Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on September 07, 2006, 04:02:09 pm ---My favorite example is Old Man Twist. Just as you note in the paragraph about Ennis, you form an impression of him and then discover something significant and apparently contradictory about him practically as an afterthought. You get that OMT is a jerk, but only later do you notice, wait a minute, he's a jerk but he's not an overtly homophobic jerk.
--- End quote ---
Really? How so? Not looking to argue here, but, tell you what, I never noticed this, and I'd be interested in knowing what detail of dialogue or behavior leads you to conclude this.
Thanks!
moremojo:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 07, 2006, 04:12:47 pm ---Really? How so? Not looking to argue here, but, tell you what, I never noticed this, and I'd be interested in knowing what detail of dialogue or behavior leads you to conclude this.
Thanks!
--- End quote ---
I don't mean to preempt Katherine's own response, but I happen to agree with her, and here is the reason why: Mr. Twist accepts Ennis into his home. He addresses him; not in a friendly fashion, to be sure, but he acknowledges his presence, and speaks to him as one man to another. He allows Ennis to depart the house with Jack's shirt (and God knows what else Ennis might have had under there, as far as the Twists knew--they only saw Jack's blue shirt bundled up in Ennis's hands). And all this transpires with Mr. Twist's awareness that Ennis had been his son's lover. Any virulently homophobic person probably wouldn't even done half these things; they might well have run for their gun when someone they knew to be a "queer" stepped towards their door. Mr. Twist is a hateful man, and is homophobic, but he also somehow manages to treat Ennis with a modicum of decorum. He certainly seems less virulent in his homophobia than, say, Ennis's father had been.
My apologies to you both, Jeff and Katherine, for stepping on any toes with my response. Katherine, please respond as you see fit to Jeff's inquiry, if it pleases you.
In the spirit of sharing,
Scott
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 07, 2006, 04:12:47 pm ---I'd be interested in knowing what detail of dialogue or behavior leads you to conclude this.
--- End quote ---
My pleasure, Jeff! It took me a long time to come to this conclusion, myself. The scene is very subtle and potentially misleading. Now I think it's one of the many brilliant things in the movie.
OMT clearly knows Jack was gay ("Tell you what, I know where Brokeback Mountain is"), but he never says anything specifically negative about that. The key part is when he talks about how Jack always used to say he was gonna bring Ennis del Mar up and lick this damn ranch into shape. "He had some half-baked notion the two of you was going to move up here, build a cabin, help run the place. ... He's going to split with his wife and come back here." But, he complains sarcastically, Jack's ideas "never come to pass."
So what is he objecting to? The prospect of Jack leaving his wife for another man? Nope. He seems to have no big problem with that. His main complaint is that Jack didn't follow through with the plan. (Probably he actually could use the help). OMT calls Jack's notion half-baked, which it sort of was. But he doesn't say it's immoral or wrong or shameful or anything like that. He taunts Ennis with the news of the "other fella," yet says nothing really homophobic there, either. Even his understanding that this info will hurt Ennis implies, in a perverse way, his calm acknowledgement of their sexuality. He never says anything that he might not just as easily say if everyone involved were straight.
I love this, because both we viewers and Ennis are led to expect from the get-go that OMT will be homophobic. After all, though Ennis' dad was the worst kind of homophobe, he was otherwise a respectable guy in Ennis' eyes (fine roper, "he was right," etc.). Jack always unequivocally described OMT as a bad dad -- never taught Jack a thing, never went to see him ride, can't be pleased, no way. So here's a gay man's dad, an older Western rancher, known to be an asshole -- just imagine what a homophobe HE must be. But ... surprise!
My take on it is that this scene has multiple purposes. It's another case in which you can't judge characters by appearance. It helps explain why Jack had a healthier attitude about his sexuality than Ennis did.
Most importantly, it shows Ennis that he's been wrong all these years. He has never met anyone in his life, probably, who isn't homophobic, as far as he knows. He assumes everyone is -- assumes, in fact, that they're "right," it's just a law of the universe that homosexuality is bad. Yet here is evidence that his fears were overblown and his assumptions incorrect.
BTW, the most potentially convincing counterargument to this interpretation is OMT's emphasis on Jack's going into "the family plot." For a long time, I took that to be an allusion to "family values," with OMT saying Jack had violated them by being gay. But someone else who agreed with my interpretation of OMT theorized that it's actually a slap at Ennis -- Ennis disappointed Jack and therefore doesn't deserve the ashes. In other words, Jack's ashes belong with his parents, his family, not with the guy who consistently refused to create a family with Jack.
Scott, I was just about to post this when I saw your post. I agree with you, and our answers don't even really overlap! I'm glad to see more support for the idea. Thanks!
:)
Front-Ranger:
There's little that I can think of to add to this, but I'll try to add on a little something in the spirit of Mel's title to the post. A useful tool that writers often employ is The Old Man (TOM) who appears near the end or somewhere in the middle of the story and tells a parallel story or some piece of puzzling information and you're supposed to put that together with the main story and derive a new meaning from it. Another Western writer who does this besides AP is Cormac McCarthy (I wonder if there are any other fans of his writing around here?). So, I am thinking maybe TOM in this story is OMT, it seems so the way he delivers his lines with such gravitas. Also, I'm not going to go so far as some people and say that he is gay, but I think that Uncle Harold might have been, that he was a younger brother of OMT, and that's what OMT means when he says "I know where Brokeback Mountain is." (See, Harold, or "Hal" as I like to call him, went up on BBM 20 years ago with Joe Aguirre...STOP LEE!! [slaps self]) Anyhow, what was I saying? I shouldn't even be in the ROOM with you guys, I'll just wander away blathering to myself now....
Jeff Wrangler:
Thanks, Katherine--and Scott, too!
Can't say as I agree with that other writer's point about the refusal to let Ennis scatter Jack's ashes as a slap at Ennis. I don't see that as having anything to do with family values, either.
I'm comfortable with my understanding, going all the way back to 1997, that the refusal to honor Jack's clearly stated wishes and allow his ashes to be scattered on Brokeback Mountain is just that hateful and hate-filled old man's final assertion of power over the son he despised.
The unanswerable, or unresolvable, question is, do we take John Twist at his word, and assume he despised his son for being a dreamer who never followed through, or are his comments merely a veil to conceal that he really despised his son because his son was "queer"?
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