[ SECRET POST #2101 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2101 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.


__________________________________________________



12. [repeat]


__________________________________________________



13.


__________________________________________________



14.


__________________________________________________



15.


__________________________________________________



16.


__________________________________________________



17.


__________________________________________________



18.


__________________________________________________










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #300.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 2 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - take it to comments ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[kallanda_lee]

Hmm, I didn't think it was bad per se, and I liked it more on second viewing, but here's some criticism I heard.

- It was actually just a very generic Hollywood movie, that was only "revolutionary" because it was about two men. Imagine the same story with a man and a woman - it would just be a fairly uninteresting romantic drama.

- Ennis is not so much a sympathetic character. Sure, he's partly a victim of circumstance - but still, he's a jerk to both his wife and Jack. Basically he promises them both something he can't give them, and leads them on for years.
And he's the one that the movie wants us to sympathize with at the end.

- Form over content: I.e. beautiful shots, that cover up lack of story.

- Too drawn out

- The one actual gay sex scene in that movie is pretty terrible - which is a shame, because, ya know, it's kind of essential to the movie.

etc, etc

[stainless]

How sympathetic was Ennis supposed to be, though? I thought part of the point was that he was a horrible person because he was so emotionally stunted he couldn't be anything else -- and personally I'd say part of that's internalized homophobia and part of it's norms of masculinity and part of it's just who the character was.

I had complex reactions to him -- sometimes compassion, sometimes disgust -- and I thought that was intended.

It sounds like from what others are saying that maybe I made the character complex in my mind because my imagination is a better writer than whoever penned the script, though.

I hope not, though it does kind of give me superpowers. *glowy halo*

[(Anonymous)]

It sounds like from what others are saying that maybe I made the character complex in my mind because my imagination is a better writer than whoever penned the script, though.

That's probably it, to be honest. It's even worse reading the original story. Anne Proulx gives SMeyer a run for her money.

[stainless]

I liked the story, too. Really loved how sparse it was.

I'm now feeling like I'm either a genius or crazy.

[(Anonymous)]

No you're just reading the movie correctly and more intelligent than the people with whom you're talking about it here. Anyone who compares Annie Proulux with Smeyer is a moron.

[stainless]

Thank you. I was feeling like I was in Bizarro World. "Doesn't deserve the Pulitzer" is one thing. Comparisons to SMeyer? That just seems like anon has an enormous axe to grind.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with everything you've said.

[stainless]

I thought the story was pretty impressive, personally. Generally I find stuff published in The New Yorker to be unbearably pretentious tripe. Brokeback seemed like an attempt to capture a little bit of the soul of a region and community and its outsiders, and I liked that about it.

I could see how the dialect could be annoying, but that's a stylistic choice, not a sign of a hack. And maybe I never paid enough attention to Twilight but I didn't get the feeling SMeyer was trying to capture the soul of a region the way Proulx was, so they really don't seem comparable at all even if Proulx is a bad writer. (Which maybe she is; I liked Brokeback but it may be unusually good. Or her other stories may be so stylistically indistinguishable from it that once you've read one, you've read them all.)

[(Anonymous)]

Protip: You might be taken more seriously if you bothered to spell her first name right.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, it wasn't that bad. Or maybe I'm just taking this in the context of it being one of the first GLBT stories I read.

[(Anonymous)]

Probably. I read Proulx's story as well as the first 15 pages of Twilight and IMO, it really was that bad.

[kallanda_lee]

To me the problem is: it seems that the movie doesn't go far enough if they wanted to go with the "repressed douche-bag Ennis" story. Which, to be fair, is how I felt about most of of the movie. They brushed over certain subjects, alluding at them, but never quite daring to fully push them through.

Though maybe I'm just a not-so-subtle person in generaland my opinion is not scared, of course. My bf loved the movie, interestingly enough.

My personally issue with Ennis is that I dislike cowards and liars, and sadly he was both.

[stainless]

He was both. And quite unlikeable too.

[(Anonymous)]

You are right about Ennis, fwiw. The one's complaining that he's dysfunctional are giving the film a very cliche, shallow reading. Too much yaoi has warped their brains, I reckon.

[stainless]

Thank you! <3 I kept thinking "you can't win with people." If it's a yaoi-type portrayal of a strong, silent top for whom things work out exaggeratedly well in the end, it's unrealistic and cliched and no one could live like that. If it's a realistic portrayal of a very aloof and closed-off person who has that kind of personality for real and actually shows how that can be harmful, well, he's "still a seme" so people still hate him.

Iiiiii dunno. I mean, yeah, I have some problems with yaoi semes too. But I would think Ennis would make these people happy -- because they could point to the depiction of him and go LOOK, SEE, IT MAKES FOR A DYSFUNCTIONAL JERKFACE.

But no.

[(Anonymous)]

You know, when damn near everyone else is reading the same thing that's different from you, it may just be your version that's seriously warped. Just sayin'.