Topic: 'dead sheep' scene - spoilers

[Hermes1]

Wow, I just realized, from a PBS educational documentary, that in prisons, a sexual predator is called a "wolf".

The wolf killed the sheep.  The dog is standing guard.  The wolf that was killed had "balls the size of apples."   A wolf and a dog are similar (canines) yes disimilar (enemy/friend, unlawful/lawful, thief/servant).  Gay and straight sex is similar yet dissimilar, along the same criteria, in the eyes of society.

Some 15 years ago, or more, I watched a 60-minutes/20-20 (cant remember which) type expose, of gay men soliciting male prostitutes, filmed under cover.

The term for the male prostitute was "a chicken", which is not a sheep, admittedly, but it is this same imagery which fits in with wolves as predators.

Criminals in the street, seeking drug money, refer to their victims as "prey".

Yet, at the 4th of July fireworks display, the two "Hells angels" were certainly predatory heterosexuals.

I vividly remember, in the PBS documentary on prison "wolves", and interview with one sexual predator, who had a pattern of beating heterosexual prisoners into submission, until they would perform upon him.  He described what he did to one fellow prisoner, who finally cried, but in the end, broken, performed as the wolf wished.   The "wolf" explained that all of his childhood was miserable. He never received any love, or birthday parties, or presents, so, therefore, why should anyone else be happy or have it easy.


All this talk of images of death reminds me of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice

This is so very true!  I get chills just reading this post.  I remember exactly that the music that was played when the sheep is found dead and brutally slaughtered is the same music that was playing when Ennis saw the ill-fated postcard.  Maybe that music was symbolic of what was in Ennis' head.  When my partner and I first met (he's so much like Ennis), he used to always say we were going to hell for what we were doing.  I of course never believed that.  But this post reminds me of those scary feelings... so ery eerie!

[justlikethisalways]

This is so very true!  I get chills just reading this post.  I remember exactly that the music that was played when the sheep is found dead and brutally slaughtered is the same music that was playing when Ennis saw the ill-fated postcard.  Maybe that music was symbolic of what was in Ennis' head.  When my partner and I first met (he's so much like Ennis), he used to always say we were going to hell for what we were doing.  I of course never believed that.  But this post reminds me of those scary feelings... so ery eerie!

There is a third scene with that same "music" (I call it the "death motif"); it's where 9-year old Ennis is taken to see the body of Earl (the murdered gay rancher neighbor). Someone here has also commented on the similarity of the sheep's carcass and Earl's body. And in Ennis' mind he sees Jack being beaten to death while laying helpless on his back.

[chrissy323]

This is so very true!  I get chills just reading this post.  I remember exactly that the music that was played when the sheep is found dead and brutally slaughtered is the same music that was playing when Ennis saw the ill-fated postcard.  Maybe that music was symbolic of what was in Ennis' head.  When my partner and I first met (he's so much like Ennis), he used to always say we were going to hell for what we were doing.  I of course never believed that.  But this post reminds me of those scary feelings... so ery eerie!

There is a third scene with that same "music" (I call it the "death motif"); it's where 9-year old Ennis is taken to see the body of Earl (the murdered gay rancher neighbor). Someone here has also commented on the similarity of the sheep's carcass and Earl's body. And in Ennis' mind he sees Jack being beaten to death while laying helpless on his back.

Wow, I never made the music conncetion. Thanks for posting this. I'll have to pay more attention next time I see it.

BTW that was me who mentioned the similarity of the postion of the bodies. Funny how I saw that but didn't notice the music.

Chrissy

[cowgirl19]

I agree with the lot of you, but I keep thinking....the sheep got his guts torn out and that's what is going to happen to Ennis later on (emotionally)

[Sitaram]

I agree with the lot of you, but I keep thinking....the sheep got his guts torn out and that's what is going to happen to Ennis later on (emotionally)

Prior to reading your post here, I just finished reading the following true story, truly gut-wrenching, posted by a 62 year old man at http://www.annieproulx.com

http://www.annieproulx.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=2381#2381

I think that all BBM fans will be deeply moved by this true story.  The man who writes this could very well be Ennis in old age.
I encourage you to visit the above link and read the moving story in it's entirety.

....
(posting only the final several paragraphs)

As before, we spent an inordinate amount of time together that summer working for the campaign of John Kennedy for President. My senior year I was given a scholarship to a private boarding school and I was excited to leave home, in no small part because it would separate us finally. Yet he came up to visit me several times that fall, hitchhiking or getting his mom to drive him. He seemed to grow more sad and withdrawn. And I would see him on those weekends I came home and over the Christmas holidays, often again staying over each other's houses, still committing sin. He had started seeing an older married man in his twenties whom he liked, a man who had been a driver in the Kennedy campaign.

I was glad to hear it as I thought it would relieve me the burden of guilt and responsibility for his emotional and sexual neediness. When I went back to school I intentionally stayed at school most weekends, going places with my new friends and classmates. One Thursday evening in spring my Mom called school to tell me Billy shot himself in the mouth and was dead.

