Author Topic: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations  (Read 6131 times)

Offline ednbarby

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An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« on: November 26, 2006, 10:53:12 pm »
So I just got done seeing it for my I've-seriously-lost-count (I'm guessing around 20th) time on HBO, and here are the new things I've come away with:

1.)  DavidInHartford was right - Jack would vote Republican.  I got that from this line "Why bother earning it? - if the taxes don't eat it up, the inflation will."  Taxes = Democrats.  Why did I never see that before?  In general?  I've wondered for years why my blue collar brothers are such Republicans - why anyone who works basically minimum wage and barely squeaks by would vote Republican - and I got it answered for me tonight.  Jack would vote Republican because he sees the Democrats as eating away the money he makes in taxes.  Ennis, if at all, would vote Democrat because he secretly sides with them for pulling for the "little man."  David was right.

2.)  Brokeback Mountain is my Cry Therapy.  A coworker goes to Busch Gardens in Tampa every year to ride about the scariest roller coaster in the world.  Over and over and over again.  Why?  So he can scream his lungs out.  And feel fresh and new afterwards.  Brokeback Mountain is the only thing, just about, in this world that can make me cry.  Not cry - weep.  I still take a low dosage of antidepressants since the bout I had with post-partum depression five years ago - I've tried to wean myself off of them three times, now, and it keeps coming back.  But the thing about SSRIs is that they make something in your brain kick in just when you're about to cry - and - stop it.  Must be a substance all straight men have in their brains naturally.  So, just when I've been at my most vulnerable in my everyday life - fighting with my husband - at my wit's end with my 4-year-old - feeling like a failure at my job - I haven't been able to squeeze out a single tear.  But Brokeback makes me weep.  Even after nineteen or some odd viewings.  I need Brokeback.

3.)  The Shirts.  OK.  How THE HELL can anyone not be moved by the friggin' shirts???  It must be homophobia and nothing else.  Otherwise, I don't get how you can come to a point in a movie where you see that someone has carried a torch FOR TWENTY FUCKING YEARS to the extent that they have spirited away their love's shirt and kept it hidden in a childhood closet, covered over with their own shirt from that same period, and not be reduced to a PUDDLE OF FUCKING TEARS.  What is FUCKING WRONG with you?  I'm sorry, but again, I have the diagnosis:  Homophobia.  You CANNOT get past the fact that these are two men instead of a man and a woman, can you?  Allow me to turn all those hackneyed premises on their ears for a moment and ask you this:  If this were a story about a man and a woman and say... a notebook... would you not be equally as moved?  Morons.


« Last Edit: November 27, 2006, 09:43:35 pm by ednbarby »
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Offline Kd5000

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Re: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2006, 11:48:39 pm »
Democrat voters were as rare in Wy as were Republican voters in the Deep South/ TX panhandle during that time period.   :) 
Of course, things have changed. Right now,  I'd say a Jack type would be a Republican and Ennis would be a Democrat.

I though the mention of inflation and smoking the joint were to let us know that there now in the 1970's. Inflation was a big concern in that decade.  Some ppl have complained to me they needed a better time guideline. I guess they want the year the events are transpiring to be labeled at the beginning of every new "chapter."

Yes, I sent an e-mail to a film critic who had a big article the day after the OSCARS saying why the better picture won.  He was quite upset in his  reply e-mail to me explaining that not enough of the film was devoted to showing Jack and Ennis falling in love, being in love, etc. But he did mention the shirts as being evidence they had feelings for each other, but they needed more moments like that (the shirts). Like HELLO!   Should Juliet should have done something more drastic then committing suicide to show she loved Romeo.  :'( 

Offline RouxB

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Re: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« Reply #2 on: November 26, 2006, 11:58:24 pm »
After my upteenth viewings, here is (some of) what I came away with tonight:

Jack's soul did not "die" after Ennis divorce scene (not that I really thought that it did)

Ennis did own up to his queerness-lake scene-but then denies it again with "I know what they got for boys like you" to Jack.

I, yep me, am ready to accept that Jack needed to leave Ennis in order to save them both. But, possibly contrarily, I think Ennis was at a cross roads and, had Jack not died, something would have changed.

I am wrung out fromt his viewing. I haven't been hit this hard since my 5th, and most sorrowful, viewing in Birmingham while with my father.

I wish this had spell check...

Heathen

Offline ednbarby

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Re: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2006, 12:01:08 am »
Yes, I sent an e-mail to a film critic who had a big article the day after the OSCARS saying why the better picture won.  He was quite upset in his  reply e-mail to me explaining that not enough of the film was devoted to showing Jack and Ennis falling in love, being in love, etc. But he did mention the shirts as being evidence they had feelings for each other, but they needed more moments like that (the shirts). Like HELLO!   Should Juliet should have done something more drastic then committing suicide to show she loved Romeo.  :'( 

Exactly.  Honestly, it all boils down to this:  If you don't get it, you either a.) don't get Romeo and Juliet or b.) are a homophobe.

