I like my black fake pirates just as much as I hate my real white pirates!
**Queequeg **though, now there’s a guy who had his shit together. But I don’t think he was white, black OR a pirate. But he made a damn fine young cannibal.
I totally disagree with the racism explanation, but I also don’t think the “fiction vs nonfiction” explanation covers all cases.
For example, why do movies/books have “lovable” pirates/hit men/thieves, but there are no “lovable” serial rapists of 5-year-old kids?
If the “it’s just fiction, relax already” angle explained the willingness to like a fictional character who does some stuff we don’t like in real life (kill, steal), why are people not willing to like a fictional character who does other stuff we don’t like (e.g. rape young kids). “So what if Joe, the charming and witty star of the movie just raped three 5-year-old kids, it’s just fiction, relax already, I just love the guy! His one-liners are hilarious!”
What a surprise. The overprivileged white males of SD tsking at the evil pirates. The underclass should know their places. When Nestle’s marketing strategy murders 1.5 million babies every single year (WHO estimate), that’s just profit. But when a poor black ex-fisherman in Somalia picks up an AK47 and tries to cut himself a slice because dumping of toxic waste has killed the entire fishery… why, he’s just an uppity negro in need of a hemp necktie from the ol’ apple tree, the traditional Amerikan cure for uppitiness.
Yeah, and what’s with Grape Nuts? No grapes, no nuts!
Actually, there’s a dearth of lovable rapists in general, not just of five year olds. Because it’s hard to setup a scenario in which raping someone is justified. For that matter, it’s equally hard to set up a scenario where it’s okay to murder or steal from a child. On the other hand, it’s not too difficult to set up a scenario in which robbing from, or even killing, an adult is justifiable. Most likable hitmen kill other criminals. Most heroic pirates are stealing from corrupt plutocrats. And if you’re rooting for a thief, it’s probably because he’s stealing from a jerk who has more money than God anyway, so who cares if he loses some extra diamonds. Most of these anti-hero archetypes are either about enacting some sort of perceived social justice, or creating a space in which all the participants have agreed to suspend the rules of civilized society. It’s difficult to do that with rape, which I think says more about how our society views rape (as compared to other crimes) than anything else. And, of course, it’s nearly impossible to justify any sort of crime where the victim is a child.
Usually the hero is killing off faceless mooks who have done something or other to deserve their fate, even if their deed is to just oppose the hero. Kids are to the public at large, innocent and relatable. Kids are naturally sympathetic characters and heroes do not attack sympathetic characters. Same thing applies more or less to women. None who died by Sparrow’s sword were women.
Rape is a slow and agonizing deed. Most kills on screen happen fast. Jack slices some guys chest, and the guy presumably dies somewhere off screen. If there was a scene where the hero slowly thrusts a dagger into chest of the victim while the victim is begging for mercy, I’d consider the hero a villain.
All very good points. They also show that “it’s just fiction, get over it” is not a sufficient explanation for the attitude towards fake vs non-fake pirates.
“It’s just fiction” or “I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality” cannot be used as a blanket excuse for all types of movie behaviors and still have the hero likable.
Sure it is. We can enjoy Jack Sparrow because he’s not a real person, he’s a fantasy construct in a world designed to justify his actions.
Sure, but I don’t think anyone has suggested the contrary. No one’s said that “it’s a fantasy” can excuse any behavior in a fictional character. They’ve said it can excuse behaviors exhibited by a specific fantasy character from a particular work of fiction. Obviously, there are certain actions that are not justifiable even within the realm of fiction. If there’d been a scene in Pirates of the Caribbean where Jack Sparrow set fire to an orphanage, very few people would view him as a likable or heroic character. There is no such scene, though. All of the actions Jack Sparrow undertakes fall within the spectrum of acceptable traits in a fictional action hero.
No one said it did.
I suspect you are correct. And I do avoid her, these days.
Thanks, Smashy. It means a lot to me that you’re not on my side.
So this attempt to caricature everybody else is about uplifting poor people rather than excusing the failings of robbers and murderers, I take it?
I think he’s implying that the Mariners killed by Somali pirates deserved it because they were on the B.O.D. of Nestle.
Ahem…
There is no implied level of fake crime that would make the perpetrator unlovable.
And thank goodness for that, because if the pirates were shooting working class stiffs who were doing a job to take ends meet, that’d be terrible, and one could then argue that a working class person in a Western country doing a job for a potentially unethical corporation was comparable, and perhaps even ethically superior, to a person from an impoverished country engaged in piracy.
So…Gangsta rap is not popular at all among white people?
Nobody went out to see Get Rich or Die Tryin’? No white people shell out for Tupac albums?
Fuck your friend’s theory. People are obsessed with romanticising crime of any kind, white or black.
I suggest you re-read the quoted portion and highlight the section where I said the reasoning applied to all criminal acts.
I like the Somali pirates just fine. I’d like machine-gunning them even finer. Nothing personal.
I have to mention this:
I’ve read plenty of stories of real Pirates. From the Privateer era to the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. There’s more than a few things I’ve learned and that I think are not uncommon knowledge:
-
Many of the pirates of that era were pretty psychotic. I doubt many folks who like pirates are unaware of the antics of Blackbeard and other nutcases.
-
Over and over the Pirate’s life tends to follow the same pattern: Became a pirate, had lots of success being a pirate, got drunk at Tortuga, went out and captured more ships…then got caught by a Naval Frigate in a cove and got killed (or captured and exectuted).
When reading the latter, my attitude was not “Oh! Miserable they! This was direct cause of the antics of the East India Company! They were just poor sots trying to defend their coastline from the privations of merchants. The English middle class was just racist and mean!” no my attitude was " Well that would be the end result of that kind of life".
That being said we do tend to romanticize the past. Renn faires do not dwell on Machiavellian politics (for the most part) nor do they have heretic burns, 30 years war privations, or other such things. Doesn’t mean that they can’t just be fun…even in the hard times of the past it wasn’t all suffering.
Attempts to justify modern piracy by complaining about the romanticizing of the older piracy era (where, if nothing else they had much cooler clothes) or by trying to justify it by invoking outdated claims of waste dumping are ludicrous.
Seeing as you’ve been bandy around latin phraseology of late I think you’ll find this is what you’d call a “Non sequitur”.
Additionally it’s wrong. The WHO said no such thing. Based on a quick back of the envelope calculation it think that would require them to kill one baby for every few dozen packages of baby milk they sell.