Race and Pirates
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
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Plus, there's the added fact that back in the seven/eighteenth centuries that most people would have accents. And among pirates it would make sense that most of the people of color were recent immigrants to the Americas or from a lower class setting originally.
I don't think this fic really does anyone a disservice, I don't even think that most people who watch it would notice--it's most significant as a popcorn movie, after all, not as a statement. A real reason you seemed to notice this, as you stated, was that you had recently read a book dealing with (I'm figuring) a very close subject.
Though, the cannibal island part was a bit much. Weren't most of them wiped out by Cortez and co, anyway? But it wasn't any more than any OTHER portrayal of a cannibal island in any other movie/book/tv show that's been put forth as less than scientifically factual.
...If any of that makes any sense.
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I think even though it is a popcorn movie, it's still significant because it's adding to the portrayal of people of color in popular culture. Because there aren't all that many people of color in popular culture, each portrayal of them carries more weight than portrayal of white characters. Also, I feel like more people should be noticing this, not just people who have been reading about it, and especially not just people to whom this is a close subject, largely because this is an issue that affects everyone, but it's an issue that many people have the privilege to ignore.
I'm not bothered by the fact that there were accents or people of color who were recent immigrants. I'm bothered by the fact that they were almost all minor, disposable characters, easy to kill off, and that almost all the viewpoint characters were white.
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Adding to that, since all of the main "good" characters in the movie are leftovers from the first movie, that would most likely lead the door open for the token black/asian/whatever to be the bad guy. And then people would complain about THAT being racism. It's a no-win situation. There are plenty of movies out there with more racially diverse casts, I think hoping that a kids movie based off a time period where minorities were looked down upon even more than now is going to be PC is a bit much....
Plus, I thought the Voodoo Queen there was set to be an interesting character and a main force throughout the movie. And it's hardly just a stereotype to say that most serious Voodoo/Hoodoo practitioners are/were black, since it's a historical fact. Most people believe she's going to be revealed to be Davy Jones' love interest, which would most likely place them in an interacial relationship, something seen even less in movies than a major minority character.
I think putting every movie in terms of racist-or-not hurts more than it helps. Most people would never notice it was racist and that's A GOOD THING. Because it means they're not THINKING in terms of "huh, they're all white" or "oh, look, all the minor characters are brown" or whatever. It's like the South Park episode where the kids redesign the flag and all of them thought it was bad because it showed violence, not noticing the colors of the people on it at all.
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I think putting every movie in terms of racist-or-not hurts more than it helps. Most people would never notice it was racist and that's A GOOD THING. Because it means they're not THINKING in terms of "huh, they're all white" or "oh, look, all the minor characters are brown" or whatever.
I am a little confused by what you're saying here. It sounds like you're saying that the less racist people are, the less likely they will be to notice actual racism. And also that it is a good thing to not notice racial divisions that actually exist.
That would mean that, for example, that the people who noticed or discussed the fact that all the black people were sitting at the back of the bus were actually more racist than the people who did not notice or discuss this.
Is that actually what you're saying, or did you mean something else?
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Please refer to my South Park reference.
Why should people notice skin color? Why should we train our children to see different skin colors as meaning different things? I went to a school where everyone, white, black, Indian, Puetro Rican, were basically the same. Because we weren't judging them on skin color, we were judging them on how they acted and what they did.
If you're African and you wear African native dress, same if you're Tibetan, or Magyar, or whatever, then that should be noticeable. But if you're just a certain skin tone because you're ancestors happened to live in an environment where that skin tone was a better adaptation, why should children be made to think you're different? Kids never think boys and girls are different until people start pointing that fact out to them. Then the opposite gender has "cooties". Racism can be a lot like everyone having "cooties" because someone mentioned that they were different in some way, so people started thinking they were different in other, more important ways.
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Beverly Tatum argues that even if parents never mention race at home, children as young as three will still pick up on racial stereotypes, simply from popular culture. I don't think this is a good thing or a fair thing, but because it happens, I think it has to be confronted and dealt with.
As such, I think pointing out racism is a necessary step to get to a non-racist society; the only way to get past stereotypes is to confront them and to actively attempt to diffuse them and provide counter-examples. Otherwise, people are just ignoring an existing problem and as such, exacerbating it.
