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This article took a sharp turn. https://twitter.com/outmagazine/status/1355879759410982913
Proulx “I wish I’d never written the story,” [...] “the story isn’t about Jack and Ennis.”
Proulx: “It’s about homophobia [...] a place and a particular mindset and morality,” Proulx said. And that particular mindset doesn’t allow for happy gay people.”
Having read the short story and also seen the movie 18,000 times I feel compelled to comment. Also, I’m gay. Proulx is not. The short story she published in The New Yorker was made into a cinematic masterpiece.
The characters she birthed are Jack and Ennis but I’d argue they’re most cherished as they were in the film: presented by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. No one is pining for her short story. I’ve read it. There’s little elaboration of their love.
So if she is complaining that the community is taking liberties and creating fanfic, rewriting the ending to remove tragedy, seeing the characters as more than two dimensional (love & death) well that’s a liberty that the gay community gets, frankly.
Now, maybe she tempered her comments in some way, and I’ve only read what Out published. But Proulx’s commentary that she won’t give a happy ending to the community that so desperately wants it is .... because society wouldn’t have allowed that is... part of the problem.
Does it suck that the characters experience tragedy? Yes. Is it fair? No. Is it how things may have gone down had Ennis and Jack been real people? Maybe, plausible even likely. But to quash people who find themselves in the characters is to disregard the importance.
Of the characters and, maybe more importantly, the work. And for one, having read it and seen the film, I’d give the credit to Ang Lee for taking the story and crafting a bigger one.
One that would be so loved that the gay community, forever dying in movies and books... would have wanted Jack and Ennis to live.
