Isn’t the question, how far does the excuse ‘a product of his time’ go?
Which character could one use that reasoning for in, for example, Mississippi Burning?
[And same-sex couples have been ‘setting up housekeeping’ together, citing economy or companionship, for as long as there have been same-sex couples in homophobic societies.]
I was once criticized for mentioning the name of the winner of the World Series Of Poker some weeks after the event, because apparently it hadn’t come out on TV yet. Spoilers for real life events that had received wide news coverage seemed over the top to me. I hear Heath Ledger is dead!
The first statewide anti-discrimination law was passed in Wisconsin in 1981. And I’m pretty sure I said that these two particular men would have been pretty much unable to move to an urban area. My point here is simply that it wasn’t impossible as a matter of fact for two men or two women to live together in a committed relationship at the time of BBM. Committed couples of both sexes were public at the time.
Indeed. I haven’t seen the movie but read the story many years ago and from it:
The old man spoke angrily. “I can’t get no help out here. Jack used a say, ‘Ennis del Mar,’ he used a say, ‘I’m goin a bring him up here one a these days and we’ll lick this damn ranch into shape.’ He had some half-baked idea the two a you was goin a move up here, build a log cabin, and help me run this ranch and bring it up. Then this spring he’s got another one’s goin a come up here with him and build a place and help run the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his from down in Texas. He’s goin a split up with his wife and come back here. So he says. But like most a Jack’s ideas it never come to pass.”
I’m sorry, I know generally what it’s about, but haven’t seen Mississippi Burning.
Yes, and I asked the OP to take this story in context in its time and place. Two “avowed bachelors” involved in the arts community might have been able to get away with it in 1930’s Berlin. Different time, different place and as you know, times did change in Germany, didn’t they?
Second insult, second warning. If you can’t stay civil in this thread, then keep out of it.
Since when is speculating on what behavior is or isn’t covered by the vague prohibition against “being a jerk” considered an insult? Serious question. This comes up frequently, and I’ve never seen anyone warned for it. Examples to the contrary will elicit a sheepish apology from me, of course, but your admonition honestly bewilders me.
ETA: And apologies, your reference to a “second warning” sent me back through the thread; I hadn’t seen the first one.
wouldn’t that be best served in email or private message?
Were you paying attention at all, or just looking for reasons to call these men jerks? First, Jack never said that he knew two guys who lived together. He did suggest that he and Ennis start a cow and calf operation together, but Ennis had deep-seated psychological reasons for not wanting to do that. HE was the one who said there were two guys that he knew who lived together. In case you went to the bathroom or went to get a beer at that point, those two guys were murdered by bigots, with one of them strung up by his dick to a vehicle and hauled around until his dick was pulled off. Ennis’s father marched his two sons out there and made them look at the body. Ennis’s father was such a hateful homophobe that Ennis said his old man could have been the one who did it, for all he knew. Ennis was so freaked out by the thought of being murdered because of his sexuality that when told of Jack’s death, he immediately pictured a scenario where Jack was beaten to death by murderous bigots rather than believe what he was told about it being a tragic accident.
For you to call Ennis an “emotionally distant coward” shows a shocking lack of comprehension and empathy regarding the film.
Wouldn’t this?
I remember very well what is was like being gay pre-Stonewall. Sure, there were some guys who lived together, but they did so under fear of getting beaten up, or worse, with no recourse whatsoever. They were even beaten up by cops, the very people who should have been protecting them. And I’m referring to people who were openly gay in an urban environment (the damn few who were). Ennis and Jack were not even close to being what we think of as “openly gay.” They would have thought of themselves as straight guys who sometimes fucked. Not even remotely the same thing. They were anything but jerks. They were making the best they could of an impossible situation. The closet isn’t pretty. It kills.
No.
So how do feel about the way they treated their wives and the way that Ennis treated his children?
There were certainly villains in their lives, but they were still jerks to those closest to them. And Ennis was even a jerk to Jack. There may be reasons that they were jerks, but they were still jerks.
After I watched “Brokeback Mountain,” it took me a long time to digest the movie in my head. Yes, Ennis and Jack were indeed jerks. I think Ennis was a cowardly asshole. I think Jack had selfish, clueless tendencies. I also think that they were both doing the best they could. It wasn’t a case of “two guys can’t live together,” it was a case of Ennis couldn’t admit even to himself that he loved Jack and wanted to live with him as a romantic partner. I usually hate adultery in movies, but it’s a testament to this movie that it seemed like the adulterous relationships were the ones the guys had with their wives.
