Please post responses here. Focusing on one scene is recommended but not required. And if you are interested in connections between this film and Giovanni’s Room, feel free to share them as well.
16 thoughts on “Midnight Cowboy”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
For me, one of the most sobering things in this movie was the isolation of the main characters. Despite the fact that he stands out in his cowboy outfit, nobody pays much attention to Joe when he first arrives and tries to catch the eye of various women, and he remains firmly in the background throughout the movie. Ratso is even more hidden than Joe, having been part of the seedy background of New York for much longer. Aside from each other, they both don’t have anyone in New York that knows or cares about them. At first, one might wonder why nobody pays attention to Joe, as his cowboy outfit and large stature would certainly be able to stand out. But it’s because of his economic circumstances that he fades into the background, just like Ratso. Why would anyone in New York City who has places to go and things to do want to pay attention to a penniless cowboy who’s an aspiring prostitute, or his companion, who’s a short squatter with a limp? The only time that people who are in better circumstances seem to pay attention to them is either completely by random– when Joe and Ratso are invited to the party by chance–or when something is needed from them, mostly the people soliciting sex from Joe. Even then, those interactions are quick and clipped, as if those people can’t wait to get Joe or Ratso out of their sight. The lesson to be learned here is that it’s far too easy for people in better socioeconomic situations to not think about those in worse situations than them and ignore them if a physical encounter were to happen. A relevant example: have you ever walked past a homeless person on the street while trying to pretend like you hadn’t seen them? Joe and Ratso are the ones that people walk past on the street and try not to notice. I believe that this theme tells us that we need to think about people in worse socioeconomic situations then ours and make ourselves aware of their struggles and plights so we can be more sympathetic. If we were to start noticing them, instead of relegating them to the background, would that change anything else about the way we see them?
One scene that I found particularly interesting was when Joe and Rico go to the Hotel Berkley with the hopes of Joe encountering a high paying client. As soon as Joe enters the hotel, Rico is already imagining what he’ll be able to do with the money. He’ll buy two tickets to Miami (one for him and one for Joe) where they’ll run on the beach, get their shoes shined and hair cut by the pool, eat the food that Rico will cook, and gamble with old ladies. The film cross cuts scenes of Joe in the hotel to a close up to Rico on the other side of the street to Rico’s fantasy. When Joe creates a scene with one of the women, the scenes changes scenes at a more rapid pace, and Rico’s fantasy falls apart as Joe gets thrown out the door.
Miami is Rico’s garden of Eden—or at least, the kind of man that Rico wants to be is his Eden. He wants to be pure and complete. In his fantasy, Rico is dressed in all white, the color of cleanliness and purity, which contrasts the dirtiness that Rico lives with on a daily basis and the petty crimes he commits to put food on his and Joe’s dinner plates. In his Eden, Rico can run—even faster than Joe. It’s tragic but fitting that Rico dies only minutes before arriving in Miami. No one can return to the garden. Even if Rico were to live long enough to get to Miami, it still wouldn’t be Eden because his body still limits him. It is only through death that Rico can hope to be able to run again with a new body, in another life.
I found myself thinking about the ways in which Schlesinger uses stereotypes in the film. Joe Buck serves as the Manhattan migrant who stands out against those who did not cross the same border. The use of quintessential cowboy clothing reinforces his Texas roots, and paints a somewhat one dimensional portrayal of his character.This is a method of comedy, as well as a precursor to his pitfalls in the city. Buck and Ratso particularly stick out when walking down the street. Their clothing exemplifies their bond as outsiders in their world.
The female characters in the film are hyper feminine and homogenous. The call girl, Sally, and Shirley serve supporting roles in the plot, specifically complementing Buck’s world. Although the film was created in 1969, the women in the film tend to blend together. Perhaps Schlesinger does this drag viewers deeper into Buck’s perspective- a vulnerable outsider among a see of New York labeled individuals.
