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And it looks like (if it's the same ring, and I think it is) Jack/Depp is wearing the ring - prominently - on the cover of Rolling Stone. Whether that means anything, I don't know, but it does offer some slender support to the "not merely a throwaway moment" hypothesis -- "keep the ring visible, make it part of the Captain's recognizable image."
Flyboy, I'm curious to hear what you feel is specifically problematic about Tia Dalma (not that I disagree - they're definitely at least skirting the edges of some uncomfortable territory - but I suspect you'll be able to articulate it better than my own vague unease).
As for the cannibals, it was interesting to see what a big deal Disney made in the official press kit about the "completely and utterly fictional (i.e. "made up") tribe the Pelogostians, and their completely made up (i.e. "fictional") language that is based completely on fiction and accounts from pirate folklore that have nothing to do with real people like the Caribs, whom our 'let's pretend' cannibal Pelogostians don't even resemble." I wouldn't say that gets them off the hook, really, at all, but they seemed to be running around in circles to emphasize that "no real people were defamed during the making of this movie and, if you asked them, our lawyers would agree with us." Unfortunately, there is a thick vein of (probably unconscious/unintentional, but no less palpable) racist imagery running through both movies, which makes it harder to write off any individual instance.
One potential problem that comes with reviving a genre - "The Pirate Movie" - that's been effectively dead for 40-50 years (and was firmly rooted in genre literature from an even earlier period), is that of reproducing the iconic imagery associated with that genre without considering how times have changed. Aside from the cannibals and that sort of story-level thing, the basic design elements "pirates crews were ethnically diverse" (historically true) and "pirates were ugly/dirty/savage" combine to give you a lot of ugly, dirty, savage, nonwhite pirates menacing, say, Kiera Knightly in her nightgown, in a way that reinforces some distinctly uncomfortable ideas (e.g. as soon as she steps onboard the Black Pearl in PotC1, she is viciously backhanded by a towering, bald, tribal-scarred African man - the same man who later pushes her off the plank in her underwear - and is "rescued" by the more outwardly "civilized"-looking European, Barbossa). Surely they could have found a way to work around the most obvious problems, but they didn't.
And it's too bad, because like PJ's King Kong (you want horrific cannibals??), there was so much that was so good about the movie, and I want so much to be able to enjoy it/defend it unconditionally, but... |
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