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Author Topic: Reactions to Brokeback by friends, family & audiences  (Read 612470 times)

Offline graylockV

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #660 on: February 14, 2006, 10:32:57 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

Hi Cara.  It is clear to me that you are a kind and compassionate person.  I wonder if the arguments over BBM really serve much purpose with regard to your SIL's situation at this time.   May I suggest that you just be the kind and caring person that you are when you deal with her.  I know you won't let her get to you.  Given her personal turmoil, I am sure if there was no BBM there would be some other issue that would flush out all her antagonistic statements.  After all, the fundamentalists are not just at war with gay people - they are at war with the contemporary world.

So I repeat - just be the person you are with her - that's all you can do.  If she is unable to respond in a positive manner to your kindness and compassion then there is nothing else you can do for her.
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Offline Uclapeterg

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #661 on: February 14, 2006, 10:47:01 PM »
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!)

You traitor!  ;)

cyoung

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #662 on: February 15, 2006, 10:15:35 AM »
Hi Cara.  It is clear to me that you are a kind and compassionate person.  I wonder if the arguments over BBM really serve much purpose with regard to your SIL's situation at this time.   May I suggest that you just be the kind and caring person that you are when you deal with her.  I know you won't let her get to you.  Given her personal turmoil, I am sure if there was no BBM there would be some other issue that would flush out all her antagonistic statements.  After all, the fundamentalists are not just at war with gay people - they are at war with the contemporary world.

So I repeat - just be the person you are with her - that's all you can do.  If she is unable to respond in a positive manner to your kindness and compassion then there is nothing else you can do for her.

For now I'm letting it go. It's not a good time for her, and I don't have the emotional energy.

I'm still scratching my head about one thing, though: Why did she want to see the movie in the first place? It's a puzzle.

Cara

cyoung

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #663 on: February 15, 2006, 10:19:57 AM »
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!)

You traitor!  ;)

No, I'm intensely loyal -- last year, my main obsession was Gerard Butler and Phantom of the Opera.  :) So, this is how I assuage my guilt for spending more time here nowadays than I do at the GB site.  :D

Besides, the signature reminds me that God exists and loves us! LOL!

Cara

Offline paintedshoes

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #664 on: February 15, 2006, 11:31:14 AM »
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!)

You traitor!  ;)

No, I'm intensely loyal -- last year, my main obsession was Gerard Butler and Phantom of the Opera.  :) So, this is how I assuage my guilt for spending more time here nowadays than I do at the GB site.  :D

Besides, the signature reminds me that God exists and loves us! LOL!

Cara
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Offline TexRob

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #665 on: February 15, 2006, 06:32:25 PM »
Hi jpq --

You've made some extraordinary observations here, combined with a cogent analysis of what may be happening.  I especially like your observation that, for some people, there is no real "there there,"  no center. 

I don't know if this really does fit the sister-in-law, but surely it fits a lot of people who are unable to get anything meaningful out of Brokeback Mountain.  As you say, such people are so in search of the black-and-white in this contingent universe that any hint of gray is deeply threatening.  Such concrete thinkers (as opposed to abstract thinkers) sometimes lack the literacy or education to appreciate the nuance of such a film, but just as often they are rather terrified that there is nuance in the first place -- to any moral issue.   

I find it helpful to think of this film as a masterpiece of existentialism in art.  Looking at it this way implies that our concrete thinkers out there are practicing a form of self deception, which means that, on some level, they have to know precisely what it is they deny seeing.  The existential theme also implies that you're right about the minds that hate: they have been stunned, and they will try a subtle reframing of the issue.  The problem, for them, is that this movie's strength is simply that it exists in the first place.  In existential terms, that's all it has to do to defeat the hatefulness aimed at it; it's role is that of the Witness, making any future effort to debase it fatally flawed from the outset.  I don't think the enemies here can use subtlety to their advantage.  As art, the film has robbed them of that option.   
« Last Edit: February 15, 2006, 06:37:18 PM by TexRob »

Offline MellorSJ

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #666 on: February 15, 2006, 08:20:28 PM »
[snip] for some people, there is no real "there there,"  no center. 

