Heath Ledger Frightens Straight Men

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




by Dennis Perrin
Heath Ledger Frightens Straight Men
Posted January 27, 2008 | 10:04 AM (EST)


Once news of Heath Ledger's passing spread wide, you knew it was coming, predictably and quite unavoidably. Set your watch, tap your foot, and see the curtain rise.

The queer cowpoke jokes. The sniggers and snorts from presumably straight men who think that Ledger dying at this point in his career cements his fag image for eternity.

Maybe Ledger really died of AIDS. Maybe Jake Gyllenhaal had Ledger killed in a jealous lover's spat. Hooo yeah! Git it? He was a fruit in boots!

I've seen online and heard on sports radio all kinds of "Brokeback Mountain" tie-ins to Ledger's death, most of them incredibly one-dimensional, stupid, and not even approaching funny -- that is, if you insist on some kind of intelligence in your humor. Frankly, I don't know if there is an intelligent, humorous connection between Ledger dying and his stellar performance in Ang Lee's film. But I do know the sound of hetero-fear, that nervous, adolescent chuckling that emerges when the closet door starts to open a little too wide. Were Ledger an actual gay ranch hand, it would be bad enough. But he was an actor who played a character in a fictional story -- you know, pretend. Not real. Yet when "Brokeback Mountain" initially appeared, I couldn't believe the amount queer-phobia thrown at the film, at Gyllenhaal and at Ledger. A lot of it was heard on sports radio, one of the last bastions of white male angst, where attacks on "political correctness" are encouraged, because, like, if black people can call each other the n-word, then why can't white people use the same word? It's just not fair! And now we have movies that show American cowboys fucking each other on the prairie. Where will this PC madness end? And who can stop it?

I grew up with and around a lot of white guys like the ones I've been hearing lately, and I know the type all too well. They're sad, pathetic specimens, hanging on to some fantasy image of male strength and virility (which is, to use their reasoning, kinda "gay" in and of itself). Politically isolated, socially atomized, they look to blame or mock those ostensibly beneath them -- hell, anything but face the stark, political reality that shapes their every movement. Ultimately, the joke's on them. Heath Ledger's final film was not "Brokeback Mountain," but will be "The Dark Knight," in which he plays heavily-armed, psychopathic mass murderer. Somehow, I don't think American white boys are gonna mock Ledger for that portrayal. Hmmm, I wonder why . . .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-perrin/heath-ledger-frightens-st_b_83370.html

[ursi]

1. I loved Heath Ledger, talent spirit! I can't stand homophobes!

[alarimer]

2. I hear this crap all the time and not just about Heath Ledger.

I live in Texas. I saw Brokeback Mountain with a date, someone I thought was a nice guy. What he said after the movie was that it was "too graphic". WTF?

But don't most people know that he was just playing a role?

[havocmom]

4. Back in the day, most people thought John Wayne was a real nice hero

Saw him in real life a few times. He was a sad, mean drunk on those occasions.

Too many can't separate reality from rolls written by people other than the actors who play them.

[msongs]

22. john wayne was a vicious racist right winger in real life nt

[havocmom]

37. ah, you met him too?

But most people confuse him with the rolls he played. Too common and still going on with actors of today.

[Myrina]

8. I think alot of people assume...

... that only gay people take 'gay' roles in film/tv etc.

I mean, why would any straight man want to pretend to be gay?? :eyes: :sarcasm:

[marmar]

9. True....And the same warped logic applied to straight men who went to see the movie.

I remember some of the puzzled looks I got after telling people I saw "Brokeback" and how awesome it was.....The narrowmindedness of people never ceases to amaze (and sadden) me.

[El Pinko]

13. I loved Heath Ledger and thought Brokeback was a great film, but I will say...

...there was nothing that made me uncomfortable in the whole film with one exception, Ledger spitting in his hand. Somehow that was a bit much for me. If that makes me intolerant, so be it. I don't have a problem with two men as a couple, in love, kissing, etc. but I do think that some aspects of sexuality are better left to the bedroom or the realm of porn. I think I'd feel the same if there was a sex scene with a straight couple in a serious film and the guy smelled his finger or something. It just seemed gratuitous. But it was a rather small detraction in an overall moving, wonderful film, IMO.

[xchrom]

3. indeed -- and imagine the hate if he had been gay.

a gay who had been undetectable to those ''nervous'' straight guys.

cause that's what we're really talking about isn't it?


oh -- and don't think for a moment this hate is limited to American WHITE boys.

recommend

[saltpoint]

5. Dustin Hoffman played a down-and-outer in MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Ricco was

a tough veteran of the big city and knew its edgy, after-hours brutality.

