Lookin for the handle

[Front-Ranger]

Annie Proulx writes in the last paragraph of the story, "...the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity."

In pivotal parts of the movie, we see handles of all kinds jutting out. Some of the memorable ones are...

[Lynne]

How about the handles on the two buckets of water Jack brings up when they're making the first camp?

[Front-Ranger]

Yes, I remember those canvas buckets and the way the water slopped over when he put them down!

And that reminds me of another bucket...when we see Jack's back as he "relieves himself" probly of too much whiskey as they pass the time around the campfire, there is a bucket hanging from a tree sideways up near his head. Its hanging by its handle, natch!!

[Lynne]

Good one, Lee - love Jack flicking the belt buckle.

And Jack's holding the handle on the saw cutting wood setting up that first camp too.

[Front-Ranger]

Another handle that leaped out at me when I saw it was the handle of the pot on the stove to Alma's right just before she said, "Ennis, do you know someone name a Jack?"

[Lynne]

I watched again this morning and that saw doesn't seem to really have a handle.     What do I know?

Ax handles are strewn around liberally, though.

[Front-Ranger]

Well, it's a different kind of a handle. As I recall, that is a bow saw, and it's Ennis who uses it.

Regarding those ax handles, most of us have remarked on how the ax handle seems to be pointing to Jack's head  while he sits by the campfire. A corollary that I noticed is that when Ennis is sitting in his trailer at the end of the movie talking to Alma Jr., there is a knife block full of knives behind him and the knife handles seem to be coming out of his head.

 

[Front-Ranger]

Ooooooh, a list-makin’ opportunity. Bobby’s spoon handle at Thanksgiving. Alma Junior’s coffee cup (at the end)—she doesn’t hold it by the handle. Jack’s mom holds her coffee cup by the handle. Door handles. Car door handles—polishing them while telling someone what you should’ve said a week ago.

Yee-haw! The sublime list-maker returns! Adia, you know how I love your lists!!

[Lynne]

Great to see you, Adia!  Now I'm wondering about Alma holding her coffee cup, while awaiting Ennis' return after the Motel Siesta night...(compared to Junior in her last scene)...I have to find my website with the screenshots.

And it occurs to me that the various trailers (Ennis' at the end) as well as the ones that brought the horses to camp over the years had hitches (aka handles).  A stretch?

[Brown Eyes]

I was just perusing some of the older Open Forum pages and came across this great old thread... It seems like this topic of tire irons and spoons is hot again.  So, I thought I'd give it a nudge back up to page one.

[LauraGigs]

"...the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity."

I've always wondered what this is supposed to mean.  I immediately assumed it was some kind of metaphor, but maybe it's just nothing.  (In any case, it's a bit baffling IMO.)

[belbbmfan]

I've always wondered what this is supposed to mean.  I immediately assumed it was some kind of metaphor, but maybe it's just nothing.  (In any case, it's a bit baffling IMO.)

Yes, lurid colors? And obscenity? Why use those words? To give a sense of shame that Ennis maybe still feels about the dreams he has? Him 'not being queer' and all that. I don't know. He has the shirts hanging in this trailer at that moment, he isn't hiding them. And at that point be has come out, in a way, to several people.

I thought that the image of the handle reflect Ennis's lack of having 'something/someone to hold on to' in his life. Isn't Ennis holding more handles in his hand when he's around Jack (he drinks the whiskey holding the cup by the handle telling Jack about how he ended up there, he's holding the saw when they're setting up camp).

My mind is just wandering here. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And maybe someone has an better explanation for those lurid colors?


great idea to revive this thread Amanda! 

[Front-Ranger]

I've always wondered what this is supposed to mean.  I immediately assumed it was some kind of metaphor, but maybe it's just nothing.  (In any case, it's a bit baffling IMO.)

Speaking of metaphors, here's AP's recollection on the first metaphor she created:

I was very young, about three years old, when introduced to metaphor, and I remember the first sharp pleasure I felt in playing what seemed a kind of game. I was with my mother in the kitchen of our small house. Classical music came out of the radio, I have no idea what, some sweeping and lofty orchestral statement. I was not consciously listening until my mother, who was a skilled watercolorist, said, "What does this music make you think about, what do you see?" Immediately I translated the music I heard into an image. "A bishop running through the woods," I answered. I had no idea what a bishop was but liked the word for its conjunction of hiss and hiccup. What the music made me see in my mind's eye was a tall, glassy, salt-cellar figure—the bishop—gliding through a dark forest dappled with round spots of light. The connections of perception between the sounds of the music and the image of trees / slipping figure / broken light had been made. Thereafter, and forever more, I found myself constantly involved in metaphoric observation.

[Front-Ranger]

I just had a bolt of lightning hit me about the last metaphor in the story, where the spoon handle is jutting out of the can of beans "with an air of comic obscenity." It happened after I woke up from a dream where some things were pictured like cartoons...a television remote, a car, and a drainpipe. They sort of glowed like black lights and had a black outline around them. I realized that these things were not pictured that way to make fun of them or put them down, it was because they were symbolic icons, like drawings on the walls of primitive native caves and temples. What Annie Proulx is doing here is creating or advancing an iconography, and emulating in prose what the artists she admires, like Richard Prince, did for the cowboy, the West, and now our own private story.

