Race and Pirates

[oyceter]

I ended up buying Beverly Tatum's "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?", despite already having borrowed it from the library because a) I wanted something to read in line while I waited to get a seat for Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and b) I want to financially support books like these and authors who tackle the subject of race.

I read a few chapters while standing in line, delighted by Tatum's definitions and her clear explanations and her compassion toward people of color and Whites alike.

Then I went in to watch Pirates.

And I watched, and I grew more and more uncomfortable. Jack Sparrow and crew run amok of cannibals. The cannibals, are, of course, Black. They have face paint and random piercings; they have made Jack Sparrow their king. He speaks to them in terms like, "Licka licka, savvy?" There are a few people of color in his pirate crew, but their speaking parts are small, and they all have very strong accents. Or they don't speak at all and lend their faces to the motley look of the crew. The main character of color is a Black woman, a voodoo witch or something, with eyeballs in jars, blackened teeth, and an accent so strong that I couldn't understand her half the time.

While I was noticing this and noticing the fact that there were no non-stereotyped portrayals of people of color, I was growing more and more uncomfortable with this awareness. I'm actually very ashamed to say this, but I kept thinking of things like, "Oh, is it really that bad?" and "It's just a movie" and "Really, it's about pirates, what can you expect?" and "It's all in good fun."

Except... it isn't.

And I can't get over the fact that even though I had been reading about race right before the movie, noticing the stereotypes and being critical of race in the movie made me incredibly uncomfortable and squirmy, so much so that I tried to rationalize it away. I spent the first half of the movie squirming and becoming more and more aware of the fact that my mind kept trying to slip away from the topic of race, kept trying to not confront it and come up with more and more reasons why it really wasn't that bad.

Except... it is that bad.

It is bad that I cannot think about race without this extreme uncomfortableness, that I cannot do it without attempting to rationalize and excuse, that I cannot do it even after reading about it and being fully committed to speaking out. And it is even worse, because I know if I had seen the movie without having read the Tatum beforehand, I would have noticed, but I would have let myself brush it off, let myself not post about it.

I didn't even post about this last night because it made me so uncomfortable.

Well, also, I wanted to make myself a "Not the magical minority fairy" icon.

But anyway. No more excuses from me, no rationalization. The movie is incredibly racist. I still had some fun watching it, but knowing that it was racist and knowing that most of the audience very likely wouldn't think so spoiled the majority of it for me.

I have difficulties just typing "The movie is incredibly racist," and I have to keep thinking about how I routinely notice the portrayal of women in nearly everything I read and watch (the movie is not as deeply sexist as it is racist; thankfully, Elizabeth gets to do stuff. But it is still very male). I have to keep thinking that for me, noticing sexism is ok, that pointing it out in my LJ is standard. And I have to keep thinking that I need to do the same about race, even though posting things like this frighten me because of the reaction to the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM.

Part of me doesn't even want to keep talking about this because it's so uncomfortable, because it causes such defensiveness in other people, because I am tired of being told that I am wrong for seeing these things. And that's the very reason I am making myself post this, making myself confront the nidginess and the squirminess, the problems that I have in just acknowledging that something that I am enjoying is racist.

ETA: Freezing some threads in which further discussion seems to be rather pointless.

ETA2: I'm now screening all anonymous comments to this entry, not because I don't welcome them, but because I've been getting stupid spam comments everyday. If you aren't a spambot, you should make it through the screening! This is for spam only, not opinion-filtering.

Comments

[serenada.livejournal.com]

The cannibals weren't black. They were a Carib analogue, of West Indian aboriginals who predated the slave trade. Which doesn't make it not racist, but I wanted the distinction to be made. I was taught in (Jamaican) history class that the Caribs spoke pidgin (like Jack was) to communicate with whites and did practise religious cannibalism, so again, not bothered by the instance so much as the lack of balance.

