The Idea of the American West in Ang Lee's adaption of "Brokeback Mountain"

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig, course: Methods and Theories in American Studies, language: English, abstract: Ang Lee's adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story “Brokeback Mountain” was to become one of the most successful films of 2005/2006, both critically and commercially. For instance, the film won three Oscars at the 2006 Academy Awards and was twenty-second in 2006's box office rankings (IMDB). Considering its topic of two queer cowboys, it is not a surprise that the film caused to some extent controversies. The controversies evolved only partly around questions of quality. To a much larger extent, one of the central questions regarding the film was that of ideology and interpretation. These debates in themselves and the mechanisms behind them are certainly interesting from a cultural studies point of view, however I want to take a different road in this paper. Besides the obvious concern of heteronormativity, this debate also points beyond questions of sexuality and towards the question of American national identity in a broader sense: the film depicts two queer cowboys in Wyoming's wilderness who try to make their living there and ultimately fail.Even such a short plot summary hints at some important aspects of national identity in the film: its connection to the genre of the Western and the ideal of the cowboy and the frontier man, and on the other hand to the concept of the American Dream, i.e. the economic success story from rags to riches. Thus, the film touches upon some of the central concerns of the US as a nation and, implicitly, American studies as a research field. The American West and the frontier have always played an important role in discussions within and outside of American studies concerning the American nationalidentity, both in the classic Myth and Symbol School and later revisions of those ideas. Brokeback Mountain adds another, artistic perspective on these issues which will be at the center of interest of my paper. Using that theoretical framework, I argue that Brokeback Mountain critically engages with questions of American identity by openly discussing the ambiguities inherent to notions of the American West. After analyzing in the first part the space as such, the second chapter of the essay then engages with these findings in the broader cultural context of American identity and America's national mythology.