It’s a universal love story! It’s a universal love story! It’s a…

I haven’t seen ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and I probably won’t. Not because movies about gay sex make me uncomfortable, but because movies about the outdoors make me uncomfortable. I like indoor movies. There are a lot of wilderness shots in the ‘Brokeback Mountain’ trailer. So it’s a pass for me.

Nonetheless, the press coverage of the film really is fascinating. Every single review I’ve seen goes out of its way to characterize it as a universal love story with characters that just happen to be gay. Consider the LAT lede:

“Brokeback Mountain” is a groundbreaking film because it isn’t. It’s a deeply felt, emotional love story that deals with the uncharted, mysterious ways of the human heart just as so many mainstream films have before it. The two lovers here just happen to be men.

Here’s the NYT:

Yet “Brokeback Mountain” is ultimately not about sex (there is very little of it in the film) but about love: love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully in the heart.

More of the same in Premiere, EW, etc. And, as reported in the LAT‘s Oscarbeat blog at TheEnvelope.com, Focus Features is making sure to remind Academy voters that ‘Brokeback’ is about love, a love that just happens to be between two cowboys. Here’s a particularly non-gay ad Focus ran a few days ago in the trades:

Nice photo! And it’s even indoors. Maybe I’ll see ‘Brokeback’ after all.

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