Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
P.O. Boxes, Mailboxes and the No. 17
nakymaton:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on February 09, 2007, 05:27:44 pm ---Now that you mention it, Mel, I have this vague memory from American History that west of the Hundredth Meridian was once considered "The Great American Desert," that is, you couldn't farm west of that line? Does that sound familiar?
--- End quote ---
*digs out copy of Cadillac Desert* Yes, that's right. Rainfall east of the Hundredth Meridian is generally more than 20 inches per year, and west of the Hundredth Meridian (until you cross the Sierras or the Cascades) it is generally less. In the arid parts of the West, the Homestead Act's 160 acre allotments were generally too dry to farm and too small to graze ("...in Utah, Wyoming, and Montana - to pick three of the colder and drier states - there was not a single quarter section on which a farmer could subsist, even with luck, without irrigation, because an unirrigated quarter section was enough land for about five cows.")
I can't find a reference to the types of crops that can be grown at different levels of rainfall. There is some corn grown out here, but I think it's grown in smaller, irrigated areas, and it's grown for people to eat. It's not like Iowa, where it rains and you can grow thousands of acres of feed corn.
I bet Annie Proulx's Red Desert book will talk about some of this history, too.
Ellemeno:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on February 09, 2007, 11:55:36 am ---Yes, and did you notice the placement of the different elements, Jeff and Katherine: the brown dirt is on the bottom, the green corn (or whatever) in the middle, and the blue sky on top--on top, Jeff! Why do you think the director had the location manager arrange them that way?? :laugh:
--- End quote ---
It feels good to laugh (lovingly) at ourselves. :) Thanks, Lee.
Cameron:
I watched again last night and I was thinking how truly pathetic Ennis looked inside the trailer at the end. Here was a person who was meant for big, wide, open spaces, like the times he looked most at peace with himself was outside with the horses and the woods and mountains.
So then at the end he was in the cramped, claustrophobic trailer, with the small window of his true world far off in the distance.
And I was thinking was the trailer meant to be the prison that his life had become, with the window showing the world that he no longer had or could have.?
Or was the window with the outdoors meant to represent hope for him, and the world that he was to return to?
Unfortunatly I tend to think that the trailer was his prison, and the world of meadows, forests and streams and elks and bears becoming more and more unobtainable to him and everyone.
nakymaton:
--- Quote from: marlb42 on February 10, 2007, 10:34:08 am ---Unfortunatly I tend to think that the trailer was his prison, and the world of meadows, forests and streams and elks and bears becoming more and more unobtainable to him and everyone.
--- End quote ---
Hmmm. But he's in a trailer by himself, with a view of open spaces around him. Yes, he's in the part of Wyoming where people live rather than high up in the mountains, but people are only visitors in the National Forest land anyway -- that's part of why it's appealing, I think, and part of why his relationship with Jack was able to flourish up there - because it wasn't part of his ordinary world.
Do you know what a true trailer-prison would look like to me? Looking out the window and seeing another trailer, and another, and another. (I'm picturing the post-Hurricane Katrina trailer parks shown in Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke, but I'm also picturing every trailer park I've ever seen.) Or a trailer park in small-town sprawl, with a gigantic Wal-mart parking lot in place of the field. THAT would be hell. No Jack, no nature, and still bone-crushing poverty.
Ennis is just in purgatory.
Cameron:
So true!!
It could be worse for Ennis if he didn't have the open space beyond the window.
Although it is so sad and scary that some want to do away with the protections for the land even the parks and forests, so that open space may not be there for long.
And yes, to me anything having to do with Wmart is true hell, I won't set foot in those places.
So I do agree, it could have been worse for Ennis, but still he does look out of place in the traier.
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