I don't know if this really does fit the sister-in-law, but surely it fits a lot of people who are unable to get anything meaningful out of Brokeback Mountain. 
I think that a non sequitur.  As a counter-example, I offer people who see the movie in two possible states.  One is the long-arc/high-action folk, who expect a story to come in long (medium, really) segments, with lots of stuff (preferably involving hot chicks or exploding people); and the other is people with expectations conditioned by straight romance.  These latter cannot imagine love between two men (no matter how explained, swelling strings, running through the meadow and all) and those who cannot perceive the signals (Jack studiously peeling potatoes, clenched jaw muscles and all, or that far-away stare when Randall comes on to him) even when it's staring them in the face. They simply have no place to put the information.

I'm not being critical of these people.  (Exasperated, I'll admit to).  I'm just saying these two kinds of people have no "tree" on which to hang their new experience.  As a sometime educator of new technology, I know the biggest issue is UNTEACHING people's expectations of what constitutes the subject matter--in this case, love between two masculine men.

Offline sunspot

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #667 on: February 15, 2006, 08:38:57 PM »

I'm not being critical of these people.  (Exasperated, I'll admit to).  I'm just saying these two kinds of people have no "tree" on which to hang their new experience.  As a sometime educator of new technology, I know the biggest issue is UNTEACHING people's expectations of what constitutes the subject matter--in this case, love between two masculine men.


I just had the same experience today, with my best friend from high school, who finally got around to seeing the movie over the weekend.  She liked it, but she couldn't see where that first night in the tent had come from, the connection between Ennis and Jack or why Jack took that risk.  She'd caught the glances between Ennis and Jack outside Aguirre's trailer (tho not the ones inside!) and Ennis' "I haven't yet had the opportunity" line, but had missed a lot of the other clues (like Ennis watching Jack ride off on his jumpy mare).

I had to explain to her that that's it.  When you're in the closet, you have to be attuned to every little gesture and motion if you're ever gonna find another man.  And you're gonna have to take some risks, which Ennis would never have done if Jack hadn't come along. 

And taking those risks may have finally got Jack killed, if he misread some signal.
 
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And restless multiplicity"
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Offline TexRob

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #668 on: February 15, 2006, 09:23:35 PM »

...I think that a non sequitur.  As a counter-example, I offer people who see the movie in two possible states.  One is the long-arc/high-action folk, who expect a story to come in long (medium, really) segments, with lots of stuff (preferably involving hot chicks or exploding people); and the other is people with expectations conditioned by straight romance.  These latter cannot imagine love between two men (no matter how explained, swelling strings, running through the meadow and all) and those who cannot perceive the signals (Jack studiously peeling potatoes, clenched jaw muscles and all, or that far-away stare when Randall comes on to him) even when it's staring them in the face. They simply have no place to put the information.

I'm not being critical of these people.  (Exasperated, I'll admit to).  I'm just saying these two kinds of people have no "tree" on which to hang their new experience.  As a sometime educator of new technology, I know the biggest issue is UNTEACHING people's expectations of what constitutes the subject matter--in this case, love between two masculine men.

Hi Mellor --

You have an interesting angle here, but I'm not sure my response was precisely a non-sequitur.

Your take on this concerns what happens when people are exposed to new information -- in this case, a new way to synthesize the experience of the film, or a new generality to extrapolate from the specifics  of the film.  If this is construed in educational terms, the problem, according to pragmatic theory, would entail not so much "unlearning" their expectations, but layering this new expectation upon their existing knowledge base, allowing it to gradually, passively supplant the old knowledge or expectations.  I don't know how current this theory of education is anymore.  It may have been supplanted with a more persuasive way to "unlearn" a student, or a moviegoer, or a cultural consumer.

The type of person you're describing, however, may not be the kind of person Cara's sister-in-law is.  This is why jpq716's analysis of the situation struck me as being so cogent.

We all know some people will be unreachable, no matter what.  The question is whether that properly describes the sister-in-law, or whether she can be "unlearned" over time and really is reachable.  You and I might have opposite opinions of which one she is, but my point is that we're dealing with two separate categories of thinkers, not one.  Of the people who start out being turned off by the film, some will change their minds over time.  With others, on the other hand, it becomes clear, to summarize jpq716, that they have a deep psychological stake in not changing their minds, no matter the state of the evidence.  It just seemed to me that the sister-in-law fell into that category.

