Author Topic: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors  (Read 8794 times)

Offline serious crayons

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Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« on: May 12, 2006, 07:30:02 pm »
We've seen all the everyday objects -- fans, buckets, coffee pots, water, snow, shirts, hats, colors, wind, hair, guns, trucks, elk -- can carry big metaphoric meaning. Because these objects keep reappearing throughout the movie, it's relatively easy to match them with their circumstances and figure out whether they fit the idea they're supposed to convey.

But I wonder about objects that appear just once or twice, but seem like they might have subtexts, too. It makes sense to me to consider these, given how many of those other symbolic objects could have easily been overlooked, and given how complex and detailed everything else is.

These one-shot things are almost impossible to prove or disprove, easy to imagine, easy to dismiss as imaginary. I thought I'd start a thread in which people can throw out ideas, however far-fetched, and argue over them. Here are a couple:

When Ennis drives up to the Twist ranch, he parks next to a dark, abandoned-looking, shell of a houselike structure. It's actually some kind of ranch outbuilding. But when I saw it, it made me think of the home that Ennis and Jack never had together.

When Ennis goes into Jack's room and picks up the little horse-and-cowboy statue, it's clearly reminiscent of the horse (no cowboy) he was seen carving on Brokeback. It's not the same one, yet it's too coincidental for there not to be a connection. So what does it mean? Does Jack's statue symbolize a life he'd envisioned as part of a couple (the horse and rider), while Ennis' statue represents his expectations of a life alone?



Offline DeeDee

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Re: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2006, 07:38:14 pm »
I know what you mean.  What catches my eye each time I watch, is the fact that Ennis' apartment is right accross the street from the Elks lodge.

Each time I see it,  I wonder if it was purposely put there to remind us, or maybe even Ennis about a time when Jack was hungry and Ennis took care of him.
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TJ

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Re: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2006, 09:37:23 pm »
I know what you mean.  What catches my eye each time I watch, is the fact that Ennis' apartment is right accross the street from the Elks lodge.

Each time I see it,  I wonder if it was purposely put there to remind us, or maybe even Ennis about a time when Jack was hungry and Ennis took care of him.

The reason that there is an Elks lodge across the street from the apartment in the movie is that the lodge actually exists in the town where the scene was filmed.

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2006, 03:53:56 am »
Quote
When Ennis drives up to the Twist ranch, he parks next to a dark, abandoned-looking, shell of a houselike structure. It's actually some kind of ranch outbuilding. But when I saw it, it made me think of the home that Ennis and Jack never had together.

This house (annex?) is a shell of a house. I always assumed that this is the house Jack wanted to life in whith Ennis (lick this house and then the ranch in shape). They couldn't have lived together in Jack's childhood roomm, after all. And couldn't have lived together in the same house as mean old man Twist.
But in a neighbouring house - why not? At least for a beginning.
I don't know whether this thought is right. It's just my feeling.


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Re: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« Reply #4 on: May 13, 2006, 04:13:09 pm »
The John C. Twist, Sr. house on the ranch at Lightning Flat in the movie is not anything like the house in Annie Proulx's original story. The movie people found an abandoned house and other buildings where they were searching for possible venue locations and decided to use what they found. They had to do some work on the old house to make it look better in the movie.

So, attempting to read some kind of metaphorical meaning into some of what the viewer sees on the movie or TV screen might not have to do with anything at all.

Here is the book description of the Twist House and location.

Quote
The ranch was a meagre little place, leafy spurge taking over. The stock was too far distant for him to see their condition, only that they were black baldies. A porch stretched across the front of the tiny brown stucco house, four rooms, two down, two up.


It was a little 4 room house and the upstairs rooms were probably attic rooms. KNowing how the history of houses were built and modified in the country in the Old West, including in Oklahoma, more than likely the original Twist house had just been a 2 room house when it was first built. Jack's grandparents might have owned it originally.

In the book when Ennis remembers Jack's father peeing on him in the bathroom and Jack being late to the bathroom so much, I also believe the bathroom was an add-on lean-to at the downstairs level of the house. I have seen and been in houses just like that.

Here is the book description of Jack's bedroom upstairs in the Twist house.

