Masculinity | samcooney

I rewatched Ang Lee’s heart-aching Brokeback Mountain and thought I’d spew some symbolic noticings.

Twilight And Brokeback Mountain Photographer Kimberley French ...

As a study of masculinity, I find the film fascinating. It takes the quintessential icon of Murca’ in the cowboy and flips it, face down into the pillow. The strong and silent hero of literature and cinema becomes a figure of repressed desire and pained sensitivity.

Heath Ledger’s Ennis Del Ray is so constrained, suppressing emotion, that words can barely escape his tightly drawn face. Eastwood’s testosterone brimming squint is subverted by Ennis, as it seems to be holding back so much more. The model of the alpha male in the film (his name is almost phallic for fucks sake) he fights out of protection of his family, out of unobtainable love, but also defensively out of anger.

The first high altitude fuck happens like most – whilst drunk, camping, taking a break from watching over the sheep. Ennis is top. For now at least, as his inability to accept himself and his desires has his next drunk and teary tent visit wanting to be cradled. Trying out the yang. There is balance in this newly found relationship it seems, one that couldn’t possibly be matched by Ennis’ wife – these being the days before high-quality pegging paraphernalia.

A brief digression on Christ

The chaps talk religion briefly, in passing. Perhaps as a way to introduce that they’re not strictly religious, and don’t base their morality on the hetero-encouraging printed word of the lord, or maybe because there wasn’t much else to talk about.

But these lads, beautiful lambs of god as they are, take on the spiritually significant role of shepherds. That is until that fateful night with the fighting, and the whisky, and the making up. Ennis returns to his camp where he was supposed to be staying to scare off the wolf, the perfect symbolic embodiment of the shadow self, of latent and unexpressed homosexual desire. He returns to find a sheep has been killed, ripped open and eaten. The sacrificial lamb of his sin. Either way it doesn’t stop him going back for more, but this could embody the guilt and shame that he feels.

Brokeback Mountain Promotional Stills - Brokeback Mountain Photo ...

When the boys get back from Brokeback, and have families of their own, they meet back up under the guise of fishing trips. Cleverly repurposing the Christian symbol of the fish, that would serve as coded message for followers to have secret gatherings under Roman rule.

Jack and the beans-talk

Jack Twist appears to take a beta role in the relationship, coming across boyish – especially in comparison to the uber-staunch manliness of Pennis – or even effeminate in his adoption of certain engendered traits.

Jack is the more goofy of the two but also just more expressive. The love affair all begins when Jack complains of the sleeping situation out in the field with the sheep, preferring instead the camp, where he is able to cook for the both of them, mostly beans which they both tire of quickly.

Ennis is bringing back the food on his horse, when a bear suddenly attacks – another symbolic animal, representing overpowering primal urges maybe – once again costing the two cowboys. Sick of beans, Jack tries his hand at hunting for the both of them but fails. It is Ennis who eventually steps in and kills a bull elk to provide for the both of them.

Jack’s beta position is paralleled in his relationship with his wife. From a successful family, it is her father who takes the alpha role – seen initially at the birth of their child, when he sends Jack away like service staff, but coming to a head at Thanksgiving. This showdown of masculinity occurs when Grandpa’ takes the role of cutting the turkey. Jack accepts this. When he turns off the Football game on television, Grandpa’ gets up and turns it back on – saying some shit about how it’s good for boys. This ruffles Jack’s feathers, and his newly acquired moustache, as he finally stands and defends himself, threatening him to the point that he sits and is served. Jack carves the turkey, winning this battle and earning a sly little grin from his wife.

Meanwhile Penis is having Thanksgiving with his ex-wife and her new husband. Failing to be knocked off of his alph-spot, this is cleverly avoided by having the rounder, less threatening, man-of-the-house use an electric carving knife. Hardly threatening and a beautifully symbolic prop.

In the closet

Of course the most potent symbol that closes out the film is the bloodied shirts of Jack and Ennis. Dealing with notions of suppressing and hiding feelings that appear to run counter to constructed ideas of masculinity and morality – Ennis visits Jacks family home and finds in his wardrobe, a secret department, nesting the shirts from the first night of passion at Brokeback. Significantly carrying Ennis inside himself. When Ennis takes this memento to his mobile home, he reverses the order, placing Jack within himself.

