[lbo-talk] Brian On "Brokeback Mountain" & "The Reception"

Jim Devine jdevine03 at gmail.com
Tue Jan 31 06:56:57 PST 2006


On 1/31/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>But the world of Brokeback Mountain is apparently hermetically sealed
and insulated from all the momentous social changes -- especially concerning gender and sexuality -- that happened in those decades. <

I dunno. It seems that the world (the "redneck" West) that these guys lived in was also hermetically sealed at the time. There's still a big cultural gap between the "red states" and the "blue states."


>Alma (marred to Ennis) and Lureen (married to Jack) inexplicably put
up with loveless marriage with little sexual passion for too long (Alma at least manages to divorce Ennis half way through the film).<

My impression is that Lureen married Jack sort of the way she might buy an accessory. He was a pretty rodeo cowboy who would help provide grandkids for her father (and her mother? I don't remember her) and maybe he was an act of rebellion for her, a way to get back at her father. She seemed more interested in looking good and in money than anything else, though her part in the flick was very limited. (Her character, like Alma's, was not well-developed, compared to those of Jack and Ennis.)

BTW, lots of people are in "loveless marriage[s] with little sexual passion for too long" (except perhaps in Hollywood).


> And It's one thing for Ennis and Jack -- born provincial -- to be in the closet in 1964; it's another thing for them to be stubbornly stuck in it in
1984! Ennis' refusal to leave Riverton, Wyoming and have a new life with Jack in New York, San Francisco, or whatever .... <

I think the point is that the "redneck" West wasn't just Ennis' social environment. It was also inside his mind. I don't think he reconciled himself with being gay (or bisexual?). Not even to the extent that Jack did. -- Jim Devine "The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin

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