1

Nature against Society

Mario Henao

The world of Brokeback Mountain reproduces an array of basic oppositions. The

beginning of the movie shows the entrance of two manly men in a natural environment

where they will prove their capacity to face the wilderness. Nevertheless, this situation

does not put them against nature. On the contrary, it seems that this environment offers

them a place to find some harmony and connection between their inner core and the

outside. In this sense, the movie seems to recall the pastoral genre's experience, which

describes characters that are adequate to the environment.

So, it is possible to think that the movie proposes not opposition but unity.

However, this first part of the film exposes an ideal moment that allows the experience

that marks one of the poles of the significant opposition that the plot deploys. The film's

beginning shows nature as the perfect place where desire can be fulfilled; nature is linked

to happiness and satisfaction. I opposition to that place is the urban and social

environment, where these two men have to adapt themselves to the impositions of

society and its institutions: marriage, family, job, social mobility, and so on. In this social

life, nor Ennis, neither Jack can be happy; there, they have to accomplish structure

requirements. They suffer and fight for achieving that goal.

They are only free from that pressure when they are among nature. It seems

impossible to create a bridge that connects that feeling of happiness that they experience

in nature to their homes' daily lives. This situation is replicating the fundamental binary

structure which organizes almost all the relations in the humankind. The movie expresses
2

the idea that it is impossible to belong to two different positions: for example, it is

impossible to have a homosexual drive and, at the same time, to have a family. In this

way, it is clear that there are two different spaces where different actions and life patterns

could be experienced. On the one hand, there is the natural world where sexual freedom

is possible, but sociality does not exist. On the other, there is the social world where

desire has to be repressed in order to reach the sociality, which means being able to

belong to a community.

This kind of interpretation strengthens the traditional dichotomy between nature

and culture (society) and prevents questioning the identity. Being happy is only possible in

the middle of nature because, apparently, in that place, identity is not necessary. If Ennis

and Jack decided to live as a couple in social life, they would be attached to an identity

image and, therefore, they will be in danger. Also, none of both wants to be identified as a

queer person. So, it seems that they are condemned to this impossibility.

One of the possible interpretations of this situation is that homosexual life is

natural but unsocial, which means only outside the boundaries of humanity is possible to

experience this kind of sexuality. According to that, it is possible to have homosexual

sexual practices in nature because these practices are not human, but it is impossible to

be gay if we think gay as an identity only possible in the social life. In this sense, nature

becomes a way to argue that gay men (the movie is only showing men homosexuality)

cannot exist as a person.

3

Besides, the movie seems to link this queer desire to the wilderness. At the

beginning of the film, just after Ennis and Jack's first sexual encounter, Ennis finds a dead

sheep, murdered by a wild animal. I think that this disposition of the episodes (the

homosexual sex and the dead sheep) create a relation to the wild environment as if the

movie said that sex among men is rough as that place where they are. Therefore, in order

to be part of humanity and take a distance from the wilderness, we need to control our

drives and desire, otherwise we would live in a natural world where anyone could

assassinate everyone. This perspective does not allow the possibility to connect the

human to nature; we need to overcome nature in order to survive as a society.