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

TOTW 05/09: Things that made you go "hunh?"

<< < (8/19) > >>

SFEnnisSF:

--- Quote from: LauraGigs on July 27, 2009, 02:13:02 pm ---Well, Annie Proulx said that when she was interviewing a ranch foreman/herder boss, he said something like "we send two up together so they can poke each other when it gets lonely".  (Although I wonder if he was exaggerating/embellishing that for her, since she was angling for info about rural homoeroticism... but that's another conversation.)  In such isolated male-only work environments, quick mutual "relief" may not have been such an anomaly. But Aguirre was still disapproving in this case, since J + E's romantic horseplay went far beyond that.

How would Aguirre know or have that terminology?  In the manual-labor world, guys can jabber on all day while working (such as Timmy the Asphalt Guy) and every conceivable subject comes up...   Ennis later says "I hear what they have in Mexico for boys like you".  Same deal.

--- End quote ---


I still find it facinating that these "straight men" have such common terminology for all of these "things" and that they are so common (and obviously going on quite a bit) that everyone knows what the terminology is and what they're talking about.  They just can't actually call it what it is.. Seems ok to do it and acknolwedge that it all goes on, and have slang terms for it all, but don't ever talk about it...

SFEnnisSF:
To this day, I still don't fully understand the scene with Jimbo in the bar.  I'm not sure I ever will either...  :laugh:

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: sfericsf on July 27, 2009, 08:30:51 pm ---To this day, I still don't fully understand the scene with Jimbo in the bar.  I'm not sure I ever will either...  :laugh:

--- End quote ---

I think the problem with that scene might be insufficient context. I believe I understand what it's supposed to represent--Jack reaching out to another guy. But I don't think it portrays very well what I think it's supposed to portray (sorry, Ang Lee fans. ...). Jack's offer to buy Jimbo a drink doesn't come off to me as being particularly like a come-on, and Jimbo's reaction has always struck me as hostile out of all proportion. Perhaps if the camera had lingered a bit longer on the guys Jimbo goes to join, or showed them looking at Jack in a not particularly friendly way, but it really doesn't.  :-\

serious crayons:
I think that scene is supposed to be a little ambiguous, but it doesn't seem completely confusing. Jack's lingering eye contact with Jimbo is supposed to indicate that he's offering something more than just a friendly drink. And Jimbo gets disproportionately hostile because either he's straight and is disproportionately threatened in the way some straight guys are by that kind of thing, or he's gay (some have argued) and feels he's being outed.

As for the guys at the pool table, though -- are they talking about Jack or not? -- I think we're supposed to be unsure about that, just as Jack would be at the time, just as Ennis is at the end about Jack's fate. The idea is that, in that culture, guys like Jack and Ennis would never know exactly what the people on the pavement were saying and thinking. But Jack leaves hastily in any case, either out of frustration or a sense of potential danger.

Mandy21:
The part I didn't understand was Ang's vision of how Jake G. should look into the eyes of his other lovers, and potential lovers, over the years.  If you were to capture the exact seconds where we saw Jack look into the eyes of the rodeo clown, and into the eyes of Lureen in the back seat, and into the eyes of the Mexican lover (the cinematographer, it turns out), and in to the eyes of Randall, it always seemed to me to be much more pressing than the way he looked at Ennis.  I like to tell myself that it was a question of love (Ennis) vs. lust (all the others), but he also lusted after Ennis, so how do you explain the difference in Jack's gaze towards all of his lovers?  What are we supposed to take from that?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page