Topic: coat hanger simile

[septuaginarian]

…as a coat hanger is straightened to open a locked car and then bent again to its original shape, they torqued things almost to where they had been….

This important simile in BBM has been mentioned 3 times elsewhere on this board, but never as a foreshadowing of the sad instrument that held the shirts.

My take on the locked car (more civilized than a ranger’s truck) is that, unlocked, it might have taken the couple to Denver, as Jack had once suggested to Ennis that they go.

The lone ends of the hanger bent again to its original shape, torqued or twisted almost to, but not to, where they had been (perfectly intertwined) ) restores also the hanger’s function for the sadder use of hanging one shirt inside another.
 

[jedibarrister]

Visually, showing Ennis crumbling like a coat off a hanger was powerful.  Jack's wish to know how to 'quit' him literally took out any support in his body...Jack was his entire life and support system in a sense.  Then by likening their relationship to a hanger bent back almost into shape signifies how fragile the relationship is.  You can't bend and twist a rock solid relationship...but there's was fragile and flexible.  That's how I read it.

[nonamelake]

     I think the torquing back is really important...It's like the relationship, not quite what it once was, now that the 'unsayables' are front and center, ie, 'yeah I been..where's the f*ckin problem?', when Ennis asks if he's been to Mexiso. Ennis knew all along Jack had been riding more than the bulls, but so long as they never talked about it: 'it was no news'. Now that they have talked, it forces Ennis to separate himself from Jack, as in 'them things I don't know could get you killed.' This is one of the tools of denial from Brokeback Mountain: 'they never talked about it, just let it happen.....' Well, now wait-isn't Ennis doing with Jack what Jack does with other men? The problem is just that: For Ennis, Jack is the only one-'one's enough', he tells Linda at the postcard store. He sees Jack and him as a one-off. But other than that, he sees himself as straight. It's the reason he gets so angry at Alma when she confronts him: He's lost his safety net of being a married/straight man, while she is effectively outing him in the kitchen at Thanksgiving.

     He reacts with violence anytime his sexuality is threatened, according to the short story, and the film.

     So during that fight, he has no choice but to put Jack in the 'boys like you' category. He MUST separate from Jack lest he be associate with 'one of them guys you see around sometimes', or gay. That is something that seems to always have been an unspoken in the relationship: be gay but just don't let me know about. A serious paradox for Ennis, that he can never resolve.

     Therefore, the relationship must get torqued back; that hangar, the metallic structure-masculine?-that the relationship hangs on, has to be put back almost to where it was. It has the have the appearance of allowing the clothing to hang 'straight' on it.

     I also like the idea of it being an echo, or  a foretelling of the real hangar with the shirts. The nice point about that is the shirts hang together, the 'like two skins', joined as one....with Jack finally on top...

[jedibarrister]

Actually, in the story, there was no hanger...the shirts were on a nail.  They used the hanger in the movie and Ennis changed the shirts around.  In Lightning Flats, Jack's shirt embraced Ennis'.  In Riverton, Ennis' shirt embraces Jack's.

[jackster]

jedi's right on this, sort of. At the very beginning of the story, second sentence actually, we read: "The shirts hanging on a nail shudder slightly in the draft". But at the end of the story we read: "Below it he drove a nail and on the nail he hung a wire hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it."

In Jack's closet the story uses a nail - "At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt." While in the movie of course they appear on a wire hanger.

And, just to clarify one important point - It was the incomparable Heath Ledger who made the final change in the position of the shirts, and surprised everyone with it. Neither Annie Proulx, Ang Lee, nor any of the screenplay writers, thought of or at least suggested that. He was proud of that fact and even mentioned it to Annie (I think), saying something to the effect of "I think you'll like what did with the shirts in the final scene". Genius.

[myprivatejack]

Yes,this is an example of how Heath got into the real nature of Ennis behaviour,reasons and fears.He became Ennis during these months and got to understand him surely better than Annie or Ang themselves.He had understood that Ennis would have created a shrine for Jack that were going to speak much more about his love than he did being his lover alive.He had felt that Ennis would have liked to protect Jack during half their life,and that his own denials are a proof of it; but also that Ennis would have kept on protecting Jack,at least in spirit and memories,for the eternity,and putting his own shirt over Jack's is also another proof of it.Only somebody who is much more than " a good actor" can get this...Sorry,I think I'm a little  .

[nonamelake]

Yes, that's right...the shirts are on a nail in the closet, and they remain there in the end.
I wonder if the hangar is not the film's tribute to that line about the torquing back using the hangar. It's sometimes hard to keep short story and film straight.

Speaking of switching the shirts around: I like Ennis leaving Jack's shirt wrapped around him. Although, I like the closing of the circle that Heath Ledger devised by switching the shirts, I think there is a tribute to Jack, by letting him have the last word, in the story. Ennis accepts Jack's love in a way he could not before, and leaving the shirts be is a way of saying it.