Thanks brokeplex!
You say: As a Gay man, I would have been pluperfectly pissed off at Jack.
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Since I am perplexed by your sentence, please explain further? Is it that you would like to be in Jack's shoes,
being him in the movie??
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You say also: But then I would have set different working conditions right from the start.
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Which ones may I ask?
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And I am asking or stating: Is Aquirre really anti-gay??
Hugs!
Artiste, if I were the owner of the sheep operation I would have been pissed off at Jack whether I was gay or not because he was not doing what I told him he needed to do in order to
secure an adequate return on my investment. It is clear in the movie that Aguirre is repelled when he sees the boys "lusting in the dust". This is evidence that like most other straight men of the period, he would be by today's standards homophobic. What I was trying to point out in the above post is that Aguirre had
other reasons as well to dislike Jack. I would have also been displeased with Jack even if I didn't care if he and Ennis had "nookies" with each other. But unlike Aguirre I would not have been shy about chewing him out for his negligence right then and there.
Different working conditions :
1) I would have set a different base pay scale for the herder and the camp tender. I would have paid the herder more money because the herder has more direct control over my substantial investment in the sheep.
2) I would have offered incentives in the form of bonuses for the herder for a return of higher numbers of sheep after shovedown. If the numbers of sheep who survived the summer fell below an acceptable level I would have forced penalties in the form of deductions from the herders pay. All on a graduated scale, based on what returns the sheep operation needed to please the investors. Both boys would understand that the care and feeding of the horses and mules was their responsibility and failure to do so would result in pay deductions.
3) I would have made certain that the boys had good up to date equipment and plentiful free food, the whiskey ration I would cut back. But I would give them lanterns, and transistor radios (1963 technology), and reading materials. (in Ennis's case that would be ranch equipment catalogs)
4) I would have made certain that the boys knew that their job was on an indeterminate timeline. If it turned cold early in Aug, they would know I would want them to start shovedown.
5) A surrogate or myself would have made more frequent inspections, including going up to the grazing area to work along the herder at least once per month.
Is Aguirre anti-gay? By todays standards of course he is homophobic. He wouldn't have even used the term gay to describe Jack and Ennis's actions, he just would have considered them to be "perverted".