[Front-Ranger]

I was just reading the book Women Who Run With the Wolves about the origins of the word obscenity. It comes from old Hebrew, meaning wizard, sorceress. Like many things having to do with the old feminine-based religions, the word came to have perjorative meanings in order to denigrate those religions.

The author Clarissa Estes also says, "...ladylikeness in certain situations actually throttled a woman rather than allowing her to breathe. . . .The mischief and humour of the obscene Goddesses can cause a vital form of medicine  to spread throughout the endocrine and neurological systems of the body."

These obscene Goddesses described by her heal through sexual/sensual means. One is Baubo, the ancient Greek Goddess of Obscenity or the Belly Goddess. Another one is named Coyote Dick. And I think a contemporary person who should go in this category is our dear Annie Proulx.

[serious crayons]

These obscene Goddesses described by her heal through sexual/sensual means. One is Baubo, the ancient Greek Goddess of Obscenity or the Belly Goddess. Another one is named Coyote Dick. And I think a contemporary person who should go in this category is our dear Annie Proulx.

Interesting idea, FRiend!

 

[Front-Ranger]

I thought that the image of the handle reflect Ennis's lack of having 'something/someone to hold on to' in his life. Isn't Ennis holding more handles in his hand when he's around Jack (he drinks the whiskey holding the cup by the handle telling Jack about how he ended up there, he's holding the saw when they're setting up camp).

This was a perceptive observation that you made a year ago, friend. I'd like to take it up again...by the handle! It's interesting that early in their friendship, Jack pours whiskey into Ennis' cup and then Ennis picks it up by the handle. Later, they just swap the handleless bottle together, not caring if their hands touch while passing it back and forth.

[Front-Ranger]

I just had a bolt of lightning hit me about the last metaphor in the story, where the spoon handle is jutting out of the can of beans "with an air of comic obscenity." It happened after I woke up from a dream where some things were pictured like cartoons...a television remote, a car, and a drainpipe. They sort of glowed like black lights and had a black outline around them. I realized that these things were not pictured that way to make fun of them or put them down, it was because they were symbolic icons, like drawings on the walls of primitive native caves and temples. What Annie Proulx is doing here is creating or advancing an iconography, and emulating in prose what the artists she admires, like Richard Prince, did for the cowboy, the West, and now our own private story.

This was a prophetic dream that I had that came true. It haunts me still. In the dream, I was preparing to show a video about Brokeback Mountain to an assembled audience. There was a big monitor on a stage, but I couldn't get it to work. I realized I needed to have a remote to operate it, and I had left the remote at the hotel room I was staying at. I went back to the room and retrieved the remote, and then I set out in my rental car, an ancient white Honda, for the hall. But part way there, I got stuck. I was going over a bridge, and I got high-centered over a big white drainpipe. Since my car wouldn't go, I got out and stepped gingerly over the boards of the bridge. I could look down and see the drainpipe below and rushing water under the bridge. But I made it to the hall with my remote, and presumably showed the video. Now, this dream seems pretty routine, but when I analyzed it carefully, I realized that the remote, the white Honda, and even the big drainpipe, represented close friends of mine. And it all came true...I ended up walking out on my friend high centered over the drainpipe, with the remote in my pocket.

[zephaniah]

This is fascinating.  I did some dream/memory exercises in the late eighties, and remember that during the time I was writing out the dreams as I remembered them that they did make sense - a surprise to me - when I concentrated on examining the information contained therein as it related to my real life.  Thank you for the continuation.

[zephaniah]

These obscene Goddesses described by her heal through sexual/sensual means. One is Baubo, the ancient Greek Goddess of Obscenity or the Belly Goddess. Another one is named Coyote Dick. And I think a contemporary person who should go in this category is our dear Annie Proulx.


     !!!  A goddess named Coyote Dick?!?   Now that's a deep metaphor!

[Marge_Innavera]

These obscene Goddesses described by her heal through sexual/sensual means. One is Baubo, the ancient Greek Goddess of Obscenity or the Belly Goddess. Another one is named Coyote Dick. And I think a contemporary person who should go in this category is our dear Annie Proulx.


     !!!  A goddess named Coyote Dick?!?   Now that's a deep metaphor!

I've read Women Who Run With the Wolves several times, and I think "Coyote Dick" was the title of a story about Baubo.

Am at a library computer right now, but will check on it. 

A conversation between Clarissa Estes and Annie Proulx would definitely be one where I'd love to be a fly on the wall!

[Front-Ranger]

A conversation between Clarissa Estes and Annie Proulx would definitely be one where I'd love to be a fly on the wall!

Amen, friend. Wouldn't that be awesome! And since CE lives in Denver, it could well happen!!

[Mandy21]

I love this old topic, that's come new again.  Just got off the phone with Fiona, and she's in quite a state with her current situation with her oldest, and I've made her promise me that she and I both will put Brokeback into our PC's exactly an hour from now -- 7 my time, 8 her time.  I'm hoping that will give her a bit of respite.

And on this particular viewing, I'll be looking for handles.   

[Front-Ranger]

Yee-haw! Let us hear about your reconnections!

[Mandy21]

Dang, I couldn't even count 'em all!  Never even noticed it till now...