Topic: Etymology Query for 'Stem the Rose'

[Toadily]

I feel it was very Brokeback-ish that he never came out and said what he thought of Jack but instead implied he was lazy (I agree that stemming the rose means goofing off, not a sexual thing) IN the short story they do imply they did some goofing off, she says after their first night they knew how the summer would go "Sheep be damned" but that isn't why Aquirre didn't hire them back, they were still probably more responsible than some (note they did try to separate the sheep etc.)

Anyways, I just think "Stem the rose" with Randy Quaid saying it was so scary in a way, more scay cause there was more implied with it.

[manila_rocks]

"Stem the Papaya" is a phrase with which I have greater familiarity.   In my country, tropical fruits are plentiful (myself not withstanding)..

[jimnick]

"Stem the Papaya" is a phrase with which I have greater familiarity.   In my country, tropical fruits are plentiful (myself not withstanding)..

How funny.   Funny...get it?


Jim

[rabjr1]

The focus seems to be more about the phrase than on the man who says it.  What do we know about Joe Aguirre?  Well, he has some years on him, he is obviously in a management position, he's tuff because he has to be. 

Perhaps he is also more educated than we give him credit. He could just be a unique person that even though growing on a ranch (?) he took time to read the classics.  Maybe his secret vice is he can complete the NYTimess crossword puzzzle.  There is a staff sargent in (Title escapes me) I believe he was played by Jackie Gleason who did crossword puzzles in ink.  Ate butter brickel ice cream - his vice and killer.  In other words who would have figured?

"Stem the rose" could just be a favorite phrase (affectation?) among others that Joe uses, and if I were working onder his supervision I might be awed by his language and slightly in terror of him.

[jakeofrome]

thanks everybody for the interesting discussion
I was pretty sure the expression had a clear sexual meanig as well, plus the cross reference to flowers and wasting time was definetly a way to humiliate jack imho.
This is just another one of the multiple things that were destroyed in the italian translation of both the both story and the movie, but that's pretty much my personal crusade now 

[lacy8753]

I definitely think its a euphanism for intercourse and the "romantic" nature is an insult" to their alleged feminine character.  I think it fits.

[jimnick]

I definitely think its a euphanism for intercourse and the "romantic" nature is an insult" to their alleged feminine character.  I think it fits.

I would tend to agree with your thoughts.

Jim

[Rod]

TPE:

Without belaboring, I will air my conservatism and simply state that the euphamism, while effective, was not the right "part" for this cowboy short story.  I'm not sure what AP was after, but Joe Aguirre should never/could never say something like that......"Don't go on with me Jack.  I saw you guys last summer up there carrying on with each other like (you fill in the blank...perhaps something with a pastoral reference to sheep...)"  Just not ROSES....

stationbbm 

since in the book, Aquirre waited "until the two buckled their pants and Heath rode off" before coming down the mountain I think i have to go with most obvious sexual interpretation.  I wrote Annie's webmaster to get the definitve answer, but she hasn't or isn't answering.  I tried to find where to write the scripwriters and ask them but no luck either......

I beg to differ somewhat.  AND I completely agree with Liam56, his grandmother and mine sounded similiar. (smiles)  My Father was  fighter pilot in WW2-and ended up stationed in TX, and then ended up in the midwest raising cattle.    He and I used to go round and round about language, starting about 1974.  IF you go back even as far as the civil war--letters wrote back to families often had very flowery phrasing, from not overly educated people.   NO one out there regularly used language like you hear today--until AFTER the VietNam Vets started to come home.   ANd since "gay" was NOT a reference for where they were, or even an idea of what it was, why would any description of it "fit" anything they would use in conversation then?  It was an uncommon concept, and needed an uncommon referal.   Unless you actually knew Joe's Mother, you can't make assumptions that that is something he would never say. LOL

   But back then, in '63---while that particular phrase might sound off to some---it would fit in the men I knew trying to NICELY describe what they didn't/couldn't bring themselves to actually talk about at all.  The younger people were JUST STARTING to swear/express themselvesr outloud, and in public beginning with the rebellion/anti-war/hippie movement, but it did not evolve into main stream till in the late 60s, early 70s.    I remember the first time anyone actually swore outloud in front of our local movie theater---the manager called their Mother.   we were in Jr. High at the time, and it was one of my friends--the whole group got grounded for a week.     In middle America, that type of phrasing is exactly what he would say.

In the midwest, these men were raised as God fearing, vulgarisms were almost unheard of, and swearing never in public--EVER!!--and when I first read that in the story, it made complete sense to me and did not seem out of place at all.    Roses were a much easier phrase than anything to do with sheep---I am sorry, but sheep would have presented a reality and would have given it a humor he did NOT intend, when he was getting his message across to Jack.   I thought it fit perfectly.        And Annie must have had the same type upbringing as I did, in basically the same locations--cause within the story, it made sense to me right off.   And she knew the same kind of man raised in the same country as I did.

this always sounds like applying 90s new age standards to a time before those standards/ideas were actually commonplace.   It fits in the world I grew up in, and back in the very early 60s especially.