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I think pointing out stereotypes is, in fact, what perpetuates them. Your, er, quote there said it itself--children pick up stereotypes from culture. Culture keeps putting out stereotypes because people think in stereotypes, therefore more people start thinking in stereotypes.
But, what this all comes down to, is that your post is still arguing over the fact that a movie as historical accurate as I have ever seen a Disney movie be, is...being historically accurate. And you think that makes it racist. Despite the fact that people WERE racist back then, MORE racist. And to forget that would be like forgetting any other major part of history--foolish.
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How does pointing out stereotypes perpetuate them when unthinkingly accepting them does not? This is kind of like saying that falling down won't hurt you if you don't know Newton's laws.
and I haven't studied this topic enough to say whether it does or not)
And I would strongly suggest you study the topic before deciding your opinions on it.
But, what this all comes down to, is that your post is still arguing over the fact that a movie as historical accurate as I have ever seen a Disney movie be, is...being historically accurate. And you think that makes it racist. Despite the fact that people WERE racist back then, MORE racist.
I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not going to discuss its historical accuracy in detail. But I have seen the first movie, so I'm kind of dubious about claims of historical accuracy for a movie that takes place in a world where pirates are friendly and kind of sweet and appropriate role models for well-meaning young men and also where living skeletons walk along the seafloor and become solid flesh under moonlight.
Other people, more seriously, have pointed out that making the Carib cannibals is not historically accurate and is deeply offensive to the Carib people because claims that they were savage and cannibals were used to justify their massacre and enslavement. Finally, none of the white characters in the first movie say racist comments--which isn't historically accurate but which is necessary to make them sympathetic for contemporary audiences. What appears to be racist in this film is the deep structure of the story, which reduces all characters of colors to secondary characters, easily killed off. This is a matter of current and not historical prejudice.
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Thank you, but I'm glad you posted. Your concrete discussion of institutionalized racism is much more helpful than my suggestion of reading more.
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Which, yeah, is all you can talk about. Appearances. See the film, then talk about such things like that.
And as far as the Carib go? We'll never know. They're gone, long gone, and the people who wiped them out were notoriously bad at making factual records. But some things about them are accepted as true--they did have ritualistic cannibalism (like many other cultures throughout history) and they did most likely speak a language that was a bastardization of English in order to communicate with English-speakers (called Pidgin, which is a form of language that has been used throughout history by various people for various situations), like most other natives at that time period. Beyond that? The cannibals portrayed in this film are no more stereotypical than cannibals portrayed in any other children's film. Hell, this is DISNEY, for gods' sakes. Some people claim that the Anasazi weren't cannibals--most of them are from places where they could be their descendents, so they have a very personal reason for claiming that...and, that's a lot of what has happened with the Carib, too. Maybe it was all politics and economics that had them marked as cannibals. But that's only one theory.
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But I'm not just talking about the film. I'm talking about your statements and the logical construction of your arguments. So far you've argued that talking about racism *causes* racism, and have offered nothing to support this idea but a cartoon; you haven't even offered anecdotal evidence to the contrary, let alone cited psychiatric research.
he cannibals portrayed in this film are no more stereotypical than cannibals portrayed in any other children's film.
That is *exactly* the problem. How does saying racism is so endemic to our society that it's *omnipresent* prove that racism isn't a problem?
Maybe it was all politics and economics that had them marked as cannibals. But that's only one theory.
Uh, no. It's also marked in European records which explicitly justify exploration based on cannibalism and in anthropological investigations which don't seem to have evidence to support those contentions.
Does the film depict cannibalism solely as a religious ritual?
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All I'm stating are well known theories on human thought process that anyone can get out of Psych 101, or even my high school Psych. That if you draw attention to something, humans will think about it. If you told a person before they went in and saw a film that all of the instances of the color white in the props has a meaning, they'll be watching for the color white and trying to figure out what it all has in common. If you tell a person that a film is prejudice, they'll be looking for instances where it's prejudice. It's a commonly used technique in English courses, where you're given certain topics to think on before reading the book and they affect how you interrupt what you read. Hell, it's even used in film--if you've ever watched Mulholland Dr. on DVD, there's a perfect example.
How does MAKING racism omnipresent prove that racism is a problem? How does going around calling "racist" at the drop of a hat prove anything? How does separating racism from prejudice HELP anything?
