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Education and class in BBM

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serious crayons:
Hey folks, I decided we've been spending WAAAAY too much time discussing the thrillingly romantic and breathtakingly carnal aspects of the movie, and it's time for something dry and academic and potentially boring! Everybody agree? OK, here goes:

I'm really impressed by the way both education (lack thereof) and class are treated in this movie. I can't think of any other movie off the top of my head (I'm open to corrections) that handles these matters so completely unpatronizingly.

How many movies portray a main character as matter-of-factly poor -- yet that poverty is neither pitiful nor a major plot point? Yes, we see how poverty limits Ennis' life: he has to save half-smoked cigarettes, can't get away to see Jack easily, gets nagged by his wife to get a better job and apartment. But we are never asked to feel sorry for him or even spend much time dwelling on his finances. In most movies, if somebody's poor, that's pretty much the whole point of the movie.

And as for education, how many movies feature main characters who barely made it out of high school (Jack), or didn't (Ennis), and yet are portrayed so respectfully that they're the objects of enormous unbound affection for so many well-educated, intelligent people (us)? The only times their education level is even alluded to, it's just cute -- their grammar, the condiments thing, Jack's misspelled postcard and Ennis' lips moving as he reads it. Otherwise, who cares?!

Anybody else have any thoughts about this, or are you too busy pondering who fell in love with whom when and who's the hottest? (OK, me too.)

nakymaton:
I want to have coherent thoughts other than YES! YES! But you've said it all extremely well, I think.

Poverty and poor education (and rural upbringing, as well) tend to be treated either as adversity to overcome for a hero (see Walk the Line) or as part of what is yucky about a villian (see Hilary Swank's family in Million Dollar Baby). And BBM could very easily have treated poverty and rural upbringing as The Villian... I mean, rural areas are particularly homophobic, and it's homophobia (at least in part) that kept Our Lovers apart. (And may have been what killed Jack, depending on which version of his death you believe is true.)

But class and education and everything are simply treated as part of the background, not idealized and not demonized. And that's one of the many, many things that I love about this movie.

Jeff Wrangler:
Katherine, you put it so well it's difficult to think of anything else to say.

It's been a while now, and I don't remember, and I also don't have the screenplay with me here at work. Is there mention of Jack finishing high school? I think in the "AP original" they're both drop-outs. We just learn more of the circumstances of Ennis's inability to finish. Poor guy, he just wanted to be a sophomore, felt it had some kind of distinction.

It always surprised me that "back in the day" he could get a driver's license at 14 (!) in order to go to school.

isabelle:
Katherine, this is a very good point to bring up. To me, both from reading the short story and seeing the film, their poverty and lack of education as given facts, not as the central plot, is one of the main aspects of this film that make the characters SO real, and therefore make me feel like I know them, they are like friends. I love them. To me, they HAVE existed, do exist - I will see Ennis, no doubt, when I go to Wyoming!
Also, I am a teacher, and became one in the first place because I believed in education to help kids - especially from poorer backgrounds - have better opportunities in life, and I'm not talking only of the financial aspect. However, even as a teacher, I have never given a fiddler's fart about people's level of education, i.e the number, or names, of degrees on their resumes, and have a definite soft spot for those who could not get an education, particularly for reasons like Ennis's (lack of money).
But you are right, I cannot think of any other film where poverty/class is not central to the plot.

Kd5000:
Poverty/class is not central to the plot.

It's not central to the plot, but the poverty/family situation/time period/education attainment do play a role in the costly decisions they make. Would Ennis choose to get married to ALma at age 19. Would Jack have married a woman? Afterwards, Jack's marriage will certainly make his life more complicated, however it is a ticket to more material comforts.   I don't think Jack is anymore happier because he has attained, it would seem, the American dream.

Would you still feel sympathy for them if they were from affluent backgrounds, well educated, and wordly? They could escape far more easily. There would be more options and the situation wouldn't seem so HOPELESS from the get-go. 

PPl have posted on IMDB.com and newspaper articles about why didn't they just move to NYC or Denver for that matter? What would Ennis or Jack do in a highly urban environment, if they chose to escape the suffocating rural homophobia?  End up working in Times Square?

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