Were they gay? (Jack & Ennis)

[lightsrays05]

Okay, now you're starting to be offensive.

Why?

Don't you like raw salami?

It's a JOKE!

To cheapen such a beautiful sorrowful story!

I've cried so many times with this movie you have no idea!

I was Jack! My Ennis didn't want me... And he lives near those beautiful mountains...

If I am not going to joke about things, I might as well kill myself.

And that's not fun either.

Sorry for the joke! But I don't get why people are avoiding calling them gay, when they loved eachother so deeply! Inspite EVERYBODY else!

It's a total gay love-story!

And a beautiful one, however wretchedly sad...

[mountain boy]

Definitely possible it was "it's okay" instead of "it's all right." I just don't think it was "I'm sorry"

And when Jake Gyllenhaal says "IT'S OK!" why are you - on this big round Earth of ours - going to ARGUE???

Believe me, I am NOT gonna argue with teh Jake on this one!

[Rebel]

I guess I look at this discussion differently.  To me sexuality is not about being straight, gay, bi, or anything.  For me sexuality exists on a scale.  Some people are on extreme sides of the line being strictly homosexual or heterosexual, while others fall within that 2-9 area where sexuality exists for most I believe. 

Sexuality is a complicated drive that cannot be labeled because I believe it is interconnected with love which CANNOT be defined.  Love is boundless, it is beautiful, it can be ugly, and it can be fatal.  Sexuality is the physical representation of what love is, and I believe that though society needs labels for placing people in categories for various reasons, I refuse to subscribe to the belief that people exist in categories. 

The fact that they're two men appeals to me because I understand that love more than any other. 

[BillN]

As with almost everything in the story, Annie has created ambiguity and it is up to us to come to our own conclusions. I've been reading the posts and many have some interesting insights that I hadn't thought about. I might not agree with them, but I do learn from them, and see there can be many alternate interpretations. Maybe this just goes to the heart of Annie's ability to tell a story and draw the reader in so deeply and care about the characters.

[aceygirl]

I hope nobody minds if I jump in here. I tried to post a couple of times before but the posts didn't go through somehow....

This movie "got me good." I've been lurking and I agree totally with the spectrum of sexuality argument. JMHO.

It was interesting to me when Ennis says, "It's because of you that I'm like this" to Jack. That implied to me that Ennis believes he is heterosexual--EXCEPT when it comes to Jack. I know a few men (who identify as bisexual) who have said the same thing...they were mostly attracted to the opposite sex, but then there would be that special person who was of the same gender. I would say the same thing for myself, a female.

It was a double tragedy to me that Ennis could not dare to take the step of having a life with Jack, yet by not doing so he ends up in a broken marriage with two kids to support, making his economic situation even harder. In turn, that causes him to miss the August trip with Jack.

love is love...

 

[mountain boy]

It was interesting to me when Ennis says, "It's because of you that I'm like this" to Jack. That implied to me that Ennis believes he is heterosexual--EXCEPT when it comes to Jack.

Yeah that was definitely a jarring line. But I'm trying to recall - doesn't he follow that statement with stuff about not holding down a job? Instead of about being gay? As if he caught himself about to say something foolish and sort of tried to change the subject - granted, to something else foolish, but maybe just a little less hurtful.

[cindy]

It was interesting to me when Ennis says, "It's because of you that I'm like this" to Jack. That implied to me that Ennis believes he is heterosexual--EXCEPT when it comes to Jack.

Yeah that was definitely a jarring line. But I'm trying to recall - doesn't he follow that statement with stuff about not holding down a job? Instead of about being gay? As if he caught himself about to say something foolish and sort of tried to change the subject - granted, to something else foolish, but maybe just a little less hurtful.

He follows that with something "I'm no one. I'm nowhere." I don't think the statement is about being gay or not gay, just that he loved Jack so much that it had overshadowed the rest of his life. He was unable to be happy with Alma and his family, he had to quit multiple jobs so he could have time off for his trips with Jack. In the end, he was unable to have a fulfilling life because of his ambivalence over the love he had for Jack and his own denial of that love. I don't think he was blaming Jack for being gay; he was just making a statement about how he was unable to reconcile this relationship with the rest of his life, and how he had suffered so much for it.