Quote
The bedroom, at the top of a steep stair that had its own climbing rhythm, was tiny and hot, afternoon sun pounding through the west window, hitting the narrow boy's bed against the wall, an ink-stained desk and wooden chair, a b.b. gun in a hand-whittled rack over the bed. The window looked down on the gravel road stretching south and it occurred to him that for his growing-up years that was the only road Jack knew. . . . The closet was a shallow cavity with a wooden rod braced across, a faded cretonne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of the room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and folded neatly over wire hangers, on the floor a pair of worn packer boots he thought he remembered. At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt.


Notice the bedroom "closet" was not really a constructed closet with a door in the book.

From the way that Annie Proulx described the closet, I would say that it had been created from an opening in the wall of the bedroom and the closet itself was a part of the attic and not exactly IN the bedroom.

My opinion here is that in Annie Proulx's story the shirts were not in a real closet (just a poorboy's makeshift one) when Ennis found them and when Ennis puts the shirts on a  hanger in his own trailer at the Stoutamire ranch in Signal, he puts the hanger on a nail on the wall which he had already put the Brokeback Mountain postcard.

Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« Reply #5 on: June 01, 2006, 10:34:55 pm »
When Ennis drives up to the Twist ranch, he parks next to a dark, abandoned-looking, shell of a houselike structure. It's actually some kind of ranch outbuilding. But when I saw it, it made me think of the home that Ennis and Jack never had together.

Wow, I don't know how I've missed this thread for so long. This idea is one of the saddest things I've heard lately.  Amazing observation.  I think a big thing that happens during the Lightning Flat sequence is Ennis finally has a concrete example of what a real life with Jack really could have looked like.  He was not able to imagine a probable scenario while Jack was alive.  But here it all is... laid out for him.  The fact that the house is crumbling and the ranch is in disrepair maybe are metaphors of the neglected state of the relationship between Ennis and Jack. If they had spent more time together and "tended" to their relationship it would not have wound up in such disrepair. If they had lived at the ranch, the exta house would be at least live-in if not pristinely madeover and if they had "tended" the ranch, it would undoubtedly be in much better shape than what we see has happened to it.

Quote
When Ennis goes into Jack's room and picks up the little horse-and-cowboy statue, it's clearly reminiscent of the horse (no cowboy) he was seen carving on Brokeback. It's not the same one, yet it's too coincidental for there not to be a connection. So what does it mean? Does Jack's statue symbolize a life he'd envisioned as part of a couple (the horse and rider), while Ennis' statue represents his expectations of a life alone?

I think of that cowboy toy as an indication that Jack already was dreaming of cowboys even when he was very young.  It's exactly the type of toy you'd expect to find in any kid's room... but the idea of a cowboy would be very different for Jack as he grows up as a gay kid and teenager.  It reminds me of the flashback where he watches Ennis ride away... his ideal cowboy (maybe symbolized by the toy) is suddenly his lover in the form of Ennis.  It's probably almost unbelievable to him.  The kind of thing a person often doesn't dare hope for. 

And for Ennis, I'm sure that toy cowboy reminds him just flat out of Jack (plain and simple).  It's been discussed that the moments when Ennis gazes at Jack on his horse on Brokeback are some of the first major clues that he's attracted to Jack and that Jack probably fulfills some kind of cowboy fantasy in Ennis too.  But I'm sure Jack's toy also reminds him of the animal that he carved in the tent on Brokeback.  I think (as you've suggested in other threads) that everything in that room reminds Ennis of Brokeback (even the slanting white wall that recalls the tent).  I hadn't thought of the idea that the single cowboy might remind Ennis of his loneliness.  That's awfully sad.  But, it's true that it's right at the moment that he touches that toy that the tears become really prominent in Ennis's eyes. 

