Brokeback Mountain - The Story of Two Jerks [Open Spoilers]

Cafe Society
81

Again I have to stress that I haven’t seen the movie and it may differ from Annie Proulx’s story, but in the story it is clear when Jack and Ennis meet after they have married that Jack is getting his gay sex elsewhere.

*Ennis pulled Jack’s hand to his mouth, took a hit from the cigarette, exhaled. “Sure as hell seem in one piece to me. You know, I was sittin up here all that time tryin to figure out if I was—? I know I ain’t. I mean, here we both got wives and kids, right? I like doin it with women, yeah, but Jesus H., ain’t nothin like this. I never had no thoughts a doin it with another guy except I sure wrang it out a hunderd times thinkin about you. You do it with other guys, Jack?”

“Shit no,” said Jack, who had been riding more than bulls, not rolling his own. *

and later the last time they meet

*“You been a Mexico, Jack?” Mexico was the place. He’d heard. He was cutting fence now, trespassing in the shoot-em zone.

“Hell yes, I been. Where’s the fuckin problem?” Braced for it all these years and here it came, late and unexpected.

“I got a say this to you one time, Jack, and I ain’t foolin. What I don’t know,” said Ennis, “all them things I don’t know could get you killed if I should come to know them.”

“Try this one,” said Jack, “and I’ll say it just one time. Tell you what, we could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life. You wouldn’t do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everthing built on that. It’s all we got, boy, fuckin all, so I hope you know that if you don’t never know the rest. Count the damn few times we been together in twenty years. Measure the fuckin short leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mexico and then tell me you’ll kill me for needin it and not hardly never gettin it. You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I’m not you. I can’t make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You’re too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you.”*

82

To marry? No, they weren’t. To remain closeted? Absolutely. I certainly can’t blame two gay men in that area and era for not coming out. But they could have remained “confirmed batchelors”. Many men did.

83

This conversation doesn’t happen in the film, at least not in anything approaching this form.

This appears almost word-for-word, bit with a reduction in some of the swears.

Being a confirmed bachelor was not an option at least for Ennis, haunted as he was by the image of the dead gay rancher. For him never to marry was in his mind a direct threat to his life. And neither of them defined themselves as “gay” anyway, Ennis in particular looking at their feelings for each other as an external “thing” that takes ahold of them, so they’re not going to approach their lives from a gay perspective.

84

Wasn’t Ennis already engaged to be married before the summer on Brokeback? Not that he couldn’t have broken off the engagement if he really wanted to, but that would have caused a lot off immediate questions about why he was breaking it off. And he was probably in denial at the time about what his relationship with Jack was all about.

85

Not marrying women, and moving together to Jack’s parents’ ranch to quietly and peacefully make a rural life together may have been a happier ending for Jack and Ennis, but it would’ve been a crap movie. A 30 minute boring movie. And an unpublished short story.

86

Sorry!

87

snip

In addition to what Otto mentioned, Jack mentions, while discussing his son’s teacher with Anne Hathaway, that the teacher hates him because he calls her all the time. Jack was also resentful of his father-in-law’s attempts to keep him on the periphery of the family. I think the control that Jack exerts over his family - and son, specifically - are pretty significant, considering that he could easily have walked away at any time.

At any rate, I think calling Jack and Ennis “jerks” is kind of missing the point of the movie, and I think a lot of the suggestions people are throwing out (that they could have shacked up in the mountains together, or lived the lifestyle of a “confirmed bachelor”) are really missing the point as well.

These aren’t Hollywood actors or urban socialites we’re talking about, here. They’re farm-hands who not only don’t identify as “gay,” but don’t really have any understanding of the word as we use it and certainly don’t have any kind of good grasp on their own feelings. In addition, both of them have basically been undergoing psychological torture for quite some time - in the case of Ennis, almost his entire life.

While it might be a case of semantics, I tend to think of a “Jerk” as someone who is mean, condescending, or neglectful for no reason. Jack and Ennis essentially had a choice between living their lives as best they could under the strain of constant emotional torture, or killing themselves.

88

A jerk is as a jerk does; the why doesn’t matter when it comes to applying the label. Tony Soprano is also a jerk, regardless of the number his mother did on him. To complain that you can’t call Tony a jerk because that would be missing the point is, well, missing the point. It is not wrong-minded to notice that Jack and Ennis are a couple of jerks to the women in their lives.

89

To the person on the receiving end, should it make a difference?

90

Yeah, it should. Person A ultimately has no responsibility for how Person B interprets his/her actions.

