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Education and class in BBM

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delalluvia:
I for one was very glad to see a movie that showed that poverty and lack of education were not limited to inner city people.  They were/are problems for everyone.

I'm with kd, poverty plays a crucial part in this movie.  Ennis is essentially trapped.  He cannot be anything more than a hired hand because he doesn't have the job skills or education to be anything else and that severely limits him professionally.  Unless Alma Jr. gets more education than she has before getting pregnant by her oll-worker rough neck fiance, she is likely to be no better off than Ennis was.  Matter of fact, the movie ends in the early 1980's.  The oil slump happened in the late 80's.  Likely Junior was going to have a couple of kids by then and her husband would be out of a job.

Jack managed to get out of his trap by marrying up.  Otherwise he would have been no better off than Ennis.

hermitdave:
 I agree with everything that has been said so far. I am not particularly well educated. I grew up poor, and from the south. In my experience folks dont spend a lot of time thinking about those who have more and are better educated. Life is just lived as it is. Like Ennis said- "you dont have nothin, you dont need nothin."

Jeff Wrangler:
Reading through this thread, I'm reminded of those other sad lines from Ennis:

"I'm stuck with what I got here. Makin' a livin's about all I got time for now."

In context the "stuck" part may specifically refer to his marriage and family, but it pretty well covers his economic situation, too, I think.

serious crayons:
Thanks for your thoughts, everyone! This is one of the (many, obviously) things that impresses me about BBM and I'm glad to have a place to discuss it. Good point, KD and Del, that poverty and education are not completely immaterial to the plot; if Ennis and Jack were more affluent and educated they would made different choices and had more options (though surely the general outlines of their tragedy have played out many times among people at every socioeconomic level).

But though their economic situations help shape their circumstances, I find it refreshing that they aren't the CENTRAL issue of the plot.

Nakymaton, speaking of well put, this was really good:


--- Quote from: nakymaton on April 24, 2006, 03:56:35 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

Thinking about your post, Naky, led me to make the following -- very generalized -- conclusion: In most contemporary American films, heroes who are poor are required to overcome the poverty by the end of the movie, either by hard work (countless examples) or by marrying up (Pretty Woman). At the very least, they must somehow symbolically transcend their economic situation through bravery, pluck and/or talent (Norma Rae and Titanic, among others -- Erin Brokovich does this AND gets a big check at the end). Poor and/or uneducated people who just go about their lives, who don't improve their lot or aren't at least struggling to do so, are portrayed as trailer trash or pathetic victims.

BBM does not fit this pattern, and that's one of the many, many things I love about it, too.

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote ---Thinking about your post, Naky, led me to make the following -- very generalized -- conclusion: In most contemporary American films, heroes who are poor are required to overcome the poverty by the end of the movie, either by hard work (countless examples) or by marrying up (Pretty Woman). At the very least, they must somehow symbolically transcend their economic situation through bravery, pluck and/or talent (Norma Rae and Titanic, among others -- Erin Brokovich does this AND gets a big check at the end).
--- End quote ---

Not in any way intending to disagree--because I don't--but what you've described here, Katherine, is a lot older than contemporary American films, or even movies, period. You've more or less described what used to be called the Horatio Alger story--poor person makes good--which has been standard in American entertainment since at least the last third of the nineteeth century.

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