Topic: Doing laundry in the river - was it his undies?

[cybernaut]

jason: I nearly fell off my chair reading your post! :D

But yes I do like subtleties between the two of them in the movie that sucked all of us in panting for more, instead of the teenage MTV's wham bang thank you ma'am, let's all get drunk again and do orgies kinda of brash, trash and rudeness so often depicted in our society that completely turns us off. 

All those "domestic life" and then climax to two guys holding and hugging, humming a lullaby.... Now that is really orgasmic if you ask me. 

[jason]

jason: I nearly fell off my chair reading your post! :D

But yes I do like subtleties between the two of them in the movie that sucked all of us in panting for more, instead of the teenage MTV's wham bang thank you ma'am, let's all get drunk again and do orgies kinda of brash, trash and rudeness so often depicted in our society that completely turns us off. 

All those "domestic life" and then climax to two guys holding and hugging, humming a lullaby.... Now that is really orgasmic if you ask me. 

Ha, cyber.  Glad you liked it.  I was waiting for the overt flirting, knowing looks (and expecting them to be crassly acted in the usual way), and on my first viewing found so little of the usual feeble attempts to titillate.  I was confused.  Gay cowboy story and the whole idiom wasn't that.  What a breath of fresh mountain air.

And then I began to sense that Ang Lee was orchestrating the love interest *via* the domesticities (too late to spell that).  A whole *14 days later,* when the book arrived I read Annie Proulx's line about their living together virtually assuring that they'd get intimate (to fight off the loneliness, if nothing else).  Indeed.  But no one knew the'd discover the grand passion of their lives.

[cybernaut]

jason: Its no wonder they would try and relive their youth together up on the mountains, that's where they find their happy times together.

On my first viewing, Jack was like all-over Ennis: swapping their duties, asking him to do a little bit more and also hearing him bitch and complain about his job. Ennis somehow seemed to enjoy that strangely... like that shooting of the elk.
"I am sick and tired of your god-damn misses!"  :D
You know what happens when they are running a 2-person fraternity club! 

And maybe it was loneliness and finally he found someone who understands him and shares his thoughts.

But hey is it common practice for 2 cowboys to team up as a camp tender and the sheep herder??  I always thought its a one-person job or ad-hoc job for the camp tender as well... hmm..

[jason]

jason: Its no wonder they would try and relive their youth together up on the mountains, that's where they find their happy times together.

On my first viewing, Jack was like all-over Ennis: swapping their duties, asking him to do a little bit more and also hearing him bitch and complain about his job. Ennis somehow seemed to enjoy that strangely... like that shooting of the elk.
"I am sick and tired of your god-damn misses!"  :D
You know what happens when they are running a 2-person fraternity club! 

And maybe it was loneliness and finally he found someone who understands him and shares his thoughts.

But hey is it common practice for 2 cowboys to team up as a camp tender and the sheep herder??  I always thought its a one-person job or ad-hoc job for the camp tender as well... hmm..

Annie Proulx says in the essay that goes with the screenplay that she had to research lots of things -- one was whether two anglo guys wd go up the mountain.  She says the ealry 60s were tough economically and anglos did this work on the lower-class sheep, with chileans and Basques, and others.

[cybernaut]

jason: And now I guess we have camp counsellors from overseas playing with the kids...

[manila_rocks]

American's have a caste system for sheep?  Like in India you mean?

I imagine some sheep are more expensive than others if they are pure and not mixed?

So in the 1960s you are saying foreigners were brought in to handle the more expensive sheep in America.   This hierarchy does not exist now or ever in my country for animals (except at the zoo perhaps).

[septuaginarian]

Thank you, Jason, for your comments about escalating domesticity contributing finally to Ennis and Jack’s intimacy. I think you are almost certainly right. I believe your position can be supported both in the movie and in the short story.  I would like to add some thoughts to yours and to comment on the post that opened this topic by Manila_Rocks.

Ennis recounts to Jack with fear what he knows about domesticity between men:

“There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich…. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. … and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They'd took a tire iron to him,…. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, ....”

This reminiscene introduces the central image of  the “tire iron” and what it did do to a guy like Earl. Note the domestic simile of what the tire iron done-- “looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him” as though he had sat too close to a campfire.  Earl and Rich “was tough old birds” which, Jason mentions, is central to the characterization of Jack and Ennis.