The very thick accent was Jamaican, and I was delighted by there being two different Jamaican accents in the movie (the dread who'd traded "spices" for delicious long pork being the other--whose brother spoke French, oddly). Being Jamaican myself, I had no problem with anything she said, and it hadn't occurred to me that she was any more impenetrable than the accented white characters. But there you go.

I know the magical Negro trope isn't set in stone, but she triggered none from me because she was not in the least noble. She was more a sexualised Ananse, tricksy and worldly wise, useful because of her knowledge of things dodgier than our heroes, not things purer. She wasn't simple, she was twisty and tangential and spoke less flowerily but possibly as misleadingly as Jack himself.

I'm not making a pitch for you to see the movie as not racist. I myself see it as painfully stereotypical. But the racial politics in the first movie bothered me more, because I grew up near the real Port Royal. By now, I'm over that.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The cannibals weren't black. They were a Carib analogue, of West Indian aboriginals who predated the slave trade. Which doesn't make it not racist, but I wanted the distinction to be made.

Thank you - I was just coming in to make that point. :) (Of course, since I know more about Amazonian natives that West Indian, they seemed a lot more Generic Mythical South American to me, but the point still stands - very very sterotyped, but not black.)

[oyceter]

Thank you! I hadn't known that, I'm really glad that people have been pointing that out.

*via metafandom*

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Lack of balance, yeah. (of course, after the first movie I was mad because nobody seemed to give a damn that the Marines and Navy got it wholesale, so. I don't know. I don't think balance is as simple as 'count the bodies over the course of the series and divide by colour', but I'm also stuck admitting that I don't know what I DO think it would look like in this case.)

See, I was uncomfortable about the cannibals, but delighted with Tia Dalma, because I'm a religionist, and I thought they handled that very well. I'm guessing they're riffing off Santeria, based on the trick with the jar of dirt and a couple other things. She didn't hit my OMG STOCK WITCH button at all.

Of course, I also don't know how to evaluate the "magical Negro" question when everyone seems to be magical. Or how to feel about a universe where the racially balanced crews seem to always be the bad guys. Or where 'green', or at least 'non-human' seems to function as a race as well.

Now I'm thinking, if the cannibals were actually true to history, you know, there's a LOT of research that went into that movie. And yet that balance is still not there. Tricky stuff...

Re: *via metafandom*

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Now I'm thinking, if the cannibals were actually true to history, you know, there's a LOT of research that went into that movie.

Well, apparently the cannibalism thing is actually *not* true to history, and the descendants of the people pictured in the film consider it to be a pretty offensive slander (http://cacreview.blogspot.com/2005/04/national-garifuna-council-of-belize.html).

Re: *via metafandom*

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that changes things. A lot.

Though I think I should eat something before I try to think past that.

Re: *via metafandom*

[serenada.livejournal.com]

I didn't consider the cannibals Carib, but a Carib analogue. I understand that the cannibal designation is rejected by Carib descendants, but I just don't know. That's why I'm not overly bothered by the cannibal thing--more likely to be twitched by the idea of them adopting a dog to fill the same role.

Then again, I have less against cannibalism than most people.

Re: *via metafandom*

[sabonasi.livejournal.com]

Of course, I also don't know how to evaluate the "magical Negro" question when everyone seems to be magical.

I can help you out there a bit. The "Magical Negro" must be...

1. Black. Or at least not white, as there are racial variations to the "Magical Negro". i.e. "Magical Native American".

2. Magical. This covers both literal and figurative magicalness.

3. Exist solely to help the white protagonists evolve and/or achieve a goal.

4. Have little to not back history and/or personal motivation. They're there to help whitey.

If you're hitting more than a few of those points in one variation or another, you're in "Magical Negro" territory.

Re: *via metafandom*

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's one of those concepts I've picked up by context and never seen formally defined, so I was focussing on no.2, the 'magical' part, a lot. Hence my confusion.

In fantasy, no.2 gets kind of complicated, I think. Not insoluble, by any means, but more complicated.

Re: *via metafandom*

[oyceter]

I agree; I do think that the portrayal of the Marines and the Navy in the first movie was stereotyped and silly and not at all interesting.