I walked out of the theater admiring Hoffman's skill at dissolving his actual self into a character not at all like his actual self.

It seems to me that Ledger should be accorded the same consideration.

[papau]

6. Well said - a great talent is gone from the stage - and I hear a great Dad

[saltpoint]

7. So the reports say. Hi, papau. Friends of mine introduced me a few years

back to James Schamus, Ang Lee's producer.

There was no talk of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. I had never heard of the short story. But eventually all these folks came together on the story and film and hired Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana to throw in a script, and pretty soon they had a landmark work on their hands.

I can't think of anything that's wrong with this film and don't see the fairness is attacking one of the actors just because the character was gay. What's-His-Name -- the guy who plays SpiderMan -- is shown on the silver screen swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper and somehow nobody walks out of the theater thinking that the guy does that in real life.

Which is too damn bad, because SpiderMan is pretty awesome!

[papau]

36. :-) Once I pull enough together from those SS checks and get HDTV - SpiderMan is a must buy!

[saltpoint]

39. My cousins and I went to see the first SpiderMan film. We had grown up

with the Marvel comics group heroes -- SpiderMan, Thor, Captain America, etc. -- and after some decades (!) decided we'd plunge into the theater and see what was up.

The first thing we noticed was that it was mostly adults in the audience! Overwhelmingly so, in fact.

Next thing we noticed was a darned good film.

Ang Lee, the director who filmed BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, also did the first HULK film. He's not afraid of any genre of picture, near as I can tell.

[xchrom]

17. but you said it yourself -- hoffman was playing someone who was down and out --

who died early and ugly -- fullfilling the gay curse -- dying alone and down and out.

you're are talking about characters in brokeback -- who although their relationship is fraught with anxiety and peril and tragedy -- are redeemed, made alive, bring the very best of humanity out in each other when they are in each others company -- things reservd only for straights -- up til now.{in mass, popular culture}

[saltpoint]

19. Hi, xchrom. I love your posts on DU but I'm confused on this one on

the characters in both films.

Three of the four leads are modern cowboys, interestingly enough.

Joe Buck (Voight's character) was what -- a short-order cook in Texas and decided to head to NYC to sell his body to horny rich women. Ennis and Jack were trying to earn some money and figured herding and monitoring on the mountain would be acceptable employment.

It makes sense that insecure straight males might find BROKEBACK more threatening because there was no "escape." The boss spied them with his binoculars but by and large, no one else on earth knew what was happening and in a manner of speaking, the audience had to "manage" the relationship, putting straight men in the role of confronting things they generally don't speak of and are perhaps too revealing to discuss. There's a range of reasons, I realize, but let's say in any given film audience there are Kinsey 1s through Kinsey 6s, and the insecurities likely align with that scale.

I felt the film was superior to the short story, and I almost never think that's the case. This time, IMO, it was. McMurtry and Ossana's script (straight people both), from Proulx's short story, was terrific.

Some reviewers pointed out that BROKEBACK is a pre-Stonewall setting, and that same-sex attraction was a European salon topic but not consistent with the John Wayne West of Wyoming that Jack and Ennis inhabited. The characters could not speak of their love for each other and lived in a world that would punish them if they tried.

[xchrom]

24. joe buck isn't gay -- even though at some point

he becomes gay for pay.
although there are some parallells in the friendship between voight and hoffman -- it isn't love -- sexual, romantic love.


the characters of brokeback -- unassailable in their masculinity -- are redeemed in each other.
the thing we all hope for in sexual, romantic love.

this was romeo and julliette -- with society playing out the roles of the montagues and capulets.

of course the film takes a more journalistic modern twist -- it doesn't raise the characters through suicide -- the film and the story lets the characters lives go the way the lives of flawed ordinary people go.

and of course that's the scary twist -- these guys are the scary Every Man of the far west.

[saltpoint]

29. Yes -- "the scary Every Man of the far west..." -- the unspoken

homoerotic charge of the mythic loner / stranger / drifter / cowboy.

James Dean comes to mind. He was from Indiana but appeared to meet most of the criteria (and looked right at home on the set of GIANT).

As a wee lad I was repelled by the westerns my grandparents watched on TV. I thought GUNSMOKE was dull. It looked ridiculous, for one thing, and Marshall Dillon was far too pleasant to be a frontier realist. I didn't get the Miss Kitty role for YEARS later.

I stumbled onto Larry McMurtry's West many moons later and rediscovered it as an interesting landscape. Proulx's cowboys are modern, truck-drivin' cowboys. But they're strangled by their own reticence. That's part of the power of the mythic cowboy loner -- the reticence, but it also is the variable that makes their lives so difficult and their emotional lives so impossible.

