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

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit of a minority, myself, not a racial one (unless you count being nine different European ethnicities a minority), but a minority none the less. And I have always felt that I'd rather have minorities be minor characters than just token characters. If there was a black "main" character just so there would be a black character, how would that make it any better?

Adding to that, since all of the main "good" characters in the movie are leftovers from the first movie, that would most likely lead the door open for the token black/asian/whatever to be the bad guy. And then people would complain about THAT being racism. It's a no-win situation. There are plenty of movies out there with more racially diverse casts, I think hoping that a kids movie based off a time period where minorities were looked down upon even more than now is going to be PC is a bit much....

Plus, I thought the Voodoo Queen there was set to be an interesting character and a main force throughout the movie. And it's hardly just a stereotype to say that most serious Voodoo/Hoodoo practitioners are/were black, since it's a historical fact. Most people believe she's going to be revealed to be Davy Jones' love interest, which would most likely place them in an interacial relationship, something seen even less in movies than a major minority character.

I think putting every movie in terms of racist-or-not hurts more than it helps. Most people would never notice it was racist and that's A GOOD THING. Because it means they're not THINKING in terms of "huh, they're all white" or "oh, look, all the minor characters are brown" or whatever. It's like the South Park episode where the kids redesign the flag and all of them thought it was bad because it showed violence, not noticing the colors of the people on it at all.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I am not commenting on the movie in question, because I haven't seen it, but regarding the larger point you make:

I think putting every movie in terms of racist-or-not hurts more than it helps. Most people would never notice it was racist and that's A GOOD THING. Because it means they're not THINKING in terms of "huh, they're all white" or "oh, look, all the minor characters are brown" or whatever.

I am a little confused by what you're saying here. It sounds like you're saying that the less racist people are, the less likely they will be to notice actual racism. And also that it is a good thing to not notice racial divisions that actually exist.

That would mean that, for example, that the people who noticed or discussed the fact that all the black people were sitting at the back of the bus were actually more racist than the people who did not notice or discuss this.

Is that actually what you're saying, or did you mean something else?

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

I am a little confused...

Please refer to my South Park reference.

Why should people notice skin color? Why should we train our children to see different skin colors as meaning different things? I went to a school where everyone, white, black, Indian, Puetro Rican, were basically the same. Because we weren't judging them on skin color, we were judging them on how they acted and what they did.

If you're African and you wear African native dress, same if you're Tibetan, or Magyar, or whatever, then that should be noticeable. But if you're just a certain skin tone because you're ancestors happened to live in an environment where that skin tone was a better adaptation, why should children be made to think you're different? Kids never think boys and girls are different until people start pointing that fact out to them. Then the opposite gender has "cooties". Racism can be a lot like everyone having "cooties" because someone mentioned that they were different in some way, so people started thinking they were different in other, more important ways.

[oyceter]

I think not noticing race would result in a colorblind, non-racist society only if there weren't institutional racism in the first place. Unfortunately, that isn't the case.

Beverly Tatum argues that even if parents never mention race at home, children as young as three will still pick up on racial stereotypes, simply from popular culture. I don't think this is a good thing or a fair thing, but because it happens, I think it has to be confronted and dealt with.

As such, I think pointing out racism is a necessary step to get to a non-racist society; the only way to get past stereotypes is to confront them and to actively attempt to diffuse them and provide counter-examples. Otherwise, people are just ignoring an existing problem and as such, exacerbating it.

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

I think that the cry that everything is "institutional racism" just enacts MORE racism. Because then you get into reverse racism, and then that springs into other things, and eventually what you have is everyone hating everyone else. Sure, you can claim that, say, the government is racist against minorities, but you can also claim that a politician in my state likes to compare gay people to child molesters. If it truly exists at all (and I haven't studied this topic enough to say whether it does or not) it's not institutional racism. It's institutional prejudice against all people who are different in some way. Saying racism, in my mind, is deluding people into thinking there's just one category of prejudice--the skin color kind.

I think pointing out stereotypes is, in fact, what perpetuates them. Your, er, quote there said it itself--children pick up stereotypes from culture. Culture keeps putting out stereotypes because people think in stereotypes, therefore more people start thinking in stereotypes.

But, what this all comes down to, is that your post is still arguing over the fact that a movie as historical accurate as I have ever seen a Disney movie be, is...being historically accurate. And you think that makes it racist. Despite the fact that people WERE racist back then, MORE racist. And to forget that would be like forgetting any other major part of history--foolish.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I think pointing out stereotypes is, in fact, what perpetuates them. Your, er, quote there said it itself--children pick up stereotypes from culture. Culture keeps putting out stereotypes because people think in stereotypes, therefore more people start thinking in stereotypes.

