Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
trying to make sense of Jack
ednbarby:
--- Quote from: coffeecat33 on July 26, 2006, 07:08:12 pm ---I feel empathy for both Jack & Ennis. However, I have a violent physical attraction toward Jack.
p.s. Latjoreme, it's been very hot & humid here in Minnesota - approaching tropical rain forest dew points. :P
--- End quote ---
Heh heh. Welcome to my world. On both counts.
Front-Ranger:
I was watching the Ang Lee film "Ride the Devil" last night and one of the turns of plot might shed some light on Lureen and Jack. In the movie, the main character played by Tobey Maguire sort of falls into a marriage. One day the preacher and witness just show up and his best friend tells him to go for it. I think something similar also happens in "The Wedding Banquet." Lee is showing us a character who doesn't have much control over their destiny. He seems to believe that people don't have much say over their lives, that society forces us into molds that we don't fit. When you think of it, this is an Asian concept. It's the American way, particularly the Western way, for rugged individualism to be the norm, but we see in Brokeback Mountain that that is a myth. Another movie that showed this dichotomy was Tom Horn. It's not an Ang Lee film, I don't remember who made it.
dly64:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on July 28, 2006, 01:36:47 pm ---Lee is showing us a character who doesn't have much control over their destiny. He seems to believe that people don't have much say over their lives, that society forces us into molds that we don't fit. When you think of it, this is an Asian concept. It's the American way, particularly the Western way, for rugged individualism to be the norm, but we see in Brokeback Mountain that that is a myth.
--- End quote ---
Very well said. I would agree 100%. A big theme in BBM is the toll that rural homophobia takes on all those involved ... not only Jack and Ennis, but the women in their lives, their children, et.al. The pressure of societal mores and the need for self preservation cannot be minimized. Rugged individualism? As you have said … “that is a myth”.
Bucky:
As to the character that I am most like in the movie BBM it would be Jack. I have always tried to be the peace maker instead of the exploding type. I will explode if I am pushed absolutely over the edge like Jack was at the Thanksgiving dinner at his house in 1977. L. D. Newsome went way over the line and only a total saint would not have done what Jack did. In that scene in particular I always shout "go Jack go" and get a lot of satisfaction of him putting L.D. Newsome in his place.
Jack is resilient but you have to be to succeed in life. I do think though Jack became a lot more interested in Lureen when the bartender told him that her daddy had money and sold "big farm equipment such as $100,000 tractors." I think that Jack loved Lureen as much as he could love any woman. Jack by nature was sexually attracted to men not women. It took an aggressive Lureen to seduce Jack in the back seat of her car. Then Jack married Lureen and I think they became more like partners or best friends instead of lovers. Lureen kept Jack from having to make business decisions or most other decisions and allowed him to concentrate on selling combines and then to go on his yearly trips to Wyoming to "fish with Ennis" and to see his folks. It seems to me that Lureen never pushed Jack about their sex life although I know that she had to wonder why Jack didn't have the desires that most men would have for a sexy looking woman like herself. I think for almost any gay man that Lureen would have been an ideal partner. I know she would have for me because I hate "blowups" and with the exception of her father she kept Jack pretty well insulated from all the major stresses in life. This was completely different from Ennis' situation in which Alma was constantly putting pressure on Ennis first to move to town and then to take different jobs.
Front-Ranger:
We really need a poll or a test or somthun to help each of us figure out if we are more like Ennis or Jack. Well, U may have it all figured out, but I ain't yet had the opportunity. I suspect I am more like Ennis, since I can't figure myself out!!
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