I've been thinking about your response today, and I'm not sure I really get
it. You say that you live in a country where 'the human body is considered
as part of nature'. I am assuming you are living in France, although you
make reference to Munich. I really wonder if any country has this attitude,
other than for a certain elite class. If you're French, surely most if not
all of the Muslim immigrants, who are also your countrymen, don't feel that
way, and I doubt if, at the other extreme, the 20% or more who may support
Mr. LePen do. I am sure the social dynamics are no different if you're in
Germany, or New Jersey (though you're better off not in New Jersey, if you
ask me).
I doubt how much these are national matters, as opposed to class matters,
and I certainly doubt that a great many (new) Europeans share the same
attitudes to the public display of the naked body - or, for that matter,
native French in La France Profond.
My point isn't a criticism that any country has these divisions, but that at
this part of the 21st Century, I doubt that these stereotypes - or
self-stereotypes, if you will - hold up very much anymore.
There was certainly a period in the US when the Hayes Code, for example,
clamped down on any suggestion of sexuality in an almost comical way - man
and woman had to be shown sleeping in different beds, and there was a rule
that if a man and woman were kissing and seated, at least one of the woman's
feet had to be on the floor. That Code persisted throught the 50s and 60s
(it started in the early 30s), and also pervaded television, but I don't
think we're there now in this country, and I suspect other countries, for
lots of reasons, have moved in the other direction.
Again, not a criticism, but a reflection on a statement that I think is too
general and class specific.
Best
wrote in message
La Donna Mobile wrote:
much interesting stuff with which I agree thoroughly.
Just wanted to add a few things.
About nudity: I'm fortunate to live in the country where the human body
is considered as part of the nature. Showing it, seeing it, is nothing
special. A nude body in a movie or on a stage is a nude body, period.
I'm not talking of pornography, here. Just this weekend I saw again
Marco Ferreri's movie "L' ultima donna" (the last woman), where the
young Gérard Depardieu is naked in nearly all the scenes where he
appears. So what? It's in situation.
Nudity is not the same as sexuality. In the English Garden in Munich
people are sunbathing nude and nobody cares.
And since nudity is not the same as sexuality, sexuality is not the
same as nudity.
Unfortunately one tends too easily to retain only the second part of
the word "homosexuality". Maybe the old word "homophilia" would be
better in this regard. For men who love men or women who love women
have a sexual life like anybody else. Call them "homosexual" leads to
think that they are defined by their sexuality, which is definitely
false. Stories of "homophilia" are not primarily stories of sexuality.
Condemn 'Brokeback mountain' in this regard would be the same as to say
"Tristan und Isolde" is a story of heterosexuality" and condemn it
because of this. There is no more sexuality in Brokeback than there is
in Tristan (which doesn't mean there isn't at all).
As for the film itself, I found it OK, but not a timeless masterpiece.
It is a kind of Tristan und Isolde story with the particularity that
Isolde is a man. There are some Hollywood clichés (the guy who goes to
Mexico to meet prostitutes will have a bad end, it's 'normal' in
Hollywood), and on the whole it is not a film dealing with the specific
homosexual / homophile thematic. "Another Country" or "The priest" in
Great Britain, "L' homme blessé" or "La meilleure facon de marcher" in
France, "La finestra di fronte" or "Le fate ignoranti" in Italy,
numerous Spanish films ("Todo sobre mi madre", "20 centimetros" ...)
have gone much farther in this regard.
Brokeback is nevertheless IMO a successful film, not because of the
thematic but because of the interpretation. There is something slightly
Tristanesque in the link between man and nature, and more than
everything else there is the telling silence of Nature and of people.
Which I think answers the initial question: a film where silence is
telling made to an opera ? No way. Ortrud's idea of a symphonic poem is
more convincing IMO.
th.
>> Stay informed about: Would ""Brokeback"" make a good opera? 
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