All quiet on the gay western front

(Fundies say they won't boycott "Brokeback Mountain" ... From Salon.com)

The new celluloid version of C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" finally arrives in theaters on Friday, the same day the smaller but also eagerly awaited "Brokeback Mountain" debuts. The two films could hardly be less alike: One is the family blockbuster of the winter season with heavily marketed Christian overtones; the other is a small love story about two cowboys. And yet their simultaneous release this weekend could touch off the year's first real box-office culture clash.

The Disney/Walden Media version of Lewis' Narnia tale comes with all the bells and whistles of a crowd-pleaser -- CGI wizardry and epic battles -- and the studios are hoping, no doubt, that it will become just the first installment of a lucrative fantasy series, à la "The Lord of the Rings," but with more episodes (there are seven books in "The Chronicles of Narnia"). In a marketing campaign built on the lessons of "The Passion of the Christ," Narnia has also been skillfully sold to the Christian audience via special church screenings and a plethora of Sunday school teaching materials that tie into the film, much of it orchestrated by Motive Entertainment, the company that helped launch "Passion."

"Brokeback Mountain," on the other hand, is a quiet drama made very much in the mold of classic American tragic love stories, and has been compared to everything from "Titanic" -- even the movie posters are purposefully similar -- to "Gone With the Wind." But while in no way political in itself -- the story sticks close to the characters and the arc of their relationship -- a film about two cowboys (even one with the tag line "Love is a force of nature") cannot help finding itself suddenly sucked into a political vortex beyond the filmmaker's control, given the current cultural divide over gay rights. It's a film that "bucks Hollywood convention" and "explores the last frontier," and in a year that has seen a ferocious national debate over same-sex marriage, a taboo-busting movie that brings together two rising young male Hollywood stars locking lips on the big screen is bound to stir controversy.

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Instead of boycotts, picket lines or enraged letters to the editor, conservative Christian groups are hoping to kill the film with silence. Robert Knight, director of the Culture & Family Institute at Concerned Women for America, says his group has made a conscious decision not to campaign against the film. "People aren't going to walk around outside theaters with protest signs," Knight says. "This is not 'The Last Temptation of Christ,' which was such an affront that people felt they had to respond. This is something that could be and should be ignored.

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/12/07/brokeback_mountain/

because I am looking forward to both movies. I personally think that the fact that folks are just letting this go forward without forever bitching about it is a good sign. Although if they bitched just a bit more people would see it!

... that the more they protest something and try to ban it, the more interest it stirs up.

I remember my high school days. As soon as I'd hear about some book being banned or censored, I make a bee line to the library. I'd like to thank all the up-tight blue-noses for turning me on to authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Dalton Trumbo, Hermann Hesse, and a whole host of others.

Now if schools were smart, they'd try to get someone to ban Dickens, Shakespeare and some of the other dreary authors we had to read for class!

Lady Chatterly's Lover, Fear of Flying, The Carpetbaggers... good times!

It is in "limited release" I'd have to drive 4 hours to see it this weekend *grrr* I hate limited realease crap.