The film hints that Jack is murdered. It occurs in a brief flash into Ennis' thinking. It's a psychic landscape as barren and brutal as the geographic landscape.

Joe Buck lives on as his friend Ricco dies on the bus to Miami and Ennis lives on after visiting Jack's parents in their sad, bitter home.

McMurtry says a god has abandoned Texas in modern times. He says he wrote LONESOME DOVE to re-inhabit the time in the West when that god still was vivid and present. We get only the remnants of that god in Ennis and Jack, but I thought they were terrifyingly beautiful remnants.

[xchrom]

30. you mirror much of my thinking -- well done.

the thing about proulx stories is that she doesn't flinch from the real character of the people who inhabit the far west.

THAT'S what makes it so interesting -- and disturbing.

no apologies.

and i think you and would agree there is more beauty in the terrible reality of the far west than in the dressed american mythic version.

i was fascinated by the contrast of the beauty of the landscape and the lives jack and ennis live -- except there isn't any contrast.
that landscape -- beautiful to look at -- will kill you at the drop of a hat.
and lee somehow let's that come through.

so nice to read really thoughful comments about that film -- or any film -- seriously -- well done.

[saltpoint]

31. xchrom, the same could be said of your insights and anlysis -- and SHOULD

be said of them.

In film classes world-wide, I bet that film will be required viewing of committed film students.

And properly so.

It's a landmark masterpiece by Ang Lee, who appears to be afraid of nothing. EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN, THE HULK, as well as BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. The man's unstoppable.

[xchrom]

33. it was a masterwork -- there is no doubt.

and lee has garnered himself a place in film legend with that movie and all his others -- here he is still alive and ''young'' and he has produced and amazing film making story.

right up there with classic greats.

and yes -- brokeback will indeed be studied -- it is a classic and there can be no doubt it will stand through time.

[Oeditpus Rex]

44. 'You know what you gotta do, cowboy?'

I was only 13 when "Midnight Cowboy" came out and I don't remember if there was any backlash against Jon Voight over the scenes with he and the student in the movie theatre, he and "Townie" or the flashback in which he was raped as a teen. But now I have to wonder if he did indeed get some grief.

[saltpoint]

10. I don't see how anybody with a heart could not be emotionally walloped

by the final scene in the film when Ennis comes to visit at Jack's parents' homestead, no matter the sexual or gender identity of the viewer. Jack's mother is the key to that scene, IMO.

[Horse with no Name]

11. If Brokeback Mountain had been a "traditional" love story

One man
One woman

It would have been one of the all-time best movies ever. It was gripping and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

However, because it was "gay"...it will never achieve that status.
That says much about our society.

I really thought that Ledger and Gyllenhaal took a chance doing this movie with all of the hate that exists in this country against gays. It says a lot about each man's character and a willingness to break stereotypes.
In a weird "twist" to the story, I seriously think that most homophobes that saw this movie gave Gyllenhaal more of a pass for doing this movie than they did Ledger, and I think the reason is because Twist was killed and they felt that their lust for "God's will" was quenched by that.

[OzarkDem]

12. Men are notorious gossips

even worse than women. Pathetic.

[DemGa]

14. American white boys?

Hmmm, I wonder why the writer is using such generalizations? And Heath Ledger never frightened me.

[Bluebear]

21. Yes, the pudgy wudgy type epitomized by John Gibson, always hopping mad about something.

Always thinking someone is out to "get" what's theirs via affirmative action, always fearful that some fag is going to try to "convert" them.

[DemGa]

23. Then the writer should be clear

I can see what I'm supposed to infer from the writer, but I think he lacks clarity.

[Quantess]

48. I agree, that's an unfair generalization.

As if men of other races are embracing this movie.

[L0oniX]

15. I don't give a damn about any hollywood actor. Do yourself a favor ...turn off your TV for a change.

The world does not revolve around self absorbed tv and movie actors.

Frank Zappa - I'm The Slime Lyrics
-backing vocals Tina Turner & The Ikettes-

I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I'm the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That's right, folks . . .
Don't touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin' along on your livin' room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

I am the slime from your video
Oozin' along on your livin' room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

[saltpoint]

16. Film is an art of considerable appeal because it animates the far reaches

of the unconscious mind.

And it's fun, too.

[Bluebear]

25. Sorry, many GLBT folks are grateful for Ledger's contribution to evolving human rights.

If you can't view film as art or art as being capable of being a vehicle for change, there is no hope for you to understand.

[xchrom]

28. ...

