Real gay cowboys
Rodeo is one of our most American sports, with roots as deep as baseball’s. As an action-packed extreme sport, rodeo lends itself easily to TV and is now routinely covered on ESPN. The sport reached exhibition status at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and even had its own TV reality show—Cowboy U&#;which aired for four years on Country Noun Television.
The film Brokeback Mountain, based on the short story by Annie Proulx, became an overnight cultural icon—and the film also kicked up a political dust storm. After all, right-wingers view the cowpoke as a core symbol who embodies the purest in heterosexual family values. One Christian blogger screamed, “Now they’re out to destroy the American legend of the cowboy. God help us, and John Wayne forgive us!” In Congress, Senators from sagebrush states pushed a resolution to declare the fourth Saturday of each July the “National Day of the American Cowboy.”
Meanwhile, some contestants on the rodeo scene assured the media that, in all their years around the arenas, they’d never met a real-life Jack Twist.
I had to smile at al
STAFF OPINION: Cowboys in media are inherently gay
Spending time away from your wives, going on adventures, dusty and clad in leather is not straight people behavior…Cowboys are gay.
Cowboys are inherently queer. Not the redneck “pop country” cowboys that we see today, but the pop culture versions that we’ve seen on our T.V.s.
Being from Colorado, I contain had interactions with cowboy culture all my life, from riding horses at my grandma’s property to my school annually participating in “Wild West Days,” where kids dressed up as cowboys and participated in wild west-themed activities.
In terms of this piece, though, I intend to glance at more of the portrayal of the wild west in the media and how oftentimes it is so very queer.
Now before I get too far into it there are a few spoilers (notably for "Tombstone," though it is based on a historical event, so undertake with that what you will).
Movies like "Tombstone,""Brokeback Mountain" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"cement these ideas. From Val Kilmer’s very fruity portrayal of Doc Ho
University Writing Program
Out West: The Queer Sexuality of the American Cowboy and His Cultural Significance
by Hana Klempnauer Miller
Research Paper | UWS 53b Mythology of the American West | Eric Hollander | Fall &#;
About this paper |&#;&#; This paper as PDF | MLA format
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in a scene from&#;Brokeback Mountain.
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Ask anyone who&#;s seen BrokebackMountain() to characterize the film in three words, and you&#;re almost certain to hear some variation of &#;gay cowboy love-story.&#;&#; While many have lauded the film, directed by Ang Lee, for its nuanced portrayal of two men&#;s complicated love for each other, the film was subject to scathing criticism at the time of its release. Detractors, largely spearheaded by right-wing and religious groups, quickly and fervently deemed the film&#;s depiction of a homosexual couple immoral, evidence of an attempt to feminize men, and even anti-American. In many cases, critics honed in on the two leads &#; occupations as cowboys, challenging the existence of a &#;gay cowboy&#; in American history
Gay Cowboys? Sure, Pardner.
But real-life gay cowboys and Wild West historians say that the plot of Brokeback Mountain -- an Oscar favourite after topping the Golden Globes nominations -- is nothing new.
And in a claim that is likely to outrage many rural conservatives, they declare that homosexuality was an unspoken norm on the American frontier, where men were close and women were scarce.
''There they were, a couple of men, alone together in isolated frontier country, for weeks or sometimes months at a time,'' says Randy Jones, 53, who was the stetson-wearing, lasso-throwing gay cowboy in the Village People and who acted as an adviser on the film.
''The thought must have passed through their minds, even if they didn't act on it, because men are sexy animals. If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be so much homosexual sex in prison.''
There is growing evidence to support Jones's theory. As