Drowning in the cultural sea
By Lars Trodson
OK, I get it — enough with the “Brokeback Mountain”
jokes already. Anybody who can fire off a joke about this
gay cowboy-themed movie I’ll give you credit: you can
hit the side of a barn door. Good for you. But now, please,
I beg you, find another obvious culture target and move on.
Listen, I’m not above the fray: The other day I said
to my friend, in a faux Southern accent: “I just wish
I could quit you.” So freakin’ hilarious. It was
right then I knew I was in trouble.
I
am gently trying to ease my way out of this super-saturated
TV/broadcast/podcast/phonecast world we live in (sometimes
successfully, sometimes not) precisely because of its oppressive
nature. I’m begging my wife to cancel the cable, in part
because everything seems so bizarrely similar in that digital
world. I don’t expose myself to a lot of any of that,
but if I’m sick of hearing “Brokeback Mountain”
jokes, imagine how anyone who listens and watches a fair amount
of these entertainment or talk shows must feel.
Everything sounds and looks like it’s in a continuous
loop: If I start watching the news, I can flip the channels
and it seems as though every network is talking about the
exact same thing. Why do they each send their own reporter?
If I turn on CNN, there is Wolf Blitzer. Every time.
I caught a snippet of an entertainment magazine the other
day and they were interviewing one of the “Desperate
Housewives” and the host says “Is she desperate
to win a Golden Globe?” Ugh. How many times do you think
some writer or host has slipped in that word when talking
to one of the stars of that show? How do you think the stars
of that show must feel when they hear it? For the millionth
time?
I mentioned the other day that I have spent years oblivious
to the charms of Jennifer Aniston, but now she annoys me —
and it isn’t even her fault. Everywhere I turn there
she is — with some oblique mention of him. "Is Jen over
Brad?," "What didn’t Brad tell Jen?,"
"Jen moves on," "Why hasn’t Jen moved
on?," "Jen talks about life, love and friendship,"
(ugh), "What will Jen do next?" and the always enticing,
"Jen and Vince; The real story behind their friendship."
Ugh. She’s in the supermarket tabloids and glossy magazines
and in the newspapers and in every other movie released this
year. And the odd thing is, every time I see her on the television
I witness a young woman so coiled up, so closed up by all
this megawatt attention, that she isn’t really terribly
interesting any more. I don’t blame her — so, for the
sake of her sanity and mine, leave her alone and let her become
a human being again.
It seems as though no phrase — no matter how well-turned,
no matter how trite — will now get buried under an avalanche
of undue attention. The other day I saw a photo of Angelina
Jolie — a woman who, for whatever reason (because I don’t
know her, obviously) — strikes me as charming and intelligent
and reasonably grounded. But in this photo she was referred
to as "Brangelina." Oh, boy — here we have the
nexus of him again, that man, and her, and a new version of
an already tired contraction that was used all those years
for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Brangelina. It doesn’t
work. You can’t say it. Stop using it.
Same thing with the "Brokeback Mountain" stuff.
From what I hear — because I haven’t seen the movie,
although I will — is that it is a lovely, touching, heartfelt
movie that’s managing to survive upstream in the deep
sewage of our well-worn sexual insecurities.
Because, you know that — heh heh — every time we regular
folk — ha — talk — ahem — about gay male sex — ha ha
— in this country — heh — we try to make — ha — light
of it — cough — because, you know — hee hee — we’re
not gay and — heh cough — and — heh — well, you know —
cough — we’re not gay — cough.
So what we get from the mainstream yukmeisters out there
is a stream of Humpback or Bareback Mountain jokes, over and
over and over again and I’m already sick of the poor
movie even before I’ve had a chance to reasonably make
up my own mind about it.
And just like all those "Bareback Mountain" jokes,
I’ve run out of steam. I was thinking of trying to end
this column on some witty note, but then I realized the whole
enterprise was most assuredly not very funny to begin with.
Lars Trodson can be reached at larstrodson@comcast.net.