[mountain boy]

He follows that with something like "I'm no one. I'm nowhere."

Wow - even better. Thanks for the reminder Cindy. At every turn, Proulx, McMurtry, and Ossana seem to choose amibiguous language. So just what Ennis is grumbling about is not even pinned down - being gay, being poor, being lonely - and it's bound to be some of all these things.

[Dave Cullen]

It was interesting to me when Ennis says, "It's because of you that I'm like this" to Jack. That implied to me that Ennis believes he is heterosexual--EXCEPT when it comes to Jack.

Yeah that was definitely a jarring line. But I'm trying to recall - doesn't he follow that statement with stuff about not holding down a job? Instead of about being gay? As if he caught himself about to say something foolish and sort of tried to change the subject - granted, to something else foolish, but maybe just a little less hurtful.

I don't remember the line, will look for it next time I see it. But in the book, I remember Ennis making a much bigger point than in the film about how Jack had forced him into a sort of impoverished life, because he had to take jobs where he could get weeks off, quit them, etc. Could he have been referring to that?

Regardless, I don't think Ennis is completely trustworthy on telling us about his sexuality. I'm not sure he understands it all. (I don't understand mine! I sure as hell don't know what made me gay.)

I also don't trust every word any character says. Ennis was angry at that moment, right? The fact that he made that accusation in a fit of anger doesn't mean he believed it all the time. And his believing it all the time sure doesn't make it so.

[Dave Cullen]

To me sexuality is not about being straight, gay, bi, or anything.  For me sexuality exists on a scale.  Some people are on extreme sides of the line being strictly homosexual or heterosexual, while others fall within that 2-9 area where sexuality exists for most I believe. 

Do they? That's what I believed when I was first coming out, too. Sure made a lot of sense. How silly to lock people into two--or maybe three categories. The spectrum seemed so much more rational, so much more enlightened. So open to complexities. And I had heard oh so many theorists and straight people who sympathized with gay discrimination say it.

But then I spent 15 years with a whole lot of gayguys, and I have actually observed something completely different. Most gay men are pretty much into men. (Not 100%, but by and large.) And just about every gayguy I ever talk to reports observing the same. Seems a lot less like a spectrum and some kind of switch that is thrown that's either on or off.

Yeah, life is complex, and I'm all for getting past easy simplicities and delving deeper, but the complex answer is not always the correct one. With rare exceptions, most babies are born either a boy or a girl. Most kids do turn out to be right-handed or left-handed. They just have this profound and innate preference, and you can force a left-hander into the majority, but he's never going to feel at home there. And sorry, but there just aren't a lot of people across the spectrum of preferring one hand just a little, or a little more or a little less. Some, but rare.

Of course I'm not arguing that because gender or left/right-handers tend to be one or the other, that sexuality works that say. I'm just suggesting that sometimes biology really does cluster most people into either/or categories. So the complexity argument doesn't win just because it's less simplistic. It all comes down to observing the actual data.

And what does the data tell us?

Yeah, lots of gayguys can have and have had sex with women and enjoyed it, and lots of straightguys in prison or out at sea or other places with no options but men will get off doing it with a guy. But in both cases it's a lousy alternative in comparison. I actually loved the way Ennis put it, something about how he had sex with his wife and it was good, but nothing like this!

I just haven't seen a lot of this spectrum in actual life. Where is it?

I've met a fair number of bi guys, but a tiny minority, compared to gays.

Maybe bi's are just less visible. Maybe they are in marriages and not at the gay bars or whatever. (But I see plenty of married and former married guys there.) But I'm skeptical.

Then again--in support of the spectrum theory--I wonder about historical periods where homosexual conduct was more common, like in Sparta. What the hell was going on there? I used to assume that was the default that we would go back to without the social taboo against homosexual contact, but now I'm more inclined to think Sparta was a very unusual society. (It clearly was, in so many ways.) Of course it's not the only example, but maybe they are the outliers. Maybe each one has a reason to explain why homosexual conduct was more common. And maybe in some of them it was only more common with younger guys who were still seuxally confused, but eventually most of them figured out they had a clear preference.

