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

Ennis and Jake are homosexuals, bi-sexuals or??

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brokebackjack:
If one uses the criteria used in RL to decide whether someone is gay or bi, they are gay. Both of them. With Ennis coming off as gay as a picnic basket.

brokebackjack:
Let me amend that:

Ennis was GAYER then a picnic basket.

whiteoutofthemoon:
Thanks for starting the new thread, sometimes its nice to just have a brand new discussion on a topic that will be discussed in film classes for years to come.

I respectfully disagree with the already posted responses here.    I do not feel that Ennis was gay, but Jack was.  First of all, what defines "gay"?   We can probably go on and on about what that is and not come to mutual agreement, but it is not simply because Ennis had sex with a man.  If that were so, then he would be straight, because he also had sex with a woman.   Similarly, Jack would also be classified as straight with that definition.

I look at it more like this:   if Ennis had not met Jack, would he have fallen for another man?   I would say no: i envision him living a long life with Alma and the kids, having grandchildren.     You can possibly argue that he would have always had repressed feelings, but then if he never acted on them nor knew what they represented, then how can you classify him as gay?   There is no indication that he was ever attracted to another man, nor that he will ever be attracted to another man in the future.   

Jack, on the other hand, is implied as having had previous relationships with men, and likely future ones as well, and even had he not met Ennis, would probably had continued such relationships.

I see his situation as having the misfortune (or fortune?) of finding his one and only soulmate out of billions, but that soulmate just happens to be a man.  And that is the tragedy of the whole story.   I personally get irritated when labels are placed on people when it's not that simple;  gay and straight are not issues of black and white but numerous shades of gray.   

ednbarby:
I disagree.  Being gay is not the act of having gay sex.  It's being attracted to members of the same sex.  Many men and women live the straight lie most of all of their lives when really they are regularly sexually attracted to members of their same sex.  Just read some of the stories here.

Just because Ennis most likely would not have acted on his attractions to men had he not met Jack when he did and been isolated with him for that summer does not make him any less gay.  Ennis is a homosexual.  His own father knew it - sensed it in him by the way he interacted with other boys and girls, the things he said, etc., as a kid.  And so he showed him and his brother what he did.  There would be no reason to show them that if he in no way suspected either of them was a homosexual.

I'll say it again:  Ennis *clearly* does not enjoy having sex with Alma.  You might argue that he doesn't love her.  But I think he does in a platonic way.  He is not attracted to her in any way, though.  He doesn't look at her, he barely kisses her (and seems to be forcing himself to), and he prefers anal sex with her.  Why?  Because he's so straight?

I think you're defining gay as what someone does instead of what someone is, which is dangerously close to the Fundamentalist point of view.

brokebackjack:
I don't like labels either, I've had more then enough stuck onto my own rump by others.

I don't approach this from the 'are they gay' angle, but from the 'are they bisexual' angle.

Taking Annie Proulx's comments out of the picture entirely, in the beginning I have to say I thought they were both bisexual males. It's too early in the morning to go into the why of it but I did.

Then it  hit me that if I thought they were bi, prove it.

I couldn't.

And I tried.

Why?

Neither Jack nor Ennis show any indication in either film or short story that they were able to do the one [1] thing which means a man is a true  bisexual. I'm not speaking of sex here either....there are many gay men who can be FUNCTIONALLY bisexual with a woman, and there are just as many straight men who can be FUNCTIONALLY bisexual with a man.

I'm speaking of the ability to form a true bond, a deep bond, that bond which heterosexual love takes for granted and gay love does as well.

 I couldn't get past this: neither had any capacity to form any attachment, romantically, with a woman which even remotely had the depth of their romantic attachment to a man--each other. If you look at both characters the desire is there. But the ability simply isn't. The result was a devastated Alma and a Lureen who had all her life and vitality drained from her.

Jack was very functionally bisexual yet as he aged and the relationship wore him down he appears to have lost even that capacity.

Ennis, from the day he got that postcard, was incapable of any attachment to a woman. It was not in him.

He was FOND of Alma and in his own way CARED for her; Cassie as well. But a deep romantic attachment? It was not in him. That man was as gay as they come. I sometimes think Ang Lee had Cassie just to point it out, for exactly that reason!

Cassie was a female Jack Twist, and  Ennis remained....unmoved. Which is why I think he was so gay; if he couldn't fall for Cassie, he couldn't fall for any woman. His machismo sort of hid that fact from me but once I applied that yardstick.....

Neither of these men was capable of forming 'that special bond' with a woman. And that means neither was bisexual....which was a bit disappointing because I wanted them for MY side lol.

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