Who have really engaged with the tragedy of Brokeback Mountain?
1. Those who allowed themselves to experience the reality of Jack’s death and his disappearance from the world and felt so devastated by what this tragedy meant in human terms and by the pain of Jack’s death they needed psychological healing.
2. Those who refuse to read Dead!Jack stories, deny the reality of Jack’s death preferring to believe that Jack somehow survived.
3. Those for whom the story and Ennis’ life come to a dead end with Jack’s death.
The first group can read a story about how Ennis moves on because they have allowed themselves to face up to and feel the pain of his loss and grief, as well as their own as witness to this, and try to work through it.
The second group can never read such a thing because they cannot admit that Jack is dead let alone that Ennis might also work through his grief and loss to find a new life for himself. They have no need for healing because they never grieved Jack’s death.They have no need to grieve for Ennis because Ennis never lost Jack.
The third group can never read such a thing because Ennis only exists as an individual in terms of his relationship with Jack.
Groups 2 and 3 assert that they are the upholders of Annie’s vision in writing this story. Proulx’s story was one of loss. Where is the loss? Proulx’s capacity to create vivid characterization and Ang Lee's rendering of the evolution of Ennis’ character invite us to consider how his further development might unfold after the shock of Jack’s death. Where is this development?
Groups 2 and 3 also consider that Ennis' maturing sexuality and the representation of this with his new partner as debasing his character. Every sexual permutation in the book is allowed between two relatively unsophisticated country guys if those guys happen to be Ennis and Jack. What’s cool between them suddenly becomes something tawdry between Ennis and Ellery. No mystery as to the reason why.
So we have denial on one hand and a psychological dead end on the other. What a choice!
To actually mention the fact that Jack died is bad enough. To entertain the notion that Ennis might be allowed an existence and purpose without Jack invites excommunication.
I find this entire post baffling.
BBM is senseless, would have no impact if Jack Twist lived. I know people who dislike the death of Jack, wish it could be another way and still worship the story as written. If Jack lived, would it be the tale it is?? No way. None of us would be here, Louise would not be writing this saga, it would never have bitten deep.
It's a simple short story, not a saga, not a play, just a short story, the best written in English during the 20th century. As a story it actually broke new ground: BBM is the only successful case in the English language where a writer, any writer, IN ENGLISH created a Classic Tragedy using Attic construction, while updating it to fit modern needs and using an entirely different format from any known to Aeschylos, Euripides, Menander, Sophocles. Parts of Brokeback fit well into some books of the first western epoch, Iliad--when it comes to inner construction. But not enough to make the slightest claim of 'copying' Homer. Just the intent.
It's construction as a short story is reminiscent of Oedipos Rex, YES, that is very true. The miracle is it's format. BBM is not a play. It is a thoroughly modern short story. It uses the Attic method, wherein the characters are destroyed by their own flaws. If and when you approach AP's masterpiece from that direction it becomes seamlessly intelligable. It's use of symbolism re the Bull Rider reaches back directly to the first known civilisation in Europe, the Crete of Minos. It's symbolic double and triple meanings grab the heart and soul of classical tragedy. It's ultimate aim, to allow the reader to put his or her own experiences into play when reaching conclusions, is completely aeschylian.
This is a work where we are not given answers, we are meant to find them ourselves. It reaches down into the depths and looks at ultimate meanings. [ The Bacchae-Euripides] It does NOT give answers, it gives questions.
AP told me a few weeks ago that she ALWAYS intended to have a prologue from the moment she decided to write the story. Why? Because it is concieved of as a series of flashbacks, where the drive of emotional build has precedence over chronology. Hence the placement of Dozy embrace, the urination: FLASHBACKS. This is thoroughly modern AND completely classic--instead of those magnificent speeches, she uses mental flashbacks. A work for OUR time, not the 5th century BC. And the result was a new sort of work, one which changed the very nature of the short story in the English language. The prologue sets the tone, allows the reader to understand he/she is about to enter a total desolation while setting the construction of the tale of J & E in granite.
It's over before it starts.
Now, I hate jack's death. But it was necessary. AP wept over her characters but KILLED JACK OFF.
Why? Because she had to, if she was to succeed in her goal..
Ennis in the prologue is of an indeterminate age, because that's what she wanted us to think--no easy answers, we make our own. The ultimate reaction comes from the heart, the mind, and the experience of the reader.
OR viewer.
AP left a spark of hope for the Ennis of her prologue. Ang lee left a spark of hope for the Ennis of his epilogue. Get the connection here? To translate the book to film he put the emotions and hope-spark of the prologue into an EPILOGUE. One a mass audience would get, while preserving the essence of the story.
Topic: Taking Chances, by E. L. Van Hine and L.H. Nicoll (Read 3093165 times)