YourFilmProfessor:
In the two ending sequences, we get two closets, two deeply symbolic closets. In Lee’s vision, the closet motif represents Jack and Ennis’s “hidden love” and the “pain” that comes with such a state of being, all embodied by the two shirts. In a sense, Lee uses this closet metaphor in a way that is a cliché, but he also turns this cliché into something quite profound, reflects the origin and why of this closet metaphor, the way that our intolerant ideologies force natural ways of being into hiding, a signifier of not only that which is forced to be hidden, but in its darkness and claustrophobic smallness, a signifier of oppression in general. In another sense, Lee kind of subverts the negative connotations of “closet” as well, in the sense that while the “closet” metaphor still signifies oppression, it also signifies a sacred space where Ennis and Jack can keep their cherished memories of at least moments where they could be free of the lie of their lives, e.g., be their “selfs” with the love of their lives.
YourFilmProfessor:
By inverting the shirts, Ennis is in effect saying that he knows that he has be the nurturer now, the one to keep the memory of their love alive. As I say above, in this way, Lee is subverting the notion of the “closet” as oppressive, since Ennis is now making it a space for his shrine to Jack and himself, a loving and sacred space for Ennis, even if it also still represents where Ennis is at, still in the closet.
YourFilmProfessor:
... the image of “Brokeback Mountain,” suggesting both a link to the shirts — their intimate times together are of course intricately linked to this transportive space — and perhaps a way out of this “closet” bind, opening the closet to transport himself to an imaginary place of “freedom” where he can still vicariously live out the rest of his life on “Brokeback Mountain”…with Jack.
Brokeback Mountain Parallels
closets and cowboy like me