it's not all about Earl -- by latjoreme

[TOoP/Bruce]

Re: It's not all about Earl.   
  by darkoKnight33     (Fri Nov 3 2006 13:15:02 )   
   
Thanks guys, for trying; and not ripping me a new one for my last post.

"Don't you wanna come with me? Don't you wanna feel my bones, on your bones? It's only natural!"

Re: It's not all about Earl.   
  by ClancyPantsDelMar     (Fri Nov 3 2006 13:33:51 )   

Hi darkoKnight33 --

"Thanks guys, for trying; and not ripping me a new one for my last post."

You made sense. I am rather proud of the fact that my very last post was about half as long as the others. Not too shabby, imho.

Re: It's not all about Earl.   
  by ClancyPantsDelMar     (Fri Nov 3 2006 13:31:22 )   
   
Hi latjoreme –


“I see that my conception is so abstract I can hardly think of a way to explain it that doesn't sound kind of ridiculous.”

Now you know how I feel when I write!   


“So just bear with me, OK?”

Just like Jack with Ennis, I always do…


“Occam probably would have us turn to the pavement people and/or the fire-and-brimstone crowd, because Ennis does, elsewhere, indicate that he's uncomfortable around both. And we viewers/readers know from our cultural knowledge that those rural Wyoming pavement/brimstone folks can be homophobic.”

Yep. All if there were no Earl.


“So why do I blame OMDM anyway?”

Yeah, why do you… it’s the “old man” thing, isn’t it?


“Because -- and here's where it gets so tricky that it's almost impossible to explain -- even with the Earl element removed, I continue to view Ennis through the Earl lens, thus blaming Mr. Del Mar. "Aha!" I can hear you saying. "That's why Earl is necessary." And yes, it's true, in that sense he is necessary. But he's necessary only for the sake of my understanding of Ennis' character. Not, IMO, for shaping Ennis' character.”

Well, I was halfway through this paragraph and I was going to say “OK, I'm with you…” But then I got to the last two sentences and you lost me. I’ll keep reading…. Keep bearing with you…


“In other words, let's say for the moment that if there's an Earl, then we automatically know Mr. Del Mar's homophobia is to blame for screwing up Ennis.”

OK.


“Now comes the really, really tricky part.”

I’m all a-twitter.


“What if we take Earl out of the equation? Without X, does Y still exist? If we've got an Ennis who we know, via Earl, was the product of Mr. Del's homophobia, and suddenly there is no Earl, does that change everything? Do we start from scratch with a blank-slate Ennis?”

Well, yes. But, the blank slate needs to be filled with something. Now, it’s up to us to choose how to fill that blank slate.


“The answer, in my mind, is no. We're left with the same Ennis we've come to know and love. Whose emotional problems are the product of his dad's homophobia, not the Earl death scene.”

I’m getting confused. Yes, this is ONE way to fill the blank slate. But there are (with Earl out of the picture) better ways given by the film.

I guess I have to go back to “Without X, does Y still exist?” If Y is Ennis’ homophobia (period) then, yes, it does. But if Y is Ennis’ homophobia instilled by his father, then, no. Because in this scenario, the X-Y equation can only be valid (it would only appear) IF we have dead Earl.


“Removing the Earl death scene changes neither Ennis, nor the cause of his problems.”

Accepting that the cause of Ennis’ problems is not removed, we don’t know what that cause is. So we have to look for candidates. And OMDM comes far down the list.


“But what happens is that now, sans Earl, we don't have any way of knowing what caused his problems. If all we'd ever been given were these circumstances, we'd be turning our attention to those pavement and church folks.”

Absolutely.


“But, because in "real life" we have heard of Earl, then the knowledge of Earl's death -- and, thus, Mr. Del Mar's homophobia -- has already seeped into our consciousness. So now, even if Earl is removed, unless we want to go back to square one and start over with a whole new Ennis, we're still left with Ennis and his warping by Mr. Del Mar.”

I’m sorry. LOL. And you said I came up with far-fetched ideas? Now, what you’re talking about to support your point is to watch the film in order to get certain information and then cut that information out of the film, but keep it in our heads. The problem here is that if we showed the new, edited film to a newbie, that person would not have the knowledge that we got from the uncut version and they wouldn’t have a clue as to why we blame OMDM. I just thought of something horrible… Someday BBM will be broadcast as a movie of the week on FCC-controlled broadcast television. They’ll have to edit it. What if they edit scenes like this and then a whole new generation will come up believing that Ennis’ isn’t homophobic at all – he’s just non-committal…


“That's how I see all these scenarios. No matter what, we start with the same Ennis we meet in 1963 who has been warped by his father's homophobia. If Earl existed, and four years later he tells us the story, then we know exactly why. If Earl never existed, then either we never know why, or we find out only through some lengthy exposition. But either way, we're dealing with the same Ennis, product of the same circumstances.”

