How would different audiences respond to Brokeback Mountain?

Introduction:

• Different groups and spectators will adapt to a variety of readings of the film Brokeback Mountain. Extra-textual influences will force the spectator to align with and feel allegiance to particular characters or absence of characters within the film. 
• This may result in preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings of the film. 
• Stuart Hall - "the way the text is received, rather than the text itself"

Paragraph one: preferred reading: 

• Taking an intended reading of the film; agreeing with ALL of the messages encoded into the text
• Queer Gaze: Empathy = central imagining - extra textual - based on similar experiences - Sex scene with Ennis and wife - insinuates anal sex with wife - empathy to the coming out process and oppression / having to hide true self - heterosexual spectators may not align with Ennis lack of emotional connection to family due to lack of extra textual background. 
• Rucus - Ennis is the male dominant - Jack is the female, adapting to the stereotypical housewife role = heterosexual relationship structure
• Butler - performance of gender - in film, a homosexual couple must match the heterosexual relationship roles or their will be gender trouble - Jack's wife is the dominant/breadwinner = gender trouble - "This ain't our fault" enforcing the theory that homosexuality is not a choice - they are oppressed by society - homosexual audience may align and feel alliegance more so here than a heterosexual audience. Although a hetereosexual audience may align with Ennis and Jack, they will not feel allegiance and central imagining due to the lack of experience in this sexuality. 

Paragraph two: Negotiated reading:

• The viewer identifies with most of the meanings encoded within the text but does not agree with all of the messages 
• Female oppression 
• Kaplan - having to make a conscious decision to look through the eyes of the female in film - Sex scene with Ennis and wife - insinuates anal sex = woman has no say = male dominance and power - woman may sympathise with wives as they know that the husbands are homosexual = dramatic irony = women have no say even in a homosexual relationship 
• Jack's wife is the worker/breadwinner = against stereotypical values of Mulvey 
• Freud - family abandonment, absence of father figure when younger = search for male companion? - Ennis' children are a constant reminder that he cannot be with the one he loves. 
• A woman may sympathise with Ennis and Jack more due to having an oppressed past. Especially as the film was set in the 1950s, where women were also oppressed. However, a woman may also sympathise with the wives in the film, and lack of other female characters. - Story of Earl and Rich - castration due to sexuality and female absence - father made Ennis see as a warning = Freud / damaged past. Abused childhood = fight with jack = installed from a young age 
• Mulvey - Ennis = masculine, strong build to reinforce heterosexual relationships into the film = men may align with Ennis due to this. "No ones eating unless you're serving it" said by Ennis to wife = heterosexual relationship stereotypes, still oppressed woman = link to Butler's gender trouble / hetereosexual relationship in order for it to work - Jack cooks for Ennis.