pirates

I like Johnny Depp.
I mean, I really really like Johnny Depp.

That was my main impetus for wasting away several hours yesterday to do a double viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean I and II (as was hanging out with my pals and imbibing appropriate substances that are the natural accoutrements to a Disney film). Though I have always appreciated JD's quirkiness and his decision to choose off-center roles rather than the heart-throb or action adventure crap that actors like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise stay mired in, I haven't seen all of JD's films, particularly not the Hollywood blockbuster Pirates.

So my peeps and I rented the first Pirates and ventured off to see the sequel on the big screen. Though Pirates I began slowly (at least for my taste), it was relatively funny. There was also a fair amount of gender-bending and historically appropriate puns for the educated film viewer. Then we were off to the mall multiplex to see what further adventures and mishaps Disney would dream up for Jack Sparrow and crew.

(spoiler warning for those who intend to see Pirates II)

The first oddity I noticed in Pirates II was that there were an inordinate amount of people of color in the new crew: South Asians, Black folks, etc. I was suspicious immediately as Disney productions tend toward racial stereotyping (and that's putting it lightly). Even in the first Pirates, as my friend at Negroshire pointed out to me before I saw the film, we get an entire film set in the Caribbean in the 1700s and we don't see one slave, no mention of slavery, nothing. Of course a historically accurate depiction of British slavery and imperialism and their exploitation of West Indians and South Asians is outside the purview of "the wonderful world of Disney."

Right in line with imperialist discourse, however, in Pirates II Jack Sparrow's crew gets captured by "savages". These indigenous people of Dominica are portrayed as cannibals who are dumb enough to mistake Jack for a god and even dumber still, they resolve to go after (and presumably cook and eat) the crew's dog after Jack and his white crewmates escape (yeh, remember what I said about the colored crew? they get killed). Prior to seeing the film, I had no idea about the cannibal subplot (but thanks to my spoiler, now you do). I also didn't realize that Indian organizations were calling for a boycott of the film or I wouldn't have seen it.

As if cannibals weren't enough, the film brings in Tia Dalma, a sexualized "voodoo woman," to help the white people ("tia" means aunt in Spanish; I'll let you figure this one out). While I'm not terribly surprised about the perpetuation of these sorts of racist stereotypes in 2006, this just seemed over the top for me ... and really unnecessary (for more on Pirates' racism, see debunking white and official shrub) . The storyline about the flying Dutchman could have stood alone as an adventure plot, which should make people wonder why the filmmaker made the decisions he made: to off the colored crew, to include racist humor at the expense of degrading indigenous people, to bring in a hypersexualized "magical" black woman. Are these images so ingrained in our culture that they just go unquestioned? Are they naturalized at this point? I'm sure lighthearted filmgoers will say I'm making much ado about a silly film. But isn't the fact that Hollywood keeps perpetuating these images reason enough to make a big deal about it?