« Last Edit: February 15, 2006, 09:27:27 PM by TexRob »

Offline jpq716

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #669 on: February 15, 2006, 09:27:52 PM »
TexRob, I do not usually stick my nose gratuitously into other people’s business. But I got alarmed by a number of the details that were coming out in the course of the conversation, and I did what is for me the unusual thing of sketching out a possibly dangerous scenario that could be highly dangerous to Cara in the long run. I said my piece, stressing the provisional --- and possibly erroneous --- nature of the scenario, and now that I have said my piece, I shut my mouth and let it go.

But there is something about my observations in that post that the observations in your post has caused me to want to mention to you in a more abstract, general context. There has occasionally --- not often, but occasionally --- come to me in the course of my life the sudden realization that I was dealing with a person who appeared to have a integrated self (a soul, if you will) but who actually was nothing more than a highly ramshackle, badly fitted and potentially unstable construct of prejudices, stock phrases and stereotyped behaviors. Of course, that person has a soul: all human beings have souls, and as such, they can never be means, only ends. But in these people of whom I am now speaking the soul is so rudimentary, so submerged, so undetectable that you really cannot speak of them as functioning in everyday life as a unitary soul. Now I do not know whether Cara’s sister-in-law is one of those people, TexRob, but I do know that such people exist, and I suspect that they are playing a disproportionate role in the current controversy surrounding Brokeback Mountain.

There is a lot of soul-searching going on here on this forum about the stresses in various personal relationships that have erupted as a result of Brokeback Mountain. If I don’t agree with somebody else about the merits --- or even the facts --- of the film, then whose fault is it? Mine? His or hers? A combination of the two? In what percentage? And how can it be reconciled on a higher level? Can it be reconciled on a higher level? And so forth, and so forth…

I would suggest that, when dealing with these people whom I have described above, the suffering that these questions inevitably bring to the sensitive soul is totally unnecessary. There can come --- and sometimes, does come --- a point in a relationship when the difficulties cease to be personal and psychological in nature and begin to be systemic and political/cultural. And when that happens to a relationship in which you find yourself, especially if that relationship is an old one, the atmosphere of the relationship suddenly becomes surreal. The two of you suddenly begin to appear to each other like total strangers who have accidentally been locked together in a room for the time being and who are forced to exchange meaningless pleasantries to pass the time until help can arrive with a key to let you out. Or, to use another analogy, when you are together, it’s like watching each other through regular glasses, only to suddenly have to see him or her suddenly with 3D glasses and to know that that’s how you are going to have to be seeing him or her from now on, if you want to see him or her at all. I repeat, the personal and psychological suffering is totally unnecessary in such cases, but I have to concede that another kind of suffering, less intense but also longer lasting, takes its place. It’s the suffering of losing yet another rock-solid foundation on which you thought that you would could base your everyday life. And, believe me, that hurts a hell of a lot in a dull, throbbing way.

Do you see how dangerous movies like Brokeback Mountain are? We spend most of our lives operating with other people on a mask-to-mask basis, and that’s a good thing in general because, as T. S. Eliot knew, “humankind cannot stand too much reality.” But we begin to suffocate behind the masks, and every now and then, we need a soul-piercing work of art to crack the masks and to let our faces breathe. But oh, when we are without masks (for however brief a period of time that may be), we are so vulnerable to others --- and so dangerous to them as well. All sorts of things, not all of them good, come out into the open, as many of the discussions on this forum indicate quite clearly. And some of these things can never go back behind the renovated masks when we raise them at long last to our faces, with sadness but also with relief. And for the people who need the mask in order to have a face --- the soulless ones about whom I have spoken above --- this added facial baggage could be just the thing that tips them over the edge once and for all. That’s a scary thing to consider, almost as scary as to watch.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2006, 09:36:36 PM by jpq716 »
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Offline bluemoon

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #670 on: February 15, 2006, 09:30:22 PM »

I'm still scratching my head about one thing, though: Why did she want to see the movie in the first place? It's a puzzle.

