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Author Topic: Reactions to Brokeback by friends, family & audiences  (Read 612478 times)

Offline graylockV

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #645 on: February 14, 2006, 11:47:10 AM »
They're having a really tough time right now in their marriage because he has bipolar disorder and won't stay on medication.

So maybe she's so insistent about "ex-gays" or "controlling homosexual urges" because she herself has been there? I don't know. It's all speculation.

Cara


The speculation is often borne out in fact.  Her comments re: BBM and gay people could be her way of trying to distance herself from a deep reality within herself.  As you say, it's all speculation.

As to her husband's being bipolar and his refusal to take his meds - that's very very dangerous.   Perhaps she knows what a dangerous game he is playing and it's causing her to feel such anxiety that she transfers her fears to other matters, by expressing such hostile comments about other matters, e.g., BBM and gays, etc.  Sorry if I sound like a dime-store psychologist - but her husband needs a major reality check about his condition - forget about the homophobia.
Beulah, peel me a grape.

Offline Lola

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #646 on: February 14, 2006, 11:48:40 AM »
WOW I really do feel sorry for her.

 :'(
 
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Offline graylockV

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #647 on: February 14, 2006, 11:59:53 AM »
They're having a really tough time right now in their marriage because he has bipolar disorder and won't stay on medication.

So maybe she's so insistent about "ex-gays" or "controlling homosexual urges" because she herself has been there? I don't know. It's all speculation.

Cara


The speculation is often borne out in fact.  Her comments re: BBM and gay people could be her way of trying to distance herself from a deep reality within herself.  As you say, it's all speculation.

As to her husband's being bipolar and his refusal to take his meds - that's very very dangerous.   Perhaps she knows what a dangerous game he is playing and it's causing her to feel such anxiety that she transfers her fears to other matters, by expressing such hostile comments about other matters, e.g., BBM and gays, etc.  Sorry if I sound like a dime-store psychologist - but her husband needs a major reality check about his condition - forget about the homophobia.

BTW - true Christians, as i recall, are not supposed to be self-destructive.  They are supposed to treasure the life God has given them.  Not taking your meds is not exactly the Christian thing to do!!!

Beulah, peel me a grape.

Offline Timothy

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #648 on: February 14, 2006, 05:35:06 PM »
Cara, I'm so happy to know you (albeit by a website), you have a good heart.

And I feel badly for you and having to deal with this.  And I completely agree with what was said earlier about you not having to shoulder some burden of enlightening your sister in law.  You have already gone the second mile and there certainly aren't any expectations that you let this infringe on your life.  We'll all love you anyway.

After hearing about the problems the SIL is having in her own life, it makes some sense that she would be a bit hostile to gay people.  To her way of thinking, she's been cheated.  She played by the rules and now look, she has a difficult life.  Meanwhile some gay person is happy without having to follow all the rules she adopted... IT JUST ISN'T FAIR.  God let her down.

The problem with some conservative sects of Christianity is that they believe that if you follow all the rules, you can demand that God provide you with health, wealth and happiness.  And when your religion is based on rules rather than on a relationship with God it can be very confusing when He isn't doing what you think he should.

We can't really expect her to be rational about it.  If her own life were working well she probably wouldn't care as much or be as spiteful.  It's harder to be hateful when you're basically happy.

Of course I support your decisions - whatever you choose - but maybe it's time to let it go and let her believe what she wants.  Maybe it's just time to show her love.  That might be a greater testament to true Christian principles (or the principles at the heart of most faiths) than trying to dissuade her.

Maybe if she felt love she might be able to show it better.  And if not, you will feel more at peace in a difficult situation.

Offline Groch

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #649 on: February 14, 2006, 06:26:09 PM »

I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I worried about posting the e-mail because I was afraid it would be hurtful to many people here.  :(


Cara,

I worried about the same thing when I saw your original post. It sure gets ones dander up.

I am absolutely blown away by the thoughtfulness and understanding I see in the responses.    It would be easy for us to hate your SIL, to return in kind what we feel in her letter.