:eyes:

[devilgrrl]

32. Is that the sound of knuckles dragging on the floor?

:eyes:

[Bluebear]

40. OMG

:spray:

[slowry]

34. Apparently, for you, it revolves around self-absorbed Hollywood musicians, though.

I say that as a long-time fan of FZ. Someone appearing on TV doesn't automatically make them worthless; Zappa had plenty of TV appearances, too.

It's stupid to apply this song to Mr. Ledger.

[NMMNG]

54. Ah geez, another one of those.

Am I supposed to be impressed by the lyrics from your self-absorbed singer?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

18. I have noticed that my white male fundy boss seems to be obsessed with the gays...

my observations of the breakdown of his basic thought processes...

35% - gays or gay behavior
35% - dirty illegal immigrants
15% - dirty hippy tree huggers
13% - the 'government' is bad
2% - "Mr. Greenjeans" (Al Gore) I think he throws this one in just to get my goat. He knows I'm a fan.


Ledger's best character was in "A Knight's Tale" imo. That was the one that made me a fan anyway. :)

[kevinbgoode]

27. No surprise. . .he likely can't figure out that he is the real pervert

....most guys like that haven't been able to realize that their obsession with other people's sexuality is an indication of their own disease. I thought fundies weren't supposed to be thinking about any sex outside of their own marriage. . .not obsessing about their imagined fantasies over what others might be doing.

[Bluebear]

20. 'Politically isolated, socially atomized, they look to blame or mock'....IOW, freepers.

Really.

An EXCELLENT article.

[kevinbgoode]

26. Yes, they are sad specimens. . .

and I wonder what the hell that particular minority group is doing monopolizing the public airwaves with their insecure bullsh*t.

[NashVegas]

35. Why Doesn't The Author Cite Even One Specific Example?

I haven't heard any of what he's describing. Not even one.

Maybe I don't listen to enough Rick & Bubba, I guess.

Are there assholes making jokes about Ledger's death and Brokeback? Maybe, but this article casts aspersions without backing it up with even one example of fact.

It's like an anti-abortion ad saying that it's horrible to abort at 9 months, while providing no evidence that anyone does.

It serves up no purpose other than whipping up sentiment.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

38. Because The Article Is Fairly Stupid And Just Creating A Situation That Kinda Didn't Exist?

:shrug:

For sure, some of what the article refers to is true, but obviously not to anywhere near the legitimacy in reality it was trying to portray.

[VotesForWomen]

46. you live a sheltered life, don't you? nt

[Bluebear]

41. Oh, my. Well here's your "Even One Specific Example"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2756264

[NashVegas]

42. Perrin Should've Used That

Instead of being so vague, then.

Still, most straight guys are not Fox TV hosts, nor do they behave like them.

[Bluebear]

43. Straight guy Fox News viewers often behave EXACTLY like them.

[VotesForWomen]

45. too true. nt

[Quantess]

47. Brokeback Mountain was awkward territory for straight guys

My white boyfriend saw Brokeback Mountain with me in the theater. He said it was "good", but I could tell the gay romance was awkward territory for him. I definitely liked it better than he did. I loved the film. A straight white male friend who also saw it had a mixed review, similar to my boyfriends'.

I doubt that straight men of other races would embrace this movie any more than white men, though.

[Bluebear]

50. It's not that men of other races would embrace the movie more, it's that they don't play "anti-PC"

Always complaining that their stereotypical jokes and taunts which are met by criticism is because everyone is too "PC" for them.

[Quantess]

52. I must choose my friends wisely because

I don't personally know anyone who made offensive comments about gays, when talking about this movie. At least, not that I can remember.

However, I'm sure if I had mentioned Brokeback Mountain to my brothers, they would have had plenty of rude things to say. But, I know better than to bring up the topic with them.

My point is, that there are straight white males who aren't like that. It's an unfair generalization.

[Bluebear]

53. Of course there are straight white males not like that. . .

mostly Democrats :pals:

[Quantess]

55. Yep. Mostly Democrats, and

most definitely men who are secure with their own sexuality.
:pals:

There may be some "straight" Rebublican men who sat through the movie, because their wives dragged them there, and mocked gays through the whole movie, holding back their tears until they got back home to the safety of their closet. It's entirely possible.

[BoneDaddy]

49. Crap

He doesn't frighten me. I enjoyed his earlier film experiences in the Lords of Dogtown, the Patriot (bad MG movie), 10 things I Hate about you etc., and thought his foray into playing a gay man in Brokeback was wonderful. He may frighten homophobic men, but not this cowboy.

The announcement of his death brought tears to my eyes and I will miss his presence in Hollywood.

[MrSlayer]

51. He never frightened me.

I liked him in "The Patriot".

[Jamastiene]

56. Only a bunch of fucktards would think that way.

Why can't we lock them all up until they either evolve or grow the fuck up?