My Brokeback Mountain
by garycottle 7 hours ago (Thu Sep 11 2008 03:05:38)
From nomoresoup:
Annie Proulx wrote this story. She poured her heart and soul into it. She explained her intentions to us, what it meant to her, what it was she was trying to convey etc etc.
... but then she set it free.
... she gave it to me.
... it is therefore mine.
So my interpretation of the story, my feelings, what it means to me are correct. I am not wrong.
I think this is an excellent point. The reason we read stories and watch films is because they move us in some way. Our experience of them is deeply, profoundly, and fundamentally personal. When we read a story or watch a film it becomes ours. It’s all about what we feel and what we think that makes a story important to us.
Back in college I once took an American Literature class in which we were expected to read and interpret the classic Washington Irving short story Rip Van Winkle. Rip was a beloved member of his community, and children were especially drawn to him. He was a happy-go-lucky guy, and he got along with everyone, except his wife. Rip, in her view, was irresponsible and he lacked ambition, so she nagged him. One day Rip wondered into the woods and witnessed some peculiar phenomena, and then he fell asleep under a tree, and there he stayed for twenty years. When he woke up, a lot of things had changed. For one thing, his wife was now dead, and for another, America was an independent country and no longer a collection of English colonies.
I wrote a paper in which I asserted that Rip represented American innocense. He was a good-natured person who lived in the moment. He avoided discord, hard labor, and seriousness. There was something playful about Rip, and there just wasn’t any place for him when the country was at war. But after the dust had settled, and things had returned to normal, Rip woke up and returned to his village. At first the villagers were suspicious of him, but someone finally recognized him and he was welcomed back into the fold.
I went on for a number of pages explaining why I had this view of the story. It was my honest reaction to it. These are the things that naturally sprang to my mind while I was reading this story. I was not trying to overreach in order to get a better grade, and I wasn’t online back then, so I couldn’t simply look up reactions to the story on my computer and regurgitate some of the ideas I found there. In my paper I explained what I thought of the story and why.
It came as something of a shock when I got my paper back a couple of weeks later and found my professor had confessed in the margins that my interpretation was the most original she had read in twenty years of teaching American Literature. So in other words, my view of the story was not conventional. It wasn’t ordinary. I didn’t see what other people saw. So was I wrong? Did I misunderstand the story? Apparently my professor – a Fulbright scholar with tenure who specialized in American Literature and literary theory – didn’t think I got it wrong. She gave me an A+ for the paper, and an A+ for the class.
It was her view that stories could be interpreted in an infinite verity of ways. The meaning of individual words are often ambiguous. So when you string words together, and then join hundreds and thousands of these strings to form a story, what you end up with is something that can never be pinned down with any degree of certainty. But this is okay. Stories are not puzzles. We don’t read stories or watch films in order to solve them. We read and watch in order to have an experience, a personal experience.
When writers write stories they are attempting to convey something of their inner life. Stories are gifts. When we’re given a story we are being allowed to witness something that is generally pretty private. We’re being shown a glimpse of the writer’s imagination. And by the same token, when someone shares their thoughts and feelings about a story, they, too, are giving us a gift. They are attempting to let us in. It’s akin to a host taking us on a tour of his house in order to show us his treasures and explain their importance. Many people who come here want to share their experience. And some of these people aren’t used to putting their thoughts and feelings into words. Many who are drawn to Brokeback Mountain are like Ennis in some way or another; they have lived their life inside their heads, afraid to be themselves. I think the voices of these people should be appreciated, even if their understanding doesn’t match mine or someone else’s.
I was recently accused of being argumentative because in my responses I generally don’t break down the posts of others in a way that indicates what I agree with and what I don’t agree with. There is a very good reason for this, and it has nothing to do with being argumentative. Far from it. When I challenge a poster whom I have come to believe is sincere and serious in his/her views, then it is generally not my intention to divest this poster of his/her opinions. It is generally my intention to defend the right of myself and others to have a different opinion, and to declare that this difference should be respected.
I’m a gay man who grew up in the hills of southern West Virginia, a culturally conservative place steeped in Christian fundamentalism, and my mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. So I’m quite used to seeing things differently from the people around me. And I have learned that continuously arguing about these differences is pointless. If you’re always being contentious then you’ll most likely miss the opportunity to find common ground. And you’ll be unhappy, too.
