Author Topic: How Did Jack Die?  (Read 80054 times)

Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #60 on: June 12, 2007, 04:54:57 pm »
Hi Rayn,

Great to see you here Bud!  And, thank you for that lovely post.  I regret that I'm not going to be able to go to Alberta, but I did go to the BBQ.  And, it was a once-in-a-lifetime wonderful experience.  I'm sure you'll feel the same way about your trip to Alberta.  And, going to the BBQ was a lot like a pilgrimage for me too.  Riding in Ennis's truck and seeing all the memorabilia from the movie were just incredible opportunities.

Keep us posted about your travels!

cheers
Amanda
:)
the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie

Offline Rayn

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #61 on: June 12, 2007, 05:16:53 pm »
Thanks atz75! 

You rode in Ennis' truck!?  Tell us more, how'd that happen?  They had it there?  Woah.   If I got in Ennis' truck, I'm afraid I'd highjack it and go looking for Ennis!   LOL...

I really hope to get to Alberta.  It's gonna take time and more cash than I thought, but reading how much you enjoyed the BBQ makes me wanna go more.  It really will be a once in a life thing....

So, I'll keep working on it.   ;)

Stay well,
Rayn

Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #62 on: June 12, 2007, 07:37:39 pm »
Hi again Rayn (again, I'm so happy to see you back on the boards Friend!),

Well, yes, those of us who went to the BBQ had the great pleasure of riding in Ennis's truck and generally hanging around it a lot.  Adam (EDelMar here at BetterMost), one of the main organizers of the BBQ, is the proud owner of Ennis's blue-green truck, which we all fondly call THE TRUCK (and lots and lots of other memorabilia).  I don't know whether or not he's planning to attend Alberta.  Many of the Brokies who came to the BBQ brought memorabilia and displayed it in the BBQ house.  For instance, we had Lureen's entire outfit (red hat, red western-shirt, blue pants and even the belt that she wears in her barrel riding scene), lots and lots of shirts (mostly Ennis's shirts), Ennis's creel case and net, lots of autographed posters and scripts, etc.  Oh, and someone brought the hat Ennis wears during the "prayer of thanks" camping trip.  Amazing.

It seems like a tradition for Brokies to bring their memorabilia to big gatherings so I'm sure some will appear at Alberta too.  For instance, I've heard that people brought loads of memorabilia to the Bay City Oscar night screening.  It's very easy to get emotional when seeing some of the props and costumes from the movie.  I'm so thankful that so much of the material from the film wound up in the hands of Brokies who truly love it.

Check out the BBQ threads over in the Social Events forum.  Here's the link to the big main thread, http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,5791.1815.html but there are several other smaller threads as well.  You'll get to see lots of pictures of things like Ennis's truck and of course the smiling faces of lots of Brokies.  Meeting your fellow Brokies in person is also beyond amazing. 

I hope you'll be able to go to Alberta.  I completely understand that these trips are a big commitment.  But, I'm sure you would have a fantastic time.

Anyway,

Sorry... I fear we've veered way off topic.  To get back on track, I still lean towards the sense that Jack was probably murdered and that the accident story is some kind of cover (and that probably Lureen doesn't really have a true sense of what happened to Jack when he died... she probably believes the accident story as she recites it). 
the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #63 on: August 24, 2012, 02:31:21 pm »
It's late August, the time when Jack died under mysterious circumstances. And, coincidentally, this is also the time when another Jack died in ancient lore....Applejack, also known as John Barleycorn.

The mystique surrounding John Barleycorn is comprehensively discussed in the blog of Miguel Tejada Flores, including the famous song by Traffic. Check it out, and let me know if you see parallels to our own Jack Twist.

Prost!!
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline tampatalon

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #64 on: August 24, 2012, 05:04:28 pm »
"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it."

Its over 6 years for me & Ms Proulx's line above sums up what I think.

I love the John Barlycorn blog!

TT

"Lean on me, Let our hearts beat in time, Feel strength from the hands that have held you so long. Who cares where we go on this rutted old road, In a world that may say that we're wrong."--EmmyLou Harris

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #65 on: August 24, 2012, 07:59:53 pm »
What a great quote, tampatalon! Thank you for checking it out!
"chewing gum and duct tape"

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #66 on: August 24, 2012, 08:31:25 pm »
Here's another great thread right here in BetterMost that address this:

Are Ennis and Jack Mythological?

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Offline serious crayons

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #67 on: August 24, 2012, 11:17:19 pm »
My feeling -- heavily influenced, admittedly, by the literate and well-reasoned arguments of ClancyPants -- is that there's no question about how Jack died. He died the way Lureen described it. The reasoning:

-- The idea that Jack died via homophobic violence we see enacted only in Ennis' mind.

-- Ennis himself was primally affected by an episode of homophobic violence.

-- How would Ennis have any idea about what "really" happened? All he's doing is extrapolating from what Lureen told him. So it's natural that he might leap to a conclusion based on his childhood. Even his imagined tool of Jack's death -- a tire iron -- comes from what he experienced as a child, not necessarily what he knows to have happened in reality.

