Ennis as a Great American Character?

[nakymaton]

NPR (US National Public Radio, for people outside the US) has a new series entitled "In Character." There's a series of radio pieces that discuss and analyze great characters. I've only caught a few of the pieces, but they've been great.

As I was clicking through the NPR website today, I had a thought:

Ennis belongs in that series.

Listeners can nominate characters, so we could push for him. There's also a blog that posts reader essays, from time to time.

I've been away from this movie and story for too long, so I'm asking the rest of you: if you were to tell NPR why Ennis is an archetypal character, why he should be discussed and remembered for ever and always, what would you tell them?

(Links to info:
Series: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17914370
BlogL: http://www.npr.org/blogs/incharacter/2007/12/welcome_to_in_character.html)

[Front-Ranger]

I'll put my thinking cap on, Mel!!

Course, as Annie said, you can't have Ennis without Jack, so he's gotta be a great American character too. He's the bullrider while Ennis is the bronc rider (both did their share of "fffllllyyyin thru the air").

[Artiste]

Thanks nakymaton! Great thread!

I would tell them: Ennis is real! (Like a saint is and talked about... forever!!)

Hugs!

[Jeff Wrangler]

The series is all about fictional characters?

Maybe Ennis belongs there for the very reason that some people hate Brokeback Mountain. He exposes the homoeroticism below the surface of that great American archetype/icon the cowboy.

[serious crayons]

He exposes the homoeroticism below the surface of that great American archetype/icon the cowboy.

Yes! Plus, as a Marlboro-man style cowboy, he's supposedly the classic rugged individualist. But in fact, Ennis is the ultimate conformist -- someone who lets his fear of breaking societal rules ruin his life.

[nakymaton]

The series is all about fictional characters?

Yes, it's all fictional characters. They can be from books, movies, TV shows, comic books, anything. They don't even need to be human - the characters discussed so far include Bugs Bunney and Lassie. (They also include Jim from Huckleberry Finn, Scarlett O'Hara, Jack Bauer from 24, Pollyanna, Holden Caulfield, Eve Harrington from All About Eve, and the Lone Ranger.) The one thing they have to be is American. (So Achilles, Hamlet, and Frodo Baggins are all out.)

Like I said, I've only caught a couple of them (and the Bugs Bunny and Lassie pieces were two of them, so I'm not that well prepared to discuss humans!). And I am embarrassingly poorly read (like I have never read Huck Finn or The Catcher in the Rye, and maybe my goal for the year should be to read more of the Books I Should Have Read But Didn't). So I'm a lousy person to try to come up with reasons.

But being clueless has never stopped me from discussing things, so...

Yes, I agree that the whole business about an American icon being gay is part of it. (That was the part that created all the uncomfortable jokes when BBM was released, after all.) But that's not all. Part of it is also the way in which people see Ennis as symbolic of so many different things. Of the danger of not embracing love, or life, when the opportunity arises. Of repression, of all sorts. Of masculinity, and the conflicts involved in American definitions of it. And I've seen people of all sorts compare themselves to Ennis, for various reasons. I've seen Ennis compared to people's fathers, or to people's ex-boyfriends (both gay and straight). And I see Ennis as quintessentially rural, in a way that's different from the idealization of America's rural past or the current demonization of modern rednecks.

And then there's the Greek tragedy aspect, which maybe Lee and brokebackjack could elaborate on, because I'm no student of Greek drama, and I wasn't present for the conversations.

(As for the question of whether Jack would need to be included - oh, yes. The relationship is part of the characters. I guess I chose Ennis, in part, because I've been thinking about Heath and his magnificent work, and in part because the story is from Ennis's POV. And because I do think that Ennis is an unusual and fascinating character.)

[Jeff Wrangler]

Like I said, I've only caught a couple of them (and the Bugs Bunny and Lassie pieces were two of them, so I'm not that well prepared to discuss humans!). And I am embarrassingly poorly read (like I have never read Huck Finn or The Catcher in the Rye, and maybe my goal for the year should be to read more of the Books I Should Have Read But Didn't). So I'm a lousy person to try to come up with reasons.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Remember Mark Twain's definition of a classic (I think it was Mark Twain)? A book everybody talks about but nobody reads? 

[serious crayons]

OT, but sometimes I see articles in which famous writers are asked to name a great book they haven't read. And they tend to pick really obscure titles. Not that I'm a famous writer, but I always think that if it were me, it would be a lot easier to list the ones I HAVE read. I'm not the world's most well-read person, either. But still, I think those writers are faking it to a certain extent. Everybody hasn't read a lot of things.

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Well I just posted.

"In this classic tragedy, Ennis Del Mar represents the classic American icon, the Cowboy (or in his precise case a sheephearder) who deals with the effects of rural homophobia as best he can. Having been indoctrinated from age 9 that his attraction could get him killed, he struggles in vain to pursue happiness in his life, and sublimate his nature in order to keep safe. The price he pays for this: lonliness and abandonment. Annie Proulx's character has resonated in the lives of countless people, and the late Heath Ledger's Ennis Del Mar puts a face on generations of men and women traditionally pushed to societies margins. "

and I put my name to it. It reminds me of when I first started posting about this thing.

[nakymaton]

Cool, Truman - thank you!

(I'm still trying to decide exactly what I would say.)

[Brown Eyes]

Well I just posted.

"In this classic tragedy, Ennis Del Mar represents the classic American icon, the Cowboy (or in his precise case a sheephearder) who deals with the effects of rural homophobia as best he can. Having been indoctrinated from age 9 that his attraction could get him killed, he struggles in vain to pursue happiness in his life, and sublimate his nature in order to keep safe. The price he pays for this: lonliness and abandonment. Annie Proulx's character has resonated in the lives of countless people, and the late Heath Ledger's Ennis Del Mar puts a face on generations of men and women traditionally pushed to societies margins. "

and I put my name to it. It reminds me of when I first started posting about this thing.

This looks great Truman! 

I hope NPR responds to this suggestion.  I completely understand highlighting Ennis as a suggestion for this program (since he's the protagonist)... but what about Jack too?   Is it important to see the two of them together to get the full picture of the nuances of the social predicament illustrated in BBM?  I'm asking this more as a question for discussion here (not necessarily as something to suggest to NPR).  This is my with my old hat on... the "it's all about Ennis + Jack"  or the "you can't have one without the other" balancing-act hat.