On the other hand, I think it's difficult to compare the two because of the historical and social inequities associated with stereotypes of people of color and how those stereotypes continue to play into racism (I swear, "historical and social inequities" is my new chorus).

I didn't know about Santeria, thank you! I will go look that up and read more on it.

Re: *via metafandom*

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I think it's difficult to compare the two because of the historical and social inequities associated with stereotypes of people of color and how those stereotypes continue to play into racism (I swear, "historical and social inequities" is my new chorus).

*nods* It's absolutely a difficult comparison; with the Marines and Navy stuff, on the one hand they're (quite ahistorically, actually) all white; otoh, class gets in there, and not just class by the historical boundaries of one of the most stratified cultures of all time.

So it's not the same... and yet it's not unconnected. The stereotypes about the enlisted man and the ordinary seaman that you find in that era are unnervingly close to the racial stereotypes: you have to rule them with brute force, they don't FEEL hardship like we do, they wouldn't be in the Army/Navy (or they'd be officers) if they weren't the scum of the earth ... (we're supposed to feel sorry for Will over FIVE LASHES? That's a tenth of what you could pull for simple _drunkness_) no, it's not the same. For one thing, the markers are subter and slipperier than skin colour, and could alter over time, even there -- officers came up from the ranks, 'gentlemen' ended up in them, from all sorts of causes. There was mobility, of a sort.

"There were seamen and there were gentlemen in King Charles' Navy; but the gentlemen were not seamen, and the seamen were not gentlemen." (Macaulay)

Re: *via metafandom*

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Thank you for mentioning the relationship to Santeria! I didn't know anything about the religion.

Re: *via metafandom*

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Representations of Voudoun and Santeria present some interesting difficulties:

1) They've been presented carelessly and in a bigoted way so often that a) they legitimately get people's hackles up whenever they appear, and b) a lot of entirely legitimate practice has been appropriated so many times that now when it DOES appear it has a distinct flavour of 'exoticism' right away.

2) They're both syncretic with Catholicism: Santeria is a syncretisc blend with Spanish Catholicism, Voudoun with French.

3) They're both syncretic within AFRICAN religions; when you get a group of people from different regions of Africa practicing underground religion together and transmitting it by word-of-mouth, you're going to get mixing. There's a tendancy to define Santeria as an offshoot of Yoruban religion with "impurities", but that's denying the experience and erasing the history of practitioners.

4) As underground religions, they survived by playing to white stereotypes of Blacks. And so a faithful portrayal will show those stereotypes.

Someone was commenting somewhere about Tia Dalma's 'bad Jamaican' accent. I'm not sufficiently up on accents to know how close they got, but it ought to be closer to be Cuban or Hatian, actually. Probably Cuban -- "Tia" is Spanish.

Jamaica, being colonised by the English, wasn't a centre of Santeria OR Voudoun, except insofar as the English were the least likely to convert or encourage conversion in slaves. (This is not especially praiseworthy; converting them to Protestantism would have entailed teaching them to read, which was regarded as dangerous.) So what religious activity there was arrived with slaves from elsewhere and spread irregularly.

Also, the Caribbean is TINY. At least, if you have a ship. I don't know where Tia Dalma is meant to be, but I don't think it's Jamaica.

[calendae.livejournal.com]

The cannibals weren't black. They were a Carib analogue, of West Indian aboriginals who predated the slave trade. Which doesn't make it not racist, but I wanted the distinction to be made. I was taught in (Jamaican) history class that the Caribs spoke pidgin (like Jack was) to communicate with whites and did practise religious cannibalism, so again, not bothered by the instance so much as the lack of balance.

Except it was very offensive to contemporary Carib aboriginals because it perpetuated an incorrect view of a culture's past and reinforced a stigma (cannabalism) that they have been trying to move past. It's an ongoing struggle for these groups and especially in this case. They've known about the portrayal since filming started and have continued to fight it. Here's (http://www.bbc.co.uk/caribbean/news/story/2005/02/050215_dominicacaribs.shtml) an article from before filming. In addition, several different indigenous groups have called for a Disney boycott and protested the film on opening day. I would link, but the announcement was on a Native mailing list and I don't think it is public.

