“Midnight Cowboy” Brings Out the Worst in Humanity.
I was appalled by our class at the end of “Midnight Cowboy.”
The movie is a portrait of the people in this world who come to the city to make it big, to strike it rich, and never reach that apex. They do what they can to try to survive, stealing doesn’t seem wrong anymore, it’s necessary. Fucking a man when you’re straight is just what you do to eat. Not everyone gets to go to $40,000 college and eat in a cafeteria with both vegetarian AND vegan options! People shit all over them because they are the underbelly of society and everyone thinks they are so much better than them.
And our class shit on them, too. The fact that anyone would ever laugh at Ratso’s death, when he was so close to having finally fulfilled the one dream he had left after constantly failing all his life, only to fail again, but this time forever, is disgusting. Maybe those who laughed are just so used to getting everything handed to them on a silver platter that they just don’t understand what it is to struggle; maybe their mommies and daddies always told them that they were special and that it was okay if they didn’t do well in school, because, you know what, you’ve got other talents and you’re their little angel, that they just don’t understand what it is to not get what you want.
This film portrayed everything that’s terrible in this world. No matter what the pair did, they always were shot down and there is nothing more frustrating, but they kept on trying. And Joe Buck did everything he could for Ratso. For him to die when they were so close would be devestating.
Yes, it is just a movie, but there are a lot of people out there cheating, stealing, and fucking because life has dealt them a shitty hand, and they don’t know what else to do. It’s not so easy to get a “real job” when you have a ketchup stain on your crotch.
To laugh (in this context) just shows a lack of mature emotion.
On another note, Ratso was in love with Joe Buck, right? It was more than platonic, wasn’t it? Or was it just a deep bond between two people who need each other to get by?
lilyherman said,
February 13, 2008 at 11:03 pm
You fixated on the word apex at the reading tonight too, didn’t you?
grace said,
February 15, 2008 at 7:34 pm
why can’t everything in the cafeteria be vegan but it will be a secret that only vegans knew.
Then we’d alllllll be happy
abattoir vigilante said,
February 24, 2008 at 4:09 pm
fucking is fucking. sexual release is sexual release there is no straight. there is no gay. love is love. you love people, you don’t love gender. the ambiguity of either end of the spectrum is what makes this movie nice.
maturity is questionable.
emotion is needless.