TOTW 16/07: Did Alma Jr. know Ennis was gay?

[serious crayons]

Artiste, please keep in mind that roughly half of the members of BetterMost are straight. And most if not all consider themselves decent without that requiring further clarification. So please be tactful in these references.

Laura and Katie, I don't want to speak for Artiste, but perhaps he is referring to the fact that, in Ennis and Alma Jr.'s time and place, straight people who are understanding of and sympathetic to gays actually may BE in the minority.

[moremojo]

Artiste, please keep in mind that roughly half of the members of BetterMost are straight. And most if not all consider themselves decent without that requiring further clarification. So please be tactful in these references.

Laura and Katie, I don't want to speak for Artiste, but perhaps he is referring to the fact that, in Ennis and Alma Jr.'s time and place, straight people who are understanding of and sympathetic to gays actually may BE in the minority.

I do think straight people who are understanding and sympathetic to gays are in the minority, at present. Homophobia is commonplace worldwide, and outside the post-industrialized West often takes virulent, violent form (and continues to do so even in the West, though becoming rarer and now actively decried as barbaric).

Even many liberal and progressive straight people in the West do not so much actively support and pursue gay rights, as they are indifferent to the lives and aspirations of gay people. A lot of this is just due to human nature. A straight person caught up in their own life is not likely to expend a lot of time and energy in trying to understand and involve themselves in the gay world--naturally, they actively pursue their own interests. This is neither necessarily right nor wrong, it just is (it's like that old saying of how one cannot really understand the life of another before having walked in that other person's shoes). There are exceptions, of course, but these remain exceptions (seen against the vast proportion of the larger population).

[delalluvia]

I disagree.

When I try to look at the screenwriters’ choices, it reinforces my belief that Junior knew.

I often wonder about the storytellers’ motivations for choosing this-or-that dialogue.  Is it a part of the plot, or is it character development, or is it a red herring, or is it simply a mistake; an extraneous bit that never managed to get edited out but in the end contributes nothing.

In this film, nearly every detail seems to contribute something of value. 

And what would be the value of Junior being jealous of Cassie? 

It isn’t important to the story. 

She *is* jealous, of course, but that’s not a valuable piece of the plot here; she’s portrayed as such simply because it’s fitting—she’s not getting private time with her father.   

But to me the point of the scene is to show her connection to him.  She observes him quietly.  She's concerned, and she's wondering.  She strongly suspects the truth about him, even though he's not the 'type' at all.

Why can't the scene be simply about showing how Junior is a daddy's girl?  We hadn't really seen that up until that scene.  And that despite being a daddy's girl, she's also Alma's daughter picking up such phrases as 'not the marrying kind'  and while that can be a very very 1960's small town euphemism for gay, there are plenty of cowboys who didn't and don't marry.  That doesn't automatically make them gay or in the closet.  Otherwise as a single straight woman who isn't interested in marrying, I might be called a lesbian since I don't seem to be the 'marrying kind'.

Or more importantly, perhaps the scene is there to show how Cassie is actually trying to get Ennis to marry her, that she is serious about him, very much in love.  That would make her pain more real in the scene in the bus stop diner when Cassie and Carl come in and she spots Ennis.  And it's more reasonable that a scene that deals with an emotional issue like marriage would occur between two women - Cassie and Junior - than a scene where Cassie is trying to get the taciturn Ennis to open up about why he won't marry her.

There are many reasons why that that scene is there.  Doesn't have to be the setup for the end.  The ending is more about Ennis anyway than Junior, IMO.  She doesn't have to have some sort of epiphany about her father to make the scene work.  She can be just a simple girl happy that her daddy understands her love and is finally making time for her, no matter what.

That scene is Ang's idea of a happy ending for Ennis.  In the short story, his children are such nonentities they are only mentioned in passing, not actually part of the story, so there is not even a hint that Ennis' kids have a clue.  So I tend to think of the ending scene as more about Ennis' growth than any realization by Junior.

[Katie77]

That scene is Ang's idea of a happy ending for Ennis.  In the short story, his children are such nonentities they are only mentioned in passing, not actually part of the story, so there is not even a hint that Ennis' kids have a clue.  So I tend to think of the ending scene as more about Ennis' growth than any realization by Junior.

Very well written, and makes a lot of sense, particularly your summary of the last scene....definately shows where Ennis has come to and possibly where he was heading....that scene is about Ennis, definately......

[Artiste]

Thanks all of you!!

