piasharn | The "Yuck" Factor (Reply)

I know, I'm a bit late in jumping on this bandwagon, but this article is just begging to be made fun of. Besides, finals are coming up next week, and this works well as a stress-reducer.

There is a lot of critical buzz preceding the upcoming Ang Lee film Brokeback Mountain (known alternately in most circles as The Gay Cowboy Movie). By now, predicting this movie will dot critics' year-end best in film lists is like predicting Tom Cruise will say something loony in the next six months. No, the real speculation on Brokeback Mountain is how it will be received by audiences.

I'm predicting it will not do very well, relatively speaking. It will likely make more at the box office (and on DVD and in the foreign market) than it cost, but regardless of how they spin it, I'm guessing American audiences will stay away in droves. Why?

The "yuck" factor.

For all of our modern cultural "enlightenment," and despite the pervasiveness of gay characters and stories all over American media, and regardless of the success of shows like "Will & Grace" and "Queer Eye," by and large Americans -- blue state, red state, Christian and non -- innately find homosexuality repulsive.

Someone needs to introduce this guy to slash and yaoi. Or at least point out all the girl-on-girl themed porn in this country that indicates at least some attraction to homoeroticism. Then again, in this guy's world, "homosexual" seems to apply exclusively to gay men and not gay women. (Oh, wait... I forgot. Lesbians don't really exist. They're just experimenting or waiting for Mr. Right to come along.)

It's part of our makeup. It's biological, it's conscience-born, it's part of the imago dei. It's part of a "moral aesthetic" most everyone bears latent. To be blunt, we know anal sex is gross, and we especially know anal sex between men is repulsive. Even for most of those who have no basis for which to call it a sin find the act itself "gross."

Of course, this obviously has nothing to do with cultural influences. That's why all societies that have ever existed have been unanimous in their disgust of homosexuality - especially the male/male variety. Just look at the ancient Greeks, Romans, Japanese, and Native Americans for perfect examples of how people everywhere despise gayness.

And anal sex is always icky. That's why you will never, ever find straight pornography that features it. Only icky gay people think anal sex is fun. Certainly not good, wholesome, Christian Americans.

It must be biology in action! No one could ever think that two men having sex is erotic.

Brokeback Mountain may win awards, but it will not have an audience who is not attending either out of perverse curiosity or some sense of liberal duty. The young ladies who are fans of Gyllenhaal and Ledger do not want to see them making out.

Of course they don't. That would be yucky.