Race and Pirates
Sat, Jul. 8th, 2006 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI 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.
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.
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(no subject)
Mon, Jul. 10th, 2006 07:50 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Mon, Jul. 10th, 2006 08:10 pm (UTC)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.