Topic: The word "Brokeback" as a metaphor for...

[zhuzi]

...losing one's "backside" virginity? Is there such a place as Brokeback? Whether there is or isn't, Annie Proulx had to pick some name. do you think the name is metaphorical? Has connotative overtones?

Watching the film for the second time I caught a lot of Ang's yin-yang images. Ang Lee is Chinese and would not put these images in accidentally.

Look for yang/phallic images such as trees and mountains. Look for yin images such as meadows and bodies of water. Skies are yang. Yin is moon. All narratives are laden with sexual metaphorical imagery that we take for granted, though the archetypal images are not lost upon our subconscious. It's all part of the experience.

Notice when Ennis kicks the trash out of those two piece-of-shat dudes at the 4th of July night. What an explosion of testosterone, and it was flanked by booming, bursting fireworks in the background. I'd love to be on the front row and see that one again.

The second time in the tent on Brokeback, the image of the two men kissing is flanked by the burning fire.

Scenese of sex (yin) are flanked by scenes of violence (yang). Like after the first time in the tent. The next morning we see the dead sheep, which further associates (unfortunately) the idea of male sex with violence in Ennis's mind.

Fantastic movie on myriad levels, worthy of multiple viewings and detailed, shot-by-shot analysis.

Ang Lee's masterpiece. Hard to top.

[Sitaram]

When my step-daughter was 15, and we lived in a very tough Hispanic neighborhood, one summer night, I noticed her in the street, talking at a distance with two older Hispanic boys.  The boys were speaking to her in English, but then loudly to one another in Spanish.   Nearby, a Puerto Rican woman was leaning out her window, watching, and she told me that the boys were saying in Spanish, "Let's take her someplace, get her drunk, and break her."   I told my step-daughter what they were saying, and she became angry with them and returned home.

We break horses, bad habits, speeding cars and promises.

We watch for breaking news.

Breaking waves caress the beach.

We break in pipes and shoes.  Once broken in, they are pleasant and comfortable.

The past tense is a different story.

A gambler goes for broke.

Broke means penniless.

Broken promises cannot be mended.

[tpe]

Fantastic movie on myriad levels, worthy of multiple viewings and detailed, shot-by-shot analysis.

Ang Lee's masterpiece. Hard to top.

I agree totally.  Ang Lee is indeed a master of symbolism.  I might also add that his dichotomy between the mountain and the plain is a powerful device.

[jason]

SPOILER

We break horses, bad habits, speeding cars and promises.

We watch for breaking news.

Breaking waves caress the beach.

We break in pipes and shoes.  Once broken in, they are pleasant and comfortable.

The past tense is a different story.

A gambler goes for broke.

Broke means penniless.

Broken promises cannot be mended.

This is eloquent Sitaram, and persuasive.  Since all interpretations may hold at once I offer these.

My first reaction to Brokeback was how nicely ungrammatical and somehow quintessentially Western it is. 

Now it dominates my thought for the merciless breaking of the back of entire lives, metaphorically for Ennis and Jack at least, but also in the tire iron scene that screams through movie, physically in the taking of life.  Can't shake this sense behind the name.

[Sitaram]

SPOILER

We break horses, bad habits, speeding cars and promises.

We watch for breaking news.

Breaking waves caress the beach.

We break in pipes and shoes.  Once broken in, they are pleasant and comfortable.

The past tense is a different story.

A gambler goes for broke.

Broke means penniless.

Broken promises cannot be mended.

This is eloquent Sitaram, and persuasive.  Since all interpretations may hold at once I offer these.

My first reaction to Brokeback was how nicely ungrammatical and somehow quintessentially Western it is. 

Now it dominates my thought for the merciless breaking of the back of entire lives, metaphorically for Ennis and Jack at least, but also in the tire iron scene that screams through movie, physically in the taking of life.  Can't shake this sense behind the name.

Thanks so much for your kind words.  I continuously strive for elegance, yet rarely approach it.  It is now 2 am, and I awoke with a certain idea for a post.   I was going to post something entitled "Did you notice the book in the movie", a trick title, since it seems to me that one may be startled by the physical absense of books in the movie.  I would have to view it for a third time to go book watching.   Your use of the word "ungrammatical" inspired me to post this thought here.

How ironic that a writer as "bookish" as Annie Proulx must be writes a story about people who hunger and thirst for so many things, for alcohol, tobacco, sex, money, affection, but never for a book.   

