20 Years Later, Is It Time to Quit ‘Brokeback Mountain’?

20 years later, is it time to quit ‘Brokeback Mountain’?

I was in my 20s when I read the original Annie Proulx short story “Brokeback Mountain” in The New Yorker; I was floored by it. First, because it was a Western. I’d spent years reading New Yorker fiction by then, and I didn’t think they went in for Western stuff. No, I figured their genre was more White Bougie Heterosexual Alcoholics in Muted Despair, you know?I read further and met Ennis and Jack, two sheep herders who eke out a kind of strangle…

20 years later, is it time to quit 'Brokeback Mountain'?

Back in 2005, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal captured lust shading into love, and love decaying into heartbreak. The movie got a lot of things right — but not everything.