[Cowboy Cody]

"Stemming the Rose" was perfect description for the time and act. This is a certain code among those who are of the Cowboy/Rancher/Herder set concerning politeness. The use of the F*** would have been very rare indeed, especially before 1968. When Jack goes back to the trailer to ask for a job, that old s.o.b. wouldn't have said "I saw you two F'ing each other" he would have used a more polite term and implied the femininity that would have been thought at such actions between two men. In 1963, gay wasn't a term used to describe men, homosexual, nellie, faggot would have been, two connotations much more easily viewed as being girlish.

[chameau]

Hello all,

This is what my friend (the traducer) sent me, makes a lot of sense.  Warning!  Vulgar language ahead!   :o

1. Stem the rose link send redefine  8 up, 56 down

Its a euphemism for "struggling against love". In the movie "Brokeback
Mountain", Jack and Ennis were hired to protect the sheep from wolves.... ie...
to _stem_ the wolf attacks. Instead of stemming the wolf attacks, they stemmed
the rose... which meant that they were battling against homosexual desires.
Essentially, it was used to equate _being overtaken by same-sex-attraction_ to
_being overtaken by a wolf attack_ .... and was used as a device to show that
the boss saw them as being attacked by love. Despite being from two families at
war with each other, Romeo and Juliet were unsuccessful in their attempts to
stem the rose... and love won out.
synonyms: resist, hold back, prevent, stop, restrain. related words: stemming
the rose, stemmed the rose
Source: Glenn G, DC, Dec 27, 2005
2. Stem the rose link send redefine  53 up, 6 down

If one more movie critic tries to publicly decipher this again I will
hysterically vomit with rage.

I don't think your average cowboy has a clear concept of Shakespearean ethereal
love.

"Stemming the Rose" in this crowd means planting your stem (penis) in someone's
rosebud (anus). Get it?I like to pull her knees up to her ears, stem the rose
and finish with a Dirty Sanchez. Then we order pizza.

I posted this a while ago, there are so many postings on this board.

[Cowboy Cody]

Thanks Chameau!

[rod1960]

Seems to me its obvious he was referring to anal intercoarse:

They believed themselves invisible, not knowing Joe Aguirre had watched them through his 10x42 binoculars for ten minutes one day, waiting until they’d buttoned up their jeans, waiting until Ennis rode back to the sheep, before bringing up the message that Jack’s people had sent word that his uncle Harold was in the hospital with pneumonia and expected not to make it. Though he did, and Aguirre came up again to say so, fixing Jack with his bold stare, not bothering to dismount.

[chameau]

Seems to me its obvious he was referring to anal intercoarse:

They believed themselves invisible, not knowing Joe Aguirre had watched them through his 10x42 binoculars for ten minutes one day, waiting until they’d buttoned up their jeans, waiting until Ennis rode back to the sheep, before bringing up the message that Jack’s people had sent word that his uncle Harold was in the hospital with pneumonia and expected not to make it. Though he did, and Aguirre came up again to say so, fixing Jack with his bold stare, not bothering to dismount.

Thanks rod1960!

It's from the short story.

[Raisa]

"Stemming roses" - I like this expression which i haven´t heard before. In my ears (English not my native language) it sounds only so beautiful, garden-like, oh la laa.
"...you guys was´n´t getting paid to leave the dogs baby-sit the sheep while you stemmed the rose." Hmmm, beautifully said, anyway.
Thanks for the interesting survey of the etymology. My late comment to this  subject.

[orangetruck]

I beg to differ somewhat.  AND I completely agree with Liam56, his grandmother and mine sounded similiar. (smiles)  My Father was  fighter pilot in WW2-and ended up stationed in TX, and then ended up in the midwest raising cattle.    He and I used to go round and round about language, starting about 1974.  IF you go back even as far as the civil war--letters wrote back to families often had very flowery phrasing, from not overly educated people.   NO one out there regularly used language like you hear today--until AFTER the VietNam Vets started to come home.   ANd since "gay" was NOT a reference for where they were, or even an idea of what it was, why would any description of it "fit" anything they would use in conversation then?  It was an uncommon concept, and needed an uncommon referal.   Unless you actually knew Joe's Mother, you can't make assumptions that that is something he would never say. LOL

   But back then, in '63---while that particular phrase might sound off to some---it would fit in the men I knew trying to NICELY describe what they didn't/couldn't bring themselves to actually talk about at all.  The younger people were JUST STARTING to swear/express themselvesr outloud, and in public beginning with the rebellion/anti-war/hippie movement, but it did not evolve into main stream till in the late 60s, early 70s.    I remember the first time anyone actually swore outloud in front of our local movie theater---the manager called their Mother.   we were in Jr. High at the time, and it was one of my friends--the whole group got grounded for a week.     In middle America, that type of phrasing is exactly what he would say.

