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Author Topic: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II  (Read 616111 times)

Offline janjo

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #135 on: January 21, 2008, 12:18:54 PM »
I am not trying to say that Jack saw it as a good thing that they weren't face to face, rather that it was necessary for the author to make the point that Jack connected the embrace with the parental love that Jack never had, at least from his father.
If they had kissed face to face AT THAT POINT then that illusion could have been destroyed.
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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #136 on: January 21, 2008, 01:16:27 PM »
What Ennis is showing isn't really an illusion, though - it's what he really feels for Jack.   The illusion is there's nothing 'queer' about it, that they're just friends.   I think what's showing the 'parental' aspect is Ennis using a phrase from his childhood - he's speaking to Jack the way a parent would speak to a child.  That's what it brought it to mind for me, rather than the positioning itself, because parents often embrace children face to face.

Offline janjo

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #137 on: January 21, 2008, 03:50:13 PM »
But don't you think a lover face to face is more likely to be interpreted by the receiver of the embrace as a sexual approach?
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Offline frunner

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #138 on: January 21, 2008, 04:05:48 PM »
I thought of the movie actors in the '40s, who were talking to each other while standing un-naturally close, because they ought to be inside the frame, you know?
I do not want to disturb the discussion here, but I remember thinking about the "single column" description in DE as very convenient for filming, and how did she got away with it.

Offline Ministering angel

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #139 on: January 21, 2008, 05:14:19 PM »
But don't you think a lover face to face is more likely to be interpreted by the receiver of the embrace as a sexual approach?

Not in the case of two men whose only described sex is anal sex from behind. AP keeps her story lines remarkably pure, I think. Even in a general sense I don't agree with your question. With some couples you could say, Yes, with others, No.

Offline Ministering angel

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #140 on: January 21, 2008, 05:41:45 PM »
janjo - I think there is some sort of general agreement around these parts that the DE has strong and crucial elements of parental love both given and received. On various threads at various times, I've mentioned Ennis's strong maternal qualities (the only way he knows to give love, through example, since the usual route of man to woman is not going to work for him) and Jack's attachment to Ennis through a desire to "get it right" with his old man (as well as love, of course).

There are odd sensory connections between the DE and the pissing scene, oddly enough. Maybe they are unintentional but they are there. And there is the clear connection between the pissing scene and Ennis's collapse at the end of the argument, when Jack must feel he has blown the chance to ever get it right with Ennis. So he recalls the DE with its promise of acceptance, and understands it ain't goin a be that way.

But back to the DE - the position is a negative for Jack, and we are told why. It has the possibility of marring an otherwise perfect moment. The fact that it doesn't mar his memory, (rather than the embrace itself) shows how important this memory is to Jack, as if we didn't already know. At the time Jack took it as the next step in their progress and was perfectly happy with it.

You are saying, I think, that even if he could have turned to Ennis at that moment, he wouldn't have, because that would have ruined the illusion of parental love. I don't agree. I think if he knew he could do it, he might very well have turned to Ennis and still retained the sexlessness. Even if it had segued into sex, the intrinsic importance of that first sexless (i.e. loving) embrace would remain.

The point is that neither were doing it as foreplay, as a means to an end. The sexlessness was an end in itself. If it progressed naturally into something else, that would have been okay. Ennis may often have come up behind Jack and held him as a prelude to sex, but this time was completely different, and Jack knew that. This was, in a way, Ennis's restrictions defeating him - he had his physical restriction - no f2f - but couldn't stop the feelings of love anyway (although I don't think he saw it that way; I think he just got caught up in his own happy memories and was oblivious to the significance of what he was doing - I think this might require a whole new post so I won't go on).

Jack would have turned if he could have, I suspect, because he understood the big picture much better than Ennis. He didn't have to separate out his feelings. He wanted a lover who would love him completely, as brother, father, lover, friend, soulmate. Ennis had to separate out the different elements - Jack was the best friend that he also happened to fuck.

Offline Ministering angel

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #141 on: January 21, 2008, 05:50:54 PM »
I thought of the movie actors in the '40s, who were talking to each other while standing un-naturally close, because they ought to be inside the frame, you know?
I do not want to disturb the discussion here, but I remember thinking about the "single column" description in DE as very convenient for filming, and how did she got away with it.