One symbol that I myself overlooked, while watching Midnight Cowboy, but is important to note is that of the radio. The radio was the reason Joe was so firm on traveling to New York. In fact, one of the very first scenes in the film is of Joe on the bus. He listens as the radio announces to him the voices of the many eligible woman in New York. Joe perceives their ideas of an ideal man to be him, shouting “yeehaw” after the last voice. In a later scene, Ratso takes Joe’s radio away from him as he’s sleeping. Joe wakes up angry and demands his radio back. Perhaps this is depicting a reinstallation of the American Dream. He doesn’t want to let go of his hopes and Ratso is leading him in a different direction then he had planned for. Before the final scenes in the movie it is explained that Joe and Ratso experience poverty. Because of their lack of money, they make the decision to sell the radio for 5 bucks. This is a progression for Joe. It is only after this scene that Joe begins to reconcile with his identity. He begins to reconstruct his ideas about what it means to be a cowboy, homosexual and live in the Big Apple.
Through all this it can be seen that the radio, an industrial invention, is a distorted representation of the American Dream or Joe’s dream. While he believes New York is a land that will guarantee him money he comes to find out that New York serves as a means to confronting his past and current identity. Perhaps this isn’t a message simply for Joe but for the American identity today. Has America confronted its past? Who does America represent?
One scene in Midnight Cowboy that stood out to me when Joe and Ratso are on their way to Miami and Joe buys them new clothes. He almost prances down the street and there is excitement in his eyes for this new life that him and Rico are about to begin. Everything is new, a new place, new people, an opportunity to leave the troubles of their old lives behind. It seems that everything will be “alright”; however, the use of the song “Everybody’s Talkin’” by Harry Nilsson felt troubling to me in this scene. To me, the song contradicts itself, its melody is somewhat cheerful but its lyrics speak of a heavenly escape with a loved one, a world where judgement does not affect us. This is an almost impossible dream because as the two men are escaping the confines of the city, they cannot completely escape discrimination because of their sexuality. Thus, the song almost foreshadows Rico’s death when Nilsson sings “Only the echoes of my mind I won’t let you leave my love behind”. While the words suggest that Joe won’t have leave Rico behind, they do not speak of a promise, but rather his own battle with the fact that he must leave Rico behind when he dies. When Joe must stare his past in the eyes and literally close Rico’s eyes, the bus driver instructs for Joe to leave Rico lying next to him, a metaphor for how the past will always affect the future, and in some cases haunt us. It made me wonder not if parts of our pasts are escapable but if any of it is escapable.
One theme I found compelling in Midnight Cowboy, is the return to the abandoned apartment that Ratso and Joe live in during the late summer and winter. The apartment serves as a place that gives shelter to Ratso and Joe, yet it also serves as Ratso’s death bed. The metaphor used throughout the film is that the apartment slowly lets Ratso fall further into poverty and illness, yet Joe seems unaffected. The apartment in the film is so similar to Giovanni’s room in Baldwin’s novel. In the novel the room serves as a metaphor of confronting oneself and a physical description of how David felt on the inside about his sexuality. In the film Joe becomes “dirtier” leaving his southern manners behind, learning to be cruel, to steal, and to hustle. The increasing volatility of the apartment as winter approaches matches Joe’s changing personality and the increasing sickness that finally overtakes Ratso.
As a side note, the film has so many other connections to Giovanni’s Room. The flashbacks especially struck me as Joe’s internalization of his past and his internal conflict that David has to struggle with throughout the novel. Another connection is Joe’s somewhat fluid sexuality. The scene in the theater also had many flashbacks making Joe slightly fearful of his internal desires. Similar to Giovanni’s Room, David feels the need to sleep with partners of both sexes, attempting to understand and hide his true identity.