And here I am, a very bookish sort of person who lives live vicariously, noetically, between the pages of novels and the stanzas of poems.

So, here, Annie Proulx, a very scholarly person, spends six months on ten pages of story, layering it with byzantine intricacy of motif and symbol, to portray characters who struggle over a word and concept like Pentecost.  Then, a small minority of the reading and viewing population done their archeologists attire and begin excavations to see what they might uncover.  But the vast majority of the consumer public simple enjoys a compelling story, and never gives a thought to the tense of a verb or the etymology of a name.

We are dealing with something which has two very different levels; an outer exoteric level for the hoi poloi, and an inner, hidden sanctum of meaning for those who would be elite and elect.

Being the bookish sort that I am, I cannot help but compare Annie Proulx and this Brokeback Mountain story with another writer whom I focused on for many months last year; Milan Kundera.

http://literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org/ftopic639.php&highlight=kundera

http://literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org/ftopic103.php&highlight=kundera


There is one thing which Kundera said in an interview which has stayed with me; "Critics are people who discover other peoples' discoveries."   And here we are, true to form, on our Easter Egg hunt for signs and symbols, like Little Jack Horner, poking our thumbs in every nook and crannie, hoping to pull out a plum of an insight, call it our own, and proudly say "Oh what a good child am I."

It is this illusion of finding what has been hidden for us to find that makes us feel that this treasure is our own.  Perhaps the essence of art is to conceal the obvious sufficiently so that it appears miraculous, but not so well that it is undetectable.

Kundera, somewhere in France, at this very moment, scrupulously shunning computers, conversing in French and composing  in Czech,  would perhaps take offense in reading what I am about to say.

Kundera strikes me as a very homophobic writer who would never make even the most casual reference to a same-sex relationship.  He stands in stark contrast to our moxie Annie Prouxl, filled with boundary crossing chutspah.

The rose is never stemmed in Kundera's novels, to my knowledge.  There is one scene where a gentleman has his fair lady crouched on all fours, when, suddenly, he sees "the eye of the rump", and becomes inflamed with increased ardor.  I had to concentrate for a minute to come to grips with this euphemism for the rose, "the eye of the rump", a tasteful euphemism. Kundera merely eyes the rose, but never stems it.



...

(This mornings work-in-progress, I shall return here momentarily, coffee cup in hand.)

[jason]

SPOILER

We break horses, bad habits, speeding cars and promises.

We watch for breaking news.

Breaking waves caress the beach.

We break in pipes and shoes.  Once broken in, they are pleasant and comfortable.

The past tense is a different story.

A gambler goes for broke.

Broke means penniless.

Broken promises cannot be mended.

This is eloquent Sitaram, and persuasive.  Since all interpretations may hold at once I offer these.

My first reaction to Brokeback was how nicely ungrammatical and somehow quintessentially Western it is. 

Now it dominates my thought for the merciless breaking of the back of entire lives, metaphorically for Ennis and Jack at least, but also in the tire iron scene that screams through movie, physically in the taking of life.  Can't shake this sense behind the name.

Thanks so much for your kind words.  I continuously strive for elegance, yet rarely approach it.  It is now 2 am, and I awoke with a certain idea for a post.   I was going to post something entitled "Did you notice the book in the movie", a trick title, since it seems to me that one may be startled by the physical absense of books in the movie.  I would have to view it for a third time to go book watching.   Your use of the word "ungrammatical" inspired me to post this thought here.

How ironic that a writer as "bookish" as Annie Proulx must be writes a story about people who hunger and thirst for so many things, for alcohol, tobacco, sex, money, affection, but never for a book.   

And here I am, a very bookish sort of person who lives live vicariously, noetically, between the pages of novels and the stanzas of poems.

...

(This mornings work-in-progress, I shall return here momentarily, coffee cup in hand.)

Ha!  Your post is a delight.  No books.  Hadn't thought of that.  I'll look when I next see the movie (which will be my 7th). I'm bookish too and try to write, but my aims are pedestrian. I only try to write clear science.  I don't try anything more poetic, tho' Brokeback might yet work something in me.  Looking forward to the rest of your ideas.  But I never stay up as late as 2 (yes, blame BBM!) so hope for it tomorrow.

[jason]

SPOILER

We break horses, bad habits, speeding cars and promises.

We watch for breaking news.

