Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
TOTW 16/07: Did Alma Jr. know Ennis was gay?
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: jstephens9 on November 28, 2007, 03:03:42 pm ---I imagine Alma Jr. would have been growing up in the 70s and 80s as far as when she would have first started getting an idea of the world. I can't really imagine her having much of a concept of the word gay or how her father would have fit into it especially being that she was from Riverton, Wyoming. And it is questionable whether or not she had travelled anywhere.
--- End quote ---
If you were reading the Bird, that must have been Hotlanta in the 1970s. :D
She probably hadn't done any travelling other than Wyoming communities in the same region, such as Caspar. But I find it difficult to impossible to believe that a 19-year-old in the early 1980s would never have watched television and never heard the word "gay" used in a sexual orientation context on TV at least. Riverton might not be a metropolis, but it isn't an Amish community or a monastary. From your account, it sounds like you at least knew what the word 'gay' meant by the 1970s and I expect Alma Jr did too, even if she didn't know many details.
As the Mencken character in Inherit the Wind put it, "the virginal small-towner has been had by Marconi [radio, in the 1920s; mass media in general ] and Montgomery Ward [the spread of the consumer culture]." And this was a comment from a playwright 50 years ago.
I'm not suggesting that was very sophisticated or that she understood much about her dad's life but the days when one could assume that a small town girl was all that unaware of changes in the larger culture were long over by the early 1980s.
Artiste:
Alma jr. was intelligent and must have known that her father was bi or gay?
She did think about family life!! That is what makes me think that she knew that Ennis, her father was a bi or gay man!!
You think so too, maybe?
Hugs!
delalluvia:
I think we're giving Junior a bit too much credit. I didn't see anything particularly "intelligent" about her.
She acts like a typical teenager from a small town.
She wants to leave her mother/stepfather's home because - gasp! - they're too strict!
She thinks marrying a roughneck at the age of 19 is a good idea with a good future.
She has a poverty-stricken father ("Daddy you need to buy some more furniture"). And seeing how meanly he is living is suddenly happy that he's going to quit his sole means of income job just for her!
Ouch! How self-absorbed is that?
No, Junior isn't the sharpest pencil in the box.
Yes, I imagine there were shows from Hollywood on TV about gays by the late 70s early 80's, but I'm sure Alma and her husband did not allow them to be aired in their home. And Junior most certainly lived at home.
And honestly, does Ennis act like any of the gay stereotypes that might have been seen on TV way back when?
As for magazines and books and newspapers...let's just say Junior doesn't look like the reading type. 8)
LauraGigs:
--- Quote from: MargeInnavera ---...I find it difficult to impossible to believe that a 19-year-old in the early 1980s would never have watched television and never heard the word "gay" used in a sexual orientation context on TV at least.
--- End quote ---
I definitely agree there, Marge. But there's a huge difference between hearing gayness mentioned on the TV or by giggly highschoolers, and making the leap that your big, macho, stoic father has been faking straight since before you were born, you know?
Artiste:
It is obvious that Alma Jr. knew that her father was a bi or gay man!
She did see her father gotten hug by Jack, strongly, and heard them talk.... surely!
She has an eye, too, it seems to me? To you?
Hugs!
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