Posted on 01/15/2006 11:00:14 AM PST by TFFKAMM
also, wyatt's brothers strongly object to his relationship with doc.
"it just doesn't look good wyatt--you being friends with a cold-blooded killer like holliday", or something to that effect.
Actually research says it's partly due to genetics, partly due to stuff outside genetics, like the environment of the mother's womb or environmental/social factors growing up. You can think of it as people genetically inheriting strong inclinations to be gay, and they probably will be if other conditions are just right (hormone levels in the womb, for example).
But come on, I'm sure there are plenty of gay people who end up getting married to the opposite sex and having children anyway, especially in the past when there was more pressure to do so. I don't doubt at all that the genes are still getting passed on. It's all an interesting little paradox.
the real, historical wyatt and doc were both straight. for all i know, the real curly bill was straight, too.
however, once these things get to hollywood, anything can happen.
You win. I wore out the replay button on my remote on that one.
I would also add to this precise statement that sexual love is nature's way of helping said persons stay married during the raising of those offspring. It's "God's gift to Man." Thank you. (And I'm an atheist!)
There is the Western myth as portrayed in movies, books, song etc. and then there is the western history.
The myth is much more pleasant and is part of American culture.
The reality is often extraordinarily unpleasant. Holliday was a racist, murderous hoodlum who didn't live much past his mid 30s.
I prefer the fiction of Val Kilmer in Tombstone.
My favorite romantic dramas are 'Where The Red Fern Grows', and 'Old Yeller'.
Right. I think that was her...
If I remember correctly, they were married for like 60 years or something...she was of that type of women who cropped up every now and again in the 1800s. Many of them in the U.S. went west. In Europe, they married writers and poets. Mary Shelly was another. So were the Woodhull sisters in NYC.
I want to say Barnum -- but that's probably not right. I didn't even know he made it to Tonopah (great ghost town!)
p.s.
Josie's mother would have telegraphed back after hearing news of her marriage to Earp -- "So, what was wrong with the dentist?" Meaning Holliday...
i had forgotten about holliday's racism--didn't he kill some unarmed black union soldiers at a swimming hole?
i like both val's and kirk's interpretations. they both did wonderful jobs. i saw "gunfight" in the theater when it came out in the early '50's--i was a kid, and it had tremendous power.
It was either soldiers or kids, difficult to know that kind of history. There was also another murder or two that pushed him "West."
what's so amazing about America is that people like Doc Holliday, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid (i had to include one New Yorker here) are so romanticized.
some people sure managed to get good press.
i just remembered (bringing the thread back to "brokeback" themes): i once saw an interview on tv with the actor cliff robertson, who had played cole younger in "the great northville raid" (i think it was called). Cliff claimed (and i'm honestly not making this up) that Jesse James was gay! i have never heard anyone else claim that. have you ever heard that particular claim?
What happens is people get seriously twisted up in their thinking when they start mixing the reality with the myth. Yeah, everyone likes Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid and Jesse James -- but they probably were closer in reality to gangsta rappers than the clear-eyed rugged individualist, bad boys of books, etc. However, their myths remain of value as do the fictions they inspired. I believe that westerns -- books, movies, songs, poetry -- are a unique American artform, much like jazz.
The history also remains of value for obvious reasons.
What is interesting/ironic in the Brokeback debate is that the who deal is nothing new for McMurtry who is deeply interested in the wester myth as it relates to the 20th century. Horseman, Pass By (the movie Hud) dealt with it. As did The Last Picture Show (which by the way, had an extended scene of high school boys having sex with cows)...and, of course, Lonesome Dove.
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