Indeed. There is an element of destiny involved in a tragic hero’s downfall. Not destiny in the sense that a divine being has decided your fate; more that, being who you are in the place where you are, you are incapable of stopping yourself from hurtling helplessly, sometimes kicking and screaming, towards your demise. It takes an extraordinary person to resist that outcome, and Ennis was not that person.
This discussion has become so abstracted and oversimplified that it’s no longer really about Brokeback Mountain.
First of all, if every fictional character who ever chose wrongly with good intentions was dismissed as a “jerk,” that wouldn’t leave much good reading outside of official Catholic hagiographies and political autobiographies. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would single out the simply human protagonists of BM as jerks–without starting the same kind of thread about Pip or Othello or Phillip Marlowe–without imagining that there must be some other, unstated, reason for being uncomfortable with Jack and Ennis as characters. Some of my favorite characters of all time could easily be dismissed as jerks; King Lear, Kristen Lavransdatter, Independent People–all these masterpieces of world literature are about jerks.
In the first place.
In the second place, as I was apparently completely unable to communicate in my last post–assuming anyone actually read it or put forth any effort to understand it, evidence for which is almost entirely absent from the subsequent posts–in the time and place portrayed in BM, both Jack and Ennis believed that they were doing the right thing. They were both putting forth a superhuman effort to do what was expected of them. In their world, there was really no such thing as “gay,” as a lifestyle choice. God made men straight, but some of them had unnatural urges that it was their responsibility to control, suppress, and ignore. From their learned perspective, the only time they were being “jerks” was when they gave in to those “unnatural” urges.
I wish those of you who have only viewed this movie solipsistically would make an effort learn what it’s capable of teaching you: that the world is not the same place for everyone. Jack and Ennis may have lived in the same time and place as people like you, but they did not live in the same world.
Oh please. Thinking Jack & Ennis are jerks is no more homophobic than not thinking they’re jerks is misogynistic.
Nobody is saying it was a bad movie. The entire point of the thread is that the two leads are jerks. It doesn’t matter a whit if all good stories are about jerks; that’s completely irrelevant. The only question here is that Jack & Ennis are jerks. And that’s not even a question.
That anyone can seriously argue that they aren’t jerks is comically ridiculous.
Again, an effort to understand might help. They aren’t jerks, unless you redefine “jerk” to mean “human.” By the standards that would label them “jerks”–this was the apparently too confusing point I was making in my previous post–everyone who ever lived besides Siddhārtha Gautama, Jesus of Nazareth, and Francis of Assissi, is a “jerk.”
Repeating, more clearly I hope: Ennis and Jack are “jerks” only if jerk is defined as “a member of the human race.”
That’s a crock of shit. You’re saying that every human who ever lived (except three) would have treated their wives just as poorly? Take off the blinders.
No, I’m not saying anything that abstract and oversimplified; I’m saying YOU are saying that… You keep wanting to reduce it to that oversimplification. I’m trying to address the actual people in the actual situation in the movie, and explain why their context makes them no more a jerk than any other average human being, and a great deal less than most.
You, and others, seem to be defining “jerk,” for the purpose of this thread, as “anyone with human flaws.” I’m saying *that *is ridiculous.
reasonable people can have disagreements over interpretation of movies.
IMHO, there is no one “correct” way.
Didn’t Dex just say that?
Yes. I thought it was worth repeating.
Die in ignominy.
ThThat’s an answer to your question, not a request.
I’m not saying that at all. Don’t equate my point with a straw man of your own creation.
Again, I’m not reducing anything to anything. I’m simply pointing out that the two leads were jerks to the women in their lives. Are you saying that every single closeted homosexual has ALWAYS and INVARIABLY been just as big of a jerk to their wife? That would be ridiculous, but with your insistence that every human in history (save three) would have done the same thing seems to imply that.
What I’m trying to get you to understand is that, in fact, you *are *saying that. I’m aware that you don’t understand it that way, but what I’m trying to do is to get you to understand it in a different way from how you do now.
No; again, I’m saying that YOU are simplifying to that extent; you seem to refuse to see the two men as individuals.
Again, I wasn’t stating that, I was saying that your oversimplified characterization of the two men in BM as “jerks” implied that. I agree with you that it’s not true; that was my point.
This movie should have given you an opportunity to see into a world that was foreign to you. Instead, simply–too simply is my main point–you saw it without any effort to rethink your own understanding of the world, and interpreted it by your own experiences and standards, without making any effort to understand the vastly different world it was trying to show you.
To reduce these two men “jerks” is to vastly oversimplify their experiences, to make no effort whatsoever to understand what they were trying to live through. It’s to entirely–but entirely–miss the point of the movie, as well as of the story it’s based on.
Let’s explore that. Is that what you think the movie was about? The OP apparently does.
Personally, I’d have found the movie pretty boring if it struck me as something as simple as “men being jerks.”
This would be truly hilarious read (as I heard it in my head) by Wallace Shawn.
No, of course not; that would be simplistic and idiotic. As I’ve tried to explain multiple times, but it seems to have not penetrated the fog of defensiveness.
Just because the movie wasn’t even remotely ABOUT two jerks doesn’t mean for a second that the two leads WEREN’T jerks.
This is pretty funny, considering your entire argument seems to be driven by a bizarrely defensive refusal to reconsider the gross oversimplification of “those guys were jerks.” I have, personally, rarely seen such a dog-wagging tail as your childishly defensive, fingers-in-ears mantra of, “yeah but, whatever but, still, they’re jerks.”
Thanks for making it ultimately clear beyond any shadow of a doubt that I’ve been wasting my time. Catch, here’s my towel.
> BANG! BANG! < ::: Moderator bangs head against wall for attention :::
This has already been said WAY too many times in this thread: in this forum, people are supposed to be able to disagree about art/entertainment without name-calling or disparaging the other person’s viewpoint.
Let me try again in another way: in this forum, people are supposed to be able to disagree about art/entertainment without name-calling or disparaging the other person’s viewpoint.
Once more: in this forum, people are supposed to be able to disagree about art/entertainment without name-calling or disparaging the other person’s viewpoint.*
And just to be even more clear: saying “You’re too thick-headed to understand what I’ve said sixteen times,” well, that’s a personal insult.
Has it sunk in yet? Lissener and Ellis Dee: do you get it yet? How many fuckin’ warnings does it take in a single thread???
Apparently. more than my patience is willing to extend to. Hence, this thread is closed.
*[sub] “What I tell you three times is true.”[/sub]