The Review and Record of Online Film Salon Brokeback Mountain

 

May 27^th 2020

 

With the passionate and profound discussion, the online film salon came to an end.

 

 

Now, let’s review the whole process of our film salon.

 

1 The Review of Film Salon

 

 

This activity can be divided into four parts:

 

1.       The introduction of the guest speaking teacher and the film Brokeback Mountain

2.       Students’ self-introductions and comments

3.       Topics of discussion

4.       Summary

 

 

In order to encourage students to participate in the discussion actively, we set up a reward of “MVP” and two kinds of students can win it.

 

1.       The student who has the highest number of speeches.  

2.       The student who expresses impressively and profoundly that is selected by all students after the salon.

 

In the third discussing part, we made a questionnaire for students to ask about the interesting parts in the film and collect the questions what they want to discuss with teachers after watching the movie.

1.      

 

The following part is the questions we collected.

2.       Is Ennis a bisexual？（Because I think he once loved his wife.）

3.       What cultivate Ennis personality?

4.       What changed Ennis’s mind?

5.       What’s the condition for 'homowives' in this film? In modern society, how does a gay think of his wife?

6.       Why is so difficult for Chinese film censors to approve public screenings of a movie featuring gay characters in leading roles?

7.       Why does “Boys Love” culture garner a strong cult in China?

8.       How do people think of LGBT?

9.       What is “True Love’?

 

The questions are diverse and worth discussing.

 

 

 

 

2 Topics of discussion

Students have shared many questions and their thoughts about the film before. Let’s review the wonderful speech together.

 

Ennis and Jack are forced to hide their love because the gay wouldn’t be accepted by society. Brokeback mountain is a wonderland for them to cover their love. Actually, all of us have a “Brokeback Mountain” inside our hearts. The mountain will disappear if we enter into society. Moreover, the people who comes out of the closet will suffer unaccountable pressure because of other’s malign language. 

 

On the Brokeback mountain, Ennis and Jack were overwhelming by freedom and carefree and thus they fell in love naturally and gradually. They lead a life as simple as nature here and they can respect and understanding the same sex ‘s love. Leaving alone the same sex identity, they experienced the intrinsic love. When people don’t limit love by gender, love is equal between both the same gender and different gender. Consequently, the tragedies of this film are their marriage and their “secret love”. If homosexuality can’t be accepted by the whole society, the people who falls in love with the same gender will not be the only victim. If a gay had been accepted at that time, they would not have suffered a lot.

 

 

 

 

Everyone was deeply touched by the sceneries and plots of Brokeback Mountain and expressed their opinions about the theme of this film. The following part is students’ opinion.

1.       After an outbreak of love in the tent, Ennis has recognized his true feeling and he gradually received Jack’s kiss.

2.       They kiss each other excitedly after reunion, which vividly show the joy of their unspeakable love.

3.       Before leaving the Brokeback mountain, they had a big fight. I am moved by their painful and desperate love. Ennis decides to escape while Jack always spare no efforts to maintain their love, which also implies their heartbroken tragedy. As a result, this film inspires us that love needs two side’s effort to maintain.

4.       The outcome of film’s tragedy is the whole society can’t accept homosexuality and thus they push too much pressure to the gay. Haunted by the past trauma, they are afraid of coming out, letting alone giving up everything to pursue true love. Therefore, they have a bad ending due to both psychological and social factors.

 

 

More and more students can’t wait to share their opinions.

 

“I have watched many movies about homosexuality before. In this movie, I think Ennis is devoted to Jack in actual, which can be witnessed in many details. He loves Jack but he needs to quit it. Eventually, Ennis accepts this love and it touches me deeply.”

“Love should meet with soul, rather than sex.”

 

 

 

 

3.       The Feedback and comments of Film Salon

At the end of the salon, we invited all students to fill out a questionnaire about their suggestions and expectations of future’s topics about film salon.

Here are the topics we have collected.

1)      The course of our growth and self-enrichment process

2)       Women's rights

3)       Self

4)       Any topic is OK.

5)       Love, because I want to know other’s opinion of love.

6)       Keep watching movies

7)       Death penalty

8)       The topic is as sensitive as the homosexuality like this time.

9)       The family relations

10)   I can only think of women’s right now.

11)   A book or a person (such as a historian, a writer or a playwright)

12)   Maybe we can keep discussing the topic of love, or the conflicts between love, career and family. We can also discuss attractive movies.

13)   The movies related to philosophy 

14)   The movies that are interesting or about philosophy.

 

 

 

The next part is the major suggestions and comments we collected about this salon for satisfying our students’ need and attracting more students’ participation in the next time.

1)        I hope organizers can provide the estimated time of salon more accurately by giving a longer estimated time next time. Alternatively, you can also shorten the time of discussion part.

2)        I’m glad to have an opportunity to join in this salon.

3)        Perfect!

4)        I like today’s salon and it’s good enough for the online salon.

5)        Maybe it would be better to shorten the discussion time of the first part.

6)        How time flies! I’m too happy to notice the time. Therefore, I hope our salon time can be longer next time.

7)        I hope our teachers and organizers can also participate in the salon more actively. To be frank, you can add some feedbacks to us after our speech, rather than only say “Thank you, and next one”. Because it’ s the way in which our organizers are attach importance to our discussion and enhance our satisfaction and willingness to the next time. If organizers only have great preparations ahead of the activity and neglect the process, our students may be disappointed and can’t have a good time.

8)        The questions that need to be discussing can be delivered earlier.

 

Finally, thanks for all teachers’ and students’ participation. We would listen for useful suggestions and spare no efforts to improve the quality of our activities. I hope we can organize more diverse and fruitful activities for our students in the future.