Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
I just realised why Cowboys don't dance with their wives!
Kd5000:
Maybe she found his initial shyness, "what are you waiting for cowboy, a mating call" a novelty. He's so sweet for a cowboy, isn't an "animal" at all.
The only time they are shown being intimidate is when she is taking off her clothes faster then he is in the back seat. Jack is just going along for the "ride." It's hard to turn "money" down when it's being handed to you and you have nuthin, made $2,000 in a year, nearly starved, paraphrasing Mr. Twist.
However in this social scenario at the dance, she has to revert back to more traditional roles, waiting for her husband to invite her to dance. Looks tacky in front of Randall and his wife for Lureen to say "get up Cowboy, let go dancing."
Why didn't you think she ever asked for a divorce ??? I mean in the early 1980's, it was more socially acceptable to get divorced then say the early 1960's. What was she getting out of the relationship? Was Jack playing MR MOM and jr business partner as salesman? It seems that way.. The only inconvenience was when he took off for a weeks to go away to the Big Horns with his hunting/fishin buddy and she kept him on a short leash as well, wanted him back in a week or say to do the combo ag sales.
I wonder how many "friends" Jack had that he kept in his head. Was she that detached from his life that she never wanted to meet them. Certainly, she knew Randall. :) Of course, I presume Lureen might have thought her husband suffered from impotency after the intial "honeymoon" and just accepted it. Don't know how common it was back then for women to suspect that "I think he might be gay" thing. It seems much more so nowadays, not as farfetched as it was back then.
ednbarby:
I can see Lureen not asking for a divorce (and that's only as far as we know) for a few reasons:
1. To have a husband who is kind to you, takes care of your son so you can work, takes you out now and again and helps you entertain at home, doesn't give you any headaches other than losing a parka here or there or disappearing for a week or two at a time a couple times a year, not to mention handsome and charming, would be a blessing to many women, in spite of the lack of interest in having sex regularly with you.
2. She didn't want to look like a failure in her social circle. Divorce still wasn't all that common in the early 80s, though it was starting to be.
3. She loved him. And being with the man she loved even though she suspected or knew he didn't love her back was better to her than being alone.
YaadPyar:
Great thread Ray - thanks for getting it started. I'm not sure I understand all the hostility toward Lureen. She is not someone who tried to rope a gay man into an unsatisfactory marriage, and then kept him twisting away there for her own amusement. And maybe her daddy had money, but she and her family were just a product of their world and times like Alma and Ennis and Jack.
Why is Lureen a villian? I can only see her as hardened and disappointed. When she is young, she is exhuberant, full of all the promise of being brought up indulged and certain that you're a princess. And when reality hits, she seems to makes the best of what she can. Her daddy hates Jack, but she sticks with him. Nothing in the movie indicates that she chose Jack to teach her Dad a lesson; she and Daddy seem farily devoted to each other. But she stays with him, even as the reality of all he'll never be unfolds in their relationship. Jack himself never speaks ill of her or complains. He's just sort of detached about who she becomes, which he's had a huge part in creating.
I can't really buy that she's a 'slut', which seems always a word that's used as a weapon against women. I think she's just used to indulging her pleasures as she wishes, without considering the potential consequences. She and Jack are young, and lots of young folks (and not so young) fall into that trap all the time.
Neither Alma nor Lureen are deeply insightful women, and they bring very typical and traditional expectations to marriage. And it's as it should be, or they would never be able to sustain relationships with men who are so deeply ambivalent about their marriages. If I had seen my husband kiss another (especially a man), I could not leave it be to some place of painful silence. Another kind of woman wouldn't be able to survive in such a marriage, and indeed, even Alma can't.
But I don't see how any of that makes Lureen a villian. Jack was an equal part of their marriage, and Ennis part of his. We don't get to make one of the characters a villian and another a hero here, and I think that's what Annie Proulx did so beautifully in this story - show us that Brokeback Mountain broke EVERYONE. That Jack and Ennis couldn't find a way to be together is tragic. But it wasn't Alma or Lureen who kept that from happening. It was fear. That's the tragedy...what fear destroys, not what Lureen Newsome did to Jack, but what fear did to Ennis before Jack ever met her...
Lumière:
Re: Lureen divorcing Jack:
There are 2 people who would've been more interested in the divorce than Lureen: Jack and LD Newsome.
Lureen was a Southern woman who would've cared alot about keeping up appearances in her social circles.
I mean, being married to Jack was probably not that bad, inspite of his fishing trips with his best buddy, his drinking and his little interest in sex with her.. :-\. That said, I think that even if Lureen knew about Jack's 'escapades', she probably went along with it because he didn't rub it in her face and never asked her for a divorce or left her for that matter.
Ennis' call on that fateful day was what took the wool out of her eyes.
Meryl:
Great discussion, Ray, and Celeste, I agree with your many well-made points.
I think above all that Jack and Lureen were good friends. They made a life together, worked together and supported each other. Maybe passion wasn't in it, but there was real regard and loyalty there nonetheless.
No one so far has addressed the Accident/Murder question. If it was murder, it was possible Lureen already knew about Jack's homosexuality, since it might have come out that it was a gay bashing. Perhaps she hadn't yet put two and two together about the fishin' buddy until Ennis mentioned Brokeback, though. What I love about this scene is how many different interpretations it can take and still make sense.
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