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

symbols that are different in the story vs the movie

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nakymaton:
Ok, yeah, so I know I'm the biggest symbolism-basher on the entire board, just about. But I was quoting a story passage in another thread, and it struck me that, although there are symbols that are used the same way in both the story and the movie, there are some things that are used very differently.

Take beans, for instance.

So in the movie, "beans" become a sort of symbol for the things that Ennis is willing to live with, but Jack won't.

But in the story?

Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking about getting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.

Alma was saying something about taking his friend to the Knife & Fork for supper instead of cooking it was so hot, if they could get a baby-sitter, but Ennis said more likely he'd just go out with Jack and get drunk. Jack was not a restaurant type, he said, thinking of the dirty spoons sticking out of the cans of cold beans balanced on the log.

They had a high-time supper by the fire, a can of beans each, fried potatoes and a quart of whiskey on shares, sat with their backs against a log, boot soles and copper jeans rivets hot, swapping the bottle while the lavender sky emptied of color and the chill air drained down, drinking, smoking cigarettes, getting up every now and then to piss, firelight throwing a sparkle in the arched stream, tossing sticks on the fire to keep the talk going, talking horses and rodeo, roughstock events, wrecks and injuries sustained, the submarine Thresher lost two months earlier with all hands and how it must have been in the last doomed minutes, dogs each had owned and known, the draft, Jack's home ranch where his father and mother held on, Ennis's family place folded years ago after his folks died, the older brother in Signal and a married sister in Casper.

So what do the beans symbolize in the story? I mean, they scream "yo! symbolism ahoy!" to me, and I'm pretty much deaf to that sort of thing. But I can't figure out for the life of me what they represent. I mean, there they are in the scene where Ennis feels like he can paw the white out of the moon, and then Ennis thinks about the beans before the reunion, and then they are this bizarre nightmarish image that spoils the memory/dreams of Jack. So what are they? Are they, I don't know, love threatened by homophobia (represented by the spoon, of all the crazy utensils to seem threatening)? Or are they something more subtle than that?

Jeff Wrangler:
I don't have the text in front of me, so it's probably unwise to reply, but maybe it's just that they ate a lot of beans that summer, so in his memory Ennis came to associate beans with being with Jack up on Brokeback?

That's a pretty poor meal to be a high-time supper, beans and fried potatoes. Not even any bacon to go with. Or biscuits--though biscuits are mentioned elsewhere.

serious crayons:
Just thinking out loud, without actually going back and reading the whole story first, as I really should, but ... In each example, a can of bean seems connected to their relationship on Brokeback. Maybe not even their specific relationship, but maybe theirs as representing gay relationships in a larger sense.

In the third example, that relationship is in its natural context, happy and carefree.

In the second, the relationship is in conflict with society, in the form of Alma and a restaurant. It's interesting that they eat beans with a spoon, but Alma suggests going to the knife and fork, the opposite. Also I notice that she wants to go out because it's hot, but the beans themselves are cold.

In the first, of course, the threat is actual violence as the spoon transforms in a dreamlike way into a weapon.

What else I notice: The beans are always in cans. In 1 and 2, the cans are balanced on a log; in 3 the guys are sitting with their backs on a log. I have no idea what this means, if anything. It probably sounds too nitpicky. But I'm coming to believe that every word in the story, including even "the," might be more meaningful than it first appears.

Front-Ranger:
Gives new meaning to the name "Jack and the beanstalk" doesn't it?  ::) One reason why I think the symbolism evolves into something different in the movie is that Ang Lee is Asian. Thus the even more prominent use of the shirts and other clothing. And the beans. Beans are an Asian symbol of male virility. They don't have the connotation of poor people's food that they do in the U.S. Beans are eaten much more often than in the West and there are even sweets and celebratory dishes made from them.

moremojo:

--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2006, 02:31:28 pm ---That's a pretty poor meal to be a high-time supper, beans and fried potatoes.
--- End quote ---
My sense of fun must be pretty impoverished, because I could definitely see that being a "high-time supper" for me. Simple, wholesome taste, and filling. I think Ennis is a man of simple tastes himself, and doesn't require much in the way of material happiness--though I think the implication in this one instance is that the other boy's presence made this event "a high-time supper" for our respective heroes.

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