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

[oyceter]

I totally did the same thing with Firefly's racial politics, until yhlee posted about it and I couldn't rationalize any more.

I wish it weren't so hard to find good storytelling that wasn't racist or sexist and had lots of good roles for people of color and women (and women of color, obviously)! I have this weird sliding scale for sexist and/or racist storytelling; sometimes I like it despite noticing the worrisome aspects about race and/or gender, sometimes I chuck stuff against a wall.

And I want to reply! Comments to the effect that people have been thinking about these things because of my post are incredibly encouraging and heartening!

[sabonasi.livejournal.com]

I wish it weren't so hard to find good storytelling that wasn't racist or sexist and had lots of good roles for people of color and women (and women of color, obviously)!

I hear you.

Heroes (NBC this fall) is looking fairly interesting. (Good, diverse cast, although a bit lacking regarding women.) I really liked Invasion (ABC) but it got cancelled. (A bit male-centric at times, but the plot of the show can definitely be read as an allegory for the immigration debate.) LOST (ABC) is a personal favorite. (Diverse cast, some good female characters.)

[oyceter]

Ahhh, I bounced off Lost on the pilot because J. J. Abrams annoyed me so much with the gender politics in Alias. Glad to hear it's better than that!

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Lost had in the first season, unusually enough, a nice focus on a Korean-speaking couple as the romantic pairing -- well there was a whole stupid "love triangle" involving Pretty White People, but I ignored most of it. IIRC yhlee (I think it was yhlee?) said Daniel Dae Kim's Korean was pretty awful (I admit I give him a bye because of Teh Pretteh), but his wife was played by Yunjin Kim, an accomplished Korean actress who is gorgeous AND talented AND apparently speaks Korean right. Points for casting! (Interestingly enough she was born in Korea, but grew up in Staten Island.) However, by the middle of S2 the focus was pretty much back on the Pretty White People and the plot was also a tangled, shredded, freaky mess, but I do recommend maybe putting S1 on your Netflix.

Naveen Andrews is also frequently shirtless and dripping. If you, ah, like that sort of thing. MMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmNaveen.

[sabonasi.livejournal.com]

It isn't perfect, and there were a couple of parts that bothered me, but LOST has quite a few interesting, non-stereotypical female characters: Sun, Ana Lucia, Rousseau, et cetera.

Like, I have no doubt that you and I could come up with something better, but it's better than a lot of stuff out there.

Plus, as was said, there's the whole shirtless dripping wet Sayid aspect...

Incidently, Abrams hasn't been with the show for a while; he was busy with Mi:III. By the way, you can download episodes at lost_eps if you're ever interested.

[parallactic.livejournal.com]

I defended Whedon on the internet. My biggest rationale was that Firefly was cancelled before the worldbuilding and characters could be fully fleshed out. Also, while Book fulfills the Magical Negro requirements and didn't get much development, I liked the character.

I think I also have a weird sliding scale when it comes to this. Usually, when a work does one thing right, like Whedon and women, I'll think, "Well, he does that so well, and that is the focus. I'll look elsewhere for the other stuff."

I think while there's some offerings of race+gender in literary sf/f, like Octavia Butler, there isn't much to go on in the media.

[oyceter]

I still wish there were a recognizably Asian person on the Serenity crew though =(. I got rather disillusioned re: Whedon's gender politics in the last season of Angel too, so, unhappy fan speaking here.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Man, at least Bladerunner had the freaking noodle vender talking to the White Lead (oh yeah, and the guy who designed eyes. And maybe 1-2 other bit parts). In Serenity, and Firefly, there was Chinese slang and Asian design influences everywhere and _no Asian people._ wtf? Did an Asian actor even have a speaking line in the movie?

If Simon and River Tam (and their family) had been Asian or at least Eurasian, the whole setup would've been a lot more palatable for me. Or Inara even, altho that would've brought up the whole sexual-fetishization-of-the-Other mess.

Whedon also really disappointed me when Book kicked it in Serenity after Wood going "Surprise" in the last ep of Buffy -- I loved that, and thought it was a neat little twist on the-brother-always-gets-it-in-genre cliche. Bad Joss, no franchise.

[parallactic.livejournal.com]

I didn't follow Angel as closely as I did BtVS or Firefly, although I did quite like the Illyria storyline. I also wish that there was a recognizable Asian person on the crew as well. LA is ethnically diverse and there's a huge Asian-American population in CA, and what about all those Asian-American actors who play small parts in movies and tv?