Breaking waves caress the beach.

We break in pipes and shoes.  Once broken in, they are pleasant and comfortable.

The past tense is a different story.

A gambler goes for broke.

Broke means penniless.

Broken promises cannot be mended.

This is eloquent Sitaram, and persuasive.  Since all interpretations may hold at once I offer these.

My first reaction to Brokeback was how nicely ungrammatical and somehow quintessentially Western it is. 

Now it dominates my thought for the merciless breaking of the back of entire lives, metaphorically for Ennis and Jack at least, but also in the tire iron scene that screams through movie, physically in the taking of life.  Can't shake this sense behind the name.

Well, it's 2 am again and I'm here wine glass in hand.

Not too much interest in the meaning of this now famous, invented name, Sitaram.  Can anything be famouser than Oprah and her show and her welcoming our stunning actors to her forum today? Wouldn't you say?

I requote my unworthy interpretation of the meaning of Brokeback to see if it appeals to/provokes anyone.

Having tried finally to understand and indulge in literary criticism, I am so interested to hear your exploration of the function of the critic. As an archeologist.  I had years of archeology too.  Indeed yours is a satisfying parallel.

It took me so long to get the hang of the critic's craft (which makes this blog about BBM such roaring good fun) that I must remonstrate a bit. I think one can learn to understand words and their use as in deconstruction, and the habits of an author to such an extent (ad usque is a more satisfying rendering of this feeling of conclusion) that you can start to enunciate themes that an author may indeed be unaware of.  Surely not all writers plan the archeology of their texts in the way you suggest.

Some do.  At least I'm convinced of the truly Olympian structure of Socrates' "Oedipus Rex."  The surficial story, with all its inconsistencies, carries the action and the hoi poloi love it, and have for centuries, because if the catharsis and the wonder and the terror (why do I think of BBM? Are we comparing Proulx to Socrates?  I think so).

But then the subterranean text, like an underlying cave, is all there for the seeing (surely not for the elect only).  But it seems that it took the insight of Vellacott two milennia later to reveal it.  And it truly raises the play to something supreme.  I buy Vellacot's argument: So many items of evidence in Socrates' text point in these directions that I am convinced that Oedipus knew what he was doing when he provoked the enquiry into the murder of Laius, knew exactly his own origins, and knew he was precipitating his downfall and exile.  Such knowledge, and the so Greek toughness to face his fate, raises Oedipus to a truly tragic figure (as Lee Harris also argues for Ennis and Jack), instead of a dupe of the gods, instead of a ranting, unreasonable old man.

I cannot remommend Vellacott's (Vellacot?) translation and interpretive essay too highly (1972).  This is masterly archeology.  And Socrates must have planned every word, and the echoes of the clues across hundreds of lines. 

I have been mainly unaware of the themes and symbols in BBM that so many folks have mentioned, and greatly enlightened by them.  Amazed.  And maybe there are indeed aspects which the artists, Proulx and Ang Lee, have provided unconsciously -- though my impression is that Prouilx may be less interested to produce layers of meaning, where Ang Lee indeed seems interested and capable, as the posts have convinced me. 

Up with all you critic archeologists!

[Sitaram]

As Milan Kundera contemptuously observes "A critic is someone who discovers other peoples' discoveries."

(see Kundera's essays, "The Art of the Novel")

You might want to take a look at this essay I wrote in 1969, "A Method and It's Practical Application"

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/method.htm

[lacy8753]

I scanned these posts and I didn't see-Brokeback as a metaphor for paralysis. If your back is broken you are paralyzed. They were both paralyzed.
Ennis says, "... You wouldn't do it , Ennis, so all what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everything built on that, its all we got, boy, fu**in' all, so I hope you know that if you dint never know the rest..."   Ennis says a few sentences later, "...Its because of you Jack, that I'm like this. I'm nothin'. I'm nowhere." and the continued refrain "nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved."  The homophobia of the time and place  keep them from having a life. Ennis gets nowhere job-wise cause he keeps taking jobs he can quit to be with Jack. The terror of discovery and the facade of their home lives based on that point in history keep them from moving in any direction with their lives.

[jason]

I scanned these posts and I didn't see-Brokeback as a metaphor for paralysis. If your back is broken you are paralyzed. They were both paralyzed.

Yes, no question this layer of meaning shd be there. 

Hadn't thought of it.  Thanks lacy!!