But that would not be fair, she is probably, like us, a fine compassionate person dealing with life the best she can.

There is a lot of talk these days about family values, and your SIL's letter indicates that family is very important to her.

I just wish that empathy, compassion, and a willingness to try to walk a few steps in the other persons shoes was still considered a family value.

You have it in spades, and I hope that some day she will understand the pain and real damage that views like hers cause to hundreds of thousands of less traditional families every day.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."- MLK

Offline paintedshoes

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #650 on: February 14, 2006, 06:38:46 PM »
Timothy, I very much appreciate your views on Cara's situation with her SIL.  Thank you for sharing them.

Groch, for someone relatively new to these boards, you are right on the money.  Glad to have your thoughts here.

Cara, you doin' ok, honey?  It's nice to see your smiling face again.
"Miracles do happen, dear friend(s).  Miracles are real."- Boris 
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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #651 on: February 14, 2006, 06:45:32 PM »
Timothy,

Thanks so much for your kindness and understanding and for saying I have a good heart. (I thought to myself, I'll remember this when I lose patience with one of my kids and yell and then feel guilty, LOL).

I do hope to discuss this with my sister-in-law one day, and she responded that she was open to that.

Cara


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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #652 on: February 14, 2006, 06:51:25 PM »
Timothy, I very much appreciate your views on Cara's situation with her SIL.  Thank you for sharing them.

Groch, for someone relatively new to these boards, you are right on the money.  Glad to have your thoughts here.

Cara, you doin' ok, honey?  It's nice to see your smiling face again.

I just want to say that I VERY much appreciate everyone's in-depth responses. You've all helped me a great deal, and I will be very well prepared when my sister-in-law and I do talk. Talk about good hearts!

I wanted to respond to everyone who replied, but I'm trying to meet an editing deadline. I keep finding excuses to take a break and check the forum! Anyone know how to do this in moderation? Moderation isn't one of my strong points.  :(

Cara

Offline paintedshoes

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #653 on: February 14, 2006, 07:38:55 PM »
Gerard is back, too.  Yea!!!  All is better in my world, Cara.  Thank you, sis.
"Miracles do happen, dear friend(s).  Miracles are real."- Boris 
"There are only two things we know: the cosmos exists and we are imbedded within the cosmos.  Everything else is speculation and discovery."- Caithness's dad
Ing's space:Ingyllenhaal+Ingstier+Ing-Myster+Ingwer+IngCannesBabe+darlING

cyoung

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #654 on: February 14, 2006, 07:43:15 PM »
Gerard is back, too.  Yea!!!  All is better in my world, Cara.  Thank you, sis.

I wonder if it's sacrilege to have a sig file with Gerry Butler instead of Heath or Jake? Hmmm....   :D

Cara (I'm such a fan girl!)
« Last Edit: February 14, 2006, 07:46:40 PM by cyoung »

Offline killersmom

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #655 on: February 14, 2006, 08:05:56 PM »
Gerard is back, too.  Yea!!!  All is better in my world, Cara.  Thank you, sis.

I wonder if it's sacrilege to have a sig file with Gerry Butler instead of Heath or Jake? Hmmm....   :D

Cara (I'm such a fan girl!)

Nope, Cara, it works for me ::) I just went wuff when I got here :o

Also when I figure out moderation, I'll make sure to let you know ;D :o

km
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cyoung

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #656 on: February 14, 2006, 08:18:34 PM »
Nope, Cara, it works for me ::) I just went wuff when I got here :o

Also when I figure out moderation, I'll make sure to let you know ;D :o

km

 :D ;D 8) ::) :P

Cara

Offline BillKCMO

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #657 on: February 14, 2006, 09:07:35 PM »
Her comment about "finding God" as an alternative to accepting one's homosexuality tells me that she is, sadly, capable of being very mean.  While she probably thinks that comment is righteous and wonderful, on my end of a real life non-role-play, *it brings tears to my eyes*.  It's non-understanding, non-empathic, and cruel.