That single column is such a powerful image. The two as one, just as the shirts are later found to be. And it works so well on film, almost as if AP had seen it in that medium (although I'm sure she didn't). We can have two beautiful faces in a tight shot, without anything much having to happen. No wonder Ang Lee echoed it in the motel, and contrasted it with the first Alma/Ennis sex scene.

I think that because it has connections with love on various planes (parental, friend, sexual) we can all identify with the emotions when we see stills of it. We go Ahhhh! automatically.

Offline royandronnie

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #142 on: January 21, 2008, 06:47:12 PM »
Aguirre as slimy? Sure but what does that have to do with him not reacting much to lovey-dovey stuff? 10 minutes-and the sex was quick and rough according to AP. We are meant to think he saw pretty much one whole session. And he didn't stroke out. So clearly, it was man/man expedient sex; nothing he would have thought was queer. Do we now say Aguirre would be ok seeing what we saw at the Reunion? come on.....

Then why did he deliver the news of UH's recovery "fixing Jack with his bold stare" and "not bothering to dismount?" It doesn't sound to me as though he was completely cool with it, either. He was at least patronizing, at most contemptuous.

The thing is that Aguirre watched the entire act, certainly most of it and the end. "…watched them through his 10x42 binos for ten minutes one day, waiting until they'd buttoned up…" How polite of him, not to interrupt or embarrass his hired hands at their expedient sex. He was being a voyeur. We are meant to react negatively to his intrusion on their privacy--he enjoyed the show, then waited so they wouldn't know he'd been watching--because watching could also be construed as queer.

Different men in the story react to them in different ways, all negative, but only Ennis' father is seen as dangerously homophobic. There may be a message here, too--as you say below, Ennis' demons are there in his head by BB: that while the danger is real, Ennis makes it worse than it is.

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The idea of the 'wrong' guy seeing them-that's interesting, but it is extraneous to the story, I think.

Do you? I don't. Ennis has no way of knowing what kind of guy is going to see them. Not a good risk to take.

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I think the info is contained within-the characters we need for Ennis to do battle with are there, either in his head or in his life. So Aguirre is the one-he is the guy from Sage, on BBM, and there is no way to explain away how Ennis had to have been told by Jack that his Uncle had pneuomonia by Aguirre-but he STILL continues to have sex with Jack, knowing its possible to get caught.  And it takes a trauma-the bloody nose and the ministering to do that in the end..where was it with the idea of being SEEN? There is no fear on Ennis's part-not because he has no risk of being seen-that's over with when AGuirre shows up-but he will not be seen as queer. He will be seen as an expedient poker. ;)

I do understand what you're saying. But nobody was sitting up there parsing whether it was queer sex or okay sex. The concept of being queer wasn't one Ennis had closely examined at 19. I'm sure of that. (Four years later, faced with the knowledge that he loved Jack, he had bolstered himself with this "I'm STILL not queer" idea.) There were two kinds of sex--with women, and queer. Mansex=queer=dead. Earl was a horror that simply shut down any intellectual examinations or exceptions he might have made into the question of whether it was okay to have sex with a man under any conditions. The problem was that then he found himself in a situation where he discovered, by accident and with the help of booze and a late hour, that he wanted to have sex with a man. It's certainly not irrelevant that their first encounter is from behind, but it also serves to emphasize Ennis' tendency to dominate, and the sudden, almost unavoidable aspect of the encounter. They were pulled together like magnets. There's no reason it couldn't have been f2f, leaving Ennis' denials aside for the moment, but artistically, the savage quality of it does show the passion that overcame Ennis' fears and loathing and the immature quality of their early relationship as well as hinting that Ennis even in the throes of passion had some reservations about the whole thing.

Again, not being a man, I don't know--would all fours be the default position, the one that would first be chosen? That's not an irrelevant consideration either, but I suspect the answer would vary. Certainly it is a position that gives Ennis tremendous power, which is also relevant. He is setting the pace.

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I see you are arguing the year later-but why? AP tells us when AJ was born; Ennis's comment is tied to that time-the sucking and the squalling of the baby recalls the squalling of Jack's harmonica...Why is this point so heatedly argued? It always puzzles me... Does it really not follow?


It isn't that it doesn't follow. I'm not saying it didn't take a year for Ennis to ADMIT, to allow himself to understand, what was really wrong. I'm just saying that "everything seemed mixed" and "headlong fall" show quite clearly that Ennis was AWARE of emotional turmoil with regard to Jack, and what they had been doing, long before a year. This is before the dry heaves, too: he was already sick.

