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

Life and this movie are messy

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serious crayons:

--- Quote from: fernly on July 12, 2006, 10:37:08 am ---Far as symbols go....I've heard more than one writer at readings or seminars respond to a question about a symbol by saying something like....no, in that particular case the symbol wasn't intentional, but sure it works that way and they wish they had thought of it consciously.

--- End quote ---

Exactly! It's  possible to interpet a symbol differently than the artist intended. Or see a symbol the artist didn't intend at all. Or find a symbol not consciously intended by the artist, but maybe subconsciously. In my own writing, I sometimes go back over earlier drafts and think, wait a minute! There are lots of hotels and motels here, and they change over the years in much the way the family in the story changes over the years (real example). So in subsequent drafts I might try to emphasize that by tweaking the descriptions, strengthening the connections, using hotel-related analogy in places where I might otherwise use some other kind of analogy. In that case, maybe in many uses of symbolism, the idea started out in my subconscious -- and, because that particular piece happened to be a nonfiction essay, also in real life -- but was quite consciously developed afterward.

In doing this, I would try not to make the hotels stand out so obviously that the reader gets bonked in the head with A Symbol. And symbols probably shouldn't be things dragged in from outer space that wouldn't otherwise fit  naturally into the context. Like, in Brokeback, fountain pens or champagne glasses wouldn't be good symbols (I started to say "roses," but then -- oops! they are!). To work well, symbols should be subtle, ideally entering the audience's unconscious the same way they emerged from the creator's unconscious.

But you can consciously find symbols become often they keep reappearing, or because they appear in contexts that are just slightly ... unusual. So coffee pots: Ennis is washing a coffee pot when he looks up with concern at Jack riding across the mountain. Ennis bangs on a coffee pot while Jack sings Water Walkin Jesus. Ennis sees a coffee pot and bucket when he opens the tent the morning after TS1 and looks out at his new world. Ennis says all the traveling he's done is around a coffee pot looking for the handle (colorful phrase, but strange). In the flashback, the camera pauses momentarily on a coffee pot and bucket, resting cozily side by side over the fire. In Ennis' trailer,  a coffee pot is prominently set on his stove (sort of like the big fan on his bed).

Do any of these call attention to themselves? No (except, arguably, the traveling one). Do any seem artificially inserted in the movie to Mean Something? No. What to make of the scenes where Alma suggests Jack come in for coffee and when Mrs. Twist serves Ennis coffee and even when Ennis and Alma Jr. have coffee -- are those somehow related? Who knows. Maybe. Or maybe they're there just because Wyomingians drink coffee. Really good symbols, I think, are often a bit ambiguous and arguable and even abstract.

Could all of these coffee pot images be utterly coincidental and meaningless or just there to provide continuity? Not in my view. But if you prefer to see them that way, or if they don't work for you or enhance your appreciation of the movie, feel free to ignore them!

Front-Ranger:
Hmm, I would love to read your hotel/motel piece. Is it fiction or nonfiction?

Front-Ranger:
Continuing to look at the messier elements in this story and film... Jack first brings up the stink of rotting lightning struck sheep and we're off! On the mountain that first morning, "the cold air sweetened" when the sun came up. But as the sun goes down again, Jack is bitching about the smell of the pup tent. On another night, Ennis (who is a good singer in the story, but doesn't like to sing in the movie) knows the salty words to a song, but after TS1 they were "flying in the euphoric, bitter air." The coming storm from the Pacific brings a metallic smell to the mountain, and Aguirre has a sour look for them.

In the earlier days of his married life, Ennis found the smells of milk et al comforting. But he liked even more the "faint sweetness" like grass that Jack exuded during the reunion scene. Proulx cranks up the smells to their highest during the Motel Siesta scene, even bringing in sour hay. Ennis's reaction to Jack's return "scares the piss out of" him, and Jack thinks back to Aguirre's last envious words of sweet smelling roses. Then comes the sweetest moment, when Jack tells Ennis of "the sweet life" they could have with a little cow & calf operation. But Ennis responds by telling him the horrendous story of a man he had seen who had been killed and who had no nose.

Finally, Alma finds her words and labels Jack "Nasty." Jack and Ennis continued to meet in the mountains, where the bitter juniper is crushed under their horses' hooves. Jack is bitter too, his words "I did once" are bitter and accusatory. Later, Ma Twist offers Ennis a cup of coffee (bitter) and a piece of cherry cake (sweet). He takes the coffee and spurns the cake. He is left with just the memory of a scent when he finds the shirts, although he buries his nose in their fabric. Proulx uses all the senses available to her to bring the story to life, harnessing the sweet and the sour to color the personalities, the feelings, and the motivations of the characters. The movie enlarges this theme, adding a scene at the end where Ennis breathes in the scent of Alma Jr. as he folds his daughter's sweater that she leaves behind.

Front-Ranger:
Jack is also the last to bring up olfactory issues in the movie as he wonders to Randall why a woman would want to powder her nose just before going home to go to bed. Then, Lureen's account of Jack''s death has his nose being broken by an exploding tire.

malina:
In the short story, when Ennis finds the shirts and inhales their scent:

<<He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack>>

When I first read that I didn't like the use of the word 'stink', even qualified by 'salty sweet'. I guess I would've preferred something neutral and unchallenging like 'scent' or 'smell'.

I still have trouble with it. I guess I want to be able to imagine cozying up to Jack and I don't want him to be stinky.

BUT.. I wholeheartedly applaud Annie Proulx for phrasing it like this. It's real, not a polished and stylized representation of love. It doesn't matter that I have trouble with it. The visceral quality of the messiness and smelliness is part of what brings Jack and Ennis to life.

Btw, this is off-topic but the movie and my obsession with it have made my life messier than I'd bargained for too. And.. as a very general observation.. love messes things up. Maybe all the specific messes are reflections and manifestations of that.

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