Monday, March 06, 2006
Icons in America.
[T]he fact that these are iconographic red-state guys is what makes this blue-state movie uncomfortable. But note that it's not cowboys who are banding together to protest. You and I have both known cowboys, and though they can be reactionary, racist, and homophobic, usually they also tend to be libertarian. They might not see the movie, but its existence wouldn't bother them much, just like the existence of gay people doesn't bother them much, as long as they don't have to deal with them. The people who are getting uncomfortable are exurban, kinda wussy fundamentalists who fantasize about a masculinity they don't actually have. If you made a movie about exurban fundamentalists discovering they were gay, nobody would care because exurban fundamentalists are nobody's masculine icon.Alexander "Benjamins" Hamilton.
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I haven't seen the movie, but I read a vicious rumor suggesting that actually the two guys were shepherds and that not a single head of cattle appeared in the film. Is it true? The Marlboro man don't herd no sheep, is all I'm saying.
OK, I admit it. I haven't seen it either. But I've read some of Annie Proulx's other stuff, so I feel fully competent to comment here. The two guys are apparently sheepherders, which is a far cry from cowboys. Sheepherders don't ride horses much, which is the manly essence of cowboying. And they're often foreigners, not Americans. Which is to say nothing of the sort of joke cowboys like to tell -- to wit:
What are the three biggest lies a cowboy tells?
- That pickup truck's paid for,
- I won this belt buckle at a rodeo, and
- Honest, ma'am, I was just helping that sheep over that fence.
What are the three biggest lies a cowboy tells?
- That pickup truck's paid for,
- I won this belt buckle at a rodeo, and
- Honest, ma'am, I was just helping that sheep over that fence.
I've seen it. Sheep, not cows. My great grandfather would have been appalled.
BTW, when I was four or five years old, if you asked me who my best friend was, I would have said "Tommy." Tommy was a gay, Native American cowboy who worked on my parents ranch. Taught me how to (not) chew tobacco and how to stay on a horse.
BTW, when I was four or five years old, if you asked me who my best friend was, I would have said "Tommy." Tommy was a gay, Native American cowboy who worked on my parents ranch. Taught me how to (not) chew tobacco and how to stay on a horse.
# posted by 
: 6:01 PM
: 6:01 PM
I worked on a cattle ranch when I was 19, which sort of makes me a former gay cowboy (certainly more so than Jack or Ennis, who I think spent five minutes once on a bronco or something). I think you're taking the piss out of the sheep herder thing, but it was just one of those ways dumb journalists kept reducing the story to a quick, digestible soundbite, whereas Proulx's whole point was to avoid cliches about the West.
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