Author Topic: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"  (Read 1014864 times)

Offline Sason

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1000 on: September 29, 2013, 08:29:37 am »
Interesting discussion. Thanks, x-man, for reviving analysis and discussion about our movie!

I think Ma Twist knew Jack was gay, and what Ennis meant to him. Her knowing little smile when Ennis returns downstairs with the shirts tells me that. Maybe the reason she even suggested he go up there, was that she hoped he'd find the shirts.

Also, given OMT's form of fatherhood (the bathroom incident in the book, his open contempt with Jack, his lack of fatherly support etc), I think it's very likely that Jack did in fact not rave about Ennis when his father was around, but kept those confidences for his mother alone.

The fact that OMT knew where Brokeback Mountain is, and the way it emphasized it, doesn't necessarily mean that he knew anything about Jack's and Ennis' relationship, but rather the contempt he felt for his son who wished to be buried at some godforsaken mountain rather than in the family plot. His overall disappointment with Jack doesn't necessarily mean that he knew Jack was gay - he did, after all, marry and have a kid.


 
Brokeback Mountain left both of them shell shocked, and neither one ever fully recovered from it.

Monika, I love the way you worded this!
The same goes for us, really.

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Offline x-man

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1001 on: September 29, 2013, 08:55:22 am »
We're still waiting to hear from serious crayon and Jeff Wrangler, but I just want to add one small point.  Monika, I agree with your analysis that Jack was the one who knew what he was doing, and I alluded to this.  Proulx and the movie do have Ennis catching on pretty quickly, but he is responder, not initiator.  It is the Second Night that gets my attention.  After telling Jack that afternoon that what they done the previous night was only a "one-shot thing," Jack lies in the tent, waiting; Ennis sits by the fire, thinking.  Then he slowly gets up and goes into the tent.  Serious crayon, this is where Ennis really shows his courage.  Consider what it took, with all his fears, for Ennis to show that it was not to be a one-shot thing at all.  He then goes in and shyly offers himself to Jack.  Here we go beyond sex, to love.  Whatever they end up doing, Jack is here making love to Ennis, and showing that he, Jack, is a knowing, experienced, and tender partner.  He indeed knows what he is doing, and doing a pretty good job of it.  Whether that experience was from random encounters around Lightening Flat in previous times, or with the previous herder the summer before, we may never know.  Except, if that experience HAD been with the previous year's herder, would Jack have waited so long to get things going with Ennis?  If he had had a previous encounter on the mountain, would he not have thought that sex was just a regular part of the scene on BBM?
Happiness is the lasting pleasure of the mind grasping the intelligible order of reality.      --Leibniz

Offline x-man

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1002 on: September 29, 2013, 09:05:36 am »
Excellent points, Sason, especially about the mother knowing and hoping Ennis would find the shirts, Jack's guardedness around his father, etc.  Your position is closer to my original posting--now I don't know what to think.
Happiness is the lasting pleasure of the mind grasping the intelligible order of reality.      --Leibniz

Offline Sason

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1003 on: September 29, 2013, 09:51:51 am »
I agree, x-man. Going into that tent where he knew Jack was waiting for him, was probably the most courageous thing Ennis ever did in his life. For the main part, he just did what was expected of him in a given situation. But going into that tent - that was really challenging his internalised homophobia, his fears, his self denial, his life long strive to pass for a "normal" straight man.

now I don't know what to think.

Well, welcome in the club!   ;D

That's part of the beauty of BBM - there are so many ambiguities, we can never be sure of so many things. They will always be open to interpretation and new input. If you follow the usual course of the brokie fever, you'll eventually settle with the not-knowing, x-man.

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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1004 on: September 29, 2013, 10:15:00 am »
We're still waiting to hear from serious crayon and Jeff Wrangler.

I'm glad you ordered a copy of Story to Screenplay. I can't imagine who criticized it here--but let be, let be.  ??? As I said, Annie's essay is priceless, and it will also give you a screenplay--though not necessarily a "shooting script," and you'll notice there are lines in the film--ad libs?--that aren't in the screenplay.