Back when I was a small child, before I started to school, I was regularly taken to church where I was told that if I didn’t surrender to Jesus I would go to hell. And when I got home my mother would sometimes tell me that she was Jesus’s mother Mary. I became suspicious of the things I was told. I became a skeptic, but I was secretive about it. I kept my thoughts and feelings to myself, and as a result, I became an eccentric person. Later I would realize that my own view of things could be pretty peculiar. But that’s okay. We all have to make sense of the world in our own way. And we often see things differently.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Duck-Rabbit_illusio n.jpg
Click on the link above and look at the picture. What do you see? Many see a duck, many see a rabbit, and most are able to switch back and forth between the two perceptions. When you see a duck, everything about the drawing indicates that what you’re seeing is a duck. And the same is true when you see a rabbit. So when you see the rabbit, are you wrong in not seeing the duck? If you see a duck, are you wrong in not seeing the rabbit? I don’t think so, but it might help you to get along with other people if you kept an open mind and remembered that your perception may not be universally valid. Others may see something different, and they may have their reasons for this. Just because something doesn’t make sense to you does not mean it does not make sense. And intelligence often has nothing to do with it. Intelligent people disagree.
Some people think McCain should be our next president, and others intent to vote for Obama. Different countries have different political systems. If you visit Russia and then visit India you’ll discover some very stark differences in culture. If you look up churches in the phone book you’re likely to find a couple of dozen denominations listed even if you’re in a small town.
People have differences of opinion, and they often fight and argue about these differences. They sometimes go to war and kill each other because of these differences. But do we have to give into these impulses? Do we have to be so strident in our understanding of a story?
In Peter Shaffer’s Equus, a psychiatrist is put in charge of “helping” a young man who has gotten into some trouble with the law. Through a series of interviews with the young man, he learns that his patient has, more or less, created a religion, a way of interfacing with the world in a spiritual sense, all his own. The doctor knows that in time he can break down this boy’s belief system, but he wonders if this is really the right thing to do. He’s not sure that he should take away this young man’s ethos simply because his beliefs aren’t considered “normal.” At one point the doctor states, “The normal is the good in a child’s eyes–all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills–like a God. It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Average made lethal.” So is it not possible to appreciate this boy’s vision even if we don’t share it or understand it?
Maybe human beings can’t help but fight and kill one another over their political and religious differences. But can’t we show a greater degree of tolerance of the different ways in which we see a story? Can’t we be more tolerant of the various readings of Brokeback Mountain? Jack and Ennis were crushed by the tyranny of what was considered normal for the time and place in which they lived. So can’t we learn from this and be a little less tyrannical in our desire to force others to accept our positions?
I’m sure that I have on occasion been much too forceful in defending my own point of view of the story. I believe that if I have overstepped it’s because my ego got in the way. I sometimes forget that it’s not my place, nor is it necessary, for me to define the world for everyone. I just need to make sense of it for myself. And hopefully I can do that while keeping an open mind.
Brokeback Mountain is special to me because I so strongly relate to Ennis. Like Ennis, I have lived much of my life inside of my head. As I’ve said above, I grew up in a conservative environment, and my mother was seriously mentally ill. I knew I was different, but I also knew I couldn’t outwardly assert this difference without causing a lot of trouble. I did not internalize the disdain for my homosexual desires like Ennis did, at least not to the degree he did. But, nevertheless, I did my best to hide in plain sight.
I’m 42 years old and I have not heretofore met my Jack. I have never had a boyfriend. I’ve never had anyone tell me that they love me, at least not in a romantic sense. So for this reason I am somewhat envious of Jack and Ennis. I do realize that this may be an unusual reaction, but I can’t deny it. At least Jack and Ennis had Brokeback. At least they had their camping trips. I know it wasn’t enough. And I know they shouldn’t have had to settle for what they got, but at least they had something.
And since I’m so with Ennis, I will always wonder if Jack was murdered. And I can imagine that if I were in his shoes, I would always regret not being there, and I would see my ignorance as to what really happened as my punishment, my cross to bear.
My reaction and understanding of the story says just as much about me as it does about the story. But that’s okay. Brokeback Mountain has meaning for me because of the personal issues it helps me to face. In light of it, I can both validate some aspects of myself and attempt to rectify some things that now appear to be misconceptions.
These are just some of my thoughts and feelings concerning the story. Maybe, when I put it all together, what I see in Brokeback Mountain at this moment is a rabbit. Hopefully I can study this rabbit, and get all I can from the experience, while remembering that others legitimately see a duck.
