn, would signal an increased acceptance of same-sex relationships.
As USA Today summarized it, the film would change “how Hollywood portrays gay characters [and] also how gay men and lesbians are accepted by mainstream America.”
Well, it turns out that the reports of a breakout were greatly exaggerated. While admittedly, Brokeback did well at the box office, its audience was exactly whom you would have predicted all along: people in the Northeast and on the West Coast. The film made far more money in Canada than in the Great Plains or the Rocky Mountain states.
There’s nothing new in this pattern. As Mickey Kaus of Slate pointed out, it’s the same pattern we saw with Fahrenheit 9/11, the anti-Bush documentary. Then, as now, reports about the film’s alleged popularity in middle-America were treated as harbingers of a cultural shift. Then, as now, these reports were shown to be equal parts wishful thinking, spin, and propaganda.
But even if we concede that Brokeback’s $70 million-plus at the box office “is a sign of American mainstream status,” we are still left with another question. “What is $288 million or even . . . $370 million” a sign of?
This question was posed by columnist Terry Mattingly. The numbers he’s citing are the comparable box-office takes for The Chronicles of Narnia and The Passion of the Christ, respectively. These films not only made many times what Brokeback did, they did well in every part of the country. By Rich and company’s logic, this would place them and their Christian messages squarely in the “mainstream.” But don’t hold your breath waiting for such an acknowledgment.
The truth is that, as Mattingly writes, “Brokeback Mountain is a solid, artistic niche movie for the hard left in American life.” This group is “dominated by Oscar voters and Hollywood’s most loyal supporters in blue zip codes.”
The insular worldview of this group is why the “Best Picture” nominees are, as the Los Angeles Times put it, “five movies most people haven’t seen.” This year’s Oscars are a celebration of one particular group’s ideals and tell us little about what constitutes mainstream American attitudes.
That’s why we need to ask ourselves another of Mattingly’s questions: Who will make commercially successful movies that “force Hollywood people to grit their teeth when it comes time for the Oscar voting?”
For Mattingly, whose new book Pop Goes Religion looks at the relationship between faith and popular culture, the obvious answer is “Christians.” If we can learn how to make good films—and we’re beginning to do so—that people will want to see, we could then witness a real breakout: one that leads away from Hollywood’s insular worldview and in a much more positive direction.
Living in fly-over country and working for a pretty stodgy company, I haven't heard anyone declare they've seen 'Brokeback Mountain'. On the other hand, my huge company goes out of its way to have say we accept the sexuality of GLBT employees, and has a 'Gay Pride' month. So is homosexuality going mainstream or not?
I can hope that this movie will wake up more Americans to recognize an even sharper divide between the far left and the rest of the country, and hope that this will help bolster the movement to pass a traditional marriage amendment to the constitution. But I can only hope and pray... I really don't know.
Sincerely,
-- Joe
$70 million at the BO is nothing.
At $10 a ticket at the coasts, that's 7 million tickets sold. 7 million out of 300 million Americans is 2%.
2% is NOT a cultural shift any way you spin it.
Breakouts - Which Movies Are Really in the Mainstream?
None that have been nominated this year.
I'd be willing to betcha it's way below 2% given that some people probably saw it twice..
I had to get out of the house for a few hours last month, as the old lady was throwing a party for her friends.
I stopped going to movies a long time ago, but I went to see "Hostel." Boy, that was pretty good, the moral being "Never let the little head think for the big one, especially in a foreign country!"
The party before that, I saw "Enemy At The Gates." Excellent!
But theaters in Brooklyn have sucked for a long time.
They were once palaces - you'd get 2 films, a cartoon, and a short film in a very relaxed and opulent setting.
Then they partitioned these buildings into Seven-Plexes.
You watch a movie in a shoebox room, with soud from the other movies bleeding through the walls. It blows, ergo I rent videos as a rule.
"2% is NOT a cultural shift any way you spin it."
It's a "fact of Life" and it is bound to reveal itself in a series of inevitable "unintended consequences".
This prompts a send up from your fairy tale years in which Little Bo Peep reminds us: "Leave them alone and they'll come home, dragging their tails behind them".
Every set of wierd circumstances have consequences.
Does your company have a "Christian Pride" month? Or a "Hunters" month? Why would a business single out the homosexual lifestyle for recognition, in deference to others far more deserving? Those are questions I think employees have a right to know about the company they work for. They also have a right to voice their disagreement, and to resist having such an abominable lifestyle forced on them in the workplace.
So is homosexuality going mainstream or not?
It's trying. But as has often been said, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Whose going to watch the Ocsars? I'm betting this will be the lowest-viewed Oscar program of all times. And John Stewart is just not funny.
Either that.
Or "Let go, let GOD".
And when you factor in that probably many of those interested in this subject matter saw it multiple times, the percentage is even less ... maybe one percent. This is not exactly a Super bowl audience.
I doubt that many straight men saw it at all, except to take their girlfriends to it to get them warmed up for a night in the sack.
"Then, as now, reports about the film’s alleged popularity in middle-America were treated as harbingers of a cultural shift. Then, as now, these reports were shown to be equal parts wishful thinking, spin, and propaganda."
Well said. Anything the freaks in Hollywierd promote is always promoted through their own media channels and spun, spun, spun. If this movie truly has artistic merit and is "mainstream" it would've sold more than $70 mil in tickets up to now ($70 mil in sales is a WEEKEND take for action films, etc.)
Again, "equal parts wishful thinking, spin, and propaganda."
The Oscars have been rewarding bad behavior for a long time now. Look at the past few "Best Actress" awards? Halle Berry for a violent sex scene? Charleze (sp?) Theron for portraying a prostitute/homicidal maniac?
Even Shirley Jones won an Oscar in "Elmer Gantry" for her portrayal as a prostitute.
This is nothing new. Hollyweird will always promote vice of any kind and call it "art."
The Academy Awards are soooo out of the mainstream.
They even have to give the participants $100,000 worth of free gift bags to bribe them into attending.
Let the buggers in Hollyweird praise themselves to the skys. Me, Ive got better things to do than watch that load of crapola.
Good Point. Like everybody in the Castro in SF and everybody in the Village in NYC.
Were it not for the gay tinted theme, the storyline of this movie wouldn't even be worth an "honourable mention" award, much less than an Oscar.
Cheating spouses isn't even novel in cowboy genre anymore.
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