i had talked abt this on my twt a few weeks back but lately ive rly been thinking abt the potential to read ennis as aromantic and like. yeah idk i just think its a really intriguing reading into the character
like i personally see both ennis and jack as homosexual for a variety of reasons, mostly bc a. that was the frame of reference that annie proulx was writing under when she had the idea for brokeback mountain (i.e. what would life be like for a ranch hand who was gay?) and b. the book that was given to both heath and jake to prepare for their roles was a compilation of memoirs written by real gay midwestern farmers
BUT. all that aside, i think that an aspec/arospec reading of ennis' character is one of the interesting ways in which we can use the visibility of previously "lesser known" queer identities to analyze this story under a modern lens
cause like, ive mentioned this before but i kinda went insane for awhile and so for the first half of this year i went deep in on brokeback mountain. like, i read every article and listened to every movie podcast about this story that i could get my hands on, and a common debate surrounding the story (so much so that theres a whole section on its wikipedia page dedicated to it) is the debate around whether jack and ennis are gay men or bisexual men
and like...sure, okay, theres definitely valid readings in both of them. I just think that, since our understandings of romantic and sexual attraction and our vocabulary to describe these different experiences has expanded in the 17 years since the movie's release and the 25 years since the short story's initial publishing, we can take a look at these charas under new lenses with which to analyze them with
i think you can make a very valid argument that ennis is a gray-area aromantic who falls in love with the one person in his life who hes able to open up, relate to, and create a super close bond with, especially if you consider ennis' extreme loneliness throughout his entire life. it only really hit me the other day, when i was rly thinking deep about this, how hard it must have been for someone in his circumstances to meet people and make friends around his age, considering the fact that he dropped out of high school as a freshman in order to work to support him and his siblings after his parents died.
couple that w this sort of stoic, distant personality type that the hard, rough, small town american west sort of breeds into men from a young age, and like. i dunno, it makes perfect sense to me that an aromantic ennis would fall in love with the one person who hes forced to spend an extended amount of time with, who he later finds out has also grown up a poor, drop-out ranch hand with a hard home life. especially since jack also made an early effort to get to know ennis, i just think it was all the prime circumstances for him to end up falling in love.
i also think it tracks w both heath and jake's mentality when approaching these characters? cause in interviews they gave at the time, they both kinda maintained this belief that ennis anc jack were both "straight" men who just so happened to fall in love w another man
and like. setting aside the fact that that was a VERY 2005 thing to say, lol, i think the idea of someone like ennis by chance falling in love w a man still tracks if you read him as arospec. like it still comes w all the trials and tribulations of him being invested in this homosexual love affair, as well as all the internal tension he must be feeling (i.e. why am i in love with him? shouldnt i be feeling this way about Alma? what is wrong with me?). like thats very much a universal queer struggle that you can read into his character regardless of what sexual orientation you see him as
anyways tl;dr the conversations around the sexuality of the characters in brokeback mountain is rly fascinating and i think that we can look back with our expanded knowledge of sexuality and see these characters in a lot of interesting ways
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