For example, say my friend calls me to try to arrange a ride to the airport. I have to work and so can’t take her, and explain to her that I can’t get the time off work to transport her. If she chooses to interpret that to mean that I hate her, it’s not my responsibility that she chooses that interpretaion.

91

This is the world’s worst example of being a jerk, so your point hasn’t really been made.

The reason somebody is a jerk doesn’t make them not a jerk. Imagine pulling a prank or joke on somebody that they don’t appreciate; just because it was intended to be funny doesn’t absolve you from being a jerk.

92

Hyperbole much? World’s worst example?

What on earth does a joke with unintended consequences have to do with forbidden love?

93

Yes, Ennis was a jerk to Alma. It’s easy for me to make excuses for him from an omniscient narrative perspective, but anyone in her situation would have been hurt, angry, and confused. The failure of that relationship was totally not her fault, though she probably thought it was and suffered on it, and that’s terrible. Thing is, would she have been better off if Ennis had been a better faker? Because there was no way he could ever be happy with her after Brokeback Mountain, and I don’t think he had the wherewithal not to marry her, psychologically, or even understand at the time that he shouldn’t. Basically, once he met Jack, all his chances for happiness in life were destroyed, by the interaction of his psychology and the society he lived in. Alma was a casualty of that, but at least she was able to move on with her life and find some modicum of happiness. His jerkishness and inability to fake it is what set her free in the end. Ennis, OTOH, is doomed to be miserable for the rest of his life, so he is more than adequately punished for his jerkishness. That’s why his jerkishness to her is not “the point”-- I’m sure, if he could have handled it some other way, he would have. He was just not equipped, and it’s pathetic and more to be pitied than scorned in the end.

As for Jack’s wife… I got the feeling she was not into him either. That marriage was a sham, but both of them participated in it. I think Jack said something like, their marriage could be conducted entirely over the phone. She seemed as indifferent to him as he was to her. Maybe her disinterest was a consequence of his, or maybe it was mutual. Not clear, but it seems not as egregiously a case of jerkishness as Ennis/Alma.

94

You know, I’d bet a lot of jerks justify their actions with this exact excuse.

95

You know, I bet a lot of them do, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

96

I don’t think it was ever spelled out, but it seemed to me that their marriage could have been a result of a baby coming along rather than either one of them particularly wanting to marry each other (and for you youngsters reading, that was also something that happened in the 70’s - people felt they had to get married when they got an accidental pregnancy).

I just recently re-watched BBM, and I had to reluctantly conclude that as much as I sympathized with Ennis, he was indeed pretty much a jerk, in more ways that just his marriage. He had two speeds - distant and jerkish.

97

I have no particular incentive to see the movie, but this thread is entertaining, what with the shrieking and kvetching and all.

98

Well, in many cases I think it does make a difference. People do well-intentioned things that turn out poorly all the time.

Ennis’ situation is significantly more complex than that, of course.

Rubystreak said what I wanted to say much, much better than I could have said it:

99

I think the answer isn’t really so simple.

On the one hand, were Jack and Ennis personally responsible for their own behavior? Clearly, yes. You have to pity their wives, who didn’t deserve to be treated in the manner that they were. They were legitimately lied to and betrayed by husbands who swore to love them for the rest of their lives.

On the other hand, what choice did Jack and Ennis have? It’s very easy to sit in the present and to assume that we, in such a situation, would act ideally in their place. We all assume we’d be resisters instead of concentration camp guards. Yet, in the present, most of us don’t rock the boat in any way that puts us in real danger.

Further, Jack and Ennis lived in a time when being gay wasn’t considered a real choice by even a small, vocal number – they were raised to believe that people who had sex with people of the same gender were abnormal, perverted freaks. They were part of that culture, not outside it. So, of course they would not cast the cultural norms of their society off so easily.

I think the point of Brokeback Mountain is not to place blame on any individual character - no one of them is a perfect person, least of all Jack or Ennis. The point is that a system of savagery makes savages of us all. Cruelty begets cruelty, and hatred creates hatred. I do not think Jack and Ennis are worthy of our admiration, but certainly they are worthy of our pity.

100

Tragedy, as classically defined, entails the protagonists being brought down at least in part by their own flaws and mistakes. By that standard, any tragic hero can be construed as a jerk.

If Hamlet had just killed Claudius when he first had the chance (or told the ghost to screw off), or if Juliet had just not acted so impetuously when she woke up in the tomb (or been a good girl and obeyed her parents in the first place), their stories might have ended more happily.

And yes, I’m aware that some people actually make those arguments, but I think they’re kind of missing the point.