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Not knowing for a year fits in with his denial-it doesn't really fit with anything else, because if he knew how he felt on BBM, or upon leaving-he'd have behaved somewhat differently. We would not have exactly the same turn-out as we do, I don't think.

Why not? I would call hauling off and belting your best friend/lover over an accidental nosebleed and the aftermath, and then pretending like nothing happened, ESSENTIAL denial. Because if you admit even to yourself that something was wrong enough to cause that punch, you admit there is a real problem. And Ennis was busy deciding it was food poisoning.

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Again, i think Mini has produced IMO, of course, an airtight finding that tells me ever more that Ennis was in denial, and prevented them from doing anything that would take him out of it; and there is no way Aguirre would have let the kind of passion we see in the Reunion go by without doing someting about it, or saying something about-the most he can muster is, 'you boys screwed up, spent too much time away from the sheep ,etc, etc.' He never actually calls him queer......

In addition, one of the main arguments here has been that Ennis could do ANYTHING because he had no fears of being seen....now its clear, if he was doing what has been imagined, he WOULD be very scared, once he knew Aguirre made trips up to see them. The argument no longer stands, in that light.

I know I sound maybe too certain... It clicked into place for me with Mini's point.

Ah, but there's denial, and there's denial. You and MinAngel make, for me, too fine a point; that as long as Ennis restricted the hell out of everything, it was okay if ANYBODY saw it, just two horny men doing what they needed to do. I think that Ennis shut down any thinking the moment he woke up in the red dawn and saw what he had done.And we must not forget that the trigger for the punch is not only the bloody nose, but also the knowledge, forced on him by the early recall before he's finished building the nice neat little box in which it would have been put away forever, that he's been having sex with a man. If all these restrictions made him so comfortable with the sex, then why would the bloody nose and a bit of wiping with a sleeve bother him? Because some part of him knows IN THAT MOMENT that it wasn't expedient, no matter what they didn't do. Because some part of him knows IN THAT MOMENT that he feels something "wrong." As long as he could pretend no one knew, no one saw, it was okay. He wasn't cool at all with being seen, he simply chose not to believe he could be seen. MUCH easier to believe nobody saw you, or could see you, than to parse what seeing you might mean. Girls don't think they're going to get pregnant. Boys don't believe they're going to have problems driving drunk. These are blanket denials, made by inexperience. When you're nineteen, you're bulletproof. You can believe ten impossible things before breakfast. Ennis didn't worry about being seen because he didn't believe anyone saw them. The door is still wide open. If you're going to fit his behavior into what's written, don't forget these words either:

"There were only the two of them on the mountain, flying in the euphoric, bitter air…suspended above ordinary affairs… They believed themselves invisible…"
"…in the family homestead of his dead lover, the shirts they wore while cowboying together long before: shabby denim and weary cotton, wrapped in each other's arms." Like this. Always.

He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small
Who dares not put it to the touch
To win or lose it all

Offline Ministering angel

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #143 on: January 21, 2008, 07:02:16 PM »
~snip!  It's certainly not irrelevant that their first encounter is from behind, but it also serves to emphasize Ennis' tendency to dominate, and the sudden, almost unavoidable aspect of the encounter. They were pulled together like magnets. There's no reason it couldn't have been f2f, leaving Ennis' denials aside for the moment, but artistically, the savage quality of it does show the passion that overcame Ennis' fears and loathing and the immature quality of their early relationship as well as hinting that Ennis even in the throes of passion had some reservations about the whole thing.

Again, not being a man, I don't know--would all fours be the default position, the one that would first be chosen? That's not an irrelevant consideration either, but I suspect the answer would vary. Certainly it is a position that gives Ennis tremendous power, which is also relevant. He is setting the pace.

Where do you see Ennis's tendency to dominate? Do you mean in general or just with Jack? We are told he has a body built for fighting yet we only hear of three fights, and one of them is against a bigger brother.

I would say that all fours is most definitely the default position. Raised on farms, it would be obvious, and I seriously doubt that Ennis would have any concept of f2f anal sex. Where on earth would he get it from? He does Alma from behind too. Nothing sweet about it - he is recreating what he did with Jack.

I don't think he had a choice of positions. I think he would have had but one idea on how to do it.


