When people point to Ennis being self-loathing, the evidence is slim.
I don't consider it slim. But you do have to be open to reading subtexts. For example, he speaks highly of his father, suggesting he respects his father's opinions. Yet his father had subjected him to a terrifying experience and, one assumes, kept Ennis more or less constantly terrified once he got old enough to really think about his own sexuality. Put two and two together, and you can surmise that Ennis considered the old man to be right about homosexuality, too.
Some argue that Ennis must have been self-loathing because the place and times were homophobic, and he was a product of them.
Not me. Jack is a product of the same times and is not self-loathing. This conclusion is based on his character, as I interpret it in both the story and movie, especially the latter.
The characters can only be labeled homophobic or internally homophobic based on what they say and do.
Agreed on this. No wait, not quite. I think the characters can be labeled based on what the book/movie tells us about them, which isn't always the same thing.
Sometimes it is their direct actions, but obviously no BBM character comes out and says, "I am homophobic." You have to look at what they say and do (Ennis praising his father, saying "You know I ain't queer," preferring to hold Jack from behind, canceling August, telling Jack "It's because of you I'm like this"). But you also have to ask yourself why the book and movie make a point of showing them saying and doing those things, and other things. They're not just filling time.
For example, why do you suppose both book and movie have Ennis getting in bar fights? Why, in the movie, does one of them occur when some bikers are talking sexually, and another right after Alma's explosive Thanksgiving confrontation?
Curiously, serious crayons, we come to different conclusions about Ennis being comfortable with his sexuality when he is alone with Jack. I regard those times--in contrast to when they around other people and thus might expose themselves to discovery--as being when Ennis is quite comfortable.
He is. But part of him is also uncomfortable about his time with Jack, to the point of canceling the get-together in August.
In the movie Ennis utters the "You know I ain't queer" line the afternoon of the second day, when he is still a little surprised at what happened the night before. He is undoubtedly saying that he does not self-identify as gay, but what could he say but "queer"? It was the only word he knew for gay.
If you think I was saying that's evidence he was homophobic because "queer" is a slur, no, that's not what I meant. He said it because he thinks of being "queer" as something terrible, and desperately wants to reject that label for himself.
And in the movie he says it before the events of the second night in the tent where he seems to reevaluate somewhat. In the book a version of the line occurs in the motel. Ennis is talking at some length, trying to account for his being married with children, yet still being attracted to Jack and their sex being far better than what Ennis has experienced with women. He seems to me to be genuinely bewildered, rather than homophobic.
True, Book Ennis is more outspoken, and perhaps less self-loathing, than Movie Ennis. Both the screenplay and Heath's performance turn Movie Ennis into a more bottled up, damaged figure than Book Ennis.
"Ennis will only hold Jack from behind"? I missed that.
It's in the book description of the dozy embace.
We see them face to face in the second night in the tent, the following scene where Aguirre sees them (meant in the movie to stand for the Proulx passage "...both knew how it would go for the rest of the summer...as it did go"), and at the reunion when they were definitely face to face.
Right. The movie shows them face to face, but the book says Ennis never wanted to embrace Jack face to face.
Or by "holding" are you referring to fucking?
No.
You still see Jack as hitting on Jimbo. My gaydar is firmly in place. I did see Randall hitting on Jack, but not with the rodeo clown.
I'm not going to argue that my gaydar is stronger than yours. Obviously it's not. I'll only say that in the seven years since I saw the movie and started discussing it, I don't remember many people not interpreting the scene that way.
I say again that in 1963 a man could offer to buy another man a drink without it being seen as a proposition. I know, I was there. I offered and was offered drinks to/by other men without anything sexual being implied or inferred.
Of course. But it's not just that Jack offers Jimbo a drink, it's that he makes intense eye contact and holds it for longer than normal in a non-pickup situation. It's that Jimbo immediately senses what's going on and turns down the offer. That Jack then gets flustered and angry and storms out of the bar.
If you don't see that as a failed pickup, then what's the point of the scene? Jack stops in a bar and offers a clown a drink, the clown says no thanks, Jack leaves. Why would they bother to tell us that? Keep in mind that every scene, in fact every line, in BBM is there for a reason.
And remember, if you're tempted to argue that gay men do or don't do this, remember that this book was written by a straight woman, and the movie was written, directed and acted by straight people for a largely straight audience. It doesn't stretch credulity to think they are using body language that straight people would recognize, deliberately and/or inadvertently.