In one of the first scenes of the movie Midnight Rider, we see Joe Buck walking down a street in Texas without a care in the world with the song “Everybody’s talkin” by Harry Nilsson playing in the background. This song is played recurrently throughout the rest of the film, and represents Joe’s innocence, naivety, and his peripatetic lifestyle throughout his travels. “People stopping, staring, but I can’t see their faces” coincides with the scene when Joe is walking through the streets of New York, clearly out of place in his cowboy boots, tasseled leather jacket and cowboy hat, but Joe doesn’t seem to notice how out of place he is. Contradictory to the song lyrics; however, it doesn’t seem like the people in New York even bother to care about how odd Joe looks. They all have their own busy lives to tend to, so they ignore Joe – which is almost worse than treating him as a foreigner – furthering Joe’s isolation and loneliness.
The song lyrics also emphasize the fact that Joe Buck is always moving, always trying to find somewhere that’s “better,” rather than adjusting and settling down, similar to David in “Giovanni’s Room.” Harry Nilsson sings “I’m going where the sun keeps shining, Through the pouring rain, Going where the weather suits my clothes.” Not only do these lines represent the “in motion” nature of Joe, they also more literally depict Joe and Rico’s desire to go south to Miami where life will presumably be ideal. Joe tries so hard to being Rico to Miami because Rico is Joe’s only companion, and getting Rico to Miami is Joe’s only purpose in that moment. It is horrible, but almost expected with Joe’s luck, that Rico dies on the bus a few minutes out of Miami. Once again Joe is left alone. His companionship wasn’t even able to last the duration of the film. Once again, Joe resumes his life “skipping over the ocean like a stone,” always skipping, and never settling on the bottom in the sand.
Both tv and dogs appear fairly often in the movie, but the scene where Joe watches the actors dress a dog up on tv stood out in particular to me. Joe’s just had sex with a prostitute who owns an identical dog. The repetition made me wonder: which one of them was a dog dressed in whore’s clothing? Are they both playacting, not quite able to pull off the part? Joe obviously struggles in his naivete. He gets hustled while trying to hustle and ends up forking over a $50. But he also chooses to be a hustler. He quits his day job as a dishwasher and moves across the country. The dog on tv doesn’t want to hustle. She’s held up by laughing humans who can see her discomfort and find it hilarious. Does the rich prostitute want to have sex with men for money? We don’t know. So while she may be better at easing money out of people’s hands than Joe, she could still be the victim of the situation, beholden to a pimp.
But the actors holding the dog need not be pimps. They could represent larger societal forces. Throughout the movie, the camera continuously cuts to a sign proclaiming “MONY.” We’re all beholden to money. To quote the prostitute, “we all gotta make a living somehow.” She may good at prostitution, but that does not mean she chose it. She simply had no other way to pay the rent. Success does not equal agency. From this lens, Joe also becomes a victim. Washing dishes pays remarkably poorly. It’s normally just minimum wage without the supplementary tips waiters receive. $1.30 an hour isn’t enough to buy food, let alone save for inevitable emergencies. While Joe ostensibly chooses to become a hustler, he does so because he needs more income and has no other way of going about making money. Capitalism screws everyone over in America. Unless you’re born rich I guess, but those people aren’t really characters in the movie.
And this isn’t even getting into the relationship between religion and money! The $20 placed in front of a picture of Jesus, the priest talking about money instead of God on the radio…
One pervasive symbol I saw throughout Midnight Cowboy was that of American culture and of capitalism and consumerism. The MONY sign and advertisements depicted seem strongly indicative of the themes of wealth in the film. Television is depicted as a powerful corrupting force. In the sex scene where they roll over the remote (which contrasts sharply to the rolling over the dice in the later scene), the tv cycles through images, some banal, some disturbing. Included in these clips is one of a blackface performer, and a laundry bleach ad that declares “It even makes blacks whiter!” The ubiquitous use of dogs to represent a particular culture of near-absurd higher-class living is apparent, especially in the tv clip of dogs in wigs. Masculinity is explored in depth throughout the movie, but it is specifically connected to American culture, with Rico and Joe discussing whether the “John Wayne” cowboy has been shifted culturally from a masculine symbol to a gay one. Advertisements, especially for Florida products, connect directly to Rico’s American dream of moving to an opulent life in Miami, and in the dream sequence where this is most directly depicted, the reality of his current situation comes crashing down upon him. His is a life of poverty, and even through Joe’s desperation in the end, Rico cannot escape it; his sickness kills him two minutes outside Miami.