Uh, no....
Yeah, and so are LOTS of things. That doesn't prove they're not cannibals. There had to be cannibals in order for them to get that idea, after all. Saying that "Well, that person drives a Toyota so they must like foreign cars" doesn't mean that every person who drives a Toyota likes foreign cars. It's a generalization. Generalizations aren't facts. In fact, one would think someone who's against racism would go out of their way to avoid them.
Does the film depict cannibalism solely as a religious ritual?
See, if you had seen the film, you'd know the answer was yes. They believe that Jack Sparrow is a god trapped in human flesh and they must free him from that prison by death. A very common view, in fact, among polytheistic "native" religions throughout the world--that of sacrifices representing gods. And definitely something found throughout the central Americas. As is, of course, mistaking a person for a god, as with Cortez.
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If you tell me to look for a pink elephant in The Merchant of Venice, I still won't find it. If you tell me to look for anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice, I will find examples of it. This is not because I am projecting my own attitudes onto the text, but because the text has characters demonstrating prejudice against Jews and arguably vindicates many of their assumptions. People can and do disagree about whether the text, as opposed to the characters, are anti-Semitic, but their arguments about it didn't create European anti-Semitism. Yes, people see whatever they expect to see in Rorsarch blots. This doesn't mean that observers are projecting racism onto the meaningless action of Klu Klux Klan members burning crosses on someone's lawn.
How does MAKING racism omnipresent prove that racism is a problem? How does going around calling "racist" at the drop of a hat prove anything? How does separating racism from prejudice HELP anything?
How does calling a clearly argued discussion of elements in a film equate to "at the drop of the hat"? And why am I the one who's making generalizations about depictions of cannibalism when I'm simply responding to your statement that "the cannibals portrayed in this film are no more stereotypical than cannibals portrayed in any other children's film"?
How does separating racism from prejudice HELP anything?
It helps because it identifies how a specific form of prejudice and discrimination is working in this particular context and allows people to take specific action designed to correct this prejudice. We legislate against discrimination based on sex, sexuality, race, and physical disability because those are common grounds of discrimination. Legislating against discrimination because of race doesn't make it impossible to *also* legislate against descrimination because of sex.
See, if you had seen the film, you'd know the answer was yes.
That wasn't a rhetorical question. It was a question asking you for information. Most of my questions to you *haven't* been rhetorical questions; they've been honest questions asking how you justify contradictions in your arguments.
A very common view, in fact, among polytheistic "native" religions throughout the world--that of sacrifices representing gods.
You do realize that cannibalism and human sacrifice aren't synonyms, right?
That *would* be a rhetorical question, except your last paragraph doesn't actually make sense otherwise.
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No, no they're not. Some of their descendants are alive and well and protesting this movie.
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Saying "institutional prejudice," in my mind, is deluding people into thinking that there's nothing particularly virulent about racism, that we aren't individually responsible for mitigating racism because we're all "different" somehow and thus all equally victimized. And I simply don't see how questioning the apparent racism of anything is perpetuating racism.
But, what this all comes down to, is that your post is still arguing over the fact that a movie as historical accurate as I have ever seen a Disney movie be, is...being historically accurate.
I have only seen the first POTC movie, but I think points are:
-The depiction of cannibalism is not historically accurate.
-Perpetuating stereotypes about the Carib aboriginals and their descendants is different from perpetuating historically inaccurate stereotypes about, say, pirates because most audience members know that they weren't actually and would not associate aspects of actual pirates or their stereotyped Hollywood versions to the descendants of pirates. This is not the case with regard to modern Carib aboriginals.
-And if the movie is going to be a cheerfully anachronistic fantasy -- and here we could talk about details, or we could start by talking about the premise and the historical unlikeliness Elizabeth's character -- it can darn well be anachronistic in certain ways about race. Did it hurt the original movie in any way to have Anamaria in there? Not that I can see. If the movie is "just entertainment," it would have been good if it could have entertained rather than angered nonracists and avoided stereotypes that have no place in modern entertainment. If the movie is supposed to be true to the historical record, it would be reasonable to expect it not to perpetuate historical inaccuracies, not to disproportionately kill off characters of color, and to be as "equally accurate" as possible with regard to white and non-white characters. Either way, it sounds like it failed.
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