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

A Ninth Viewing Observation

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ednbarby:

--- Quote from: latjoreme on June 05, 2006, 02:52:09 pm ---Well, it's a lot to expect for all of society to appreciate him as much as you do!  ;)  :-*
--- End quote ---

LOL!  I think that's precisely my problem - I expect way too much of society.

Front-Ranger:
Wooah, Front-Ranger. Sometimes I get a little too carried away. I did not mean to say y'all were maligning Jack. I know you love him. I just meant to say that the idea that Jack is a no-good, clumsy, rodeo f**k-up is presented in the surface of the story, but if you look deeper, Jack is maligned not because of his inability but because he is different and people sense that difference and react with hostility.

Those were great quotes you cited and very convincing goadra! You have really added to this discussion.

But I have to mildly disagree with you Katharine on everybody liking Jack. The list of people who did not like Jack is long. And even his wife just used him as an escape from her dad, didn't speak well of him after he died, and treated him like an accessory. She didn't speak up for him when others called him a pissant in her presence. Ennis expected Jack to do all the work of keeping the relationship going and wouldn't even consider Jack's offer to buy a ranch for them to live in.

serious crayons:
I love this thread, because there's no real topic to go on or off of. Or is there? Come to think of it, I can't even remember what the original 9th viewing observation was (and I think I'm on my 12th).

I have to mildly disagree with you right back, Lee.  :)  Jack seems way too likeable a guy for many people to dislike him. In any case, I see Lureen differently from you. I think she loves him and does the best she can for him -- except in the pissant scene, which, now that you mention it I've never really understood.

And I really see Ennis differently. I think Ennis does his best to keep the relationship going. In objective terms it's less than Jack does, but from Ennis' perspective he takes on a lot of risk and inner conflict to be with Jack. And the reason he refuses to consider Jack's ranch proposal isn't because he doesn't like Jack!

You know, today I've been bouncing between this thread and some of the Jack/Ennis Jake/Heath polls. I have always been convinced that one's preference of cowboy really shapes the way one interprets and responds to the movie. Anybody else agree with this?

nakymaton:

--- Quote from: latjoreme on June 05, 2006, 03:48:11 pm ---In any case, I see Lureen differently from you. I think she loves him and does the best she can for him -- except in the pissant scene, which, now that you mention it I've never really understood.
--- End quote ---

I think Lureen looks like the "pissant" comment bothers her, actually. Whether that's because she's frustrated that her handsome romantic bull-riding cowboy isn't what he seemed that day at the rodeo, or whether she's annoyed that their customers are dissing Jack and she can't really tell them off when she wants them to buy farm equipment, I don't know. But she doesn't seem happy about it.


--- Quote ---You know, today I've been bouncing between this thread and some of the Jack/Ennis Jake/Heath polls. I have always been convinced that one's preference of cowboy really shapes the way one interprets and responds to the movie. Anybody else agree with this?

--- End quote ---

I think there's some of that going on. (But what about people who like the dynamic between the two of them more that liking either one individually? I think that's where I stand.) I should go back and post in the Jack/Ennis poll thread. I voted, and read the thread, but have been trying to figure out my answer for a couple days.

ednbarby:

--- Quote ---I love this thread, because there's no real topic to go on or off of. Or is there? Come to think of it, I can't even remember what the original 9th viewing observation was (and I think I'm on my 12th).
--- End quote ---

Actually, we are sort of staying on topic in this particular branch of the discussion, because my ninth viewing observation was that Jack ashed himself at the dance after he caught Randall eyeballing him at the table and while Lureen was saying "Husbands... don't never seem to wanna dance with their wives..."

But even if we weren't, I have no problem with my thread going off in other directions.  That's what keeps it lively, and I'm all about keeping things lively.

I actually am in the camp that thinks Lureen loved Jack.  I just don't think she loved him *unconditionally* like his mother and Ennis did.  It may not even be a matter of not loving him unconditionally so much as not fully knowing and understanding him like those two did.

And I find her not speaking well of him after his death as being out of the bitterness of realizing fully that the marriage was a charade and that he couldn't possibly have loved her like she loved him.  I totally believe she knew how and why he died - Anne Hathaway has all but said this.  She didn't know until the phone call that Ennis was the love of his life, but she knew there were others and that they weren't women.  But the fact that she suggests that he go to Lightning Flat is *huge*, especially considering that in the short story we learn that Jack never once took her up there to meet them.  The unselfishness of that gesture is astonishing, and to me it has to be borne from love.

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