pirate movie

[jinian]

Really liked: The swashbuckling! The over-the-top goofiness of the swashbuckling! Davy Jones and crew were excellently gross. Combining several betrayals at once, yay efficient angst. The pedantic pirates!

Pissed off by: Race, race, race. Swann getting sidelined and having a hissy fit while the boys fenced, what was that?


So yeah, about like Oyce said, only she didn't mention the Magical Negro -- who's a skanky ho. Great. (What exactly was supposed to be staining her mouth dark? Just dirty living?) It's fine that she's sexual, but both male leads looked like they wanted to get the hell away -- what would it have hurt for her to be attractive as well as powerful? Or for the issue not to come up?

Most of the nonwhite pirates are in one cage, the one who's a foolhardy cheat appears to be Indian, and none of them is ever seen again.

Wim has apparently perceived Jack Sparrow as nonwhite, which could be true, but to me Will Turner's skin looks darker than Sparrow's in this movie. The black people with the candles at the end seem to have felt some sort of kinship with him, or something, though I expect he was as much of a cad with them as with anyone. Chez Oyceter, someone mentions Johnny Depp's Cherokee ancestry and the possibility that Sparrow is a racial intermediary. I dunno. He seemed like a fey and very tan white guy to me.

Yeah, okay, cannibals have to be "native" people. (Note that the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink and others are NOT happy, though.) And it was mostly Sparrow doing the repeated-repeated baby talk to them, but they did understand, even if that was gesture-based, and say it back to him -- not a sign of abundant mental activity in our culture. Why were there cannibals at all? Why did they have to be idiotic?

Would I have been offended if I hadn't known about the race problems going in? I can't say. But I do know I am not planning to go again. I will just have to find another way to see thatmathchick.

Comments

[rosefox]

what would it have hurt for her to be attractive as well as powerful? Or for the issue not to come up?

Interestingly, the people who do perceive her as being portrayed as attractive call it "hypersexualized". Bit of a lose/lose there.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I left the post sketchy because I wanted to go to bed, but "hypersexualized" definitely wanted to be in it. It was the combination of her overt interest in the sexy men combined with their distaste that pissed me off. It reeks of "have you ever slept with a nigger wench?" to me (to which the answer was "of course," because why else do they exist? how would they not be sexually available to white men? -- Hemingway, I think). That combination's definitely a lose/lose one, but I think the writers could have made no one attracted to anyone (not as interesting, but not maddening) or everyone mutually interested (could have been interesting tension-wise).

And if she's Davy Jones' lost love interest the way the buzz says, that's even better. The only one who wants her is a squid-faced guy.

I guess I'm not done ranting just yet, am I?

[rosefox]

Apparently not!

All this discussion is making me want to go see it again, because I feel like I somehow saw a different version from what a lot of other people saw. I didn't see either of the men reacting to her with disgust, for example.