Boondocks on "brokeback"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jan 24, 2006, at 8:42 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

>> The full name is, after all, "Brokeback Mountain." It is not
>> uncommon for
>> topographical names to have "negative polarity" not is it uncommon
>> for movies to
>> contain words with "negative polarity."
>>
>> I do find the film was a bit daring in selecting a title that is
>> so close to
>> "Bareback," given that that is a euphemism for unprotected anal
>> sexual
>> intercourse that is well known in American culture
>
> I wonder if Annie Proulx, the author of the eponymous novella on
> which it's based, was aware of that term.  Also, am I right in
> (vaguely) recalling that the mountain name is real?

it's a natural name for a two-peaked mountain.  like the one in the
movie.

i'm away from my atlases, and can't find usable sources on-line, so i
can't say anything on the existence of a real Brokeback Mountain, in
Wyoming or elsewhere.

in any case, i suspect that it never occurred to Proulx to connect
"brokeback" to "bareback" in the sexual sense (if she even knew the
sexual sense when she wrote the story).

>> In a message dated 1/24/06 7:20:53 AM, hwgray at GMAIL.COM writes:
>>
>>>  IMO, the latter use of "brokeback" has been extracted from the
>>> phrase,
>>>  _ADJ as a brokeback mule_, a very common BE expression.probably two
>>>  days older than water. I was a bit taken aback when I first learned
>>>  that there was a movie entitled "Brokeback" anything, given the
>>> total
>>>  negative polarity of the BE term, which is sometimes dysphemized as
>>>  "brokedick."
>>>
>>>  -Wilson

well, we all have our different experiences with vocabulary items.  i
knew this sense of "brokeback" but had no strongly negative
associations to the word.  i understood it literally as 'with a broke
(n) back', which in many contexts is not a good thing, but isn't
*intensely* negative, and can be extended to things that merely
*look* like they have a broken back

my recollection was that i'd heard "brokeback chair" from
southerners, and maybe i did, but i get no google hits, web or
groups.  in fact, "brokeback mule" gets only one hit, in the
newsgroup alt.tasteless on 12/19/05, "I was hungover like a brokeback
mule this AM".

one of the early reviews of BBM -- Michael Musto in the Village
Voice, 12/12/05 -- referred to the movie as "Crouching Cowboy Hidden
Penis", my favorite of his suggestions, which also included "Bareback
Mounting" and "Eat Drink Man Man".

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org