Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

Black Hats, White Hats

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Aussie Chris:

--- Quote from: TJ on May 09, 2006, 09:23:49 pm ---Person two, "Just because, no reason. I just did it."

--- End quote ---

I think you're being a little unfair here TJ.  No one here is saying things just are and for no reason.

The concept of Yin & Yang is not Chinese, only the expression is.  You yourself provided a more cowboy-like way of expressing the same concept so there's no reason it could not be applied to BBM.  We just use Y&Y because we know and understand the term, but if you want you could just as eaily replace it with Horse & Wagon and you'd have the exact same conversation.

I also think you're missing the point that a discussion on symbols does not have to be based in fact or even in reality, and you certainly don't need knowledge of the film-makers intentions to have fun with it.  Seemingly arbitrary (beyond the aesthetic) set designs, lighting, costumes and accoutrements still had to be selected by someone, and with the degree of care for everything else in this film, why not consider that hat colour was part of that plan, or that a Y&Y (make that Horse & Wagon) relationship between Jack & Ennis was the intention?

The world is far more interesting than any of us give it credit for or could comprehend - this is just one way of exploring it.

TJ:
Speaking as an American who learned how to speak an syncretic version of Western Oklahoma and Eastern Oklahoma English before I attended public school and lived around small community and rural folk and having lived in the country, rural communities and small towns, where many of the students in the public schools and in college were from the very same kinds of places, I just look at things differently and speak from my own world point of view, too.

I was a full-time public school teacher in Southwestern Kansas in a very small town where most of the students lived out in the country. I was a teacher years later in SW Missouri where many of the students lived outside of the City limits. And the next school term, I was in NE Missouri where the Junior-Senior High School was literally in the country south of a town which had around 2,000 in population.

Besides working and living on farms in Oklahoma, I have also lived on a dairy in Northern California; worked in fruit orchards and vegetable farms in Oregon.

I don't consider myself to be better than anyone else. But, as an art student who studied design and composition and and also as a person who has some experience in the theatrical arts (I was a member of the players group in college and a member of the National Honorary Dramatic Fraternity - one has to be invited to join that after one has done so much work with on-campus productions, on stage and behind the scenes), I don't see why people have to explain why an artist, aka the director, Ang Lee, had to use an Asian philosophical context as a reason why he did things a certain way or why they just came out that way.

BTW, I have directed stage plays and I even designed the scene sets, too. I just created them the way I thought would look the best from the audience POV, composition and design wise, with no thought of philosophy whatsoever.

RouxB:

--- Quote from: TJ on May 10, 2006, 03:33:19 am ---BTW, I have directed stage plays and I even designed the scene sets, too. I just created them the way I thought would look the best from the audience POV, composition and design wise, with no thought of philosophy whatsoever.

--- End quote ---

But Ang Lee is not you ???


 O0

TJ:

--- Quote from: RouxB on May 10, 2006, 03:49:27 am ---But Ang Lee is not you ???


 O0

--- End quote ---

EXACTLY! And not you, neither!

serious crayons:
TJ, if works of art -- movies, books, paintings -- never contain metaphors and subtexts and layers of meaning beneath the surface, then artists and critics and college professors have been wasting a hell of a lot of time over hundreds of years.

Many movies, probably most movies, can be fully understood just by watching what's on the screen and listening to the dialogue, just like many books don't mean much beyond the obvious words on the page. But clearly, great works of literature go a lot deeper than that. And if you refuse to acknowledge that any meaning lies beneath those superficial elements in Brokeback Mountain, IMO you're missing half the movie.

We don't know exactly what Ang Lee meant by everything -- that's the nature of metaphors and subtexts in art. They're SUPPOSED to be complex and ambiguous, not spell things out. So yeah, we're analyzing and debating and wondering. But it's beyond doubt that there's SOMETHING there, that he hopes we'll look for it and that doing so will enrich our experience.

Incidentally, there was an article on Slate around Oscar time about how costume designers like to make subtle comments on their characters through their choices of clothing colors, styles, etc. The point of the piece, in fact, was that although costume-design Oscars usually go to spectacular period pieces such as Memoirs of a Geisha, the costumers themselves actually aren't fond of those movies because, with all the historical frou-frou, there's no room for those subtle distinctions. Here's the link, if you're interested: http://www.slate.com/id/2137272/

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