if they looked like Catherine Zeta Jones
I didn't see the movie. Did they look like this?
Posted on 01/05/2006 4:21:21 PM PST by Incorrigible
BY DRU SEFTON
It's true, the movie "Brokeback Mountain" does provoke what one researcher calls "a very strong ick factor" in some straight men.
What is it in this story of two cowboy pals in 1960s Wyoming who find themselves in lifelong love -- yet go on to marry women -- that elicits this response from heterosexual males?
The answers are as complex as the plot.
A psychologist who coined the word "homophobic" said the revulsion is precisely that. A scientist who discovered genetic links to sexuality said he simply does not understand the response. The author of "The Sexual Brain" said there is nothing on a neurobiological basis to explain the aversion.
To film fan Eddie Hargreaves of Stockton, Calif., it's more like the "ick" of romantic drama. "I'm not going to speak for everybody," he said, "but I don't know a lot of straight guys who said, `Oh, man, I can't wait to see "Bridges of Madison County,""' 1995's famous tearjerker.
"Brokeback Mountain," directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee and starring box-office hunks Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, is sparking both critical praise and water cooler chatter. It's been nominated for seven Golden Globe awards.
But when movie critic Dave White, who is gay, wrote a humorous piece titled "The Straight Dude's Guide to `Brokeback,"' "I got hundreds of messages, most of whom hated me for just existing," he said.
An excerpt from the column: "The good news -- there's less than one minute of making out. It's about 130 minutes long and 129 of them are about Men Not Having Sex."
We're not talking here about rejections of homosexuality based on moral or religious grounds, though the film has provoked its share of those. It's that some men who pointedly won't see "Brokeback" are social liberals who generally find no fault with people being gay.
"I didn't write the piece with the homophobe in mind," said White, a Movie.com reviewer in Los Angeles who wrote the column for MSNBC.com. "I wrote it for the liberal guy who just can't see this movie, because they know that reads as socially uncool."
White's theory on straight-male queasiness centers on self-identification. "These characters are too close to being regular guys," he said. "That's part of the freakout."
Timothy Shary also noticed that. He's director of the Screen Studies Program at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., and examines masculinity in movies.
"This is a threat to most men because it opens up the possibility that two men who are friendly may become affectionate," Shary said. "That's something men just do not want to consider."
Countless movies feature characters who marry (or are married to) someone but linger evermore over feelings for another -- think "Casablanca."
"But this is about two men who are attracted to each other and keep that connection. That's especially troubling for some men," Shary said, adding, "but that's what makes this a truly revolutionary film."
George Weinberg said this aversion is "definitely homophobia." He is the New York City psychologist and researcher who invented that term in the 1960s, and broke ground with his 1972 book, "Society and the Healthy Homosexual."
"This is the idea of one man's adoration for another," Weinberg said. "A love affair more deep and lasting and romantic" than with their wives.
His advice for straights uneasy about "Brokeback" is to "first understand you have this problem. At least by acknowledging it, that's a start. It's like saying, `I have a fear of heights."'
Research into a physical source of these feelings is lacking.
"It does seem to be almost culturally universal that heterosexual men can have a deep repulsion to overt homosexuality," said Dean Hamer, scientist and author of "The Science of Desire: The Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior."
"But there is no study I know of to ascertain whether this is a biologically based trait," Hamer said.
Simon LeVay agreed. He is a lecturer on neuroscience and author of "The Sexual Brain," a biological overview of sexuality.
"From a neurobiological basis, I just don't think this response has been researched at that level," LeVay said, "although it's something that should be."
Movie buff Hargreaves, who is straight and married, still isn't going to see "Brokeback Mountain." Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"To say that straight guys are missing out because they're unjustly turned off by the plot, well, there wasn't anything to turn them on in the first place," Hargreaves said. "At least `The English Patient' had a plane crash."
Jan. 5, 2006
(Dru Sefton can be contacted at dru.sefton@newhouse.com)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
On the other hand, watching parasitic worms, slugs, fecal matter, decaying meat, rotten flesh, and vomit DOES disgust me, and DOES prevent me from eating that kind of thing.
So, what would a "modern" therapist tell me?
That I'M WRONG and HATE-FILLED when things that can make you sick ARE NOT attractive?
Wellll Doc, It's like this. It aint a phobia, it's a pukia. I'm so f'n disgusted with all the perversion out there that I just can't help but purt'near puke when I even think about it. And I have a REAL problem with any nitwit fudge-packing PhD who thinks that is a fear. So lets just call it homopukia and leave it at that, OK?
One more thing. If you think I'm spending a dime of my hard earned money to be that disgusted, you are the one who needs therapy.
The phrase, "Stick 'em up!" will never be the same.
This is a transparent attempt to get men to watch a movie that they just will not enjoy by challenging them to prove that they are not homophobic.
Y'know what, I don't care what this guy thinks of me. I will not shell out money and waste my time to see something that I am certain to find unpleasant.
It's true, the movie "Brokeback Mountain" does provoke what one researcher calls "a very strong ick factor" in some straight men.
if they looked like Catherine Zeta Jones
I didn't see the movie. Did they look like this?
"This is a transparent attempt to get men to watch a movie that they just will not enjoy by challenging them to prove that they are not homophobic."
I'd add just one word to your sentence, liberal. Only liberal men would be prodded by the fear of exhibiting homophobia and rush to see this movie. Conservative guys will hoot (see the rest of this thread) and still avoid the film. They're trying to boost the audience numbers with guilt.
The guy quoted obviously doesn't want to be bothered by the facts. He says the behavior engenders universal revulsion but he doesn't yet know if it is "biologically based".
That's like saying in all cultures there is a revulsion to eating sh!t but we're not yet sure if the aversion to eating sh!t is "biologically based" or not.
The contradictions are astounding but even more so because they exist in successive sentences.
On that, both the historical and moral answers are "yes." A society that gorges itself on peripheral titillations is a society that has already made the jump to a focus on sex as pleasure, either first or exclusively. An old book once made the point that homosexual activity in a society is (one) result of separating sexuality from morality and morality from its source. Sex then becomes viewed either primarily or exclusively as a source of pleasure. The hedonist paradox is that pleasure diminishes with the repetition of the pleasureable act, so you always need "more" for that buzz...., thus "normal" sexual pleasure morphs to perversion simply by being sated, bloated, and looking to be pleasured again. Misers become crooks, gluttons get fat, sexual obsessionists become pervs, and cranky old farts like myself become churls. Just the effects of what we used to call "sin."
One thing we call "sin" in engaging in behavior that is antithetical to the paradigm that governs mammals in material reality.
I don't care to see it.
Bravo
sorta true, but cats rats and bats will all screw their offspring to produce further offspring without a second's thought, and that at the first sign of estrus. i have heard the argument for prohibition of sexual activity on the basis of the natural order, but i think that argument fails on a number of levels.
thanks for the interaction, though.
Many of the cowboys I know have Master in various subjects and many speak French, German, Czech or Spanish.
Homosexual behavior in humans is a result of an identity crisis, a mental illness, and any alleged homosexual behavior you find in the lower orders is the result of extreme environmental or grouping conditions.
Learn to deal rationally with reality other than what you would like it to be, like a conservative, or continue to bark your mental shins on hard and heartless Nature, like a liberal.
The interactive pleasure is all mine.
That is the only thing you can see when your head is where theirs are!
Didn't take them long to blame "homophobia" for the lousy box office.
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