In the midwest, these men were raised as God fearing, vulgarisms were almost unheard of, and swearing never in public--EVER!!--and when I first read that in the story, it made complete sense to me and did not seem out of place at all.    Roses were a much easier phrase than anything to do with sheep---I am sorry, but sheep would have presented a reality and would have given it a humor he did NOT intend, when he was getting his message across to Jack.   I thought it fit perfectly.        And Annie must have had the same type upbringing as I did, in basically the same locations--cause within the story, it made sense to me right off.   And she knew the same kind of man raised in the same country as I did.

this always sounds like applying 90s new age standards to a time before those standards/ideas were actually commonplace.   It fits in the world I grew up in, and back in the very early 60s especially.

Nice. 

I'm coming into this one pretty dang late, but to me the phrase Joe uses isn't necessarily out of place. Like someone else said, what do we know about this supposedly simple man with a tough exterior who's trying to confront what Ennis and Jack did and didn't do for him? How difficult would it have been for him to outright decline work to a man who made love to another on the mountain, (mind you it isn't all that unlikely that Joe himself was hiding his own homosexuality) as opposed to rummaging around for a considerably "foreign" euphemism? What if it really did only take being brought up even for a week in an era where this was not unheard of?

To me it's just not that seriously out of place for god's sakes, and in the moment, on a whim as probably both characters to an extent were, it works fine.

It is an interesting euphemism though and I, living in a later time, hadn't heard of it before Brokeback. But I'm rather particular about what I justify. I tend to think Annie did have her reasons but that they didn't overpower the nature of the scene.

[tpe]

Nice. 

I'm coming into this one pretty dang late, but to me the phrase Joe uses isn't necessarily out of place. Like someone else said, what do we know about this supposedly simple man with a tough exterior who's trying to confront what Ennis and Jack did and didn't do for him? How difficult would it have been for him to outright decline work to a man who made love to another on the mountain, (mind you it isn't all that unlikely that Joe himself was hiding his own homosexuality) as opposed to rummaging around for a considerably "foreign" euphemism? What if it really did only take being brought up even for a week in an era where this was not unheard of?

To me it's just not that seriously out of place for god's sakes, and in the moment, on a whim as probably both characters to an extent were, it works fine.

It is an interesting euphemism though and I, living in a later time, hadn't heard of it before Brokeback. But I'm rather particular about what I justify. I tend to think Annie did have her reasons but that they didn't overpower the nature of the scene.

Well orangetruck, perhaps you are right.  Like you, I have never heard of the expression before BBM.  Whether or not it is consistent with the character of Aguirre is beside the point, IMO.  It is a tantalizing and very visually provocative expression, to be sure.

[orangetruck]

Well orangetruck, perhaps you are right.  Like you, I have never heard of the expression before BBM.  Whether or not it is consistent with the character of Aguirre is beside the point, IMO.  It is a tantalizing and very visually provocative expression, to be sure.

Why yessum 

Quixotically, I like to also entertain the idea that the "stem" completed the rose or better yet made the rosebud natural, from earth, to suggest Ennis and Jack weren't being paid to make love, grow together. Was Joe married? Bitter about a lover that didn't work out? I probably missed some of his details. Perhaps profanity or specificity would have transpired something inside himself that he was afraid of. Could he have subconsciously acknowledged the beauty of Ennis' and Jack's connection, sour as he may be? -- Fantastic but not realistic, I know. I'm just not sure what exactly has provoked Joe. Perhaps that is partly why Stem the Rose was used.

[tpe]

To be unusually Frank about it, orangetruck, when I first saw this expression of Proulx's, I immediately associated the word "rose" with the anus, and stem (as a noun and not a verb) for you know what.  Hence, I thought there was a double meaning to the term -- first, it meant taking the thorns out of the rose, and second... well, you know what.

I interpreted it as a deliberate play at words. 

[orangetruck]

To be unusually Frank about it, orangetruck, when I first saw this expression of Proulx's, I immediately associated the word "rose" with the anus, and stem (as a noun and not a verb) for you know what.  Hence, I thought there was a double meaning to the term -- first, it meant taking the thorns out of the rose, and second... well, you know what.

I interpreted it as a deliberate play at words. 

 

This is wonderful. How I love the unusually frank. I had NO idea that "stem the rose" meant to literally take the thorns off of the stem. Thank you.