How does pointing out stereotypes perpetuate them when unthinkingly accepting them does not? This is kind of like saying that falling down won't hurt you if you don't know Newton's laws.

and I haven't studied this topic enough to say whether it does or not)

And I would strongly suggest you study the topic before deciding your opinions on it.

But, what this all comes down to, is that your post is still arguing over the fact that a movie as historical accurate as I have ever seen a Disney movie be, is...being historically accurate. And you think that makes it racist. Despite the fact that people WERE racist back then, MORE racist.

I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not going to discuss its historical accuracy in detail. But I have seen the first movie, so I'm kind of dubious about claims of historical accuracy for a movie that takes place in a world where pirates are friendly and kind of sweet and appropriate role models for well-meaning young men and also where living skeletons walk along the seafloor and become solid flesh under moonlight.

Other people, more seriously, have pointed out that making the Carib cannibals is not historically accurate and is deeply offensive to the Carib people because claims that they were savage and cannibals were used to justify their massacre and enslavement. Finally, none of the white characters in the first movie say racist comments--which isn't historically accurate but which is necessary to make them sympathetic for contemporary audiences. What appears to be racist in this film is the deep structure of the story, which reduces all characters of colors to secondary characters, easily killed off. This is a matter of current and not historical prejudice.

[popfantastic.livejournal.com]

Yes, and next time it takes me half an hour to finish a comment, I'll check that someone hasn't already posted what I want to say much more eloquently.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Cross-posting!

Thank you, but I'm glad you posted. Your concrete discussion of institutionalized racism is much more helpful than my suggestion of reading more.

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

What appears to be racist in this film....

Which, yeah, is all you can talk about. Appearances. See the film, then talk about such things like that.

And as far as the Carib go? We'll never know. They're gone, long gone, and the people who wiped them out were notoriously bad at making factual records. But some things about them are accepted as true--they did have ritualistic cannibalism (like many other cultures throughout history) and they did most likely speak a language that was a bastardization of English in order to communicate with English-speakers (called Pidgin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin), which is a form of language that has been used throughout history by various people for various situations), like most other natives at that time period. Beyond that? The cannibals portrayed in this film are no more stereotypical than cannibals portrayed in any other children's film. Hell, this is DISNEY, for gods' sakes. Some people claim that the Anasazi weren't cannibals--most of them are from places where they could be their descendents, so they have a very personal reason for claiming that...and, that's a lot of what has happened with the Carib, too. Maybe it was all politics and economics that had them marked as cannibals. But that's only one theory.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Which, yeah, is all you can talk about. Appearances. See the film, then talk about such things like that.

But I'm not just talking about the film. I'm talking about your statements and the logical construction of your arguments. So far you've argued that talking about racism *causes* racism, and have offered nothing to support this idea but a cartoon; you haven't even offered anecdotal evidence to the contrary, let alone cited psychiatric research.

he cannibals portrayed in this film are no more stereotypical than cannibals portrayed in any other children's film.

That is *exactly* the problem. How does saying racism is so endemic to our society that it's *omnipresent* prove that racism isn't a problem?

Maybe it was all politics and economics that had them marked as cannibals. But that's only one theory.

Uh, no. It's also marked in European records which explicitly justify exploration based on cannibalism and in anthropological investigations which don't seem to have evidence to support those contentions.

Does the film depict cannibalism solely as a religious ritual?

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen ANY hard evidence either way. The closest that came is the person who wrote this post placing a comment in my post paraphrasing the book that really caused this post in the first place.

All I'm stating are well known theories on human thought process that anyone can get out of Psych 101, or even my high school Psych. That if you draw attention to something, humans will think about it. If you told a person before they went in and saw a film that all of the instances of the color white in the props has a meaning, they'll be watching for the color white and trying to figure out what it all has in common. If you tell a person that a film is prejudice, they'll be looking for instances where it's prejudice. It's a commonly used technique in English courses, where you're given certain topics to think on before reading the book and they affect how you interrupt what you read. Hell, it's even used in film--if you've ever watched Mulholland Dr. on DVD, there's a perfect example.

How does MAKING racism omnipresent prove that racism is a problem? How does going around calling "racist" at the drop of a hat prove anything? How does separating racism from prejudice HELP anything?

