Essay plan brokeback mountain

Plan essay for how will different audiences react to brokeback mountain.

How would different audiences respond to brokeback mountain

Introduction

 

Depends on sexuality, homosexuals spectator more likely to be aligned, heterosexual spectators may struggle to relate to the film.

Butler

Butler says gender is a performance, a social construct in the mind in the way you act, talk and dress, not something you are instantly born with.

Brokeback mountain shows two men struggling with their hypermasculine roles as Cowboys with families. Although they are both homosexual inside.- closeted.- when Ennis has sex with his wife from behind after his relationship with Jack.

Jack is the feminine one in the relationship, Ennis is the masculine.

Jacks wife is more manly than him- has reversed gender roles

Homosexual spectator would align with Jack, since even though he can't openly express his homosexuality due to the society of the films time period, he is much more comfortable with his homosexuality and femininity than Ennis. Heterosexual spectator is more likely to align with Ennis because Ennis gender role in his head is that he is a masculine straight man which they can align with but his relationship with Jack obviously changes this and causes inner conflict for Ennis. 

I'm not a queer y know example

Rucus

Rucus says that a homosexual spectator has to adopt the position of a woman in a film to get any pleasure from it. 

Examples

Binoculars looking at Jack and Ennis wrestling- literal voyuerism

Naked showering but Jack is out of focus and Ennis isn't looking at him, the men aren't sexually objectified

Jack is feminine in relationship- loud, playful, wrestling, more emotional- reflected in his later marriage

Ennis is masculine- quiet, detached, aggressive, - when angered, lashes out, - Jack, man who calls him an asshole when he crosses the street, his wife

Homosexual spectator may not align with the film as much as they would if they viewed the film from a queer gaze perspective. They can still get pleasure from the film by empathising with the homosexual relationship from their own personal experiences. Instead, a heterosexual male spectator may find that they align with Ennis since they may find they have similar personalities to him. A female heterosexual spectator may identify with Jack in the same way.'

Apply Judith Butler and Derek Rucus

Apply Judith Butler and Derek Rucus to 500 days of summer.


Judith Butler says that gender is a performance constructed and reinforced through media and culture. It doesnt matter about your physical differences gender wise, its about how you think and the way you act. Applying these to 500 days of summer shows that the two characters of the film, Tom and Summer have subverted gender roles. Tom is quite feminine whereas Summer is quite masculine. However Butler would argue that the two gender roles in a relationship have not been subverted but just attached to opposite genders since her theory suggests that gender is a performance construct.

Derek Rucus says that a gay male spectator can only derive scopophilic pleasure from men. If applied into 500 days of summer, an example would be when Tom looks over the cubicle to see Summer. He is looking directly at the gay male spectator with a romantic gaze. Another example is the bus scene where they all look at Summer and her measurements

Queer Theory/Gender

Queer theory challenges

Judith Butler- apply her theories to spectatorship.

Male and female behaviour roles are not the result of biology but are constructed and reinforced by society through media and culture.

500 days of summer
men might not align with Tom because he is playing to feminine gender role. they may not align with Summer because she plays to masculine gender role.

Any behaviour or representation that disrupts culturally accepted notions of gender.

1950's- police actively enforced laws that prohibited sexual activities between men.
.  Sexually abnormal and deviant
1967- homosexuality is decriminalising in UK (2009 for India)
In parts of Africa and Asia. homosexuality is punishable by death.
.1977- WHO refers to homosexuality as a mental illness and not taken down until 1990.
.Civil partnership legal in UK in 2004.


Brokeback Mountain (2006)

Success of this hollywood film is an indication of more progressive attitudes to homosexuality.
The film challenges two quintessential traditional images of american masculinity- the cowboy and the fishing trip.
However, it can also be suggested that the homosexual relationship portrayed here is represented as tragic- a long way from the idealised heterosexual relationships in mainstream Hollywood films.
As the film is set in the 1950's, some would also argue that this suggests issues of homophobia belong in the past.

Gender trouble is evident everywhere in mainstream media.
Queer theorists suggest this is evidence of a move towards increasing tolerance of sexual diversity.

When a gay personal watches a homosexual film, it brings a much more emotionally charged element to the spectator. It is the emotion of empathy because of coming out and breaking out of the sexual norm. The gay audience have allegiance  to the empathetic character.

Theorists Notes

Kaplan

. Kaplan argues that the spectator aligns with the male in film. She argues that the spectator must make a conscious decision to align with the female in film.
. This theory therefore can link to my previous point, as the spectator wants to align with Summer, he/she must make a conscious decision to do so.
. For example, one may align with Summer consciously as she does not gain a voice, however if we only view the film through the subconscious male gaze, the spectator may not align with Summer, as the audience cannot hear her perspective.
. One may adapt to a negotiated reading of the film; if the spectator is not white, male and straight.
. If the audience take a conscious decision to take a woman's perspective, then the reading of the film is negotiated.

Mulvey

. Based upon the theories of Freud, Bellour and Metz, Laura Mulvey focuses on the male gaze and how women are the subject of the film, only there for visual pleasure.
. Summer is introduced through close ups of her body: the narrator describes her average height etc, making her an object of viewing pleasure only. The narrator goes on to explain ''The Summer effect'' in which displays of voyeurism are presented. Example is the bus scene. An allegiance may be formed with Summer and the female spectator.
.When Tom has sex with Summer for the first time, the next morning he breaks out into a dance sequence in the middle of the street. Although this is a comical part of the film, it displays the male gaze on a large scale, a large celebration of Tom conquering Summer with his penis, making Summer the subject and Tom regains his masculinity.
. Male spectators would feel allegiance with Tom due to the fact he has gained a sense of power over the women, confirming to the stereotypical Hollywood film.

Williams

The female gaze becomes the dominant gaze, the strong female character is usually punished and there is a struggle to align with them, because of their break out of the conventional role. This isn't applicable to 500 day's of summer. In the film, Summer is strong, independent and isn't intentionally looking for a relationship. She doesn't get diagetically punished but she gets punished in terms of spectator response. The scene where she talks about her past lovers shows she is dominating him sexually, as well as the conversation. So diagetically, Tom is punished because Summer gets married to another man and he ends up depressed. For example, the scene where he criticises her appearance in the same way he complimented her appearance earlier in the film. At the end of the film, the day counter resets to zero when Tom meets Autumn, which could indicate the cycle of punishment is going to happen again.