I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I worried about posting the e-mail because I was afraid it would be hurtful to many people here.  :(

Quote
Has your sister-in-law ever been in therapy?

She and her husband are in counseling together, but I don't think she's been in individual therapy. I don't know for sure.

When -- or if -- she and I ever have that long talk, I will definitely ask her to imagine being a gay person. I will also ask her how she would respond if one of her own children was gay.

Cara



You surely have nothing to feel bad about -- you are simply the messenger, and I think SIL's email was well worth sharing.  Tells us what you are up against!!  And, the unfortunate truth is it's not the first time I've heard that kind of mean, unempathic, ill-informed stuff about gay people (e.g., James Dobson, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Anita Bryant, Jerry Falwell...).  It was a good illustration of the attitudes that have made life hard for gay people...a real-life example of the forces that led to the suffering of Ennis and Jack.

About therapy for SIL:  I suspect as a previous poster "psychologized" that her keen lack of empathy about the gay thing may be an attempt to channel other fears onto a "them"....and to feel empathy for others would remind her of her own pain, which might be unbearable.

Offline jpq716

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #658 on: February 14, 2006, 09:28:36 PM »
Cara, I have been following the dialogue on your sister-in-law’s problem with Brokeback Mountain and I am starting to get a number of highly disturbing impressions about her. You are quite worried about her, but I am starting to get a little worried about you. There seems to be much more going on within your relationship with this woman than just her glib and scatter-brained homophobia. I do not think that you are going to like what I am going to say, but here goes, anyway…

A number of people on this thread feel that your sister-in-law is a conflicted person who is trying to reconstellate her life at the present time and who might benefit from an intensive period of psychotherapy. I am not so optimistic. Your husband, who has known her a hell of a lot longer and, apparently, a hell of a lot better than you have, has already tipped you off that his sister has always been “impressionable.” What I think he’s telling you, very carefully, is that, with her, there may be “no there there.” In spite of her surface affability (which I am quite sure she has), there may not be a rock-solid personality (a soul, if you will): there may be --- there may never be anything more than --- a ramshackle heap of prejudices and behaviors that periodically collapses and then is reconstellated into --- another ramshackle heap of prejudices and behaviors.

A number of the remarks that you make about your sister-in-law truly reinforce my opinion on this matter. You met this woman long ago at a time when you yourself were “unformed,” and I know from my own personal experience how hard it is to erase, or even to alter, adolescent impressions. You and she go back a long way, and even though you have grown enormously as a human being since, the highly understandable root affection that you have for this woman --- an affection buttressed by the unerasable biographical fact that you met your husband through her --- blinds you to the fact that she has not grown at all. You mention that she had some sort of a nervous breakdown after her freshman year in college, that she returned to school a Christian fundamentalist, and that you cannot understand what happened to her. What may have happened to her, Cara, is that she realized at the age of nineteen or so --- in a way that you did not have to realize --- that she was being overwhelmed by the complexities of life. It’s not merely that she was doubtlessly experiencing some unpleasant things at that time: it may well have been the sheer chaotic quantity of the life experiences themselves, above and beyond their pleasantness or unpleasantness, that overwhelmed her. From such a perspective, her retreat into Christian fundamentalism was neither a mistake nor a failure of nerve: it was the only thing that she could do in order to protect herself from being destroyed by the complexity of modern life!

And her retreat into Christian fundamentalism --- into a ramshackle heap of prejudices and behaviors --- has worked for her, at least until recently. You say that your sister-in-law’s husband “has his good qualities,” but your sister-in-law probably married him for his no-nonsense cut-n-dry approach to life, where the whites are super-white, the blacks are super-black, and there are no agonizing grays. And she has gotten a great deal out that relationship for the past twenty years, not least her four children. But she did not realize when she married the man that his so-called “good qualities” were premised upon a potentially explosive bipolar personality. And now that the couple is entering middle-age, the dark side of that bipolar personality is really starting to take control (as, sadly, it so often does in a certain kind of middle-aged man). The marriage is very deeply in trouble; your sister-in-law knows it; she has already gone to a lawyer to discuss the legal possibilities for a separation; the husband has gone to marriage counseling only as a result of this; and your sister-in-law does not truly believe that he is able to stay on his medications, despite his promises to do so. The prospects for the marriage, I am sorry to say, Cara, are not good. And maybe you --- and your more insightful and thus more guarded --- husband know it.

