Current mood:	touched
Current music:	His Name Is Alive, "Detrola"

'Brokeback' in Appalachia
Brokeback Mountain has stunned its detractors who said it would never play outside of New York and San Francisco. The theory was that nobody in “middle America” wanted to see “gay cowboys.” But the film is not only flourishing in our major urban centers, it also plays in Peoria…and in Appalachia.

Jeff Mann, a talented and versatile writer whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, lives in West Virginia and teaches at Virginia Tech. Writing in the Charleston, WVA Gazette (2/19/06), he shares his experience with Brokeback Mountain—an experience that, as so often happens, bordered on the profound. As he points out, we were all ready for it:

Anyone with any sense must realize that we gay people are starved for literature, music and films that reflect our experience. Surrounded by a frequently hostile majority, swamped by media infused with heterosexual images and values, we ache for affirming artistic mirrors of queer life. Those of us who have grown up in small towns and the countryside and who have resisted the urge to flee to cities where gay enclaves can be found are especially hungry for queer art that reflects the rural worlds we know.

Jeff was not only hungering for something like Brokeback, he was also prepared, having read Annie Proulx’s short story and followed up every reference he could find to the forthcoming film. The characters of Jack and Ennis even invaded his dreams. But he dreaded the prospect of watching the film amid homophobic audience reactions, like the ones that had ruined his viewing of Making Love in a West Virginia theater more than two decades earlier. It wasn’t the ignorant rednecks that he feared, but rather his own reaction to them:

I am 46 years old and 200 pounds, and I am more than willing to denounce homophobes and defend myself and my kind, either verbally or physically. A Martin Luther King statement keeps coming back to me: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” As much as I wanted to see the film, I also wanted to avoid getting into a fistfight, for my days of silence are long over. A jail term, I reflected, would not improve my chances of securing tenure at Virginia Tech.

Trying to resign himself to waiting till the Brokeback DVD was released, Jeff found that his dreams were getting more intense:

Both the story and the movie trailer images had leached so deeply into my subconscious that I couldn’t stop dreaming of Ennis and Jack. Sometimes I was traveling with them on horseback across the Wyoming landscape, a terrain I’ve seen only in films. Sometimes, we traveled together through my native mountains of Appalachia. One night, I dreamed about them all night long. I realized I had to see the movie just to get out from under it.

Jeff’s obsession finally led him and his partner John to a theater in downtown Charleston, for a 3 p.m. weekend showing of Brokeback. Anxiety ran high as he anticipated jeers and catcalls during the love scenes, but he got a surprise:

My country brothers made love in their high-mountain tent. They kissed violently after four years apart. They sprawled naked in a motel bed, delighting in their reunion. And that Charleston audience was absolutely silent….

Brokeback Mountain is one of the great movies of my life. I will always remember the first time I saw it. I will recall how those with whom I experienced that story recognized love and tragedy and met those eternals, those immensities, with the silent witness they deserve. That other immensity—hate—which so shapes the fears I share with Jack and Ennis, was not among us in that darkened room, on that winter afternoon.

Jeff’s beautiful essay is, like Brokeback Mountain itself, something to fall in love with. You can read and/or print it in its entirety at:

http://wvgazette.com/webtools/print/perspective/2006021825

Find out more about Jeff and his work at his website:

http://www.english.vt.edu/~jmann/

Jeff, I wish we knew how to quit you…!