Author Topic: The "Roots" of the movie  (Read 6783 times)

Offline brokebackjack

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Re: The "Roots" of the movie
« Reply #10 on: October 21, 2007, 03:50:20 am »
My son, who is the most gay friendly non-judgemental 22 year old around--and I am very serious--can't sit through Brokeback.
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Offline brokeplex

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Re: The "Roots" of the movie
« Reply #11 on: October 21, 2007, 02:19:14 pm »
My son, who is the most gay friendly non-judgemental 22 year old around--and I am very serious--can't sit through Brokeback.

Brokeback jack, your comment about your son has stirred my interest. Is he unable to sit thru the BBM movie because it is just too painful, the emotions too raw and disturbing? Or,is it because it just doesn't keep his interest? I know several young and middle aged"straight" men, who have seen the movie due to the prompting of their girl friends or wives, and at first are shy to tell me their true feelings, but upon skillful prompting they will admit that the movie bores them. After I tell them my own personal history, they easliy accept why BBM is important to me, but to them BBM is just a nice thoughtful Western (like "Ride the High Country"). I am very interested in the reactions of everyone who has watched the movie or read the SS. When I firstsaw the movie a year six months ago, I walked out of the theater numb... I couldn't cry, I couldn't think.....just numb, and then the crying started later. The obsession followed, and it frankly gets more intense as time has gone on. Thanks for the comment. 

Offline brokebackjack

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Re: The "Roots" of the movie
« Reply #12 on: October 22, 2007, 01:04:46 am »
It's interesting brokeplex!

He is crazy about the short story, just crazy about it.

But FNIT as depicted in the film makes him antsy lolol.
I think I get it>>being straight himself, he is watching 2 very straight cowboys his own age spontaneously hump lubelessly in a tent. He has his own  cowboy hat and his own tent, LOL, and I suspect his sphincter would tighten up as a defense mechanism at the very thought roflmao.

And I damned well know that gay friendly as he is, my son or not, I'm talking about  a 6'5 blond, blue eyed, built 22 year old who used to be 'the fat kid'. He isn't any longer. Far from it. 'Looks-wise' the words Holy Shit have been voiced by total strangers when he enters a room.

On those looks alone, he gets offers. He has told me about them. He has no problem when gay or bi men ask him ...uh, whatever. What he does have a problem with are men who do not accept NO and keep on importuning him after being told NO. I agree with him here, completely. If someone puts the moves on another person and is told no, and the man being importuned explains he is straight and invariably adds that he will happily be friends but no way regarding anything sexual, that demands respect. If respect is not given, then there is a problem. I well remember how aggravated i used to get when men I had said NO to kept bugging me for something I was not going to give, and hell, i wasn't even straight, I was bi!.

If he doesn't want to, that is his right. I think the film is sort of dull to him. And FNIT, to a kid that age who wears a cowboy hat, rides and camps, can make one nervous LOLOL
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Offline delalluvia

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Re: The "Roots" of the movie
« Reply #13 on: October 23, 2007, 09:36:07 pm »
I don't think it's either GWTW or Roots

Ditto.  I think has shades of Romeo and Juliet or Out of Africa more than anything else.

Offline brokebackjack

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Re: The "Roots" of the movie
« Reply #14 on: October 24, 2007, 03:43:37 am »
There is a real  Attic technique in BBM. AP wrote a Greek Tragedy, in short story form. If you read it from that perspective,or have had a classical training it is pretty obvious.

The heros are destroyed by their own flaws. It struck me immediately and I grabbed Aeschylos, felt I'd latched onto something. There is and was enormous similarity in the TECHNIQUE.Then, when FrontRanger actually asked Annie about the classical allusions in Brokeback, her answer all but said it.
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: The "Roots" of the movie
« Reply #15 on: November 02, 2007, 01:05:57 pm »
Ditto.  I think has shades of Romeo and Juliet or Out of Africa more than anything else.

I don't remember anything about Out of Africa, but I agree that it's more like Romeo and Juliet, at least in its specifics, than the others mentioned. Both are stories about two people who are the love of each other's lives but can't be together because of the prejudices of people around them. I'd throw in West Side Story, since that's just Romeo and Juliet in a different setting. Brokeback takes that same idea and gives it a twist, so to speak. The details are different -- nobody's brother or cousin gets murdered, the prejudices are partly internalized -- but the themes are similar.

IMO, the similarities with GWTW and Roots are more superficial: BBM is a big love story like GWTW and takes a historical look at members of an oppressed group like Roots.


Offline brokebackjack

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Re: The "Roots" of the movie
« Reply #16 on: November 09, 2007, 06:22:25 am »
I just don't see any similarity between BBM and Roots, which was an epic spanning the generations.

I DO see a lot of similarities between BBM and the Greek Tragedies, because that's what it was envisioned as, a modern Greek Tragedy in short story format.
"I couldn't stand it no more so i fixed it"