Golden Globe Award Research Articles

The Business of Representing

Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market. By Katherine Sender. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 311 pages. $35.00 (cloth). The Ellis Island Snow Globe. By Erica Rand. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005. 360 pages. $22.95 (paper). In late 2005, film director Ang Lee's heavily hyped film Brokeback Mountain first screened in U.S. theaters. The film was an immediate success, garnering $32 million during the first month, winning the Golden Globe award for best picture and best screenplay, and winning the Academy Award for best director, best screenplay, and best original score. The film, based on a short story by E. Annie Proulx about two young cowboys who meet and fall in love in Wyoming in the summer of 1963, has received a great deal of attention in the popular press. Frank Rich, in the New York Times, called it "a landmark in the troubled history of America's relationship to homosexuality."1 In Newsweek, reporter Sean Smith waxed passionately about the film, stating, "No American film before has portrayed love between two men as something this pure and sacred. As such, it has the potential to change the national conversation and to challenge people's ideas about the value and validity of same-sex relationships."2 Whether the film is as important as these reviews suggest remains to be seen, but the hyperbole of the reviewers does imply that the commercial success of Brokeback Mountain is in some way indicative of the film's ability to tap in to "authentic" gay culture. Indeed, much of the critical acclaim of this film assumes somehow that the film offers transparent meaning in terms of the relationship between the two men—the reviewers' positioning of Brokeback Mountain as an important intervention within "the troubled history of America's relationship to homosexuality" or as the first film to portray "love between two men as something this pure and sacred" suggests that the film was able to access, in some way, an "authentic" gay identity (which, apparently, could be depicted only by two heterosexual actors). The film's rendering of the complexities of gay male life in the 1960s United States—and cowboys, no less— [End Page 495] has inspired film critics to assume that after years of attempts to represent gay identity within commercial culture, finally someone got it "right." This idea, that commercial products allow us a way in to deep, "authentic" sentiment or action, is certainly not new. Commercial products, such as Hollywood films, are often imbued with a sense of political urgency—indeed, the consumption of such products often stands in for political action itself. With respect to gay, lesbian, or queer identity, commercial products that carry within them or signify political statements and commitments are often seen as transparently progressive, interpellating consumers who buy and use such products as active participants in struggles over GLBTQ rights and practices. Indeed, examining the trajectory of commercial images of gays and lesbians, one can see how consumer culture has gradually shifted gay acts to gay identity; products contain the "essence" of a personal identity. It is not so much, however, that commercial products reveal identity in some authentic way, but rather that commercial products produce particular identities as real and "authentic." In two recent books, Katherine Sender's Business Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market and Erica Rand's The Ellis Island Snow Globe, both authors explore this claim of politicized commercial objects; both books detail practices in visual and commercial culture that work to discipline and classify particular individuals as gay or heterosexual "identities." As much as Brokeback Mountain (partly) subverts the myth of the American cowboy through the inclusion of gay identity, other commercial forms such as advertising and souvenirs offer an opportunity to reflect on how the boundaries of consumer culture are policed and monitored in terms of sexuality. Each author adopts a very different strategy for presenting her arguments, and while both are concerned with consumer culture, they look...

Peter Kellaway, PhD (1920–2003)

Peter Kellaway, renowned neurophysiologist and epileptologist, died June 25, 2003 in Houston, Texas, from complications of lymphoma, a disorder that he had battled for more than a decade. He was 82-years-old and had worked actively until his death. Dr. Kellaway was a pioneering clinical neurophysiologist and clinical investigator in the field of pediatric epilepsy. FIGURE Peter Kellaway Peter was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the son of Cecil Kellaway, a stage and film actor, who was nominated twice for Academy Awards and won a Golden Globe award. As a child, Peter traveled extensively with his family, eventually settling in southern California. He attended Occidental College, earning bachelor and master degrees, and then moved to Montreal, Canada. There he worked with Herbert Jasper and received a doctorate degree in neurophysiology in 1947 from McGill University. In 1948, after a year on the faculty at McGill and the Montreal Neurologic Institute, Peter accepted a position at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, first in the Department of Physiology and later in the Department of Neurology. He founded and served as Head of the Section of Neurophysiology until 1998. He …

Remaking Medieval Heroism: Nationalism and Sexuality in Braveheart

Mel Gibson's movie Braveheart tells the story of the life of William Wallace, one of Scodand's great national heroes. Originally released in the late spring of 1995, the film received predominandy glowing reviews, and later in the year enjoyed a second run in theatres as Paramount Studios began marketing the film for consideration in the many end-of-the-year awards shows. Early in 1996 Mel Gibson was honoured at the Golden Globe Awards as the year's Best Director, and in March of the same year, Braveheart won five Academy Awards, including another Best Director award for Gibson as well as the award for Best Motion Picture of the Year.