He keeps the shirts in the closet but gives them time to breathe like, opening the door, to this side of his personality, and through this act of remembrance and acceptance, is softened very slightly, not having to keep up the facade of hyper-masculinity that has him being a shitty dad.

I had a few hours to kill yesterday morning, and although I knew it wouldn’t be for me, I had heard only good things about Le Mans 66. I will spoil it, or try my best at least.

Image result for le mans 66 stills

I am not a car person. More a snowflake beta-cuck than a mans man. I picked my car up from a service last week and when the cost was 4 times what I had expected, I skimmed the list of parts and services, acted like I knew what what they were and just handed over the money. I feel threatened by people who know what they are talking about and feel there is some expectation that I should too.

Man and Machine

The relationship between men and cars is a strange one. There seems to be some disjunct between humans and technology as expressed in the film. Henry Ford II creates cars on a mass scale, factory lines of machines all making the same product. Ferrari is idolised for it’s sports car, we are told looking around the factory that each part is hand-made, which makes it that much more intimate – there is more of a craft, a relationship between man and machine.

When Ford initially try to produce a sports car in competition, they load it with data logging machines and sensors that apparently can’t detect the problems that are picked up by it’s very human driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale). He makes a claim that disputes the robot, rips it out and makes his point by sticking wool to the outside of the car. He is the motor-whisperer. He uses a female pronoun when talking about the car, and it feels genuinely more sensual than possessive. He has tapped into its potential, he knows that she wants to go faster. It honestly sounds like he wants to fuck it.

Precious Egos

Story goes: Ford try to make a deal with Ferrari, but are used and then insulted. Italian grandfather-figure Enzo Ferrari sends a message to Henry Ford II that he is fat and that his wife is a whore. This is motivating factor for Ford to want to win the prestigious 24 hour race in Le Mans, almost foaming at the mouth when he says that he wants to win.

They employ previous winner and driving celebrity Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to manufacture the car, and he in turn hires the emotionally volatile Ken Miles as driver, to talk to the car, grease her up and find out her secrets.

The film opens with Matt Damon waxing spiritual in voice-over about the point at which a driver experiences transcendence, apparently around 7000 RPM (which to me feels just as arbitrary as Doc Brown’s 88mph). At this point apparently, the car ceases to be and the man is just floating in space. Or something to that affect. It sounded like a float tank.

Religious Masculinity

Ken’s wife is introduced in the film playfully roleplaying as a stranger at his garage, knowledgable about cars and turned on by the whole culture. They have a son (Noah Jupe), with whom Ken talks about cars mostly, they sit beneath the stars pondering the existence of the ‘perfect lap’. Young Peter plays with Scalextric, has model cars around his room and later his father’s trophies under his bed – the ultimate phallic prize for winning this manly competition of racing.

This 12 year old becomes my surrogate as he crudely sketches out the course of Le Mans and has his dad trace over each turn in the road explaining his method. In any other film I would feel patronised, here this is my lifeline. The connection between father and son through cars feels quasi-spiritual, this scene feeling similar to Four Lions when the father tries to explain martyrdom to his son through the analogy of The Lion King.

Any scene where I’m left alone with the grown ups makes me feel lost. They talk about parts and models, they make quips that make the men in the audience chuckle. When things get technical, I imagine those in the know, the manliest of men, are hypnotised with desire. The first 2 hours of the film felt like a segment from Strickland’s In Fabric.

The actual race in the last half-hour I did really enjoy. After Le Mans, we watch Ken get into a fatal accident and then skip ahead to Shelby visiting his family. He takes with him a symbolic gift: the wrench that Ken had thrown at him before winning a race. Before handing down this phallic baton, he explains in the most masculine of ways, that it is more consoling than words, it is a tool that can fix things.

Vroom Vroom

The sound of the engines roaring are a constant throughout the film. They hum and vibrate with varying intensity, growing with the tension of each race, effectively working just like the score.

More than this though, at one point the noise is used as a practical tool. A slimy executive is locked in a glass walled office and his shouts are drowned out by the revving of an engine.

In the final moment of the film, as Shelby returns to his car after giving the wrench to Ken’s son, he is still for a moment and tears form in his eyes. As one falls down his cheek, there is the abrupt grief-cancelling noise of the engine, as he wipes away his sadness, drops his sunglasses and drives off.

This is why you never see your father cry