But we only know it’s the same Ennis because we saw both versions of the film. If you ever call any of my ideas far-flung again… I’m saving this one!   


“Now you can feel free to argue that once Earl is gone, the rules have changed and we have to start from scratch. You could say that if I'm going to be rude enough to AP and AL as to reject their brilliant creation of Earl, then my punishment should be having to come up with a whole new Ennis and a whole new explanation for his hangups. But that's simply not the way I'm seeing it. I'm going with the same Ennis we've been given, whom we know via Earl, and who still exists, and for the same reasons, even in the absence of the actual Earl.”

What if I cut out the baby Bobby in the bedroom scene? Then I can come up with my own explanation of why Jack decided it was time to reconnect with Ennis? Or, I could cut out the Ennis in the closet scene and say that it was Ennis who stole and kept the shirts for twenty years, unrevealed until the very last moments of the film. (Actually, this one is kind of poignant, isn’t it? Would change the whole story, imho.)


“Does that make any sense?”

I wish you wouldn’t have asked.


What do you have against old men?

“Nothing! In fact, there's one I'm particularly fond of.”

Then why do you make him work so hard?


“So I still stand by my original premise: “But IMO, Earl is not even the main reason Ennis is like that -- in fact, it's entirely possible that he would be like that if Earl had never been killed.” It's true, he'd still be like that, and for the same reasons. However, we viewers/readers would not have a clue why he's like that.”

Well I certainly CANNOT and WOULD NOT disagree with the very last sentence here. It sure would make BBM into the century’s biggest “whodunit?” or, rather, the biggest “whatdunit?”.


“We'd turn our attention to the pavement/brimstone folks, who may not be innocent but certainly aren't the main bad guys, and the real culprit would remain Ennis' little secret.”

Then we’d have to change the title to “The Secret of Brokeback Mountain.” And the tagline would be: “Shhh! Don’t tell anyone. It’s not what you think!”

[TOoP/Bruce]

Re: It's not all about Earl.   
  by oilgun     (Fri Nov 3 2006 13:43:10 )   
   
But he's necessary only for the sake of my understanding of Ennis' character. Not, IMO, for shaping Ennis' character.

I can't believe you two are still at it, lol! I agree with the above and that was exactly my point when I said that Earl was only important to the reader/viewer not the character of Ennis.


))<>((
forever.


Re: It's not all about Earl.   
  by latjoreme     (Fri Nov 3 2006 16:27:43 )   
   
But he's necessary only for the sake of my understanding of Ennis' character. Not, IMO, for shaping Ennis' character.


I can't believe you two are still at it, lol! I agree with the above and that was exactly my point when I said that Earl was only important to the reader/viewer not the character of Ennis.

Oilgun, that is exactly right. You have summed up in a sentence what I've been trying over 72 posts, tens of thousands of words and countless far-fetched hypothetical scenarios to say.

CPDM, it's not really about whether Earl existed or not. It's about whether Earl is crucial to shaping Ennis' character. Our original positions were that you felt he is, and I felt he isn't. Mine hasn't changed. Given what I have learned about Ennis' background -- yes, via Earl! -- I don't believe Earl was the single watershed moment. Are there other possible imaginable factors? Yes. But none works as well as the Mr. Del Mar theory.

But I ALSO believe that Earl is crucial to conveying Ennis' background to the viewers/readers/Jack. There would be no other effective way to do it, short of dreaming up some other powerful, horrifying, succinct, resonant anecdote for Ennis to tell in the sweet-life scene. He's essential in the movie and story, just not in Ennis' life.

So I can still say, “IMO, Earl is not even the main reason Ennis is like that -- in fact, it's entirely possible that he would be like that if Earl had never been killed.” In fact I can say it with even more conviction, because you've made me defend it against dozens of alternate scenarios.

Re: It's not all about Earl   
  by latjoreme     (Fri Oct 27 2006 20:54:25 )   
   
UPDATED Fri Oct 27 2006 23:25:15
Thanks for the comments, oilgun! I agree with much of what you said.

