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

[cija.livejournal.com]

The movie is incredibly racist

- I haven't see it yet, but that's the impression I got from the previews I saw, except nobody else who'd reviewed it had mentioned that so far (that I know of), so I thought maybe I was imagining it, or it was weird preview editing that made sense in context.

It is really fucked up that I so frequently see something -- like the previews for King Kong, or for PotC2 -- and think, That looks really racist, but it can't be or somebody else would have already said something, so I'd better be quiet.

-- Did they not even have Anamaria from the first movie? I thought she'd be a recurring character -- that's really disappointing if she's not.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I hated the cannibal island part, and may have to rant about it in more detail later.

On the other hand I liked Tia Dalma, though not as much as I would have liked them bringing Anamaria back with her own ship to help the guys out. I didn't notice her accent that much, probably because Anamaria had an accent in the first film and I was thinking 'oh, Anamaria-replacement character'.

After ranting repeatedly about not enough black characters in the first film, I wasn't expecting many in this one, and actually thought I saw more than before. I may be wrong on that -- I'll have to rewatch both to compare.

But you're not at all wrong for noticing, and you should post. People need to have it pointed out to them.

[oyceter]

That looks really racist, but it can't be or somebody else would have already said something, so I'd better be quiet.

Yeah, I know! And yet...

So no, the racism isn't imaginary, it isn't weird preview editing, it doesn't make sense in context. It's just totally random.

And yeah, they don't even have Anamaria! She was cool, too.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Argh. And I was looking forward to it, too.

I don't think it's wrong to point it out. I don't know if you saw King Kong, which has the Island of the Crazed Black Savages. I remember thinking, "Well, I guess they were in the original movie, and I don't think Peter Jackson is racist, but... Island of the Crazed Black Savages!"

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

There are a few people of color in his pirate crew, but their speaking parts are small, and they all have very strong accents.

And, if you'll notice, they're all stuck in the *second* cage. You know, the one that cheats and tries to get ahead rather than wait for the guard to pass by, and then all those inside die? There's a nice closeup of all the colored faces grinning evilly just before they slip and die. After that, I *think* (I did only see it the once) the "main" crew of the Pearl is all white.

I know the movie is set in a freakshow, but walking out, all I could think was: What, they couldn't have *one character of color* dressed in normal clothing and speaking regular English and not eating people?

And it really, really bugs me that I have only seen two (not counting mine or that of the woman who went with me and was subject to my mutterings during the film) LJ reviews that even mention the subject amidst their torrents of enthusiasm. I mean, I doubt that the filmmakers had deliberately racist intentions, but a less critical mainstream appropriation of older racist tropes can hardly be spotted in this day and age.

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the movie yet, and I don't really know if I will--for the most part, people I know have been enjoying it, but the first one didn't make much of an impression (and I see few enough movies that I try to make sure I'll be seeing things I really enjoy or learn something from). But from what I remember of the first one, I can't say I find this all that surprising. :/ It's amazing what earns general acceptance if it's done in the name of "fun that hurts no one", whether that subliminal claim is true or not.

I really appreciate that you do make posts like these, and that they remind me to pay more attention to the way the world actually is.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I should have said more about my issues with the cannibal island part of the story in my review, and maybe I'll post about that at some point. I may just bundle it up with the Multiculturalism Yay post I've been planning ever since a business contact pissed me off with her rant on 'immigrants' (ironically it dawned on me afterwards that I'm nth generation English, while I'm sure she's mentioned in the past that half her ancestors are Finnish -- may have to drop that into conversation if she does that to me again). It just feels odd me ranting about race so much, when the family members doing our genealogy research are yet to find any branches of the family tree not originating in Yorkshire or Norfolk.

[tenar.livejournal.com]

i read this while looking at my friendsfriends list. thank you for writing it out. i saw the film last night and posted about it in my journal with the first paragraph being along the lines of, "let's point out the racism and cultural fetishization that was Bad okay moving on now RELEASE THE KRAKEN." sigh. today i can't brush it off so easily. i loved so much about the movie, it was a ton of fun, grand feeding ground for a lot of fic i'd love to read, but is it okay to intentionally ignore the racism in order to enjoy it? and even while the cannibal island stuff made me incredibly uncomfortable i still found myself laughing at some of the sight gags and jack's antics.

is it enough to just acknowledge it and move on? i don't know. i don't think it should be.

[littlebutfierce]

Oooh, thanks for this post. I'm so sad, because this was the big summer movie that I'd been looking forward to. I could totally see myself doing the same thing you were--trying to talk yourself out of seeing it as racist, etc.--too. I definitely still feel the pressure to not be the pain in the ass who always brings up race much more than I ever did for gender. I feel like, @ least among my friends & coworkers & other people I generally get thrown together w/, we're all mostly on the same page about feminism by now, but race is still the 800-pound elephant in the corner (or, er, whatever that cliche is).

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Tatum is awesome, right? I remember being impressed by how generous she could be; I certainly wasn't in that sort of mood when I was reading the book.

