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

Comments

Re: *via metafandom*

[liviapenn]

Now I'm thinking, if the cannibals were actually true to history, you know, there's a LOT of research that went into that movie.

Well, apparently the cannibalism thing is actually *not* true to history, and the descendants of the people pictured in the film consider it to be a pretty offensive slander.

Re: *via metafandom*

[liviapenn]

Here's another interesting link from the same site-- I'll quote the relevant part.

People with reputation of being cannibals were fair game for exploitation. In 1503, Queen Isabella of Spain decreed that Spaniards could legally enslave only those American Indians who were cannibals (Whitehead, 1984: 70). Spanish colonists thus had a vested economic interest in representing many New World natives as people eaters. Political expediency clearly motivated a number of early chroniclers who wrote about cannibalism, particularly among the Caribs (Caniba) Indians who lived in the parts of Venezuela, the Guianas, and the Caribbean islands.

Re: *via metafandom* following up on the qusrion of balance

[oyceter]

I think it handled women of all colours well

Or just better? Though I did like Anamaria a lot, and am very glad that people saw Tia as much more than standard Voodoo witch and liked her power. The other part of me is just irritated that there's only one woman of color per movie (or with a speaking part). Which of course isn't to say that it's fair to only have one main white woman character as well, because that also annoys me.

I think my problem with the cannibals is that a) just portraying people of color as cannibals, no matter how historically accurate and despite the fantastic setting, still plays into reasoning behind slavery and colonialism and all that good stuff and b) even if just having people of color as cannibals weren't problematic (though I think it is), the way they did it was just so bad and unthinking and uncritical.

I wish that the Santeria were much clearer so that uneducated people like me wouldn't mistake it as a stereotype =(.

Re: *via metafandom* following up on the qusrion of balance

[oyceter]

Eh heh, and I just realized what I said in the previous comment. I didn't mean that people should feel the need to educate me about Santeria! Le sigh. But thank you for the link!

I think I need to read O'Brien now. Well, move him up on the list of books to be read.

Re: *via metafandom* following up on the qusrion of balance

[coffeeandink]

Thank you for posting that! I was just coming back to ask if there were any resources on Santeria or Voudoun or African syncretist religions that you'd recommend when I realized I should check the other comment threads first. :)

Re: *via metafandom* following up on the qusrion of balance

[oyceter]

I had no idea there was even a cookie at the end of the credits until this whole post! Although I'm very glad I didn't stay, given that it involved cannibals and a dog. Good lord.

Re: *via metafandom* following up on the qusrion of balance

[tiferet]

Part of the problem with that is that Santeria, Voudoun, and the other afro-diasporic religions of the world were in their infancy then, and if you were to show people doing in the early 1800s what we know they did in Cuba in 1952, or in Haiti in 1978, that would be a sort of cultural projection as well--the stuff that Maya Deren and Migene Gonzalez and Wade Davis have written about has had a few hundred years to simmer and percolate and absorb various native traditions and bits of Catholic practise and bits of white people's occult practises.

Re: *via metafandom*

[serenada]

I didn't consider the cannibals Carib, but a Carib analogue. I understand that the cannibal designation is rejected by Carib descendants, but I just don't know. That's why I'm not overly bothered by the cannibal thing--more likely to be twitched by the idea of them adopting a dog to fill the same role.

Then again, I have less against cannibalism than most people.

Re: *via metafandom*

[randomblade]

Huh. I thought the cannibals had a sense of humour and fun, and that was why they were chasing the dog. I seem to have read them against the grain, seeing the tendency of these comments.

Re: *via metafandom*

[oyceter]

Hee!

I think a lot of my problems with the cannibals weren't that they were just cannibals (though I think it is problematic to portray most of the people of color in the movie as cannibals, given historical events and etc.). A lot of it was how they were used as the butt of jokes, as people whose language was so simple and mockable, and etc.

Re: *via metafandom*

[serenada]

History suggests that Jack Sparrow and the Caribs would have been speaking pidgin. Simplicity was the point, since neither side had time to learn the other's language to any great degree.