We as readers or viewers (not Ennis) needed something that horrible so we wouldn't question (at least most of us wouldn't) why Ennis was so repressed and incapable of self acceptance.

Good point. The Earl scene is powerful. It stays in the viewer's mind, as it would have in Ennis'. In the absence of anything else, I think CPDM is right to say that this incident alone is enough to explain Ennis' homophobia, for casual fiction purposes. And it wouldn't work to have Ennis go on for hours, confessing to Jack all the bad stuff in his childhood. It would be vague and rambling and ambiguous. So from a narrative standpoint, this is punchy.

But just because this incident is sufficient and memorable doesn't mean that's all there is to it. It doesn't mean that other bad stuff didn't happen, or that the story doesn't support the interpretation that there's other bad stuff, in fact even imply it. And it certainly doesn't suggest that any bad stuff contradicts what we have been shown.

When you consider other factors -- what would shape Ennis' paranoia and repression, whether a potentially murderous father would express homophobia only on one isolated occasion -- it doesn't make sense, to me, to think that the Earl incident is all there is. "History, what we know of human nature and the society we live in" is exactly what we're supposed to bring to the table as readers/viewers. We're not supposed to clear our minds of everything we know about societal homophobia or developmental psychology or prejudice or violence or anything else before reading/viewing. The author and filmmakers give us credit for knowing that much. They may surprise us, or challenge our expectations. Or they can show us things that work in accordance with our expectatoins. But they don't expect us not to have any.

They can give us credit for taking cues and considering their larger implications. I don't understand the argument that one might just as easily come away with a vision of a nice Mr. Del Mar -- after Ennis has described him pretty clearly as a guy who is a potential murderer.

Either way, the Earl story gets the point across. It works whether it stands for a whole horrible youth or a single horrible incident. The viewer gets the message.

- It just occurred to me that an equally scarring father/son incident in Jack's life was omitted from the film. I think the bizarre washroom episode when OMT urinated on his 4 year old son to teach him a lesson was never mentioned so as not to lessen the impact of the Earl scene.

That's one good explanation. Another might be that watching a small child get abused that way would be too shocking for movie audiences. It's bad enough in a book, but would be worse in a movie. Viewers would be distracted from what they're really supposed to be watching at that point: Ennis' going into Jack's room and finding the shirts.

Another is that to show Jack's impression of that scene -- Jack's father isn't circumcised and Jack is -- would require full frontal nudity of a man and kid and probably would be impractical.


Re: It's not all about Earl   
  by latjoreme     (Fri Oct 27 2006 23:28:29 )   

“…but it's like you and latjoreme are in different dimensions, lol!”

You’ll get no argument from me. latjoreme? []

I've always thought of us as on different planets. But dimensions works for me, too.

 

[TOoP/Bruce]

Re: It's not all about Earl   
  by ClancyPantsDelMar     (Sat Oct 28 2006 01:36:17 )   
   
“But just because this incident is sufficient and memorable doesn't mean that's all there is to it. It doesn't mean that other bad stuff didn't happen, or that the story doesn't support the interpretation that there's other bad stuff, in fact even imply it. And it certainly doesn't suggest that any bad stuff contradicts what we have been shown.”

See, I can agree with this, but then this raises some questions: How does the story “support the interpretation that there's other bad stuff?” How does the story “imply it?” How does the story not “suggest that any bad stuff contradicts what we have been shown?” Then, we also must ask, if these elements are implicitly present, what are we to make of this? If they are, what are we to make of this? Is the story “complete” without the extras? Is the story disadvantaged by their absence? What advantages are there to including the extraneous information? What extraneous information do we include and what information do we reject? As information is injected to give us a picture of the character, is the picture better, worse, clearer, more confused, etc. Is the theme advanced or inhibited by the new information? Does the plot suffer or strengthen from the additional stuff? From where does the extra stuff come? Should there be consensus on source material? Should any revelations that emerge be considered on a personal level? A group level? Are there better explanations for the results of the additional information rather than the additional information itself? What are the criteria against which we should judge the extraneous information? These are all I can think of off the top of my head.


“When you consider other factors -- what would shape Ennis' paranoia and repression, whether a potentially murderous father would express homophobia only on one isolated occasion -- it doesn't make sense, to me, to think that the Earl incident is all there is.”

But are you able to explain that even though this is the way the character was drawn for us, it must necessarily be inadequate? Must all characters make sense to each and/or any of us? From what perspective? Our own? From others? Do the experiences of others matter in our own understanding? Why or why not?