Offline Ministering angel

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #144 on: January 21, 2008, 07:10:14 PM »
Ah, but there's denial, and there's denial. You and MinAngel make, for me, too fine a point; that as long as Ennis restricted the hell out of everything, it was okay if ANYBODY saw it, just two horny men doing what they needed to do. I think that Ennis shut down any thinking the moment he woke up in the red dawn and saw what he had done.And we must not forget that the trigger for the punch is not only the bloody nose, but also the knowledge, forced on him by the early recall before he's finished building the nice neat little box in which it would have been put away forever, that he's been having sex with a man. If all these restrictions made him so comfortable with the sex, then why would the bloody nose and a bit of wiping with a sleeve bother him? Because some part of him knows IN THAT MOMENT that it wasn't expedient, no matter what they didn't do. Because some part of him knows IN THAT MOMENT that he feels something "wrong." As long as he could pretend no one knew, no one saw, it was okay. He wasn't cool at all with being seen, he simply chose not to believe he could be seen. MUCH easier to believe nobody saw you, or could see you, than to parse what seeing you might mean. Girls don't think they're going to get pregnant. Boys don't believe they're going to have problems driving drunk. These are blanket denials, made by inexperience. When you're nineteen, you're bulletproof. You can believe ten impossible things before breakfast. Ennis didn't worry about being seen because he didn't believe anyone saw them. The door is still wide open. If you're going to fit his behavior into what's written, don't forget these words either:

"There were only the two of them on the mountain, flying in the euphoric, bitter air…suspended above ordinary affairs… They believed themselves invisible…"

I think most assume that a part of him knew what was going on at some level. That's what denial is about. You can't deny what you don't know. Of course he feels that something is wrong when Jack ministers but that doesn't mean he clearly sees everything as wrong, just that the concept of tenderness between men is wrong. "When they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong" - that's not about the punch but the times before it.

Ennis has had four years to pick up any gossip via his brother, and nothing happened. Why do you think the brother lives in Signal? Why is Ennis not freaked by the idea of being seen? Why is he happy enough to work in Signal again years later?

Offline royandronnie

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #145 on: January 21, 2008, 07:58:51 PM »
I just had a thought, just interested me--Jack's interpretation of the DE contains the following words: "…in their separate and difficult lives." Even while he is feeling bitter that their relationship did not progress much further than the DE's single moment of unalloyed happiness, he seems here to forgive Ennis, to offer a level of understanding we might not expect from him. "Let be" is something of a turning away, a "cut your losses"--though I don't say I think it is a direct "quit" message--but the previous words suggest Jack understood, however he might have railed about short fucking leashes and HAFs, that Ennis had it hard too.

It's an interesting insight into the innate kindness of his character, I think. Though perhaps it belongs on Jack's Character.
"…in the family homestead of his dead lover, the shirts they wore while cowboying together long before: shabby denim and weary cotton, wrapped in each other's arms." Like this. Always.

He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small
Who dares not put it to the touch
To win or lose it all

Offline CANSTANDIT

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #146 on: January 21, 2008, 09:07:45 PM »
I just had a thought, just interested me--Jack's interpretation of the DE contains the following words: "…in their separate and difficult lives." Even while he is feeling bitter that their relationship did not progress much further than the DE's single moment of unalloyed happiness, he seems here to forgive Ennis, to offer a level of understanding we might not expect from him. "Let be" is something of a turning away, a "cut your losses"--though I don't say I think it is a direct "quit" message--but the previous words suggest Jack understood, however he might have railed about short fucking leashes and HAFs, that Ennis had it hard too.

It's an interesting insight into the innate kindness of his character, I think. Though perhaps it belongs on Jack's Character.
That may actually be a narrative point, ie, AP telling us their lives apart were difficult-I never saw it as Jack assessing his and Ennis's lives and coming to this conclusion. I think he just drank.
For Jack, it was the shining moment-I think we are being told the broader meaning of it, with regards to the absence of such moments in their own lives.... It was a moment they both shared, from the hunger persprective, which Jack could not know-he could not know it was the same feeling they both had of emotional hunger and not belonging... and I'm kind of glad you brought that up.

I agree that 'let be' is an extraordinary concession made for love-and it is exactly what kills Jack. He absolves Ennis and takes the pain on himself, I think.

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #147 on: January 21, 2008, 11:54:46 PM »
I just had a thought, just interested me--Jack's interpretation of the DE contains the following words: "…in their separate and difficult lives." Even while he is feeling bitter that their relationship did not progress much further than the DE's single moment of unalloyed happiness, he seems here to forgive Ennis, to offer a level of understanding we might not expect from him. "Let be" is something of a turning away, a "cut your losses"--though I don't say I think it is a direct "quit" message--but the previous words suggest Jack understood, however he might have railed about short fucking leashes and HAFs, that Ennis had it hard too.

