Paranoia and Tragedy in Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain"

금지된 꿈: 「브로크백 마운틴」의 동성애

"Brokeback Mountain" deals with the love story between two homosexuals named Ennis and Jack. They never do use the word 'homosexual' but instead 'love.' They hide their love into the closet. And they conform to socially constructed gender roles. It is because they recognize that social order has punished the homosexuals severely through history. Especially, Ennis fears the homophobic heterosexual gaze. Through his paranoia, this article examines the conventional contradictory social order causing by the tragic story that is the homosexual "closet phenomenon." Such a phenomenon has resulted from the traditional patriarchal family system that is the central unit of society. Conventionally, patriarchy consists of a dominant male and non-dominant female system, based on force. Sexuality has been constructed, experienced, and understood in culturally and historically specific ways. Homosexuality has been imaged conventionally as a female disguised as a man. As such, homosexuality would violate and break such a constructed system that keeps the sexual hierarchy through male dominant construction. As homosexual, ironically with macho gender personas, Ennis and Jack are social outsiders. Through this story, Proulx suggests the conventional fixed social order is contradictory and, therefore forces the readers to re-consider the world and ponder about the future.