I love how Ennis touches so much in that room.  He seems really sensitive to touching things, and this is probably the most important instance of his habit of caressing inanimate things.  It's like when he caresses Jack's first postcard gently with his fingers as he reads it... and the way his fingers linger on the tie at the entrance to the tent when he wakes up after the first tent scene and looks out towards the camp fire.  In this Lightning Flat moment it's like watching Ennis trying to make tactile memories... or revive tactile memories.
 :( :'(
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Offline nakymaton

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Re: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« Reply #6 on: June 01, 2006, 10:53:04 pm »
I love how Ennis touches so much in that room.  He seems really sensitive to touching things, and this is probably the most important instance of his habit of caressing inanimate things.  It's like when he caresses Jack's first postcard gently with his fingers as he reads it... and the way his fingers linger on the tie at the entrance to the tent when he wakes up after the first tent scene and looks out towards the camp fire.  In this Lightning Flat moment it's like watching Ennis trying to make tactile memories... or revive tactile memories.
 :( :'(

And to that list, I would add the last moment with the shirts, gently buttoning Jack's shirt, as if he was putting it back together after one of those kisses that Jack was always wanting...

 :'( :'( :'(

(I should not have watched that scene last night....)
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« Reply #7 on: June 02, 2006, 12:20:36 am »
Thanks for revitalizing this thread, you guys!

Amanda, this is an especially nice idea:

Quote
his ideal cowboy (maybe symbolized by the toy) is suddenly his lover in the form of Ennis.  It's probably almost unbelievable to him.  The kind of thing a person often doesn't dare hope for.

And for Ennis, I'm sure that toy cowboy reminds him just flat out of Jack (plain and simple).  It's been discussed that the moments when Ennis gazes at Jack on his horse on Brokeback are some of the first major clues that he's attracted to Jack and that Jack probably fulfills some kind of cowboy fantasy in Ennis too.

OK, here's another idea that you can add to my electric knife and postcard-wringing gallery of gutter-minded imagery. The last couple of times I've watched, I've noticed something about an early scene of Ennis and Alma's marriage -- the one where the girls are crying with runny noses. Ennis is coming into the kitchen, and from off-camera we hear this banging/thumping sound that to my mind recalls a bed jouncing against a wall. But then the camera pans over to Alma scrubbing away on the washboard. To me, it's a subconscious hint of: no exciting sex life here, just household drudgery.

Seriously, am I the only one who thinks of these things? That's kind of scary.

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« Reply #8 on: June 02, 2006, 07:22:55 am »
Wow, I don't know how I've missed this thread for so long. This idea is one of the saddest things I've heard lately.  Amazing observation.  I think a big thing that happens during the Lightning Flat sequence is Ennis finally has a concrete example of what a real life with Jack really could have looked like.  He was not able to imagine a probable scenario while Jack was alive.  But here it all is... laid out for him.  The fact that the house is crumbling and the ranch is in disrepair maybe are metaphors of the neglected state of the relationship between Ennis and Jack. If they had spent more time together and "tended" to their relationship it would not have wound up in such disrepair. If they had lived at the ranch, the exta house would be at least live-in if not pristinely madeover and if they had "tended" the ranch, it would undoubtedly be in much better shape than what we see has happened to it.

.......

I love how Ennis touches so much in that room.  He seems really sensitive to touching things, and this is probably the most important instance of his habit of caressing inanimate things.  It's like when he caresses Jack's first postcard gently with his fingers as he reads it... and the way his fingers linger on the tie at the entrance to the tent when he wakes up after the first tent scene and looks out towards the camp fire.  In this Lightning Flat moment it's like watching Ennis trying to make tactile memories... or revive tactile memories.
 :( :'(

You did it again. Look, that's me now:  :'(

Yet another repetitive habit of Ennis: caressing inanemate things. We collected some of Ennis's mannerisms on the I love everything Ennis thread. This one fits to the list. Do you like to post a new, expanded list on the "I love...", since it was your post with the list? Sniffing on clothes is missing over there, too.
I wonder whether Jack has such mannerisms, too. His tongue (still wondering if this is Jack or Jake, probably both) - but other? Maybe looking relaxed and sexy while leaning on cars  ;) Will think about it.

Sorry for being slightly ot here.




Offline chefjudy

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Re: Possibly misguided mini-metaphors
« Reply #9 on: June 02, 2006, 11:45:23 am »
 :) just when I thought we had dissected BBM fully and completely, someone (atz75) points out a new thought, idea or gesture that was previously missed - i.e. the tears in Ennis' eyes when he picks up the little cowboy in Jack's room - as if I needed another reason to watch the movie again - never enough time, never enough.................. :'(
Judy


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