-- Most important, from a literary perspective -- the perspective that supports the theme and the point of the story -- it makes more sense that the violence occurred in Ennis' head, rather in the real world. One of the major themes of BBM is that homophobia affects not only bigoted straight people but, often, its own victims, destroying not only lives (Jack's) but souls (Ennis'). Ennis was both gay and homophobic. It's more interesting to show how Ennis is permanently crippled by his culture's attitudes toward homosexuality than to show that people in conservative communities in the 1980s were often, duh, homophobic. Cinematically, the former interpretation also is reflected in the scene with Jack and Jimbo the Clown: are the guys around the pool table really talking about Jack? We're conditioned to think so. But actually, we don't know this, we just assume it based on what we know about bigoted small-town types of the 1970s. Again, it's an illustration of how a closeted gay man in that culture (like Ennis, definitely, and Jack, to some extent) is conditioned to automatically think the worst and to constantly have to worry about what people on the pavement are saying. It only makes sense that AP would have been aiming for the deeper, more complex and interesting depiction.

-- Aside from, arguably, Aguirre and Alma, nobody in the movie ever says anything explicitly homophobic with the huge exception of Ennis. Including Mr. Twist, BTW. So for characters to act on homophobic attitudes is less in keeping with the rest of the movie than for people to act in ways that are ambiguous but, from the perspective of a closeted gay man in 1960-85 America (i.e., Ennis), appear ominous.

Agree? Disagree? Keep the posts coming!  :)




« Last Edit: August 25, 2012, 11:20:41 am by serious crayons »

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #68 on: August 25, 2012, 09:56:19 am »
You're undoubtedly right, friend. There's another hint to the reality of Jack's demise...his origins in the town of Lightning Flat! It could be said that Jack died by exploding tire, but Ennis was killed by a tire iron...psychically.  :'(
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Marge_Innavera

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Re: How Did Jack Die?
« Reply #69 on: August 25, 2012, 02:06:11 pm »
-- Most important, from a literary perspective -- the perspective that supports the theme and the point of the story -- it makes more sense that the violence occurred in Ennis' head, rather in the real world. One of the major themes of BBM is that homophobia affects not only bigoted straight people but, often, its own victims, destroying not only lives (Jack's) but souls (Ennis'). Ennis was both gay and homophobic. It's more interesting to show how Ennis is permanently crippled by his culture's attitudes toward homosexuality than to show that people in conservative communities in the 1980s were often, duh, homophobic. Cinematically, the former interpretation also is reflected in the scene with Jack and Jimbo the Clown: are the guys around the pool table really talking about Jack? We're conditioned to think so. But actually, we don't know this, we just assume it based on what we know about bigoted small-town types of the 1970s. Again, it's an illustration of how a closeted gay man in that culture (like Ennis, definitely, and Jack, to some extent) is conditioned to automatically think the worst and to constantly have to worry about what people on the pavement are saying. It only makes sense that AP would have been aiming for the deeper, more complex and interesting depiction.

-- Aside from, arguably, Aguirre and Alma, nobody in the movie ever says anything explicitly homophobic with the huge exception of Ennis. Including Mr. Twist, BTW. So for characters to act on homophobic attitudes is less in keeping with the rest of the movie than for people to act in ways that are ambiguous but, from the perspective of a closeted gay man in 1960-85 America (i.e., Ennis), appear ominous.

That's a POV about Jack's death I hadn't heard before in over 6 years on BBM forums!

And I do think it's consistent with the fact that for both Ennis and Jack, being gay and sexually active in that particular era and place was full of real dangers; but on the other hand, Ennis often projected them out of context.  i.e., his statement to Jack that two men living together openly could be lethal -- which is realistic.  But then he speculates that they could easily lose control and out each other in public if "this thing" gets hold of them in the wrong place.  The reality there is that it would be the repeated separations between them that would make that more likely, not their living together.  In the latter case, they'd have to be very careful in public about little gestures, such as holding hands, that they've gotten used to at home.  But people who are married or otherwise in a long-term, live-in commitment, no matter how much passion there may be between them, just aren't likely to lose control in public.

Later on, Ennis asks Jack if he ever gets the feeling that everyone "knows".  Most likely, no one knows other than Aguierre (who is out of their lives by that time), Alma, and probably Monroe after the Thanksgiving scene; he's likely to question her about what the apparently sudden blowup was.  And it's a safe bet that neither told any third parties; if they had, some snarky remark (at the very least) would be directed at Ennis sooner or later.  


re John Barleycorn:

The image in the banner and on that blog shows the kind of effigy that would have been used ceremonially in pre-Christian and early Christian times in Europe.  I've heard speculation that it was a modification of an earlier human sacrifice practice, where a man was appointed king for a year and then sacrificed in a holocaust in the spring.  Of course, there are few to no written records to go on.

Never had heard of John Barleycorn in any context other than a figure of speech until today.  He sounds like a double first cousin to Dionysius, who was identified with wine and was also a 'dying and reviving' god.

P.S. -- I Googled "Corn Maiden" and got a lot of interesting responses but had to revise the search as "Corn Maiden paganism."  It turns out that "Corn Maiden" is a brand name.   ;)