[ SECRET POST #2101 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2101 ⌋

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

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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

[stainless]

Huh. That's interesting. I didn't think it was portrayed as healthy at ALL. I thought it was about how living in a repressive environment poisons even love when you find it. I certainly didn't think it seemed like Twilight.

That may be why I didn't hate it, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe. Just about everything in the movie seemed to scream to me "THESE TWO SHOULD BE TOGETHER THEY'RE MADE FOR EACH OTHER BUT THEY CAN'T BECAUSE OPPRESSION THAT'S SO SAD." When I'm sitting there thinking "no, they shouldn't be together because Ennis is a manipulative douchecanoe and Jack is an extreme doormat."

[stainless]

I didn't feel that way at all. In fact, I expected that. Instead I got characters who didn't read to me so much as externally oppressed (though they were that too) as internally oppressed. Ennis was a dysfunctional, maybe even a horrible, person, because he couldn't own up to his emotions.

I guess maybe it IS like yaoi, then -- it's what the exaggerated closed off "seme" would actually be if he really existed -- a stunted person whose distance harms everyone around him.

I didn't think it was fluttery romance. I was surprised that it wasn't. I'd say pleasantly surprised, but that kind of tearjerking isn't my bag. Still, it made the whole thing higher quality, I think. Impressedly surprised? That, I guess.

Though I didn't think it was great or revolutionary or amazing or anything. I did think it was impressive for its time in a way. It didn't tell a "gay story" and make the characters what you might expect, stereotypically. It presented you with an older man, a man whose struggles were as much internal as external. It didn't beat you over the head with homophobes' evil until the very end. It just made the whole thing... sad and insidious.

That felt very real to me, so I thought it was good. Again, not great. But good. And impressive in its way.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess maybe it IS like yaoi, then -- it's what the exaggerated closed off "seme" would actually be if he really existed -- a stunted person whose distance harms everyone around him.

Yep, that's exactly why it reminds me of yaoi. It used a lot of yaoi tropes, but just dressed them in cowboy costumes for a Western audience. Jack, if he really existed, would've been a classic "uke", too. And like I said upthread, there's no point paying $9 to see it on the big screen when I can read it online for free.

I couldn't even find it impressive because it's literally the same Bury Your Gays trope I've seen in all romantic dramas involving a same-sex relationship in this country, as few as there are. They're a gay couple, ergo they will not be allowed to be happy. The implication being that gay romance is not normal and therefore doomed to end you and everything you love. I'm tired of being told that because of the gender I prefer in bed, I'm doomed to a very short, miserable life.

Ironically, if it had been written and presented as a fluttery, cute relationship? That would've been impressive because it never fucking happens.

[stainless]

The implication being that gay romance is not normal and therefore doomed to end you and everything you love.

Yeah, I can see that.

Personally, I took it more as a condemnation of the culture (or better said the... I don't want to say subcultures. Regional cultures? Mini-cultures?) that can doom gay people than of the gay people themselves.

I think that's probably why that didn't bother me.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it would've jumped out at me if it wasn't such a pervasive pattern. Even when the script tries to pass it off as the result of societal oppression/ostracization, it still ends up coming off as "this is what happens to you when you're gay, WHY THE HELL DO YOU WANT TO BE GAY?"

Because you don't get the same pattern in straight couples who are forbidden by a difference in race/class/religion/whathaveyou. They get to overcome those hurdles and be happy and teach everyone around them how stupid their hatred is.

The gays? Get to wind up crazy, dead, or both. And prove the haters' point.

[(Anonymous)]

But that was in the original story which was set in the 1960's and published in 1997. So it's more "why did you pick this horrible story to portray a gay relationship?" than just another story in a pervasive pattern.

[(Anonymous)]

What does the year it was set or written have to do with anything? It's still another problematic depiction of homosexuality in a very long line of problematic depictions of homosexuality.

[(Anonymous)]

What does the year it was set or written have to do with anything?

Realism, maybe? I mean, I could write a story about happy-go-lucky Black people in the Civil War era, trying to be subversive and counter stories of their lives as tragic... but even if I was the most amazing of writers, I don't think people would so much treasure and value that as they'd think I was a clueless white moron. Rightly so.

[(Anonymous)]

Again, why choose to set the story in that time so it can be yet another Gays Can Never Be Happy story? We have more than enough of those. Why not set it in the present day (for the year it was written, even) and cast the relationship in a more positive light?

Because Proulx is a shitty author who's read too much yaoi, of course.