I was talking to a friend about this earlier and she felt the portrayal of all groups involved (pirates, East India Trading Co, voodoo priestesses) was obviously fictional, and so the portray of indigenous groups wasn't harmful. I can see some merit for that viewpoint. But mostly, I think that the experience of both pirates and early colonists is more familiar and thus more easily perceived as fictional by the general public. Whereas most people know little to nothing about how early Carib Indians lived, so when they present them as guileless cannibals, people accept it as truth and thus, their portrayal in the film is harmful and problematic.

*jumping in from metafandom*

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Which is interesting, since I (who has never heard of Carib aboriginals, cannibalistic or otherwise), automatically saw this as a more stereotyped representation than the pirates/EATC. Possibly because the pirates are so obviously non-historical? If that is the case, then perhaps it was expected the cannibals would be considered in a similar light. Which is not to say I thought it was any less racist - or, possibly even worse in a comedy film, of dubious comedic value.

*shrug* Interesting, how people can look at the same thing and interpret it completely differently.

[oyceter]

Thanks for the link!

I'm with you on the problems of representation -- pirates and early colonists are so much more represented in fiction and movies and etc. that the portrayal of them in one movie is much less likely to do harm to their image as a whole.

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

I know the magical Negro trope isn't set in stone, but she triggered none from me because she was not in the least noble. She was more a sexualised Ananse, tricksy and worldly wise, useful because of her knowledge of things dodgier than our heroes, not things purer. She wasn't simple, she was twisty and tangential and spoke less flowerily but possibly as misleadingly as Jack himself.

I totally agree. She wasn't helping the white folks because they were white, or because she felt like it was her job. To me, it seemed clear that she was helping the white folks because it was fun to play them. She had her own agenda.

[furikku.livejournal.com]

She was helping the white folks because they gave her an undead monkey. If that's not a valid reason to help anyone, I don't know what is.

[oyceter]

I liked that she had her own agenda, but I'm still irritated by the fact that she's very obviously there in the movie to give the (white) heroes help. And I'm annoyed that there are so few un-stereotyped portrayals of people of color in the movie, and because of that, her role becomes so much more representative of people of color, when it could have been more a part of a spectrum instead.

[latxcvi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that for me, the facts that Tia *clearly* (a) had a lot of power of her own, that (b) Jack & Co. could *only* get the value of that power if she *deigned* to give it to them/share it with them/use it to help them, and (c) she was unwilling to do so until they actually *paid* her via said undead monkey all worked to mitigate *against* the idea of her as Mystical Negro. Like you said, she had her own agenda, first of all, and second of all, she wasn't doing anything she didn't want to do no matter how prettily they asked and certainly wasn't doing it just 'cause they were all white.

[oyceter]

Thank you, I hadn't realized that! I also didn't realize that they had two different Jamaican accents in the movie, which is totally my bad.

I'm interested in your take on the racial politics in the first movie, though not if it's too much work to talk about it! I sadly didn't notice it that much over the Johnny Depp squee, which is again my bad.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

i was under the same impression as your opener. id like to discuss this more with you. please comment on my journal for a bit more.

[ozone.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU.
I'm guessing the OP is white, but don't mark my words.

[ozone.livejournal.com]

(Whitey guilt knows no bounds)

[oyceter]

Is "OP" original poster? I wasn't sure, sorry!

Anyhoo, if it is, I'm actually Asian. I won't say that it isn't relevant, since, duh, we're talking about race. And yeah, I do think being Asian, I'm in that weird space in which racism is at work between Asian-white interactions and (sort-of) white privilege is at work with Asian-POC interactions.

And I do apologize if the post does reek of white privilege, particularly to the portrayal of the Carib analogues; I very obviously don't know anything about the deeper issues involved and have probably stepped on quite a few toes already.