No offense meant, but it seems to me that some of your questions are getting into the area of "counterfactual history," so to speak. We don't know how Earl and Rich behaved in public, or how many bedrooms their house had. It's just a "given" of the story that they were a couple of "tough old birds," but also that they were "a joke" around Ennis's home town. Let's put it this way. It might be within the realm of possibility that they weren't even homosexual, but the "given" is that at least the community presumed they were homosexual, and that's the important point: The community assumed they were "queer," and that's why Earl was murdered. You will read in Annie's essay that the author herself says the story is not about "two gay cowboys in love." It's about the effects of rural homophobia.

Annie's essay also discusses homosexual sex among guys doing the type of isolated work that Ennis and Jack did. I've assumed since I read the story that Jack had some experience of homosexual sex because it wasn't his first summer in the mountains, and because he took the initiative. He knew what to do to get the ball rolling.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline x-man

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1005 on: September 29, 2013, 03:09:20 pm »

No offense meant, but it seems to me that some of your questions are getting into the area of "counterfactual history," so to speak.

 You will read in Annie's essay that the author herself says the story is not about "two gay cowboys in love." It's about the effects of rural homophobia

My remarks about Earl and Rich were indeed straying into counter-factual history, but there is a lot of that going on around here.  It is easygoing, and sometimes does make a point.  MY point, perhaps over extended, was to comment on your wondering if I were not giving rural Wyomingites of 1963 enough credit for concluding who was or was not gay (Earl and Rich, my parents knew about me so wouldn't Jack's parents know about him? etc.)  You say in a previous posting that "Earl was killed because he was known to be queer."  Ennis suggests that for him and Jack it would not be simply living together:  "You and me can't hardly be decent together if what happened back there...(at the reunion)...grabs on us like that.  We do that in the wrong place we'll be dead."  He does not seem to be highly crediting rural Wyomingites for figuring out what's what, but more that when passion catches you unaware you are bound to mess up eventually, no matter how careful you try to be.  In my own case, it was not rural Wyoming and I did not have THAT much to lose--certainly not my life.  In the event, Ennis' fears were well-grounded and Jack was murdered, we suppose because he and Randall had been indiscreet.

I look forward to reading the Proulx essay you mention in Story to Screenplay.  Perhaps knowing more about gay sex "among guys doing the type of work that Ennis and Jack did" I will understand how John Twist could know with any certainty what went on at BBM.

The BBM short story may not be about two gay cowboys in love, but I would suggest that the movie IS.  It is about two gay cowboys in love who, at least partially, triumph over rural homophobia.  That is why the movie has gripped us the way it has.  Was Proulx's essay written before or after the movie?  If after, could she be trying to counteract the discounting of the film as "the gay cowboy movie," to which everyone took such great exception?

The criticism of Story to Screenplay I saw here in BetterMost focused on its being "inaccurate," perhaps being a reference to the screenplay in the book not being the shooting script.

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Offline Berit

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1006 on: September 29, 2013, 05:03:44 pm »
Interesting discussion. Thanks, x-man, for reviving analysis and discussion about our movie!

I think Ma Twist knew Jack was gay, and what Ennis meant to him. Her knowing little smile when Ennis returns downstairs with the shirts tells me that. Maybe the reason she even suggested he go up there, was that she hoped he'd find the shirts.

Also, given OMT's form of fatherhood (the bathroom incident in the book, his open contempt with Jack, his lack of fatherly support etc), I think it's very likely that Jack did in fact not rave about Ennis when his father was around, but kept those confidences for his mother alone.

The fact that OMT knew where Brokeback Mountain is, and the way it emphasized it, doesn't necessarily mean that he knew anything about Jack's and Ennis' relationship, but rather the contempt he felt for his son who wished to be buried at some godforsaken mountain rather than in the family plot. His overall disappointment with Jack doesn't necessarily mean that he knew Jack was gay - he did, after all, marry and have a kid.


 
Monika, I love the way you worded this!
The same goes for us, really.

I have allways thought that both parents knew, mMa Twist with love and Pa with great  dislike.
Ennis.....always Ennis.....

