Universal Relatability:
There is still a slightly more misguided aspect at play known as “universal relatability” at play with the appearance of the characters. As an author, or even a filmmaker, your goal is to create content that your intended readership or audience relates to. To be “universally relatable” means to create content that is as relatable as possible to as much of the intended readership or audience as possible. Given that Jack and Ennis’s characters, two white and seemingly straight looking men, are most relatable to those who are white and heterosexual, they therefore would appeal most to audience of such people. By having Jack and Ennis appear in such a way, Proulx shows an underlying intent to market her work towards a masculinity…show more content… Very rarely during my parents time did one find a queer character in literature or media that is not strictly gay (meaning that there was complete erasure of everything else on the queer spectrum), and very rarely did one find a person of color playing a queer character. Occasionally, but seldom, did one even find a non-straight character that was female. This trope occurs in “Brokeback” as well, with Ennis and Jack’s portrayal as white hyper-masculine cisgender men. The character’s appearances become increasingly emphasized in Brokeback’s film adaptation, in which Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal (two actors who both identify as white, heterosexual, cisgender males and have played numerous roles in heterosexual romance films) play Jack and Ennis. These actors, being well known for their work in heterosexual romance films, would undoubtedly help the film gain maximum appeal to heterosexual women. As put by John Bebe, “Perhaps the least hazardous was to develop a major motion picture out of a story about a love affair between a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy and to cast as the two male leads emerging young stars with heterosexual reputations to look after“ (Bebe, 1). From the perspective of a film producer, “least hazardous” becomes synonymous with “most profitable,” meaning to advertise in a way the
