Homosexuality in the American West

by Lea Sander, Sarah Fuchs, & Juliane Koebe

One of the best ways to see how homosexuality was treated in the American West between the 1960’s and 1980’s is to take a closer look at the movie “Brokeback Mountain” based on Annie Proulx’s same named short story first published in 1997. The movie itself, directed by Ang Lee, was released in 2005.

The movie deals with two cowboys working together at Brokeback Mountain (Wyoming) in the summer of 1963. After a while, working as shepherds, they spent intimate nights with each other. When their work is done their contact breaks up. Years later Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) contacts Ennis (Heath Ledger) via postcard. This is the start of their secret love affair, which was affected by the Western way of life.

The first thing that comes to your mind when thinking about the American West is the representation of masculinity through western heroes and cowboys. Considering the postcard images Western men are supposed to be strong, fearless, hard working and womanizing, independent men. In this Western world homosexual affinity was absolutely taboo and not tolerated in any way.

This aversion for homosexuality is also presented in several scenes throughout the movie. One of the scenes is when Jack enters his former boss’s office asking for another job one year later.

This scene shows the intolerance and the contemptuous attitude towards homosexuality very clearly in these days. Their old boss assumes a homosexual relationship between Jack and Ennis because of seeing them joust only once. In this part of the movie it’s the first judgmental confrontation with their homosexuality by someone of the homophobic society. It’s also the first time that the audience sees Jack’s feelings towards Ennis, when he is asking for him and is obviously unable to forget. For him it wasn’t just a one-night stand. Instead he developed some sincere feelings for his former colleague.

Another scene representing the society’s shame about the existence of homosexuality is the call when Ennis finds out about Jack`s death throughout his wife Lureen (Anne Hathaway).

Here is shown how ashamed Lureen is about her gay husband. Even though she knows Ennis was her husband’s lover she doesn’t tell the true story about his death. Jack was beaten to death by some men because of his sexual attraction towards men. But instead of telling Ennis this story, she lies and tells him about a car accident where Jack was killed by his car’s rim, while changing it. The reason for this lie is not clear. On the one hand it could be possible she doesn’t want Ennis to feel guilty and on the other hand she probably just wants to keep her reputation in society. But the second variant is more likely because of the way she’s acting during her talk with Ennis.

The most striking scene showing the social position of homosexual people in the society is when Ennis tells Jack about an incident that happened in his childhood.

It’s terrifying how people in that time act when they don’t accept someone else’s sexual orientation. The man in that scene is tortured to death because he doesn’t stick to the status quo of the society. The fact that something like this is also shown to children to scare them off and make them notice the falsity of homosexuality is even more shocking.

This formative event is one of the reasons for Ennis not to come out of the closet, because he’s afraid of the society`s reaction. Maybe he also doesn’t want to accept his sexual orientation because he wants to represent the image of a typical western man who lives on a ranch and cares for his family. Although he has the opportunity to live with Jack, after he got divorced, he doesn’t take this chance and however, dates another woman. Even though he can’t let go of Jack and they still meet up once in a while. Ennis’s mental conflict is a main issue of the whole story. On the one hand (as we already mentioned) he can’t accept his homosexuality but on the other hand he’s even jealous when Jack sleeps with other men than him.

On the other side Jack is way more open-minded towards their homosexual relationship and even wants to leave his wife to build up a life with Ennis. He’s not as patient as Ennis and needs the physical interaction with men more often, which is the reason for him to go to the Mexican red-light district. Maybe his open-minded attitude towards homosexuality is also based on the fact that he was never confronted with society’s aversion towards homosexuality, like Ennis had experienced as a child. But in the end this way of dealing with his sexual attitude is the reason for his death.

Finally we come to the point why we’ve chosen this movie. In our opinion this movie is very special in presenting a picture of the American West in a completely different way than other movies do. The topic of the story is not the typical “John Wayne-postcard-image” of the American West as often shown. Furthermore it is important to talk about the topic of the aversion towards homosexuality because it’s not only something that happened in the past, but still is a problem in the society nowadays (not only in the American West).

Sources: 
Brokeback Mountain. Dir. Ang Lee. Focus Features, 2005. DVD.