A Freudian Perspective

[Front-Ranger]

This review of the movie addresses that age-old question, Were Jack and Ennis homosexual? and takes a Freudian view.

http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/shillbrokebackmountainreview.pdf

[southendmd]

Very unconvincing. 

[Front-Ranger]

I thought so too. For one thing, the author says something like "Jack's mother was never mentioned" when he mentioned her at least once and seems to have had a nice relationship with her. The author never addresses the scene in the Twist house at the end.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Very unconvincing. 

You're being kind.

I'd say to call it a film about "maternal deprivation" is bull.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I thought so too. For one thing, the author says something like "Jack's mother was never mentioned" when he mentioned her at least once and seems to have had a nice relationship with her. The author never addresses the scene in the Twist house at the end.

Good point, FRiend!

[Jeff Wrangler]

I'd be more convinced if somebody argued that Ennis and Jack were both looking for the love they never received from their fathers. We know Jack's father was openly contemptuous of Jack, and Ennis' father made Ennis look at the dead Earl and then got himself and Ennis' mother killed in an automobile accident.

Isn't that at least part of a "classic" Freudian explanation for male homosexuality, an emotionally distant or absent father?

(I mean "convinced" as a Freudian explanation, not necessarily convinced as in "correct.")