I was sort of looking forward to PotC2, even though I hadn't particularly loved the first one. Your description of how you tried to ignore the nidginess reminds me of how I felt during many points of the LOTR movies.

Thank you for posting this.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I do think I saw some commentary about this in reviews of King Kong. I haven't seen any commentary on race in reviews of Pirates of the Caribbean 2.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I was worried by the cannibal scene. I thought the woman character was simply Jack Sparrow's female counterpart.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Several of the pirates with speaking roles were people of color.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I think maybe you overlooked my next point? The black/West Indian/islander pirates all seem to have died as a result of "cheating" when they were in the cages on the islands. Of the "core" crew (Gibbs, the little person, the Greek chorus duo, and I think there were two more), the ones we follow through the rest of the film, I don't think any of them weren't white. I kept looking. (Admittedly, I did only see it once, very visually busy film, people were often drenched/filthy, etc., but it was bothering me.)

[j00j.livejournal.com]

Here via bonibaru

"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."
Urrgh, I was cringing at several points (particularly the whole cannibal thing-- I was kind of shocked that the friend sitting next to me seemed to be entertained by it).

And man, where *was* Anamaria? I *liked* Anamaria!

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

In King Kong's favour, though, it did have the smokin' hot and pretty damned fabulous Hayes, played by Evan Parke...but he got killed by the big ape half way through the movie, so maybe that doesn't count. The Crazy Black Savages DID strike me as fairly !!!! - it was a minor relief that they seemed to be no racial type known to man, but people of colour they certainly were.

Crap. I'm sorry to hear about the new PotC movie, and I can readily believe it, because I remember seeing the trailer and thinking ???? about the whole cannibal thing just from the clips. And I'm particularly sorry to hear Annamaria isn't in it! Damn - she was one of the more interesting supporting characters, & I'd been assuming she'd be back.

[silveraspen]

Saw this post linked from bonibaru, and my own comments on the film will be forthcoming, but I did want to add an observation here.

I saw it twice yesterday and the second time I specifically looked to compare the two cages.

In the cage holding the pirates who survived, in addition to Gibbs and the midget whose name I don't know, there were at least three people of other races/nationalities. I am going to try to match role to credited name later, but I wanted to say that no, not all those who survived were white. They were mostly "core" crew from the last film, I think.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I misspoke; you're right that there were other races in the first cage. However, the POC pirates *who had lines before* all died in the second cage, I believe. I honestly don't even remember seeing any of the POC pirates in the first cage again, though surely they must have been in the background!

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

(Also, the fact that there's legitimate debate as to whether there was *one* non-savage-stereotype, non-evil POC who had *any* lines is still pretty damn telling.)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry; that was very sloppy reading on my part.

The core crew was established in the last movie. There was only one continuing character added since the last movie, and she was black.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

Well, as you can see from comments below, I wrote sloppily myself. Goooo, basic reading and writing skills! ;)

I think Tia Dora (?) was quite problematic. She was a Mystical Negro living in the heart of the jungle, sexually voracious, with all the outer markings of the "savage," and yet essentially devoted, like all Mystical Negroes, to forwarding the white man's quest. If she were the only such type in the film, I might be inclined to judge it a little more charitably, but in a film where all the "audience identity" characters are white (and all but one are male) and all the POCs who get any real camera attention are "savages" or untrustworthy comrades who reap the just rewards of their treachery...I'm not inclined to be charitable.

[ellenore.livejournal.com]

I noticed it too- it's one of the many reasons why the movie was uncomfortable for me. Also, even though the introduction of the female pirate in the first movie was a bit cheesy, I'm sorry they got rid of her.

[oyceter]

The cannibals were awful. And then I laughed at a lot of it. And then there were more cannibals, and it was awful. And then I had so much mental dissonance that I thought my head would explode.

I think Tia Dalma annoyed me because after I started noticing the portrayal of characters of color, the entire voodoo witch savage lives in swamp thing really irked me, especially for the one main character of color.

[oyceter]

I missed King Kong....

I think I need a big definition post for racism and prejudice, because I would say Peter Jackson is racist in that while he may not be actively racist, he is also not actively antiracist, which means he is passively racist, particularly in the problematic portrayal of people with dark skin (or orcs, y'know).

Which is not to say that he is the only person like that, because hey, I have been passively contributing to racism for most of my life, which I am not happy about.

But I think that opens a whole 'nother can of worms that shall have to wait till I have my definition post up.

[oyceter]

Ugh, yeah, I didn't even notice that bit about the second cage =(. The sad thing about the comments to this comment is that there is even debate about whether or not there were non-stereotyped people of color. It just makes it that much clearer that all the very memorable characters were white (or, uh, squid) and that the one memorable character of color is portrayed problematically enough that there is debate on whether or not she is stereotyped.

Very, very with you on the less critical mainstream appropriation of older racist tropes. I doubt most people have deliberately racist intentions, and yet... (I have just finished Tatum, so I use her vocab). If they aren't actively antiracist, then so much ends up being racist via passivity, just because of how society is structured.