Here is an explanation of how gaudy pirate dress was a flaunting of widespread sumptuary laws:
As for clothes, in most countries sumptuary laws still regulated what the poor could wear, forbidding the non-property owners from donning luxury items such as fur collars or wigs or silks. Where laws didn't dictate drab clothes for the poor, custom discouraged anyone not wealthy from ostentatious dressing. Pirates, on the other hand, damned the whole business and outfitted themselves in whatever insane melange of stolen finery they fancied. Prisoners observed pirates teetering ashore in ill-fitting silver-buckled pumps or cinched into tight waistcoats with gold buttons. Sailors, who often had to mend sails, were generally adept at needlework; so, while merchant men might turn a scrap of canvas into tarred trousers, pirates would take the richest striped silk of the East Indies to fashion their wardrobe. One favorite accessory was the bright colored sash draped over one shoulder, with loops to carry two or three pistols.
Yo ho! Attention all **Maureen O’Hara/Pirate ** movie Fans. On Sunday, August 21st, 12:15 PM EST, TCM will be showing The Spanish Main, one of several swashbucklers made by Maureen O’Hara.
ARRRRRRR !!! What you landlubbers be thinking? THE pirate movie that started it all was Cutthroat Island starring Geena Davis before she became President of the United States.
Great swashbuckling, looting, pillaging and skullduggery at every turn.
I’ll forgives you this time for forgetting this movie - maybe you had a touch of scurvy.
But the next pirate thread better be mentioning “Cutthroat Island” a lot.
Otherwise we might be keel-hauling the lot of you.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR !!!
It was definitely Pirates of the Caribbean that is responsible.
Pirates have always had popularity level that hasn’t really waned. But in the same way that Jurassic Park became the tentpole that drew attention to dinosaurs, despite their incessant popularity already, so did POTC draw more vivid attention to the Pirate-themed aspects of current pop culture that already existed.
Have none of ye seen Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story?
This guy who dresses, talks, and acts like a pirate all the time?! He’s a product of all the aforementioned brainwashing.
Also, Bosda linked to stories of actual modern-day pirates, not the pirates of centuries ago, and that got me thinking- besides the drug-dealers? in Six Days, Seven Nights, have there been any movies that actually contain modern-day pirates realistic pirates (not that that movie was too realistic)? I think it’s time for someone to make one…
Why are pirates ever cool? Aren’t pirates just yesterday’s terrorists? In two or three hundred years, will Osama be reduced to a cultural icon that warms our hearts and sells our products? “I drive a BelchFire 3000 because it has room for all 72 virgins, yet sips gas like a sparrow drinks the morning dew. Oh, and Death to America!”
Both of those presentations sound kind of cinematic and unrealistic and maybe hokey- I was thinking a gritty drama like City of God, with realism and all that.
