Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
milomorris:
--- Quote from: x-man on September 23, 2013, 09:45:52 am ---Ennis and Jack were 19 when they began, 39 when Jack died. Except for the first summer and their deepening love for each other, they had to "make it on a couple of high-altitude fucks once or twice a year." When Jack died they were only 39, but Ennis faced a meaningless future, his life was going nowhere, and with all his hangups his prospects of finding a new Jack were remote indeed. Ennis did not lack "wisdom" to "stand it:" Given his whole being, he could do no other, except perhaps to sink into absolute despair. He really was doing the best he could. (And I will not comment on another man's courage.)
--- End quote ---
We're looking at different points in the BBM story, and talking past each other. When I refer to Ennis lacking the "wisdom to know the difference," I'm talking about the time when Jack was still alive. Ennis couldn't see the possibility of the life Jack wanted for the two of them. Nor did he have the courage to change something that he very well could have.
And no, I don't have a problem evaluating another man based on his courage. That is one of the many factors that men use when assessing each other. And not only is it an important factor when men are building relationships between each other, but it is a key factor in the dynamic between Jack & Ennis. Jack was far less risk-averse than was Ennis. And this, IMO, contributed greatly to Jack's frustration with Ennis and their situation. This difference in courage is clearly visible during their final argument. Ennis is still at a loss for a "better idea," and Jack maintains that he had one once.
And you are right. After Jack was gone, Ennis did indeed have the wisdom to "stand it." We'll never know if the alternative of suicide ever crossed his mind, but I tend to doubt it.
x-man:
--- Quote from: milomorris on September 23, 2013, 06:58:08 pm ---Nor did he have the courage to change something that he very well could have.
And no, I don't have a problem evaluating another man based on his courage. That is one of the many factors that men use when assessing each other. And not only is it an important factor when men are building relationships between each other, but it is a key factor in the dynamic between Jack & Ennis. Jack was far less risk-averse than was Ennis. And this, IMO, contributed greatly to Jack's frustration with Ennis and their situation. This difference in courage is clearly visible during their final argument. Ennis is still at a loss for a "better idea," and Jack maintains that he had one once.
--- End quote ---
I try to use "courage" in the way that Hemingway defines it as "grace under pressure," NOT as successfully triumphing over everything in ones psychological makeup. To ask courage of Ennis, as you seem to use the word, is to ask the superhuman. You and I actually do not disagree about much at all here, but where we do is the core of my argument--that Ennis was doing the best he could while the dark forces that shaped his personality simply would not permit him to act otherwise.
Yours is a very existentialist understanding of the world. It seems to be, formally put, that "existence precedes essence." This is just a way of summarizing the idea that we are free to act any way we want to in the world, and only later after looking at the pattern of our behaviour, do we come to some conclusions about human nature. In the case we are talking about here, like everyone, Ennis is free to act in total freedom, to choose to do anything he wants to do, however unique or novel. Indeed existentialist writers go on to speak of our being condemned to be free, that we must act freely, and we do not have the luxury of pointing to a nonexistent human nature as an excuse not to act. They would tell Ennis he is a coward in not acting to "fix" his situation with Jack. All he has to do is go ahead and act; everything he has done or not done before does not count. So, to be courageous, Ennis could simply choose, if only he really wanted, to settle down and live openly with Jack. This is an appealing and at first liberating way of looking at the world. But I don't think the world and our actions within it are as Camus and Sartre would have us believe. To a great extent we are prisoners of our own worldviews, and our choices are limited. Courage--grace under pressure--is our acting valiantly within that worldview. This may not be as optimistic, but I think it more accurately describes the world as it really is.
