Does Jack know that is or is not his child?

[Artiste]

Does Jack know that is or is not his child?

That, to me, is important. For many reasons.

Do you feel or know that that child is his??

Does Jack become to know, when and how??

Such questions and others are important, surely.

Pray you all will comment,

hugs! Blessed is a child to all!!

[Artiste]

Don't be shy to comment now.

This is very important in the BM movie... surely!

Hugs!!

[brokeplex]

Jack knows that Bobby is not his child.

[injest]

he sure didn't seem overly interested in him...at least in the story..

[brokeplex]

Good point!

That is one of the departures the film makes from the short story. Jack showed more interest in his heterosexual life in the film. Arellano in her essay in "Reading Brokeback Mountain"  points that out that this is a part of the heteronormativity the screenwriters added, which became a part of the Ang Lee's fillm.

[injest]

yes, Ennis's scenes with his family seemed more real and in keeping with the story...all of Jack's seemed jarring to me...not the way I pictured Jack at all.

[brokeplex]

agreed, many critics have also noticed that.

Daniel Mendelsohn in his article in New York Review of Books "An Affair to Remember", points out how jarring the additions of the heterosexual life of Jack is to the story. Several critics have opined that the screenwriters turned what was essentially a gay short story into more of a heterosexual story with elements of the gay closet as a companion text. Examples, the film has numerous scenes with Lureen in it, the short story tells us very little about her.
 

[Artiste]

Thanks brokeplex, thanks injest!!

I am happy that I am not the only one talking about the thread's question, I posed: Re: Does Jack know that is or is not his child?

I think that much, much more can be said about that question.

You two's comments are revealing. greatly so. Thanks, thanks!!

Concerning your sentence Brokeplex if I may quote you:

the film has numerous scenes with Lureen in it, the short story tells us very little about her.
 
 
 

.......

Brokeplex, injest and to all others, to that, to me the film does tell us much more that we think about Lureen.

There is a twist in the film. Like you say, different from Annie's story in a way, since scenes in which Lureen is in are numerous. That what I call a twist is to me like a circle.

The film seems to let us think very little about Lureen, but Lureen has many scenes in which she is in as somewhat secondary as our viewer perception... BUT we seem to view just like that ONLY on FIRST viewing.

But since Lureen is a female, I think she takes the first role!!

Lureen even surpasses and overtakes Jack's role as the prime one!!

Lureen is concerned always with time!!T

That time is like a circle; those times are like circles.

 And the screen writers and/or the director does that because Annie writes with circles and that kind of writing is her genious (her invention) as a tour-de-force).

All that I tried above to display, colours this differently: Re: Does Jack know that is or is not his child?

That is my idea. What you think you all?

Hugs!!

[moremojo]

The extended scenes of Jack's married life were added to the film to flesh out what was originally a short story into a two-hour feature length movie. I think the heteronorming that arguably resulted was primarily a by-product of this, rather than an objective in and of itself.

In the short story, I see no strong reason to disbelieve that Jack is the biological father of Lureen's son. The film complicates this, surely, because of the discrepancies in the timeline. I prefer to think those discrepancies were an oversight on the filmmakers' part, and that Jack was supposed to be understood to be Bobby's biological father. Thus, I would argue that Jack did know that the child was his, because there was no reason (on his part) to believe otherwise.

[Artiste]

Thanks moremojo!

May I ask you to look at that child, in the BM movie?

And tell me what you see, please.

Hugs!