Ineedcrayons, you say this: Artiste, please keep in mind that roughly half of the members of BetterMost are straight. And most if not all consider themselves decent without that requiring further clarification. So please be tactful in these references.

Laura and Katie, I don't want to speak for Artiste, but perhaps he is referring to the fact that, in Ennis and Alma Jr.'s time and place, straight people who are understanding of and sympathetic to gays actually may BE in the minority.




...
May I reply that I never did qualify in numbers, or if one is straight or gay or otherwise who is decent!!  Even if half or more, if not less, are straights on Bettermost, why limit freedon of speech??

[...]

I do find Jr. a decent person, yes, in the movie! Is there something wrong with that? I hope not!

[...]
...
However, I think that Alma Jr.  in the movie is a decent person as she does accept that her father is bi or gay; she is certainly not dumb nor homophobic since she helps and asked her father to her weding!!
...........................................

Replies from you and from all, gays, straights, or others are welomed,

hugs!!



Edit by Penthesilea:
This post has been edited because it was way off topic for the greatest part. The parts which were moved are marked with [...] and can be found here:
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,8804.msg300398.html#msg300398

[serious crayons]

Ineedcrayons, you say this: Artiste, please keep in mind that roughly half of the members of BetterMost are straight. And most if not all consider themselves decent without that requiring further clarification. So please be tactful in these references.

Laura and Katie, I don't want to speak for Artiste, but perhaps he is referring to the fact that, in Ennis and Alma Jr.'s time and place, straight people who are understanding of and sympathetic to gays actually may BE in the minority.
...
May I reply that I never did qualify in numbers, or if one is straight or gay or otherwise who is decent!!  Even if half or more, if not less, are straights on Bettermost, why limit freedon of speech??

Freedom of speech is almost never limited on BetterMost. My point was simply that if half of BetterMostians are straight, and you imply that decent straight people are unusual, many of the people you are writing to are likely to take offense. It's a matter of courtesy, not censorship. If that was not your meaning, then fine.

[moremojo]

Freedom of speech is almost never limited on BetterMost. My point was simply that if half of BetterMostians are straight, and you imply that decent straight people are unusual, many of the people you are writing to are likely to take offense. It's a matter of courtesy, not censorship. If that was not your meaning, then fine.

I take your point, Katherine, but I think we can assume that BetterMostians are hardly representative of the culture at large, and straight BetterMostians can hardly be taken as examples of the majority of straight people, whether in America or worldwide.

[Jeff Wrangler]

The ending is more about Ennis anyway than Junior, IMO.  She doesn't have to have some sort of epiphany about her father to make the scene work.  She can be just a simple girl happy that her daddy understands her love and is finally making time for her, no matter what.

I agree with you, Del, especially that last.

I'm afraid I tend to see the idea that Junior knew her father was gay, and even more was OK with it, as wishful thinking. But then I also come to this question from a life experience of having had a friend, now dead five years from metastatic lung cancer, who had a daughter who had a very difficult time accepting that her father was gay. And she didn't have to figure it out for herself, she was told (perhaps at an age too young to understand, but nevertheless she was told). And this wasn't small town Wyoming thirty years ago, this was the East Coast in the 1990s. They weren't reconciled until near the end of my friend's life. Thankfully, he and his daughter did have a good relationship for the last few years of his life.

[serious crayons]

I take your point, Katherine, but I think we can assume that BetterMostians are hardly representative of the culture at large, and straight BetterMostians can hardly be taken as examples of the majority of straight people, whether in America or worldwide.

Sadly, Scott, I agree. Originally, I was only trying to explain to Artiste why some straight people here would take offense at the implication that decent straights are an anomaly. Unfortunately, as we agreed earlier, when it comes to empathy toward gay people, they may be -- certainly in many cultures, if not all. Nevertheless, it's nice to be tactful when making negative generalizations about a group and directing one's comments to members of that group.

I would guess most people here understand those points and we can move on.

[LauraGigs]

But then I also come to this question from a life experience of having had a friend, now dead five years from metastatic lung cancer, who had a daughter who had a very difficult time accepting that her father was gay.

That's such a sad story, Jeff.  And I can certainly see why it would leave a strong impression.   

Alma Jr though?  Although I have a hard time believing she knew her dad was gay until after the timeline of the film, I do think she would be okay with it.

I guess what leads me to believe this is the fact that she was still very loving toward him despite the fact that he hurt her mother.  Between the swingset scene and Thanksgiving, Junior knows that Ennis could be pretty turdish toward Alma Senior, but doesn't let that sway her love for her dad.  I don't think knowing he was gay would sway her love, either.