Let me stick to saying the farther fetched idea in my previous post is just what I called it -- fantastic, and not realistic. I had skipped the "first" step and went right for second and a 3rd which was by no means practical. However, surely everyone who is bewildered by the phrase had interpreted this as a play on words. Musn't it be? A form of slacking on the job vs getting it on- though each viewer pulls their own criteria?

Still a wonder what Annie is pulling here..

[tpe]

Thanks orangetruck, although I must admit that removing the thorns was my own personal way of interpreting the phrase -- it looked right to me.  As for the second meaning, I am sure you thought about this also when you first watched this scene... 

[orangetruck]

Thanks orangetruck, although I must admit that removing the thorns was my own personal way of interpreting the phrase -- it looked right to me.  As for the second meaning, I am sure you thought about this also when you first watched this scene... 

Oh yes, that is no question, my friend. RE: "getting it on"

It is the criteria I am fuzzy about. I have to agree the phrase does sound poetic.

[tpe]

Oh yes, that is no question, my friend. RE: "getting it on"

It is the criteria I am fuzzy about. I have to agree the phrase does sound poetic.

\\

Poetic, yes; but the underlying alternative thought/meaning has a crudeness to it.

 

[orangetruck]

\\

Poetic, yes; but the underlying alternative thought/meaning has a crudeness to it.

 

I can't deny that either. Certainly not while hearing those words come out of Joe's cold iron eyes.

[tpe]

I can't deny that either. Certainly not while hearing those words come out of Joe's cold iron eyes.

I somehow feel that for all his exacting and evasive ways, there is a crudeness about Aguirre that matches the second meaning quite well.

[orangetruck]

I somehow feel that for all his exacting and evasive ways, there is a crudeness about Aguirre that matches the second meaning quite well.

I can see that to an extent. But it inadvertently raises my suspicion of his homosexuality. Not because he would be afraid to curse, use vulgarity or be blunt but because he didn't want to knock on what was inside; he was looking at poetry even though he may not have known the term poetry.

Does he not know the sex terms or slang for male genitalia and has to depend on imagery, or does he know it and chooses not to acknowledge it so vulnerably? 

[atalley]

I realized right away what Joe was referring to.  I don't see any reason at all to think he's gay; he just despises "those people".

[orangetruck]

I realized right away what Joe was referring to.  I don't see any reason at all to think he's gay; he just despises "those people".

If it's not obvious, I'm not going for the practical as that is already clear in Joe's exchange with Jack.

I am simply entertaining some ideas from left field. I go there often, it keeps my imagination active, and me learning. About how to use scissors or count crumbs on tables, no. But it does teach me how to recognize that there is always more than my own perspective. Having another perspective comes in handy.

But in the dynamic possibility that Joe may have issues with his own sexuality I am more apt to discern more useless detail from the overall ideology of the scene. Pardon my being long winded about it -- I mean to say this is how I go through the motions rather than stopping on "I know Joe."

His way of wording ass sex is however strikingly curious. I do get where you're coming from with Joe though, and how you might not see any reason at all to think he's gay.

[tpe]

I can see that to an extent. But it inadvertently raises my suspicion of his homosexuality. Not because he would be afraid to curse, use vulgarity or be blunt but because he didn't want to knock on what was inside; he was looking at poetry even though he may not have known the term poetry.

Does he not know the sex terms or slang for male genitalia and has to depend on imagery, or does he know it and chooses not to acknowledge it so vulnerably? 

Interesting question.  I think we have discussed something like this before, no?  One could certainly interpret the statement as a (again!) coded reference to repressed tendencies, atlthough this may be controversial with some people.  But I understand your point: why this over-subtlety and dependence on imagery?  Interesting point...

[tpe]

I realized right away what Joe was referring to.  I don't see any reason at all to think he's gay; he just despises "those people".

Yes, I think that most people would not see Aguirre as a repressed gay, although orangetruck presents us with a rather interesting interpretation...

[jackster]

Haven’t really followed this thread much, so maybe I’m bein’ a buttinski here . . . and probably OT at that. This “Stemming the Rose” stuff goes on all the time in environments where it’s all male, two teenage boys up on the mountain all summer by themselves, geez. Joe surely musta’ encountered this kinda’ thing before, or at least the rumor of it between certain “ranch stiffs” (BTW what’s with using the term “stiffs” - he knew whut was and whut wasn’t stiff up there on the mountain, Huh?). I think maybe what had Joe so bent out of shape was the way these guys was parading around IN BROAD DAYLIGHT with their pants down. Shoulda’ kept it in the tent at night, behind a closed flap. Rolling around on the ground in the middle of the day was just too damn queer. So he threw it at Jack just like he thought it had been thrown at him by the boys.

Annie’s just a genius to pull out phrases like this, they show up sprinkled in all over her writing. Just brilliant.