The spectrum theory is very compelling, but is it just a theory we want to believe? Is there really evidence to support it?

I believed it once, and I could be swayed back, but more and more, I think of it as a story well-meaning liberal straight people have about gay people, though I realize there are gay people who subscribe to it as well. (Or people across the spectrum.) I would need some powerful research to counteract what I encounter, day after day after day.

Rebel, what's your reason for supporing it? Have you observed something very different than me? Or do you think these spectrum-people are less visible, or . . . ?

(Actually anyone who subscribes to the spectrum theory, feel free to jump in on that one. I know there are a lot of you out there. It was Rebel's first post, and some people like to get their feet wet slowly. I hope you feel OK responding, Rebel, but anyone else can too. I'm sure some of you will have no problem with that. hehehe.)

[BillN]

Taking Dave's comments a little further, if we believe that gender preference is biological, it would be logical to then believe that it is a yes or no situation with little middle ground. I am convinced that a person being gay is not the result of either the society or family he/she grows up in. Who would chose to be a member of a despised minority? One that even places your life in jepordy?

[cindy]

Well, if you do believe that homosexuality is genetically or biologically determined, it still does not provide support for the either/or (yes or no) theory of being gay. Gender is a special situation in biology, in that the genes that determine gender can be located on a single chromosome.  But in those where the biological pathway for developing gender is disrupted, there is a very wide spectrum as to how "male" or "female" the person will be: both in terms of physical appearance and also in their self-perceived sexual identity.  So gender is still by no means clear-cut.

If you want to talk about left- or right-handedness, many people who are left-handed actually write with their left hands and but are right-hand dominant for other activities (playing tennis, using scissors, holding technical instruments, etc.).  It also worthwhile to note that left-handedness and right-handedness can help to indicate which side of the brain is dominant, but again, is not absolute (50% of left-handed people are left-brain dominant; 50% are right-brain dominant).

There are many other such examples in medicine and sciene where there is a wide spectrum of characteristics. The easiest to describe are mental health disorders and physical diseases (I am in NO WAY implying that homosexuality is a disease, but diseases are well-studied examples because they are "deviations from normal physiology".) Depression occurs on a very wide spectrum (and many believe that there is at least a genetic predisposition for depression). A disease like cystic fibrosis (genetically inherited) can be caused by a variety of genetic mutations and can thus occur in mild, moderate, and severe forms.

[HeathFanNFla]

I believe that if Ennis had never met Jack, he would've stayed married to Alma and lived a long life with her.  It is what he believed he should do and what society expected him to do.  But meeting Jack threw that proverbial wrench into the spokes of a bicycle tire.  It stirred something inside of him which he kept quiet.  IMO, meeting Jack ignited Ennis' pilot light from being an itty-bitty flame into a towering inferno. I think Ennis was gay but it was only Jack that could bring it out in him.  As for Jack, I believe he was gay.  I think that he got married because again, it was what he was supposed to do.         

Well there also is an implication that Jack wasn't really sincere, as it was when he found out her daddy was rich, he really started getting interested. His security financially may have been his real motivation. We see in the dancing sequence, his longing for Ennis.....the blank unhappiness Jake shows of Jack. Mr Gyllenhaal and Mr Lee shot that one to perfection.

Kevin

[cindy]

Just to add one final thought: in my experience, I would say that it is the norm (rather than the exception) that these phenomena that I've described above occur on a very wide spectrum.  In fact, the Mendelian genetics that we all learned during high school occurs infrequently out there in the "real world."

I find this discussion fascinating and am eager to hear more input on the matter.

[BillN]

Cindy, you make several good points and I suspect you are widely read(or maybe educated) in these areas. I can only go on personal experiences that have shown me that someone who is straight is "normally" 100% straight in terms of sexual preference, or the opposite for someone gay. Yes, I think there are people who are bi-sexual, but I don't know how large a poplulation they are. Within the scope of Brokeback, I'd agree with the comment that Jack was gay, and probably had some experiences before he met Ennis. Ennis on the other hand was probably a virgin and didn't think he was gay, then had serious internal conflicts once he acted on his true impulses.