He has haunted my life. I told his mother about our relationship because I felt I must confess my part, I had to tell her my part in driving him to such desperation. She thought that was small potatoes, had already known about it, but suffered terribly the unrelieved self-recrimination of his loss, blaming herself for his tragic end, nearly wild with intolerable grief. She began to drink a lot. We spent a great deal of time together that summer, nearly every single day. Then I left home for college and never returned there to live. His mom moved to Tacoma, Washington, finished high school and college and became a high school counselor, adopting two teenage girls, sisters. 

In death he, whom in life I tried to flee, became my constant companion. I still carry him daily around with me. I recall his face at odd times in any day and we have talked often through the years in my dreams. I love his visiting me in my dreams, except in the one recurring dream of unalleviated sadness he appears with no skin, raw, not talking, only sobbing, his tears moistening his flesh. When Jake said to Ennis “I wish I knew how to quit you” its resonance was sharp, the quick of its torn and bare cri de coeur terrible and true.   

Wave after wave of more parallels abound, leaping peak to peak, Brokeback Mountain has much reverberation in my life. I cannot keep from being profoundly shaken over the memories it gave full life to in the lives of Ennis and Jake. The mirrored memories of those two sad, poor boys, now so long ago I’ve mourned; whose best friend, a boy I’ve always loved, died so fast and hard before I could find names. Brokeback Mountain heard somehow what I've carried in my heart;it knew and guessed the ghost kept hidden in a concealed valley, its howls at night heard over the distance against a small moon; and most of all it showed that sorrows pure springs are all the same[1], whatever their names.

--leoneill

[Carolien]

Its so interesting what people think about this scene, also the symbolism and about the music. I have thought about this scene also, and i think that apart from 'bigger' symbols that the sheep might represent, there is one wich is related to the story and about Ennis his experience with 'gay things'.
Like we know, he saw the awful thing about the murderd man when he was nine. So from that point in his young life he thought: when you are gay, your ending is bad, nothing good will happen etc.. He related 'gay' with violence and dead. The first thing he saw after his experience with Jack was: a dead sheep. I think that this scene in the movie was to express this link, wich comes up again with the ending of Jack ( when Ennis is on the phone with Lureen, the pictures he sees in his mind? About Jack beaten up.) and wich is of big influence about the whole story.
Also, this scene expresses guilt feelings about what he has done that night, beeing away and not take responsibility for the sheep. And maybe also in this way: like if you are babysitting your sister, and a friend ask you: come on there's a great party, lets go! Well, you are feeling: i can;'t go, something will happen to my sister, but you are pursuaded and you go to the party. When you come back, your sister fall from the stairs or something... (yaiks). That kind of feeling may be also represented. And again, if Jack is really killed by gay beaters, than this 'fore feeling' of Ennis was right.
I think this scene is very important for the story. It is not a happy one, but it is representing so much. Sorry i have brought up such an old topic again, but i wanted to add this.

[tpe]

Its so interesting what people think about this scene, also the symbolism and about the music. I have thought about this scene also, and i think that apart from 'bigger' symbols that the sheep might represent, there is one wich is related to the story and about Ennis his experience with 'gay things'.
Like we know, he saw the awful thing about the murderd man when he was nine. So from that point in his young life he thought: when you are gay, your ending is bad, nothing good will happen etc.. He related 'gay' with violence and dead. The first thing he saw after his experience with Jack was: a dead sheep. I think that this scene in the movie was to express this link, wich comes up again with the ending of Jack ( when Ennis is on the phone with Lureen, the pictures he sees in his mind? About Jack beaten up.) and wich is of big influence about the whole story.
Also, this scene expresses guilt feelings about what he has done that night, beeing away and not take responsibility for the sheep. And maybe also in this way: like if you are babysitting your sister, and a friend ask you: come on there's a great party, lets go! Well, you are feeling: i can;'t go, something will happen to my sister, but you are pursuaded and you go to the party. When you come back, your sister fall from the stairs or something... (yaiks). That kind of feeling may be also represented. And again, if Jack is really killed by gay beaters, than this 'fore feeling' of Ennis was right.
I think this scene is very important for the story. It is not a happy one, but it is representing so much. Sorry i have brought up such an old topic again, but i wanted to add this.

Carolien, welcome to the forum, and I commend you for a first beautiful post.

welshwitch had also noted in another thread the intrinsic connection between the dead sheep scene and the remebrabce of Earl's death.  What is interesting is that we only see the scene involving Earl much later, and we even hear the same music.  Certainly, the association is this: the wages of sin is death.

You also pointed out the connection with the scene showing Jack's death.  This is certainly true.  And we see it in the movie as if Ennis himself was seeing it in his mind's eye.  It has been voiced elsewhere that perhaps Ennis even imagined himself as Jack's killer (see the thread on the tire iron scene) -- whether this is true or not, this nonetheless echoes your observation about the sense of guilt that Ennis harbored within himself.

I do agree that this scene is pivotal to everything that comes after it.  The amazing thing is that it is done so subtly.  It is not strange that many first-time viewers did not see the significance.  And yet, deep down, I am sure all of us felt a sense of dread and foreboding -- something that we could not understand at the moment, and yet accepted as a warning on what was to come.