In the wake of Larry Miller’s shutdown of Brokeback Mountain at his Salt Lake City Jordan Common plex on Friday, the Salt Lake Tribune ran a solid and obviously timely piece the very next day about why men who worship and cherish the rugged-cowboy tradition find the film so threatening. Written by Leonard Pitts, it’s simply called “Why ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is so frightening”…and here’s an excerpt: “[The lovers in] Brokeback Mountain…are not cute gays, funny gays, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy gays. These are ‘cowboys’, and there is no figure in American lore more iconically male. Think Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, the Marlboro Man. The cowboy is our very embodiment of male virtues. In offering us cowboys who are gay, then, Brokeback Mountain commits heresy, but it is knowing heresy, matter-of-fact heresy. Nor is it the sex (what little there is) that makes it heretical. Rather, it’s the emotion, the fact that the movie dares you to deny these men their humanity. Or their love.”
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