I went to see Brokeback Mountain this weekend. Not because I particularly care for cowboys, gay or otherwise, but because I needed to prepare myself for the anticipated barrage of people asking me if I've seen it because I'm of the queer persuasion myself.

First, let me say that it is a well-acted film. What I really liked about it though was the way it evoked a very definite time and place in every scene. Ang Lee really did a remarkable job with that. I love a good period film, regardless of the period.

I was reminded of a road trip through the south that I took about five years ago. Travelling through some of those little towns, it seemed like nothing had changed in those communities in fifty years. Like Brokeback, they're lovely, comforting places to visit, but I'd never want to live there.

I call them comforting not because they have a particularly welcoming attitude toward my kind (choose your pick which "kind" I mean - the gay, the Jew, the atheist and so forth). I find small towns like that, towns that time seems to have forgotten, comforting because I grew up in one of them. The WalMart was only built in my hometown after I moved away.

I really love the small-town Americana that Brokeback Mountain recreated. I fould myself thinking about the K-Mart in the Hackettstown Mall, a store and a mall which no longer exist. The K-Mart hadn't been renovated since the 1970's, so it always had this comforting dated essence that always reminded me of my childhood.

To be perfectly honest, I couldn't care less about cowboys. I went to see this movie because of the prospect of seeing two hotties getting it on. Don't get me wrong, they're both fine actors (as are Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway - Hathaway's character was the most compelling in the movie for me), but the only reason I ventured out to The Loft was to see Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger get naked. Call me shallow, but cowboys are generally a turnoff for me and this was the only thing that could keep my interest while fulfilling my dudely duty.

The story is pretty straightforward and I suppose not uncommon among the gays, at least from what I read on the movie's website, though I find the whole idea of staying in the closet for twenty years rather than just growing up and expressing your emotions rather silly and pointless.

I'm really disappointed that people are going to see this movie just because it has cowboys who happen to like to play hide the salami with each other. "They're so brave!" and "It's so beautiful!" people exclaim, as if hiding a love affair takes courage or determination. These characters are not role models. They are seriously flawed individuals who lie and deceive. Yet they are being loudly lauded by the gay community. It's really rather silly.

You know what else is silly? The whole rugged individualism thing so in vogue in Arizona today and portrayed so disarmingly by Heath Ledger in the movie. It's a concept I confess I don't really understand. I think it's just stupid to not express your emotions or be honest about how you feel about someone, for better or worse. That stoicism and go-it-alone attitude might be popular with the mindless masses who joined me in the movie theatre on Saturday night, but I'll stick to wearing my heart on my sleeve and speaking my mind, thankyouverymuch.

The irony, of course, is that I'm quite content to go it alone. Perhaps that's why I'm not one of those 'mos that's showing slavish devotion to this movie: I'm entirely anti-romantic when it comes to the kind of sentimental fluff that's being read into the story. It's sad that Ennis can't bring himself to make a life with Jack, but I'm not losing any sleep over it. Sure there are massive social and cultural pressures to contend with in the world of this film, but I'm the kind of person who rages against the machine rather than taking my place as a cog in it.

That most trite of lines toward the end of the movie sums it up best. With the pressure to see and love every mainstream queer movie to hit the theatres, I'm sick of the maudlin, wrought, often pedantic schlock that's targetting this most niche of markets. I wish I knew how to quit you indeed.

And one more thing: Jack and Ennis are not gay cowboys. They are cowboys who have sex with each other. Repeatedly. But it is clear that neither of them identifies as queer (Ledger's character says as much early in the film and again later). Journalists and critics do a disservice to the gay community by lumping these two hapless fools in with the rest of us.

By giving these two characters license to be labeled gay, it excuses all the other not-quite-queer-identified folks who don't really feel a need to fight oppression, be it their own or anyone else's. By film's end, Brokeback Mountain does little more than perpetuate the backlash against the queer activist by making it OK to never question or challenge the status quo.

(This was going to be a lot more eloquent and focus a lot more on the backlash, but it's late and I'll get around to it later.)