Uh, no....

Yeah, and so are LOTS of things. That doesn't prove they're not cannibals. There had to be cannibals in order for them to get that idea, after all. Saying that "Well, that person drives a Toyota so they must like foreign cars" doesn't mean that every person who drives a Toyota likes foreign cars. It's a generalization. Generalizations aren't facts. In fact, one would think someone who's against racism would go out of their way to avoid them.

Does the film depict cannibalism solely as a religious ritual?

See, if you had seen the film, you'd know the answer was yes. They believe that Jack Sparrow is a god trapped in human flesh and they must free him from that prison by death. A very common view, in fact, among polytheistic "native" religions throughout the world--that of sacrifices representing gods. And definitely something found throughout the central Americas. As is, of course, mistaking a person for a god, as with Cortez.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

All I'm stating are well known theories on human thought process that anyone can get out of Psych 101, or even my high school Psych. That if you draw attention to something, humans will think about it. If you told a person before they went in and saw a film that all of the instances of the color white in the props has a meaning, they'll be watching for the color white and trying to figure out what it all has in common. If you tell a person that a film is prejudice, they'll be looking for instances where it's prejudice. It's a commonly used technique in English courses, where you're given certain topics to think on before reading the book and they affect how you interrupt what you read. Hell, it's even used in film--if you've ever watched Mulholland Dr. on DVD, there's a perfect example.

If you tell me to look for a pink elephant in The Merchant of Venice, I still won't find it. If you tell me to look for anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice, I will find examples of it. This is not because I am projecting my own attitudes onto the text, but because the text has characters demonstrating prejudice against Jews and arguably vindicates many of their assumptions. People can and do disagree about whether the text, as opposed to the characters, are anti-Semitic, but their arguments about it didn't create European anti-Semitism. Yes, people see whatever they expect to see in Rorsarch blots. This doesn't mean that observers are projecting racism onto the meaningless action of Klu Klux Klan members burning crosses on someone's lawn.

How does MAKING racism omnipresent prove that racism is a problem? How does going around calling "racist" at the drop of a hat prove anything? How does separating racism from prejudice HELP anything?

How does calling a clearly argued discussion of elements in a film equate to "at the drop of the hat"? And why am I the one who's making generalizations about depictions of cannibalism when I'm simply responding to your statement that "the cannibals portrayed in this film are no more stereotypical than cannibals portrayed in any other children's film"?

How does separating racism from prejudice HELP anything?

It helps because it identifies how a specific form of prejudice and discrimination is working in this particular context and allows people to take specific action designed to correct this prejudice. We legislate against discrimination based on sex, sexuality, race, and physical disability because those are common grounds of discrimination. Legislating against discrimination because of race doesn't make it impossible to *also* legislate against descrimination because of sex.

See, if you had seen the film, you'd know the answer was yes.

That wasn't a rhetorical question. It was a question asking you for information. Most of my questions to you *haven't* been rhetorical questions; they've been honest questions asking how you justify contradictions in your arguments.

A very common view, in fact, among polytheistic "native" religions throughout the world--that of sacrifices representing gods.

You do realize that cannibalism and human sacrifice aren't synonyms, right?

That *would* be a rhetorical question, except your last paragraph doesn't actually make sense otherwise.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

And as far as the Carib go? We'll never know. They're gone, long gone,

No, no they're not. Some of their descendants are alive and well and protesting (http://cacreview.blogspot.com/2005/04/national-garifuna-council-of-belize.html) this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/caribbean/news/story/2005/02/050215_dominicacaribs.shtml) movie.

[popfantastic.livejournal.com]

I think that the cry that everything is "institutional racism" just enacts MORE racism. Because then you get into reverse racism, and then that springs into other things, and eventually what you have is everyone hating everyone else...Saying racism, in my mind, is deluding people into thinking there's just one category of prejudice--the skin color kind.

Saying "institutional prejudice," in my mind, is deluding people into thinking that there's nothing particularly virulent about racism, that we aren't individually responsible for mitigating racism because we're all "different" somehow and thus all equally victimized. And I simply don't see how questioning the apparent racism of anything is perpetuating racism.

But, what this all comes down to, is that your post is still arguing over the fact that a movie as historical accurate as I have ever seen a Disney movie be, is...being historically accurate.

I have only seen the first POTC movie, but I think points are:

-The depiction of cannibalism is not historically accurate (http://oyceter.livejournal.com/456759.html?thread=3589431#t3589431).

