Comments on: The Gay Cowboy Love Story I Didn’t Need to See http://12frogs.com/12/archives/2006/02/the-gay-cowboy-love-story-i-didnt-need-to-see/ read think get curious Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:57:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Lisa http://12frogs.com/12/archives/2006/02/the-gay-cowboy-love-story-i-didnt-need-to-see/comment-page-1/#comment-466 Lisa Sun, 12 Feb 2006 20:53:20 +0000 http://12frogs.com/12/archives/2006/02/the-gay-cowboy-love-story-i-didnt-need-to-see/#comment-466 <p>For me, that scene in the hotel, and the flashback near the end where Ennis gives Jack a quick squeeze before setting out for the day, telling him that he's asleep on his feet like a horse, as his momma used to tell him--that's this movie at its most heartbreakingly powerful. Because this kind of tenderness, of genuine love and affection, is my normal, everyday life, too--and God, we are so lucky to have that. </p> <p>I didn't feel that this was a "gay" story, in the sense that it could only be told about gay characters...in the end, what keeps Ennis from building the life Jack wishes they could have is his own fear, his inability to imagine that it won't only lead to greater pain in the end. Obviously, I have a tremendous personal stake in naming the injustice and hatred that creates and feeds Ennis's specific fears, but it's a very human frailty, to be so afraid of risking what we have, however little, because we believe it will somehow hurt less if we lose it. Any two people in love can so struggle, for any of a thousand reasons, and this is what it seemed to me the movie was actually about.</p> For me, that scene in the hotel, and the flashback near the end where Ennis gives Jack a quick squeeze before setting out for the day, telling him that he’s asleep on his feet like a horse, as his momma used to tell him–that’s this movie at its most heartbreakingly powerful. Because this kind of tenderness, of genuine love and affection, is my normal, everyday life, too–and God, we are so lucky to have that.

I didn’t feel that this was a “gay” story, in the sense that it could only be told about gay characters…in the end, what keeps Ennis from building the life Jack wishes they could have is his own fear, his inability to imagine that it won’t only lead to greater pain in the end. Obviously, I have a tremendous personal stake in naming the injustice and hatred that creates and feeds Ennis’s specific fears, but it’s a very human frailty, to be so afraid of risking what we have, however little, because we believe it will somehow hurt less if we lose it. Any two people in love can so struggle, for any of a thousand reasons, and this is what it seemed to me the movie was actually about.

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