In the dreams Ennis has of Jack at the end of the story, but not in the movie, there is “the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out, … in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron.”

The can of beans and spoon in Ennis’ dreams tell of domesticity bordering on obscenity, and then of murder.

The dreamscape merging of all these things would be hard to put into a movie. That is why I think Ang Lee, who had been highly excercised to avoid obscenities elsewhere, chose another faithful way to end the movie.

This brings us back to the scene in which Jack, nude, is washing clothes in the river. Why now?

I think Manila_Rocks had it in her innuendo: “Didn't the river scene happen AFTER their ‘first time’?     ummmmmm..”

Sometimes, particularly homophobic men like Ennis and Jack, after their first encounter with another man, even if things work out OK, feel a certain remorse, or something deeper, that something irreversible has taken place.

I think that is both why Jack is nude and why he is washing. He had been born again and is in his birthday suit. He can’t wash out the line he has crossed.

And I don’t mean to be crude when I say most of us wash up after sex. Thank you Manila_Rocks.

Ennis experiences how he is different when he looks out of the tent after their first time. The sky is the same but he is not. His mood is clenched when he finds the sheep with all its guts torn out.

Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor:
Lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

[Cowboy Cody]

I'd wash Jakes any day of the week, anywhere he wanted!

[Sitaram]

Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor:
Lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

I was just now quickly reading through posts, when these last two lines caught my eye. 

I thought perhaps it would not be off topic to post my understanding of these lines, since some readers may be puzzled and curious.

They are the Latin translation of the 51st Psalm of David: "Sprinkle me, O Lord, with hyssop (rosehips), and I shall be cleansed. Wash me and I shall become whiter than snow."

Your nick, "Septuaginarian", meaning a person in their 70's,, is reminiscent of the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament (supposedly done by 70 scholars), which has a slightly different numbering of the Psalms, in which the 51st of KJV becomes the 50th Psalm (the most frequently repeated Psalm in Eastern Orthodox prayers, repeated dozens of times each day).

Tradition has it that the 51st (aka 50th) Psalm was written by King David to express his sorrow and repentence over sending his friend Uriah to the front lines of a battle (knowing that Uriah would be killed), so that David might marry Bathesheba, Uriah's widow.  The offspring of their tainted union was that wisest of all kings, Solomon, who, because of his unquenchable appetite for 800 wives (including idolators), brought about the division of the nation of Israel and the loss of certain tribes.

So, we see that this 50th Psalm is an apology for sexual misconduct.

Furthermore, in the Biblical accound of David, Jonathan, his "best friend", (and there is a verse which states that the love of two such "friends" transcends the love of husband and wife), rebukes David in a clever fashion, with a story about SHEEP.
Jonathan comes to David, and says, "O, King David! Do you know that in your kingdom, a great injustice has been done?  There was a poor man, with only one sheep, and he loved his sheep dearly. But another man, with a multitude of sheep, stole that poor man's sheep!"    David became enraged and exclaimed that that wrong-doer must be severely punished, demanding to know the trangressor's identity.  Jonathan replies, "that person is YOU, David, and the poor man is Uriah, and the one stolen sheep is Bathsheba."

[ranchgal]

American's have a caste system for sheep?  Like in India you mean?

I imagine some sheep are more expensive than others if they are pure and not mixed?

So in the 1960s you are saying foreigners were brought in to handle the more expensive sheep in America.   This hierarchy does not exist now or ever in my country for animals (except at the zoo perhaps).

I think she is NOT talking about sheep as much as people---When economically stressed, people take what jobs they have too.    The Basques, and Chilieans were hired cause it was tough to find people who would go up into the mountains and just stay for that long, and the foreign workers then like now would because the money was so much better than what they could get at  home.
Ennis and Jack were YOUNG, broke, and had to do something to survive, Jack had done it before, and when Ennis couldn't stay with his brother anymore and was cast out on his own---You do what you have to to survive, and eat.   Ennis and Jack would go up on the mountain, cause they were young, and didn't care about camping------older white workers were much harder to come by, cause they get married, or have girlfriends or children, and won't just "camp' out for months at a time.
The caste she is actually talking about is workers being broke---and not having much choice in that location--you do what work is available.   Ennis wanted to work with stock, and Jack went cause it was close to home, and he knew the routine.   IT didn't have anything to do with the sheep themselve, just the herders.

