With the 97th Oscars fast approaching amid controversy surrounding frontrunner Emelia Pérez, it’s pertinent to look back at another major LGBT Oscars candidate that received its fair share of criticism – Brokeback Mountain, a film approaching its 20th anniversary. Receiving controversial comments from senior Oscars members at the time, a similar air of homophobia continued to plague the awards ceremony sixteen years later with Power of the Dog, this time coming from an outside source. Both films raise a key question about the nature of masculinity and homoeroticism within a genre made famous by stoic American heroes of few words.
‘Howard Hughes and John Wayne wouldn’t like it’, an 81-year-old Tony Curtis replied when asked by Fox News’ Bill McCuddy about Ang Li’s seminal pastoral epic. Curtis’ disdain towards Brokeback Mountain, a film he proudly proclaimed not to have watched alongside fellow Oscars juror Ernest Borgnine, is a well-trodden tale in Oscars history. Curtis, beloved for a plethora of roles including Some Like It Hot, Spartacus and The Defiant Ones, came under fire for his controversial views, with many concluding that Curtis and the elderly members’ votes against Lee’s film led directly to the Best Picture winner going to Crash. Paul Haggis’ forgettable film about violence and racial tensions in Los Angeles quickly entered Oscars hall of fame as one of its most undeserving winners. Lee voiced his disappointment at Brokeback Mountain’s snub despite receiving Best Director, and was also dismayed that Heath Ledger didn’t get the Best Actor win. The disappointment was heard even in Jack Nicolson’s tones when he opened the envelope and unenthusiastically announced the victor.
Borgnine also made the confusing claim that, had Brokeback Mountain won the coveted Oscar during Wayne’s lifetime, then the actor would’ve been ‘rolling over in his grave’. While Borgnine probably could have worded his vitriol more coherently, both Borgnine and Curtis seemed to idealise Wayne as the quintessential vision of the masculine Western cowboy, thereby framing Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as the antithesis of that model. With Brokeback Mountain nearly at 20 years old, Lee’s film leaves a mark on popular culture as well as the Western genre, challenging the typical notions of masculinity while also highlighting the homoerotic themes embedded within its confines.
The Western comes in many shapes and forms. Will Wright, author of Sixguns and Society, mentioned the more romantic variant which Curtis and Borgnine might have been taken with, that of the ‘lone stranger who rides into a troubled town and cleans it up, winning the respect of the townsfolk and the love of the schoolmarm’. This would certainly fit with John Wayne’s later works such as True Grit, where his gruff cowboy wears laconicism as a badge of honour. But there’s also light-hearted fare like The Big Trail, Wayne’s first starring role, where Wayne’s hero is more than happy to boast about his talents with a knife to all those within hearing distance, devoid of any of the ‘admirable’ taciturn tough silences of his later roles. Whatever Wayne cowboy the older jurors are harking back to, the actor’s roles have distinct similarities with Brokeback Mountain’s central sheepherders, whether it’s Jack Twist (the boisterous, hopeful symbol of the progressive East) or Ennis Del Mar (the more repressed, laconic representation of the traditional West).
The film received ample mockery following the Oscars (the phrase ‘Gay Cowboy Movie’ has long since been used as a synonymous jibe at Lee’s work), with one particular incident occurring when Ledger was asked to present the 2007 award ceremony with Jake Gyllenhaal, but refused outright when he was told he had to make fun of the romance between their characters from the film. Ledger’s respect for the production and Annie Proulx’s source material won over the need to lampoon a great work of art. Following Ledger’s death, Daniel Day-Lewis cited Brokeback Mountain as one of his favourite films, dedicating his SAG award for There Will Be Blood to the actor and described the final scene being “as moving as anything I have ever seen’. With Curtis, Borgnine and the old Oscar guard deceased, the voting body started to become less archaic and more open to change. In 2015, a Hollywood Reporter poll involving hundreds of academy members asking to re-vote on controversial choices showed Brokeback Mountain winning Best Picture.
While the academy may have become more open minded, that didn’t shut down the Western debate when it came to the major awards season. Sixteen years on from Brokeback Mountain, Jane Campion’s 2021 homoerotic western The Power of The Dog received a grand total of 12 Oscar nominations and a substantial amount of financial backing courtesy of Netflix. The central figure who shared his displeasure this time around was Sam Elliot during Marc Maron’s ‘WTF’ podcast. One of Elliot’s most iconic roles to date is the nameless, handlebar moustache-toting narrator of The Big Lebowski. Nominated for a Supporting Actor award in A Star is Born at the time, according to Vanity Fair, Elliot exclaimed: ‘Where’s the Western in this Western? I took it fuckin’ personal, pal’. Elliot’s main concern appeared to be centred around the clothing (or lack of it), noting men ‘runnin’ around in chaps and no shirts’ and bemoaning ‘all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the fuckin’ movie’.
Elliot might have been surprised to learn that the book the film based on was written by Thomas Savage, a gay man writing about his experiences in the west. He may have been taken aback yet further to discover that Savage’s 2001 republished editions of the book contained a foreword by Brokeback Mountain author Annie Proulx. One might’ve hoped he’d have a bit more context after starring in a music video with famous gay cowboy Lis Nas X only two years prior. Perhaps he didn’t have all the facts. Elliott went on to praise, and then swiftly undermine Power of the Dog director Jane Campion as ‘that woman from down there’. Elliot’s comment tries to gatekeep the Western centrally in the realm of the Wild West despite the genre’s inherently malleable nature. The implications suggest a Taiwanese director like Ang Lee supposedly wouldn’t have any right to make a film about cowboys and pastoral lands either. The Western is a universal genre that doesn’t need to be filmed in America, or made by an American director, to channel those shared feelings of angst and loneliness in the world. 2005 didn’t quite have the novelty of the meme world yet, but luckily for The Power of the Dog, 2021 certainly did. Many users took to the internet to post pictures of Elliott with condescending captions and put downs. The actor eventually provided a grovelling apology for his wording, even though the online comments won’t be going away any time soon.
The Power of the Dog performed poorly at the Oscars despite the hype, ultimately taking home just one gong despite widespread acclaim from critics and audiences. This year’s major LGBT contender for Oscar glory, Netflix’s Emelia Pérez, holds a grand total of 13 nominations. Interestingly compared to Brokeback Mountainand Power of the Dog, however, controversy lies with the Oscars body this time round for providing the film with so much merit. Emelia Pérez has received widespread criticism from both audiences and critics alike, with social media helping to fuel the flames. The crime musical has received backlash for issues such as poorly executed themes and a weak screenplay, with the trans community and Mexican citizens (two demographics that the narrative was specifically aimed at) voicing their displeasure at gross cultural misrepresentations. Outside the film itself, actress Karla Sofia Gascón’s resurfaced tweets concerning George Floyd, Oscars diversity and Muslims garnered further controversy alongside director Jacquez Audiard’s ill-advised comment that Spanish is a language ‘of developing countries, of modest countries, of poor people and migrants’ during Emelia Pérez’s promotion. When it comes to the ultimate Oscars results, however, only time will tell.