There I go being all black and white and no gray again, but hell, to me, black and white is all there is.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2006, 09:45:31 pm by ednbarby »
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Offline silkncense

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Re: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2006, 02:43:02 pm »
I, yep me, am ready to accept that Jack needed to leave Ennis in order to save them both. But, possibly contrarily, I think Ennis was at a cross roads and, had Jack not died, something would have changed.


I CAN'T believe that Ennis would (as opposed to 'needed' to) leave Ennis.  He'd think about it, he'd talk about it, he'd threaten it...but he wouldn't.  At least not then.  If he'd been at that point, he would not have gone to Ennis & held him the way he did when Ennis collapsed.  His mind may have been there, but his heart definitely wasn't.

And, so WHY is the impact different at different times?  And why to us and not to others -that is still a mystery to me.

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Offline serious crayons

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Re: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2006, 03:29:19 pm »
1.)  DavidInHartford was right - Jack would vote Republican.  I got that from this line "Why bother earning it? - if the taxes don't eat it up, the inflation will."  Taxes = Democrats.  Why did I never see that before?  In general?  I've wondered for years why my blue collar brothers are such Republicans - why anyone who works basically minimum wage and barely squeaks by would vote Republican - and I got it answered for me tonight.  Jack would vote Republican because he sees the Democrats as eating away the money he makes in taxes.  Ennis, if at all, would vote Democrat because he secretly sides with them for pulling for the "little man."  David was right.

I think it's possible that Jack might have voted Republican, though I would guess it might be more a matter of his being wealthy at that point (that, and his red-state environment) than his blue-collar background. My understanding is that traditionally Democratic working-class folks didn't start shifting to the Republican party in huge numbers until the '80s, when conservatives realized they could use wedge issues like gay rights and abortion and affirmative action and flag-burning and school prayer to divide socially liberal and socially conservative Democrats.

I'm not sure how Jack or Ennis would have stood on any of those issues (except maybe -- secretly -- gay rights and the fire and brimstone crowd's school prayer). Both seem pretty apolitical.

Offline nakymaton

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Re: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« Reply #6 on: November 27, 2006, 03:42:49 pm »
I think it's possible that Jack might have voted Republican, though I would guess it might be more a matter of his being wealthy at that point (that, and his red-state environment) than his blue-collar background. My understanding is that traditionally Democratic working-class folks didn't start shifting to the Republican party in huge numbers until the '80s, when conservatives realized they could use wedge issues like gay rights and abortion and affirmative action and flag-burning and school prayer to divide socially liberal and socially conservative Democrats.

Except that regional differences are also very important. In the Northeast or the upper Midwest during the 1970's, a wealthy person would have been more likely to vote Republican, and a working class person would have been more likely to vote Democrat. But the Mountain West has been a Republican stronghold for a long time ("there were seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you, you voracious man-eating son-of-a-bitch, you ate five of them" -- quote from the trial of Alferd Packer, infamous Colorado cannibal, from sometime in the late 1800's). (And Texas was a Democratic stronghold until the 1994 election cleared out a lot of the Southern conservative Democrats -- remember that Republicans ran Reconstruction, and whites in the old Confederacy wouldn't vote for Republicans until the Democrats started supporting the Civil Rights movement.) The biggest question for me about Jack's voting would be whether he was loyal to his Wyoming roots and/or was rebellious against his Texan in-laws. (He probably would have voted for Reagan, though, regardless.)

I doubt that Ennis voted.
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Offline David

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Re: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« Reply #7 on: November 27, 2006, 03:56:56 pm »
I'm kinda glad I don't have HBO.     I can't tell you the last time I watched the movie.    It just depresses me too much.    I have all the happy scenes in my head already thank you.   

Other than Jacks Death, the part that disturbs me is the Lake scene.    Jack has been seeing Randall since 1978, thats five years!     His frustration peaked and broke him that day.    I am still haunted by that look on his face as Ennis drove away.



Then the worse part.   Ennis dumps Cassie as he now knows that Jack is the only one for him.     Then the postcard comes back.....  UGH.      Well, we all know the rest.

No, I won't watch it again looking for more insight.   I feel that I fully understand exactly what Anne Proulx was writing about.   Love is hard.   Love hurts sometimes.   And sometimes Love gets away from you.


Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« Reply #8 on: November 27, 2006, 04:19:10 pm »
Well, what a cheery place this is!! I am actually pretty happy right now--a Dem governor AND a Dem legislature in Colorado, for the first time since the Kennedy administration--so I feel like I could paw the white out of the moon. But speaking of the moon, is it gettin to be full moon time again? Seems to me some people are feelin the tug of the tides, so to speak. Time to organize one of those full moon chats.
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Offline silkncense

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Re: An umpteenth viewing and... three revelations
« Reply #9 on: November 27, 2006, 07:35:18 pm »
David -

Maybe that is why I can (and do) still watch it.  I see it differently.  Jack repeatedly told his father that he and "Ennis Del Mar' would come up there someday.  But only once did he mention "some ranch neighbor of his..."  Frustrated.  Hurt.  Even at the brink maybe - but Jack didn't let him go, he still held onto Ennis.  That's what I saw. 

"……when I think of him, I just can't keep from crying…because he was a friend of mine…"