AND it has always been a two person job---If only one person was doing everything---by the time he got his food prepped and camp pitched  and  horses/mules fed and watered and staked out-he would never actually be tending to the sheep---one had to be there with a rifle for predators, and one moved the camp-only way to actually keep the sheep together and flocked up.
When you hear the "old" stories about the shepard and his dogs---he actually usually owned most of the sheep, and walked with them, and they knew him, and he was with them year after year, so they would follow him by association----in the days of this film, with herders being hired and then trucking the sheep up and down, and people  coming and going--the sheep aren't going to just pay much attention to transient herders that they only see once or twice.

[jimmypage]

Sometimes, particularly homophobic men like Ennis and Jack, after their first encounter with another man, even if things work out OK, feel a certain remorse, or something deeper, that something irreversible has taken place.

I think that is both why Jack is nude and why he is washing. He had been born again and is in his birthday suit. He can’t wash out the line he has crossed.

Yes, I agree with you... Jack washing the shirt and maybe himself, naked and shivering, makes me think of a purification ritual...

[ranchgal]

it was Jack's job to wash all the clothes that needed washing whenever---cause Ennis couldn't be gone from the sheep that long---or vice versa if they wouldn't have switched jobs.
I wouldn't have minded seeing a naked Ennis washing Jack's shirt either!!

Clothes would have taken long enough to dry in the sun that it wouldn't have worked for the herder to be trying to wash his own.

[chameau]

I wouldn't have minded seeing a naked Ennis washing Jack's shirt either!!

Same here! 

[jason]

At least they washed their clothes.  One good thing about the "working girls" in the wild west they at least got the miners etc to BATHE once in a while.
 

Hey hey.  What's all this about miners?  As an ex-miner ...    hehehehe

[jason]

Thank you, Jason, for your comments about escalating domesticity contributing finally to Ennis and Jack’s intimacy. I think you are almost certainly right. I believe your position can be supported both in the movie and in the short story. 

Ha!  You are kind.  I'm not the inventor of this idea, just to be quite clear.  Proulx suggests it loud and clear in the story, the inevitability of intimacy when thrown together on the mountain.  My reaction was one of surprise finding the movie maker following the same subtle, and most un-Hollywood line!!  With all the potential for titillation inherent in the situation just bypassed ...  I *was* surprised.

Ennis recounts to Jack with fear what he knows about domesticity between men:

“There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich…. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. … and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They'd took a tire iron to him,…. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, ....”

This reminiscene introduces the central image of  the “tire iron” and what it did do to a guy like Earl. Note the domestic simile of what the tire iron done-- “looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him” as though he had sat too close to a campfire.

I hadn't tumbled to the domesticity symbols being yoken to the scenes of horror.  This is powerful.  It did strike me that burned tomatoes seemed like an odd simile. More evidence for how the movie is getting at us sublimininally.

In the dreams Ennis has of Jack at the end of the story, but not in the movie, there is “the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out, … in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron.”

The can of beans and spoon in Ennis’ dreams tell of domesticity bordering on obscenity, and then of murder.

The dreamscape merging of all these things would be hard to put into a movie. That is why I think Ang Lee, who had been highly excercised to avoid obscenities elsewhere, chose another faithful way to end the movie.

The dreamscape is such a dense set of images, and so striking in the story, I wish Ang Lee had tried to do the merging, though. Might have become too graphic I suppose.  But strong medicine!

This brings us back to the scene in which Jack, nude, is washing clothes in the river. Why now?

Sometimes, particularly homophobic men like Ennis and Jack, after their first encounter with another man, even if things work out OK, feel a certain remorse, or something deeper, that something irreversible has taken place.

I think that is both why Jack is nude and why he is washing. He had been born again and is in his birthday suit. He can’t wash out the line he has crossed.

And I don’t mean to be crude when I say most of us wash up after sex. Thank you Manila_Rocks.

Ennis experiences how he is different when he looks out of the tent after their first time. The sky is the same but he is not. His mood is clenched when he finds the sheep with all its guts torn out.

Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor:
Lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

You make it seem quite plain, sept. I'm amazed I didn't get this.  Thanks!