Cara
I think that I am one of the few here that actually do not think that you sister in law is a mean-spirited or hurtful person.  I just read her letter again to see whether I missed something others have read.  To me, she is just mis-informed and clearly lacks the knowledge about gays.  She may not be the most compassionate person, but she seems have the desire (perhaps because of you and other personal reasons other posters have pointed out) to know more about gays. That is why she went to see BBM with you.  I see her questions (in her email) as a cry for help.  I think that by engaging in discussion in a civil manner (with so many valid points that have been provided by many posters here), she may finally see the light.  But that is only when you are emotionally ready to do so.  You got to love yourself first before you can love someone else.  Take care of yourself.  When you find the energy, you can help your sister-in-law.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2006, 09:35:12 PM by bluemoon »

cyoung

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #671 on: February 15, 2006, 09:34:06 PM »
TexRob, I do not usually stick my nose gratuitously into other people’s business. But I got alarmed by a number of the details that were coming out in the course of the conversation, and I did what is for me the unusual thing of sketching out a possibly dangerous scenario that could be highly dangerous to Cara in the long run. I said my piece, stressing the provisional --- and possibly erroneous --- nature of the scenario, and now that I have said my piece, I shut my mouth and let it go.

Before you let it go, could you explain further the dangerous scenario you fear? I'm still a little perplexed, even though I've read your post several times very slowly and carefully.

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The two of you suddenly begin to appear to each other like total strangers who have accidentally been locked together in a room for the time being and who are forced to exchange meaningless pleasantries to pass the time until help can arrive with a key to let you out.

Wow. Well said.

Cara

Offline jpq716

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #672 on: February 15, 2006, 09:41:08 PM »
Cara, I am so sorry now that I ever said a word. But in response to your request, I must tell you that I think that you may find yourself caught in the middle of a collapsing marriage and a pretty wild time for both of the people involved after it goes to wrack-n-ruin. And I repeat, you really need to talk with your husband about this, since I get the impression that he may be more aware of the dangers here with his sister and her husband than you are.

I've answered your question, Cara, and I hope that we can let the matter drop, right here...
« Last Edit: February 15, 2006, 09:43:11 PM by jpq716 »
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cyoung

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #673 on: February 15, 2006, 09:46:38 PM »
I think that I am one of the few here that actually do not think that you sister in law is a mean-spirited or hurtful person.

See, that's the thing -- she's not. If she were, I wouldn't even bother. It's the fact that she isn't a mean-spirited person but has expressed these views that makes me not want to give up.

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You got to love yourself first before you can love someone else.  Take care of yourself.  When you find the energy, you can help your sister-in-law.

After giving it more thought, I've decided to very slowly work on answering that e-mail -- write a little, save it, put it aside, write a little more when I have the energy, save it, etc., until I have something I'm ready to send. I might post it here before sending it.

Something else is bothering me. I keep re-reading the e-mail and comparing it to her usual writing style. The more I re-read it, the more I suspect that she didn't write it, or didn't write it entirely -- I think her husband did. It's more his writing style than hers. And I know his writing style because he and I have had many discussions via e-mail. Some of the things that "she" addresses weren't topics I ever brought up. They're things I've heard him rant about on occasion. But when I replied to her that maybe we could have a long talk one day, she didn't fess up, "I didn't write that, B. did, and I allowed him to put my name to it." I wish I could somehow ask her without offending her, but she's already sensitive to people thinking she "doesn't have a mind of her own." It wouldn't surprise me at all if he intercepted the e-mail and bullied her into letting him write a reply.  :(

Cara

cyoung

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Re: Audience, Friends and Family Reactions to the Movie
« Reply #674 on: February 15, 2006, 09:50:10 PM »
Cara, I am so sorry now that I ever said a word. But in response to your request, I must tell you that I think that you may find yourself caught in the middle of a collapsing marriage and a pretty wild time for both of the people involved after it goes to wrack-n-ruin.

Heh. My husband and I were both already somewhat caught in the middle, even before this whole mess about the movie. When she asked him for a separation, he called us and then drove up here, trying to get us on his "side." A few weeks later, she visited and we heard her side. Then my husband and I looked at each other and said: "Whoa. We've got to draw a line here and not get pulled into this." But it's his sister, and he's going to support her and whatever decision she makes.

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I've answered your question, Cara, and I hope that we can let the matter drop, right here...

No worries.   :)

Cara