"Come on, Jack, lighten up on me," Ennis pleads. And Jack did seem to realize Ennis' plight: After the final argument, and Ennis had fallen on his knees and he was embraced by Jack (to mix story with movie) "...somehow...they torqued things to almost where they had been, for what was said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved." As much as the blows in the final argument hurt, they were on one level an exercise in button-pushing on both sides. I believe Jack knew this, and he never "quit" Ennis as another topic site suggests he did. Jack accepted in Ennis what he could not change, his comments to his father about Randall not withstanding. Even the night before the final argument Jack already knew the way things would always be between them and was reluctantly content. Jack said, The truth is, sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it."
It is in the face of this way of looking at things that I wrote that I will not evaluate another man's courage. Where you say "courage" I would say "seeing things as clearly as one possibly can, and then to act bravely." The degree to which a person can do that we can legitimately look to in evaluating them. I say again that Ennis was acting as bravely as he could--and so was Jack. Jack's advantage was that he could see more clearly than Ennis. Shawn Kirchner's BBM song illustrates this, having Jack sing to Ennis "You can't see in your shadows what I can see in the sun." Ennis did not "choose" to be in the shadows. The anguish in his face in the final argument tells us he would join Jack in the sun if only he could.
Ennis is the tragic figure in BBM. However valiantly, he struggled against forces stronger than his own. The limited forces he could marshal were just not enough, and he was to remain "nothing and nowhere." Please do not judge him too harshly. Ennis was simply not free to "choose" to be rid of his emotional baggage and the way it dragged him down. None of us are.
Front-Ranger:
Very thoughtful points, milo and x-man. What is courage anyway? In this story, Jack might be thought to be the courageous one, although perhaps he was just more headstrong and impetuous. Ennis may be thought to be the cowardly one, although he was perhaps more circumspect and with more modest ambitions. His rodeo career was cut short the first time he was thrown from a bronc, but Jack got back on the bull time after time until he was literally brokeback (with two busted "vertebrates"). Stand it, or fix it, both require courage, I feel. In the end, I think that's why Ennis, standing before the closet altar and the entwined shirts, uttered the oath "Jack, I swear..." :'(
serious crayons:
Interesting conversation, Milo and x-man! And x-man, that's one of the deepest analyses of the psychology behind Ennis' predicament I've seen, and that's saying a lot (having spent about two years discussing every imaginable facet of the film, or so I thought, in minute detail, with some brilliant posters).
Also, if you buy the idea that your parents largely shape your adult character and outlook (which in real life I don't, but that's irrelevant here, in any case it's a venerable tradition in literature, if nothing else because it serves as a convenient and powerful way to represent a character's formative experiences of the world), then Jack and Ennis were raised to be very different people. Ennis' upbringing taught him that homosexuality was the ultimate shameful transgression, an offense so great it justified death by torture. Whereas Jack's parents, at least in the movie, tacitly acknowledged their son's sexual orientation and tolerated it. Contrary to some assumptions based on his off-putting personality, Old Man Twist isn't particularly homophobic. He knows where Brokeback Mountain is all right, but is disappointed in his son for failing to move back to help with the ranch -- even if it meant leaving his wife for a male partner!
Ennis grew up in terror of giving away any clue about his sexuality. Jack grew up not worrying about that so much. Their relative views of the world's rules and dangers were shaped accordingly.
So if Ennis and Jack had done the exact same thing (moved in together for the sweet life) it would have required a lot more courage on Ennis' part than Jack's.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on September 27, 2013, 01:13:37 pm ---Contrary to some assumptions based on his off-putting personality, Old Man Twist isn't particularly homophobic. He knows where Brokeback Mountain is all right.
--- End quote ---
Isn't it funny? Maybe some distance was required, but it really only comes to me now that the reason I disagree with you about Old Man Twist's lack of homophobia is because when I hear him say that he knows where Brokeback Mountain is, I hear the same contempt in his voice that I hear in Ennis's when he tells Jack that he knows what they've got in Mexico for boys like Jack. In other words, it's not what he says, or what he doesn't say, but the way he says what he does say. I know homophobia--hatred and contempt for "queers"--when I hear it.
But let be, let be. We both know by now we're not going to change each other's mind on this point. :)
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