All is not gay*

* - gay: Showing or characterized by cheerfulness and lighthearted excitement; merry.

So the wife and I watched the TV the other night, specifically the Golden Globe Awards on the TV the other night that was the Monday.

It was a very gay night. Yet for many of those with a more conservative worldview, it was not a very gay night.

The criticism was made after Brokeback Mountain, a film about the forbidden love between gay Wyoming cowboys that stars Australian Heath Ledger, won four awards on Tuesday.

Other winners included Philip Seymour Hoffman, named Best Actor for his portrayal of the homosexual writer Truman Capote; and Felicity Huffman, the Desperate Housewives star who played a transsexual with a gay prostitute son in Transamerica.
...
"None of the three movies - Capote, Transamerica or Brokeback Mountain - is a box office hit. Brokeback Mountain has barely topped $US25million ($33million) in ticket sales.

"If America isn't watching these films, why are they winning the awards?"

This is a very good question. And lest it go away quickly, as very good questions typically do when put to a largely liberal ubermedia:

The criticism from the American heartland carried more weight than usual this year because Hollywood suffered the biggest decline in attendance in two decades last year.

Indeed it did. So you'd think the almighty $ would be the driving force behind the secular left which dominates postmodern american media. Not really. Again from the story:

One of the few box office hits of the year was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which appealed strongly to Christian audiences.

It also has made a buttload of $$. Not that it's the best film of all-time, but it was generally pretty good with some actually stand-out moments.

Yet "pretty good" is not what wins awards. So I consider that a well-crafted and acted film, even if it contains prurient or otherwise disdainful material, can rightfully win awards whereas popular family films do not. Take "Triumph of the Will", for instance - hardly your family film of the 30s (unless perhaps your family name is Goebbels, Himmler, or Hitler). It is held by many as a film worthy of note. Then again, this is a bad example, as though however good a film it was for its day (speaking to the mechanics and art), the content and purpose are nearly universally derided.

And at one time a film such as Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica, or Capote might have been nearly universally derided.

They may still be. These things have a way of moving in cycles.