It's an interesting insight into the innate kindness of his character, I think. Though perhaps it belongs on Jack's Character.

I agree - I've always thought that he doesn't seem to blame Ennis, as you might expect of somebody in that situation.    Some of that ties into that childhood memory, I think.   He has difficulty seeing him as worthy enough to deserve Ennis's love.  But I think there's also maybe kindness too - he recognises that Ennis can't do it, rather than that he doesn't want to, and that the relationship was bad for him too.  He remembers that maybe 'they' didn't get much farther than that, rather than that Ennis didn't - as though it was a joint endeavour that they both failed at. 

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #148 on: January 22, 2008, 12:08:59 AM »
The problem was that then he found himself in a situation where he discovered, by accident and with the help of booze and a late hour, that he wanted to have sex with a man. It's certainly not irrelevant that their first encounter is from behind, but it also serves to emphasize Ennis' tendency to dominate, and the sudden, almost unavoidable aspect of the encounter. They were pulled together like magnets. There's no reason it couldn't have been f2f, leaving Ennis' denials aside for the moment, but artistically, the savage quality of it does show the passion that overcame Ennis' fears and loathing and the immature quality of their early relationship as well as hinting that Ennis even in the throes of passion had some reservations about the whole thing.

I think it's too much of a coincidence that Ennis avoids being face to face both during the FNIT and during the DE.    I don't think it's just about dominance, because what part does that play in the story?   In the added SNIT, the film chose to show Ennis as not particularly sexually dominant - I know that's the film, but still.    He's unusually dominant in the FNIT, but not shown as unusually dominant at other times - to me, he's being shown as having a need to act a certain way in the FNIT, for a certain reason.    There's a reason for them having anal sex in that position, and a reason why we need to know that (rather than being left to imagine it like the rest of their sex). 

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It isn't that it doesn't follow. I'm not saying it didn't take a year for Ennis to ADMIT, to allow himself to understand, what was really wrong. I'm just saying that "everything seemed mixed" and "headlong fall" show quite clearly that Ennis was AWARE of emotional turmoil with regard to Jack, and what they had been doing, long before a year. This is before the dry heaves, too: he was already sick.

He's aware that something's up, but he doesn't consciously know what it is.   Later he thinks that 'nothing seemed wrong' - he wasn't aware.

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If all these restrictions made him so comfortable with the sex, then why would the bloody nose and a bit of wiping with a sleeve bother him?

Because the bloody nose and the blood all over them brings to mind an image of Earl's body, I think.   And then the wiping with the sleeve is close, loving, face to face AND in the context of sex (unlike the DE) and violence (blood, pain, the reminder of Earl).   

Of course, I'd agree that all this was lurking under the surface waiting to blow at some point.   The miracle is that it didn't blow with that first handgrab.   That's because Ennis seems to have instinctively done things that would avoid that thought/feeling surfacing too far.   That starts not with the red dawn, but right at the moment of the handgrab, I think - he feels desire when he touches Jack and instantly makes it NOT about touching Jack's cock.    He avoids knowing.

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Re: Ennis' and Jack's Relationship, II
« Reply #149 on: January 22, 2008, 12:18:16 AM »
But don't you think a lover face to face is more likely to be interpreted by the receiver of the embrace as a sexual approach?

It could be.   In Jack and Ennis's case, where we see that Ennis was behind Jack during sex, an approach from behind might come across as just as sexual to the receiver. 

For lovers who are happy and comfortable with each other and what you're doing, I don't think you'd tend to see these clear distinctions.   Sometimes sexless embraces will segue into sexual ones, and vice versa.   That acceptance is something that would be expressed from day to day, not as a one off.   There are two big surprises with the DE itself - that Ennis could do it, and that it only happened once.  (And then the later surprises, that Ennis didn't want to see or feel Jack and that they didn't get much farther).    We know that Ennis continued to love Jack, so the puzzle is why he didn't do anything that felt like this to Jack ever again.   I think that comes down to his denial on the mountain (not being face to face, avoiding seeing or feeling Jack) allowing him to do it - Jack is his straight friend.   That's why it's only once, because after Brokeback Ennis knew too much.  That's the killer - this isn't all in Jack's head - Ennis really doesn't accept hiim.   He shows that in the Mexico argument.