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Abstract
This essay explores the impact on American culture and the politics of same sex relationships of the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain. The author proposes that in coming to know the pain of the closeted gay characters in this film, the audience engages in an empathic experience with the potential to transform stereotyped attitudes about homosexuality.
Notes
John Ibson, professor of American studies who has written about American manhood in the 1950s, says: “Only a later generation of historians can judge whether Brokeback Mountain simply played a part in a lessening of homophobia in America … or was involved in a much more substantial cultural process” (2007, pp. 193–194).
Page numbers for all quotations of dialogue from both the short story and the expanded film version refer to Proulx, McMurtry, and Ossana (2005), which contains a reprint of the original story and the screenplay, along with other essays by the authors.