-Perpetuating stereotypes about the Carib aboriginals and their descendants is different from perpetuating historically inaccurate stereotypes about, say, pirates because most audience members know that they weren't actually and would not associate aspects of actual pirates or their stereotyped Hollywood versions to the descendants of pirates. This is not the case with regard to modern Carib aboriginals.

-And if the movie is going to be a cheerfully anachronistic fantasy -- and here we could talk about details, or we could start by talking about the premise and the historical unlikeliness Elizabeth's character -- it can darn well be anachronistic in certain ways about race. Did it hurt the original movie in any way to have Anamaria in there? Not that I can see. If the movie is "just entertainment," it would have been good if it could have entertained rather than angered nonracists and avoided stereotypes that have no place in modern entertainment. If the movie is supposed to be true to the historical record, it would be reasonable to expect it not to perpetuate historical inaccuracies, not to disproportionately kill off characters of color, and to be as "equally accurate" as possible with regard to white and non-white characters. Either way, it sounds like it failed.

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

I think saying only racism means that when people think of such things, they think of racism first, even though there are TONS more problems in the world than skin color. There's homophobia, there's anti-Semitism, etc, etc. Tons of things that have gotten people killed over all of human history. By focusing only on racism you can't help anyone--until people can think of all forms of prejudice as bad then there's always going to be racism.

It didn't hurt to have Anamaria in the first movie, just like it doesn't hurt to have Tia Dalma, a character whose influence you've chosen to ignore throughout this entire debate, in the second one.

So now your complaining that the movie WASN'T male chauvanistic enough? Can't you just be happy that one minority group was allowed to have semi-decent representation? Even though in the first movie Elizabeth had to barter herself like some prize mare? The continued mentions of how unlucky females are? The whores and the usage of them? It's an accepted fact that anyone with Jack Sparrow would be weird, and therefore far more accepting than others would be.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Re: feminism: this was mentioned in the original post, as I quote below.

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.

As noted above, the representation of women could have been discussed, but was not as that was not the subject of the post. The subject of the post was the representation of race.

You write:

I think saying only racism means that when people think of such things, they think of racism first, even though there are TONS more problems in the world than skin color. There's homophobia, there's anti-Semitism, etc, etc. Tons of things that have gotten people killed over all of human history. By focusing only on racism you can't help anyone--until people can think of all forms of prejudice as bad then there's always going to be racism.

No one is saying that other forms of prejudice are acceptable. It's just that other forms of prejudice are not the subject of this particular post. If any single post were to discuss every form of prejudice known to man, it would be five hundred pages long. If it avoided going into specific details and merely said "all prejudice is bad," then it would be impossible to talk about the specific issues in a specific movie-- which is what this particular post is about.

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

Note that in this thread of comments we have, I had assumed, gone past simply racism as I mentioned that "It's institutional prejudice against all people who are different in some way. Saying racism, in my mind, is deluding people into thinking there's just one category of prejudice--the skin color kind." This was said while on the topic of institutionalized racism.

When you make a post, the comments won't follow your post to the letter. They will divurge. Your post, as well as the comments following, did. That, of course, is the nature of making any high profile post on livejournal.

We got off topic pretty early on in this thread, I was never talking solely about racism, because in my mind all prejudice is one. In my mind, separating them into categories hurts humanity just as much as having racism can, because it means that you can tell someone one type of prejudice isn't as bad as the other.

I'll stop posting now, though, because this was obviously a thinly veiled attempt to stop this thread. I read fandom wank, I know the signs.

Ciao.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I've read the rest of what you've said, and...

Look. One of the ways that people try to squish those who attempt to call out racism is to say, "oh, it must have been some OTHER prejudice". (i.e. "you were an asshole, you were dressed wrong you you you you" when it's about someone who acted on racial prejudice.)

Is it okay to bash gay white males, because hey, they're white and male? Of course not. But it's also not okay for gay white males to be assholes to non-white folk, of any orientation, simply because "hey, I'm a *gay* white male, and thus discriminated against, so fuck your problems with racism".

Playing agony-poker with various sorts of discrimination isn't usually productive.

On the other hand, calling out when something *is* a stereotype is really the only way to get it to end. Everyone pretending that it's *normal*, that wouldn't solve anything, would it?

[sabonasi.livejournal.com]

If there was a black "main" character just so there would be a black character, how would that make it any better?

Yeah, but how things are now, the main character of a story is white often for no reason other than that it's assumed that the main character will be white.

[oyceter]

Exactly!