““History, what we know of human nature and the society we live in” is exactly what we're supposed to bring to the table as readers/viewers.”

Why?


“We're not supposed to clear our minds of everything we know about societal homophobia or developmental psychology or prejudice or violence or anything else before reading/viewing.”

Why not?


“The author and filmmakers give us credit for knowing that much. They may surprise us, or challenge our expectations. Or they can show us things that work in accordance with our expectatoins. But they don't expect us not to have any.”

You’ve actually answered a lot of the questions by your second and third sentences. And you conclusion sentence (#4) works well with the two answering questions. In other words,

The author and filmmakers don’t expect us to not have any expectations. However, based on what they have given us, did they then surprise us and challenge our expectations or did they show us something that works in accord with our expectations?

Many people expected that this movie would be about a gay love story. However, that is not what the author/filmmaker gave us. Instead, we were given an exposé on the destructive effects of rural homophobia exposed through the plot device of a gay love story. We were challenged and surprised. And we were constantly challenged and surprised as the story played out, driving the theme.


“I don't understand the argument that one might just as easily come away with a vision of a nice Mr. Del Mar -- after Ennis has described him pretty clearly as a guy who is a potential murderer.”

The simple answer is, because he may not have been a murderer. Look at all that is said about Ennis’ father before the Earl death scene. Has he been painted as a potential murderer? No. Now, look at the Earl death scene. Has he been painted as a potential murderer? Yes. So we have a conundrum. Is he a potential murderer or not? What is our source of this information? Ennis. What do know of Ennis? Many things. One relevant item is that he is paranoid. IF Ennis’ father is not a potential murderer, then is it not possible that Ennis could think his father to be a potential murderer based on Ennis’ misunderstanding of what his father did on that day? Based on Ennis’ paranoia? Could Ennis have misunderstood what happened that day?

One strong argument that you make in understanding the argument is your use of the word “after.” Nothing before this episode indicates that Ennis’ father may be a potential murderer. It’s only after what has been described by Ennis. And he is describing it based on his personal perception. Now, if I remember correctly, it is not only OK, but it is also beneficial and natural and expected of us to add additional information into the film that would give us a more complete understanding of Ennis. What additional information do we need to add that would help us to understand Ennis as someone who would misinterpret a traumatic event? None whatsoever. We have it all right there in the film itself.


“Either way, the Earl story gets the point across. It works whether it stands for a whole horrible youth or a single horrible incident. The viewer gets the message.”

Absolutely.


(re: urination incident)

“Viewers would be distracted from what they're really supposed to be watching at that point: Ennis' going into Jack's room and finding the shirts.”

This is the best explanation I can think of for it not being in the film. However it is in the short story and so we must ask “why?”

[TOoP/Bruce]

Re: It's not all about Earl   
  by oilgun     (Sat Oct 28 2006 11:12:25 )   

But just because this incident is sufficient and memorable doesn't mean that's all there is to it.

That was my point actually. The Earl incident is primarily for the viewer/reader not the character. To me it's implicit that Earl is, like you said, a quick way of telling us that Ennis grew up with active and constant homophobia at the hands of his father and other male role models in his community. It's purely a literary tool. We all know real-life Ennises and chances are few of them have experienced such trauma as a child, it's just not required in real life. Constant low-grade "brainwashing" is all that's needed, but like you said, that's not as punchy.

Another might be that watching a small child get abused that way would be too shocking for movie audiences.

No kidding! I realize this scene would be impractical to film and I certainly didn't expect it to be. However, it could have been alluded to in conversation but that would have lessened the impact of the Earl incident IMO. Plus OMT comes off as enough of an old b@st@rd as it is, so it's hardly required.


"Now scoot!"-Ms. Perky

Re: It's not all about Earl   
  by stitchbuffymoulinfan     (Sat Oct 28 2006 16:02:38 )   
   
OP: so good!

www.jlodown.com
www.petitionspot.com/petitions/jlodown
   
Re: It's not all about Earl   
  by norway-jm      3 seconds ago (Tue Jan 9 2007 09:49:11 )   
Ignore this User | Report Abuse   
Earl is the one physical, factual, indisputable thing Ennis can point to as the reason he and Jack could never "ranch up together." "If this thing grabs hold of us, in the wrong place, wrong time... we're dead." If not for Earl, Ennis would still think it was wrong, but he wouldn't have something so tangible to hang his hat on... just a feeling that two guys can't do that. Earl is Ennis' get-out-of-gay-free card.