The high overlap and intertextuality between the characters in the play and the life outside the play, the struggles and compromises between the junk of the three eras and a woman who does not know where to go in a world that identifies them as "untimely people".
Gable is aging and outdated. The old cowboy he plays is becoming more and more demanding. He tried everything he can to refuse to be a hired worker (hoping to control his own destiny) and can’t. His era as Clark Gable’s superstar has passed, the cowboy /The era of traditional animal husbandry farms has also been replaced by modern mechanical agriculture and animal husbandry industries.
Monti was disfigured, drunk, and his acting career was at the end of his career. His little cowboy was also unemployed and left home, earning a living from high-risk equestrian performances, numbing himself in alcohol, falling into the Oedipus complex, and becoming a mother who lost his virginity (remarried). He has a huge emotional burden. He and Monroe are more like mother and son in their emotions and getting along with each other. He sleeps on her knees and chats. He is drunk and she takes care of him to sleep and protects him from the cold.
Monroe’s personal life was divorced (by domestic violence due to discord with a baseball star), childless (multiple miscarriages), career stagnation, husband and wife disharmony (marriage stalemate with Miller) and this just divorced and the future is hopeless. Of women are highly consistent.
In addition, a veteran of the World War II pilot, lost his wife, went bankrupt, and the half-built house was abolished. This shows that he has no money, and it seems that his life is only halfway through, but he can't go on.
For the stories of these four absolute losers in the mainstream value orientation of the United States, experienced Hollywood producers would say, "Whoever wants to read the stories of this kind of people, a group of Luthor", but Miller gave them dignity and let We see their insignificance and fragility, as well as their unwillingness and resignation.
It feels cruel to think about it. Let Gable, Monty and Monroe go to prove and face the biggest setbacks of their lives, pain and failure (excessive temper, disfigurement, marriage failure) over and over again in the shooting scene. Miller is really mean, writing these lines to expose the scars, but this almost barbaric self-examination also objectively contributed to their wonderful performance. Whether it's the inconsistency of Gable's heavy body language and vigorous punching into a "young posture", Monty's alcohol-numbed tongue and eyes, or Monroe's nervousness that is always on the verge of collapse, they are all before them. Unseen in the screen image (even became the posthumous work of Gable and Monroe). The premature deaths of these three stars who became famous in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s in the 1960s also secretly signaled the end of the golden age of old Hollywood.
That unruly wild horse, like Gable himself, is the last pre-modern deserter in the modern society of "Is there any place in the world" (government-owned wasteland), just like his old cowboy in the era of mechanized farms. Not only was it useless (the Mustangs were cheap/the cowboys had low wages), but they were eventually driven to extinction by huge modern machines (the plane swooped to drive the horses). He finally let these horses return to nature, and he also left a little comfort and hope in his heart. The horses can return to nature, and he is already homeless. The pilot's angry sentence is exactly his ending, "You can only go Wipe the glass in a car repair shop, or go to work in a logging yard, or work as a porter in a laundry shop!" If you become an old worker at the age of sixty, then the night scene of poverty and sickness after incapacity is not Far.
"Anything is better than wages." The old cowboy's lament is a complaint that is not what it used to be, and it is also the ruthless iron law of capitalist modern society: every technological advancement is at the cost of mass production of surplus labor, and capitalist society has never Without providing a solution for the surplus labor force, they will eventually disappear into the army of the primitive proletariat after selling everything they can sell. From the farmers in the era of sheep cannibalism to the Foxconn/Fuyao workers who are "liberated" by robotic arms today, that's not the case.
Ten years after the film was shot, the next generation of old cowboys came to New York. They didn't even have the opportunity to sell their labor, so they could only sell their bodies-the era of "Midnight Cowboy" has come.
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