Shirley and Rico Thoughts!

The Shirley/Rico foil is one that I really like. Honestly, for all of the thinking and reading about Midnight Cowboy that I do, I haven't stopped yet to consider these two characters as they stand against each other.

Shirley offers Joe a clean lifestyle. Her brown fox coat covers the white outfit she wears beneath it, resembling a sort of cleanse or even a baptism. Joe and Shirley's sex scene has her still wearing her jacket. While she offers a life less burdened than the one he has, Joe would never be completely content with it all. In tracking down a further meaning of what that burden is, I'm drawn towards it being Joe's trauma- specifically his relationship between himself and his trauma.

- The coat offers a barrier between him and Shirley. I wonder if this speaks to his issues with Annie. Joe might not be against a casual relationship with a woman, but Shirley isn't just any woman. She's a brunette, opposite to the blondes that Joe obsesses over. If he were to accept her over Rico, she will be obscured to him.

- It offers info about Shirley as well. Shirley seems clean but might not really be. She's attending the Warhol parties, she's getting high, she's taking home prostitutes. But she's also a yuppie. And Warhol wasn't exactly known for his authenticity. Shirley is an interesting case, and this avenue really does offer some interesting characterization. I'm generally a person that really likes Shirley. I wish that she hadn't been out of town. But she's also engaged with the idea of exploitation. Rico is bombarded by the the Warhol superstars with intimate questions during the party; Shirley carries this on by implying multiple times that Joe is gay. The book version makes it a bit more sinister, since the entertainment of the party is a seemingly homeless woman that Hansel and Gretel gave a bunch of drugs to.

- Bringing it to Rico, Shirley's white is comparable to Rico's white clothing that appears in the fantasy sequence. Rico's fantasy is about his interest in Joe, so a white outfit indicates his longing to live a truth. Rico's first outfit in the film, his white and red ensemble, is an interesting outlier. In this scene, Rico swindles Joe out of ten bucks, his white outfit falsely indicating a reputation for truth. Ann Roth describes how his white pants came from a table outside a subway terminal. His identity is someone else's; not only is he untrustworthy, but it also strikes at his homosexuality. 

Shirley is clean but presses Joe for things he can't talk about. Rico is dirty but can stay silent. Joe ultimately chooses Rico. He chooses to ignore truths- most pressingly Rico's impending death. But I can't really tell if he's punished for it. I'm done writing for now so I'll publish this, but just know that my ideas aren't really concrete yet.