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)
Wed, Jul. 12th, 2006 01:22 am (UTC)Ok. You know... great post, nice points, and all very articulate. Until you're going on and on and on about how uncomfortable you are about this, about why you're making this post... are you trying to convince yourself that you SHOULD be bothered? Becuase that's how it's sounding.
Being concerned about racism and not wanting to partake in it or be a part of it is good. Being aware of it in your surroundings? Also good. But this post? Is beyond just... awareness. Its to the point where you really just sound whiny and OMG this movie is a TERRIBLE THING because in the grand world scheme of things it might make white people want to enslave black people again!!!
And seriously?
No. 1. It's a MOVIE.
No. 2. It is set in a time of pirates, of 18th/19th century England. We're not even talking United States here. We're talking England. The Islands they were referring to where the cannibals were localed, if I'm remembering correctly, are a place where people of colour live. People in islands and sunny locales tanned because of the sun, and it's called evolution. So my apologies if you think that portraying Island persons who happen to be cannibals as black (which would be geographically correct) is racist. I don't see it that way.
No. 3. You are so up at arms about this, that you're picking at straws. There is such a thing as being too gung-ho... I mean... it's like some of the Jewish people thinking that all white people are neo nazi supremecists because EVERYTHING in some way comes back to anti-semitism. It doesn't. If you look at things enough, you can twist everything into how you want it to be seen. Congratulations, that's what you're doing here. The world is not all about you. The world is not out to kill you. The world is not out to hurt you or make other peoeple hate you. Hollywood is not out to make people prejudiced against you. Please stop being paranoid.
(no subject)
Wed, Jul. 12th, 2006 12:25 pm (UTC)You DO realise that you have a) created a completely innaccurate paraphrase of the original post, b) had some sort of rather messy pitched battle with your merry troupe of straw men, c) killed them all and d) dumped the corpses, dressed in tattered irrelevant statements of the obvious results into a the conversation as if they constituted an argument against the actual original post?
And if you don't realize this, why don't you?
(no subject)
Wed, Jul. 12th, 2006 09:03 pm (UTC)Yes, because that's what all conversations about race and racism boil down to. Thanks for pointing that out!
Anyway. About those pesky tanned black cannibals, I would strongly suggest you read this: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410746, if you want to be just a wee bit more informed.
(no subject)
Thu, Jul. 13th, 2006 08:23 am (UTC)The Islands they were referring to where the cannibals were localed
no, fuckit, I'm not arguing with a post that doesn't make sense.
I'll just say it's really rude to come onto
(no subject)
Fri, Jul. 14th, 2006 12:53 am (UTC)Yes, funny how anti-Semitic remarks like yours make Jews see anti-Semitism.
(no subject)
Tue, Jul. 25th, 2006 02:42 am (UTC)Y'know, that's *exactly* what the problem is with racism. It's not *personal*, it's about this category that one can't change.