'But Knight is really fired up about the affront to the ghosts of westerns past: "I think this shows that Hollywood can pervert anything. Part of the enduring appeal of westerns is the display of brotherhood, unhindered by sexualization. ... The western was a morality tale, so to make immorality the heart of this western is to violate the code of westerns. That's why it's not going to work." '

This passage suggests that Christians like Knight understand neither the strength of Christianity's critique of social structures nor their own attachment to American mythology. The genre of the western is neither sacred nor inherently Christian; it is an American genre that reflects American ideas. Christianity, like Judaism before it, takes the mythologies of the nations it inhabits and turns them inside out. So for Knight and Co. to be upset about that BBM inverts the genre shows they are more deeply wed to the American mythos than to Christianity.

And as for Sandy Dixon, someone should inform her there are enough gay cowboys to make up a gay rodeo circuit....

maybe if your 20 and cute, but believe me, there are lots of gay men who can't get a date, much less laid....

It's interesting to read the people here who have complained about the way some critics have interpreted Kong as an allegory of white fear of black men, especially since my boyfriend and I had the same discussion at dinner right after seeing the film. He thinks the racial interpretation is an example of us reading modern concerns back into a period that didn't think along those same lines--an anachronistic viewpoint, if you will.

I have no problem with the racial interpretation of the general story, since it's not so much a criticism of the original movie as it is a criticism of the whole era in which the movie was made. On the other hand, I do think there is an anachronistic viewpoint within Jackson's film itself: the conceit that Ann Darrow would have sympathized with Kong and tried to communicate with him. In Jackson's film, it's a wonderful and touching story, and Watts and Serkis make it work. But my academic mind kept telling me that in no way could that perspective have been given in the original movie--our culture was still immersed in the distinction between civilized and savage, and any real Ann would have been too strongly conditioned by her culture to fear the savage ever to sympathize with it.

And before you counter that the Ann-Kong relationship has always been part of the story, check out Meghan O'Rourke's essay on Kong in Slate--she reminds us that the original Ann never warmed to Kong the way most of us think she did....

I caught that too -- another reminder of the racial views of the times...

All of which made it hard for me to believe the black sailor (was he the ONLY Black guy on board, or even in the entire movie?) who, apparently thanks to his military service, spoke without any trace of dialect or even regional accent, could talk philosophically about _Heart of Darkness_ and sacrificed himself for his young white protoge (as all good black heroes must do? are we still playing that storyline?).

I know there were plenty of black people during that time who were well educated and that not all blacks speak street slang, but this character stands out so completely from his surroundings that I agree with D. Edelstein in saying his subplot only exists to downplay the racial subtext of the Kong story....

Jim C writes: "Several responders have asked if Stephanie Zacharek saw the same movie they did -- and I think the answer has to be "no." She viewed "Brokeback Mountain" as a critic, and most of us watch in one way or another as a reflection of our lives."

I think this distinction is exactly right. I read the review both before and after seeing the movie, and I think she is fair in her assessment of its flaws. And yet I still had tears in my eyes at the end, in large part because I understood the characters' fear and pain. Ms. Zacharek's criticism is fair and reasonable--the movie could have been better had we had more scenes of romance between the men and had the women had better roles provided for them. Yet the power of the story of Ennis and Jack is strong enough that, warts and all, the movie surmounts its flaws and provides an emotional punch that comes all to rarely these days.

so, as a gay man, me and my bf really enjoyed the movie -- as did the rest of the packed theater, who laughed loudly and got weepy at the end...

I guess that Zacharek is correct: in spite of the formulaic plot of the film, the cast gives the family such a sense of history and familiarity (many of the best moments come from gestures, not lines) and the director smartly crams all the actors into his shots (so that there's a wealth of acting details being given all at once), that we in the audience feel as though we're watching a real family, one that bickers and yet really likes each other. And that in itself is worth the ticket.

This sort of thing happens to conservative Christians all the time: check out the letters sent to (and posted by) the editors of the parody website Landover Baptist (.org) -- a lot of people can read the entire site and not realize it's a parody.

I don't know what's scarier--that people don't get the joke, or that religious rhetoric has gotten so bad in this country that the most insulting parodies sound real enough to be taken seriously....