The Ethnicity of Brokeback

I just read a quickie review in the LA Times by the hispanic author of the Dirty Girls Social Club claiming Ennis Del Mar was a Mexican character as described by Annie Proulx in the short story. It can be found here.

"Ennis, high-arched nose and narrow face, was scruffy and a little cave-chested, balanced a small torso on long, caliper legs, possessed a muscular and supple body made for the horse and for fighting. His reflexes were uncommonly quick and he was farsighted enough to dislike reading anything except Hamley's saddle catalog."

This doesn't sound like any Mexican-heritage male I've seen lately. In fact it sounds just like Heath Ledger. Now Aguirre, the Randy Quaid character sounds like he could be. Then, after savaging Larry McMurtry and his writing partner on the screenplay who also had Ennis as a hispanic, she claims, and his wife Alma too, whose maiden name in the story was Beers, Ms. Valdes turns her attention to Jared Diamond and Guns, Germs, and Steel.

She writes: In "Guns, Germs and Steel," Jared Diamond contends that the Spaniards were able to conquer what became Latin America primarily because they had horses. Horses, in fact, came to the Americas from Spain."

Yeah, they came with the Spaniards. Hello. And they printed this. Brokeback Mountain is not an hispanic gay movie. And something tells me they don't want it to be either. It's a film about uncommon love. And it happens between two unlikely characters. It's not a gay film per se as in the "gay cowboy movie" tag used to describe it quickly on TV.

This is just carping based on personal ethnic bias and an unfortunate degradation of a fine and accurate portrayal of the story. Proulx thinks so too.