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1007 on: September 29, 2013, 05:22:35 pm »
Isn't it funny? Maybe some distance was required, but it really only comes to me now that the reason I disagree with you about Old Man Twist's lack of homophobia is because when I hear him say that he knows where Brokeback Mountain is, I hear the same contempt in his voice that I hear in Ennis's when he tells Jack that he knows what they've got in Mexico for boys like Jack. In other words, it's not what he says, or what he doesn't say, but the way he says what he does say. I know homophobia--hatred and contempt for "queers"--when I hear it.

Well, I'm not saying he's president of the local PFLAG chapter!  :laugh:

I just meant that his main beef with Jack isn't about his sexual orientation, which is telling enough in itself. Sure, they had a bad relationship. Sure, the old man is a contemptuous jerk. It's just that when he looks back at his dead son, the thing he expresses the most contempt about is that Jack failed to carry out his plan to leave his wife and bring another man home to live together and help with the ranch. Compared to Ennis' dad or even just the average rural Wyoming guy of that era, he's far less upset about Jack's gayness than you'd think.

Guys, you both make assumption that John Twist (and the mother) knew about Jack's being gay, and according to each of you, did or did not accept it graciously.  What am I missing?  Why can't the father be telling Ennis, although scornfully, that since he knows where BBM is doesn't need Ennis' help?

Almost every single line in BBM serves more than one function. In this case, the text says that he knows where the damn mountain is. The subtext, given that we know that Brokeback Mountain symbolizes Jack and Ennis' relationship in its most idyllic, almost heaven-like version, is that he knows they had a relationship.

But if you don't want to parse out the literary implications, you can find clues in the main text, too, like the one I mentioned above. He wasn't concerned that his son was going to leave his wife and move in with a man. He was concerned that his son didn't do that, because he could have used the help on the ranch. Again, this is not evidence that he was a nice guy, or that he was enlightened by 2013 standards, just evidence that he was more enlightened than Ennis would have expected, because in Ennis' mind anyone who knew what was going on with Jack would be reaching for the tire iron.

BBM is full of characters who act in less homophobic ways than Ennis would expect -- there are some awkward moments but no tire irons (outside of Rich and Earl, plus Ennis' vision at the end). Aguirre knows they're gay but doesn't say anything until Jack returns the next summer. Lureen at least semi-knows but expresses it only in veiled complaints at the dance. Even Alma knows for years but doesn't say a word about it until that fateful Thanksgiving. That's one of the ironies (yuck, no pun intended) of BBM. Ennis had a disproportionate fear of the world's homophobia, even in 1960s Wyoming, because of his horrifying childhood, and that trapped him for life.

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It seems to me that the evidence is very suppositional.

Yes, analysis of good literature and film does often require leaps of supposition.

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  1.  From the story, the "knowing look" by the father.  Proulx never hints at what he might "know."  2.  From the movie, John Twist does seem to give added emphasis to the "Tell you what, I know..." line, but never elaborates.  3.  When Jack returns to the family home after the first summer, to "go back up to my daddy's place, give him a hand over the winter"  he most likely talked at the dinner table, etc., about Ennis all the time, and told them he wanted to return to BBM to repeat his experience of the first summer.  4.  At some point Jack must have told his mother NOT to wash The Shirts.  Mothers obsessively was their children's clothes.  At some point in the 20 years she "kept his room like it was when he was a boy" she would have found the shirts and, given all the blood, would have washed them, unless she had been warned specifically not to.

I should clarify that my thoughts above apply mostly to the movie. The story is a bit different here. I think this is something Larry and Diana wrote into it, that Proulx may or may not have intended, but I think it improves the irony.

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A knowing look that is never explained, Jack's talking about Ennis all the time, the warning about the shirts: is it really enough to suggest that the parents knew they were lovers rather than just good friends?

Yes. Good film writing can be very subtle. And this film is jammed with subtle writing and nuances.



Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1008 on: September 29, 2013, 07:02:02 pm »
Jack was murdered.

Be prepared for a wh-o-o-o-le lot of argument about that!  :laugh:
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Offline Luvlylittlewing

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Re: Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
« Reply #1009 on: September 29, 2013, 07:47:08 pm »
Be prepared for a wh-o-o-o-le lot of argument about that!  :laugh:

Indeed!  Even after all these years (and after reading the story, the screenplay and watching the movie at least 25 times) I'm not sure how Jack died!   :-\