One theme from Midnight Cowboy that stood out to me as being subtly poignant was the repetition of dogs throughout the movie. The dogs we see for much of the movie are small pampered dogs in the company of rich women. In the television ad Joe watches after his traumatizing interaction with Mr. O’Daniel, the TV show host and the owner force the fluffy white dog into toupee, false eyelashes, and a thong. When Rico discusses reincarnation in the diner, just before the encounter with Hansel and Gretel, he voices the idea of being reincarnated into a dog. In almost the very next scene, we see a dog barking viciously at the two men as they approach the entrance to the party. This is the first time we see a dog who acts viciously and, some people believe, as a dog should act. For much of the movie, Joe is equated to a dog, a pampered pet who is at the beck and call of the wealthy with no purpose except to dress up and be treated as a baby. During his first sexual encounter with a woman in New York, she calls her husband while Joe undresses her, as the dog stands watching. She makes to hold the phone down to the dog’s ear but first holds the phone receiver up to Joe’s mouth creating an ambiguous action that calls into question whether she wants Joe to bark and act the dog or simply just to hold the phone for her. She then forces Joe to “roll over” and submit to her through manipulation. Even as he asks for money, she tricks him into giving her money instead demonstrating that she has as much power over him as she does her dog. However, the presence of the vicious dog marks a transition in power. Joe shifts to a more dominant role who operates opposite a woman he calls “an alley cat.” In response to his impotence, he reacts defiantly and, when the time comes to collect money, the woman gives it up willingly, without degrading him. As such, the presence of the dogs reflects the changes that Joe goes through to becoming more an individual and not just a plaything.
Tucking someone in is an oddly intimate action. Think of who plays the roles: I think first of my mom and dad and grandparents, then of me tucking in someone of a younger generation like my niece, then a closest friend or love. In Midnight Cowboy, the parallel scenes of Joe and Rizzo falling asleep and having the other care for them struck me as indicative of their relationship. First Rizzo took Joe’s boots off; it displayed a reach of trust, an olive branch. Then near the end of the movie while Rizzo is dying, Joe picks him up and helps him into bed before tucking him in and stealing some money for a last ditch escape to Florida. The tenderness in thee actions, especially in the backdrop of such struggle and poverty, is breathtaking. Also consider the time period of the film — homosexuality was not tolerated or understood nearly as much as it is today. Because of this firstly it is incredibly avant-garde to have such explicit homosexuality in film. Also, the tucking in scene displays such intense intimacy without any sexual context.
The parallels to Giovanni’s room are many, and I would even like to focus on the room itself: The white out windows, the picture of the orange juice ad (?) like the picture of the lovers in Giovanni’s Room, the falling down walls and cramped space. When Joe and Rizzo were struggling for money I felt trapped in that room as I’m sure they did, especially Rizzo.
I found this moving to be tragic, and honestly pretty upsetting. Aside from some of the gruesome and jarring scenes, I found my self incredibly moved by Joe’s impossible dream living in a world that is so quick to deny people of said dreams, along with how much he is willing to give up for Ratso.
One scene that I found to be particularly fascinating, from simply a film production and editing perspective, was the psychedelic party scene. Schlesinger is able to capture such an intense sense of isolation between Joe Buck and the rest of the world by separating the audio from the visuals. This disassociation, coupled with the close up pans of Joe Buck’s face, the whispers of smoke rising through the fog and the strobe lights, the close up pans of Buck’s face, and all of the other trippy visuals help to compound this separation.
One thing that jumped out at me about the party scene was how disparate the visual effect was from the other hallucinations or dreams that Joe has earlier in the film. The psychedelic drug effect is shown is color, with images moving and fading in and out of each other, completely separate from the sharp cuts and black and white memories of the disconnect from reality in other more traumatic scenes.