At some point in the future, your sister-in-law is probably going to “crash” again, and she is going to have to find yet another ramshackle heap of prejudices and behaviors to get her through the next couple decades of her life. Now maybe psychotherapy may can help her find another refuge from the chaotic complexity of life, but I am doubtful. Psychotherapy can only work in crisis situations when the “there there” in the person is really to move on to another level of life experience. But at the risk of incurring your anger, Cara, perhaps psychotherapy cannot really work with your sister-in-law because she is incapable of moving on to another level of life experience --- and that because there is no “there there.”  You may want to regard your sister-in-law as a conflicted soul in torment, but perhaps she is actually nothing more than periodically dysfunctional mass-minded person.

Unconsciously, you may already know much of this and, hoping for the best, you are trying to help provide her with a new psycho-social structure into which she can move forward with her life. But her reactions to Brokeback Mountain are clearly signaling you --- at least I think that they are clearly signaling you --- that, as “impressionable” as she is, she is not going to jump your way. It’s just too much for you to ask now --- or even twenty years ago --- from her, and she seems to telling you through her reactions to the movie to stop asking. The psychological problems that your sister-in-law may be having at the present time may be far less dangerous than the political problems that you are opening up for yourself by trying to press her in the way that you do. After all, as you yourself admit, moderation is not one of your strong points. And danger lies there for you in that lack of moderation…

You really need to talk with your husband more about this situation, and I would not be surprised if he advises you to be a little more careful around your sister-in-law. Because I sense that a nasty crash is coming in your sister-in-law’s life, a crash that you did not cause, that you probably cannot help, but that might damage you in the process. You have worked too hard and too long to get the psycho-socio-political consciousness that you have, Cara, to let anyone upend it. As your sister-in-law’s problems might, if you are not careful. Sometimes, as Shakespeare tells us, discretion is the better part of valor, and sometimes it is better to fold one’s hand rather than to throw good money after bad into the kitty. So be careful, Cara, be careful!

Speaking more generally, do you people see why it is so hard for movies like Brokeback Mountain to get made? Most art in our society exists to put us to sleep, and most of the films that we see are nothing more than a primitive version of “the feelies” against which Aldous Huxley warned us in Brave New World. But when something like Brokeback Mountain comes along, the grave cultural and political danger that real art always poses to a society suddenly reveals itself way out in the open. Plato did not expel the poets from his utopia merely because he had a tin ear, you know: he realized, just as many fundamentalist Christians today realize, that art can be dangerous. Have you noticed just how silent the fundis actually have been over Brokeback Mountain? Yes, yes, there have been complaints and even sporadic demonstrations, but no mass opposition. As yet. Why? Because the supreme artistry of Brokeback Mountain has flown under their radar scopes and temporarily stunned them with its emotional truth. But you just wait… Ten years from now the fundi reaction to Brokeback Mountain will be white-hot, and very, very sophisticated. Cara’s troubled relationship with her sister-in-law in 2006 is but a faint reminder of the chaotic social and political trouble to come for all of us in this community – and for many who do not know the first thing about it yet..
« Last Edit: February 14, 2006, 09:32:19 PM by jpq716 »
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cyoung

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #659 on: February 14, 2006, 10:11:27 PM »
Thanks for your feedback, jpq. I'm not too clear on what you think the danger is for me. If you're concerned my sister-in-law will somehow persuade me to her way of thinking, let me assure you that it ain't gonna happen.  :) I read too much and think too deeply.

As far as considering that there may be "no there there" to her personality, that's harsher than I'm willing to go. People are complex creatures, and I don't give up on someone that easily.

More later, when I have time to reply in depth.

Cara