No, there was no reason at all for them to be jerks. There was a good reason to keep their love for each other a secret, sure. But they didnt have to go out, get married and thus be a jerk to 2 women.
All they had to do is live as two confirmed batchelors (sadly likely seperately, but next door would be OK), who were close freinds. Sure, they’d have to occassionally visit a titty bar and gawk, whistle at a girls legs and so forth, but they didnt have to drag two decent women into their lives.
Again, this interpretation says far more about your unfamiliarity with the truth of the situation than it does about the film. The pressure to marry and produce children was enormous. More importantly, homosexuality itself was seen as an aberration, not simply another way to go through life. To a very great extent, even men (as well as women, it goes without saying) who felt sexual urges toward the same sex shared the cultural belief that there was, essentially, no such thing as “gay.” Rather, it was simply a given that men were supposed to be attracted to woman, and any other urge was unnatural and, each man with such urges prayed, fleeting; a “phase.”
I’d hoped that Brokeback Mountain had been more successful in causing people who’d never been in that situation to really try to empathize, but clearly many people were not inspired to do so. Put yourself in that situation (I don’t have to; I was a gay teen in the seventies; I lived through it daily): merely in order to survive–not to mention in order to believe yourself worthy of joining humanity–you had to try, every waking moment of your life, to fit yourself into the mold that the society you grew up in told you daily was your only choice.
The point of showing the two men trying to make “normal” lives for themselves, and convincing themselves that they could love a woman as much as they’d loved each other during that “phase” that they believed they’d learned to control, was to demonstrate that it was the pressures of society that forced the two men to try to live a life that, ultimately, they discovered was a lie. Surviving that process, of putting every fiber of your being behind trying to live the way the world around you insists that you must, is so far from being a “jerk” that I really don’t know how to express my frustration that people still see such things so solipsistically.
Hence, no doubt, my peevish tone in this thread: such intolerance and, simply, ignorance, as has been expressed in this thread is the same kind of intolerance and ignorance that made my teen years such a misery, and Jack and Ennis’s lives unsurvivable.
The lack of compassion and empathy in this thread is very, very saddening to me.
You weren’t speculating. Someone asked about how old a work has to be to stop using spoiler tags and you responded with I’d have to consider “someone who thinks politeness should have a statute of limitations” as good a definition of “jerk” as any.
That wasn’t a vague speculation; you were calling another poster a jerk.
So because they have been dealt a bad hand in life that gives the right to not be jerks when they treat their wives (plus children) like shit? Do you have an empathy for their wives? Would they be jerks if they engaged in some light gay basing to fit in? What if they actually beat another gay man to fit in? What actions could a closeted man at that time commit and still not be a jerk just because there is pressure to fit in?
Wow. Just, wow. Another lesson in trusting my instincts: I shouldn’t have even bothered.
> TWEEEET! < ::: Second moderator steps in to blow whistle for attention :::
First, the personal insults will STOP and NOW. However obliquely disguised, they’re still personal insults. It is possible for a person to have very different reactions than yours to characters in a movie, and not be a jerk, insensitive, or whatever other names have been flung about.
Please remember that watching a movie and reacting to characters is very subjective. If I just had a quarrel with my wife before going to see a movie, I might think the wife in the movie deserved the slap, for being so bitchy. If I had just had a romantic, cozy dinner with my wife, I might think the guy was a wife-beater and the worst villain ever. Same movie, different reactions based on my own mindset at the time.
Other people’s reactions are worth listening to and exploring, and learning from. If you don’t feel that way, then get the hell out of this forum.
Now, on the question of spoilers and when they are appropriate or not: as someone else referred, please see the Forum Rules and note Post #4. Quoting:
If you want to discuss this, please start a different thread. When does something become “so well known” that it doesn’t need spoiler tags? I don’t think there are hard and fast rules, it’s all pretty much subjective. Yes, spoiler boxes are a minor nuisance to read; one remedy is just to give the thread title the warning “open spoilers” if you think there will be lots of 'em. Or ask the Moderator to edit the thread title, if there are more spoiler boxes than you think reasonable. Anyhow, that discussion can continue elsewhere if you wish.