The film Midnight Cowboy, besides its portrayal of socially contended topics, including poverty and homosexuality, is also extremely original in its conceptualization of temporality. Although the plot begins in medias res, through various flashbacks, viewers learn of Joe’s past and the experiences that have ultimately lead to his present decisions and actions. Understanding the leaving of his mother and his, at times, disconcerting relationship with his grandmother, along with his ill-fated intimacies with Annie, the audience becomes privy to his interior motivations and resulting behavior. This blurring of time further works to reveal the desires of other featured characters, utilizing internal thoughts to convey the aspirations of Ratso. Through a series of daydreams, viewers learn of his longing to escape the city and its subsequent hardships to travel to a new life in Florida, cured of his illness and liberated from his current suffering. Therefore, through the dissolution of sequential borders, viewers gain a more intimate access into the plot and development of the film.
Not only is the picture experimental in its bending of temporal constructs, but also its aesthetic representation of the passage of time. During scenes of intensity, including sexual exchanges and events at the party, footage is interjected with clips of seemingly unrelated video material, creating an overwhelming sense of confusion meant to mirror that of the characters. For example, at the movie theater, when Joe is receiving fellatio from a young man in exchange for money, the audience is shown a stream of images including memories from his past interjected with footage of an astronaut in outer space. Although, separately, these brief instances could pose a different significance, their pairing in this context makes it a highly sexual moment, allowing viewers to infer the actions occurring outside of this footage.
For me, this blurring of past and present, real and fiction, was closely related to that observed throughout Giovanni’s Room. Just as the temporal borders are broken down across the film, so are the narrative patterns within the novel. Similar to Acadia’s point, despite everything endured by the protagonists of these two works, have either of them truly changed? Although Joe has undoubtedly encountered many new experiences, isn’t he in the same position as at the start of the film, alone and in an unfamiliar place? Perhaps this demonstrates the conditional circularity of identity.
While watching Midnight Cowboy, I couldn’t stop seeing connections with Giovanni’s Room. They share SO many common themes and metaphors; movement vs. stagnation, seasons, mirrors, a troubled past, masculinity, identity, escaping to places, economic hardships, New York City, being an outsider, changing of the seasons. WOW! It would be hard to believe the filmmaker wasn’t at least a little influenced by Giovanni’s Room.
Similar to Giovanni’s Room as well was the cyclical nature of the movie. At the beginning of the movie, one of the opening scenes is of Joe Buck preparing for his travels. The shots move in quick succession and show Joe walking, driving cars, and features quick snippets of people talking and asking about Joe. Joe is going New York City, a place of opportunity and perhaps new beginnings. The rapid change of video and face-pace movement of the film makes the future seem exciting, mysterious; we look forward to the adventure that Joe is about to take. This mirrors the last scene of the movie. Joe, again, is going somewhere, this time fleeing his past destination (New York City) for a new one: Miami. We see him again in the same green Luxury Lines National bus. The ending scene is that of motion again. However, the scene contrasts the beginning, as Joe now cradles his passed companion, Ratso. The filming style, at least at the very end of the movie, is slower-paced, only showing Joe and Ratso sitting in the seats of the bus, with no rapid change of camera or dialogue. The viewer, upon seeing these beginning and ending scenes with their similar situations but contrasting filming styles, questions the extent of Joe Buck’s “metamorphosis.” Similar to David in Giovanni’s Room, Joe has not really grown at all. Despite his movement geographically and temporally, these parallel scenes highlight his lack of development. Which makes me question, why do we go to new places? We can never really escape who we are. I actually am planning on focusing this idea of physical movement and stagnation in my analysis of Giovanni’s Room!
I love your analysis and you draw excellent parallels to Giovanni’s Room. Quickly just wanted to say that I do think Joe changed from his beginnings, unlike David. I feel that Joe is much more of a somber person and this is shown by the slowness of the film; while it is cyclical, the stark contrast between the pace of the beginning and end note to me not just the mood of Rizzo’s death, but also a change in Joe.