the style of a woman, the kiss of a man

petersparker:
Everything’s built on that, that’s all we got boy, fuckin’ all. So I hope you know that, if you don’t never know the rest! —Brokeback Mountain (2005) dir. Ang Lee
I really hope y’all fandom people who reblog pics and gifs of content as #____SaidGayRights know that Brokeback Mountain fucking said gay rights.
It was the first movie about a gay characters with a love story at its heart (and it wasn’t about AIDS!) by major actors and a major director and you STILL had to go to an indie theater to see it. It still buried your gays. But it was the biggest step in the right direction in … well. Decades. It was a tragic romance but it was first and foremost a romance not a biopic like Boys Don’t Cry or Philadelphia.
We wouldn’t have Love, Simon or Roswell, NM or Shadowhunters or honestly any of your favorite canon queer things without this. But more than that, it was one huge step in humanizing queer people to the flyover states who thought they’d never met a queer person and never would. Yeah. We rode and died on this. It mattered so much that Jack and Ennis weren’t typical effete stereotypes and that they loved each other and that this movie was a huge force and got Oscar buzz. This was 10 fucking years before marriage equality. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was in place and would be for 5 more years and the rate of queer servicemen and women suicide was so high I remember crying over it and I thought I was straight back then. We had even less rights than we do now.
Representation matters. Everyone involved in Brokeback can get away with making a whole lot of dreck for the rest of their careers if they want in my opinion because of what this did for the community. You break that much ground and I feel you are free to do what you want artistically. I love everyone one of them and tbqh I don’t actually enjoy this movie. But damn if it didn’t change the game.