How the Pirate movies deconstruct the Chosen Narrative
Okay, I made a post about this a week or so ago and someone asked to elaborate. So let me elaborate. Because mother in Christ, the Pirate movies were doing things that were more interesting than what most at the time gave them credit for. Even without movies 2 and 3 planned from the beginning, there really was something interesting going on, that clearly was deliberate. And it is how the movies relate to gender, fiction itself, and the Chosen One narrative.
Because at their core the trilogy (there are only three movies, don't @ me!) is a deconstruction of both classical adventure and romance stories. And in this function as a deconstruction the movies are also in a constant conversation with the Hero's Journey.
That is why the idea of Elizabeth as the protagonist of the movies is so important. Because that is something that is core to how the deconstruction functions.
I do remember the discussions when the movie came out. Because I picked up on Elizabeth as the main character early on, and while most people could agree that Jack was not the main character, despite being the most memorable aspect of the movie, a lot of people picked Will as the main character. Because he looks the part. He looks like the kind of character you would expect on the cover of a penny dreadful pirate adventure. And this is actually the point.
Because even the narrative in the universe believes that this is how it should be. Both Will and Jack are the "touched by destiny", meaning in the function of the story, they are de facto Chosen Ones. They technically are the Hero from Campbell's Hero's Journey.
Only that both of them have given up by the beginning of the first film.
I will never stop rambling about this: the movies are set around 1740. The Golden Age of Piracy is over. We now full in Mercantilism, baby. Colonialism is gearing up even more. Slavery is in full swing. The white people are going ahead on the entire manifesting of destiny shit. And the story knows this.
Jack was the Child of Destiny. He learned swimming from mermaids. Tia Dalma, the ocean goddess, had a personal relationship with him. But he starts the movie having given up. Explicitly.
I will never stop rambling about this: Elizabeth grew up fascinated by pirates. She grew up reading about pirates. She grew up reading about the Adventures of Jack Sparrow. He was to her the hero of stories she used to escape a real world that was made of as a society, in which she never could be anything but a woman. Her father loves her dearly, but he knows that Norrington, whom she does not love, is as good as it is going to get for her, because at least he loves her. Norrington would treat her with respect, would allow her as many freedoms as polite society can afford a woman. Which is not many, but it is something. And when he proposes to her, those societal expectations are literally suffocating her. She falls, she nearly drowns, and there comes Jack, the protagonist of the stories she used to flee, and cuts away the corset - the societal expectations.
This leads to the wonderful sequence of Jack trying to escape, meeting Will, and then ultimately being caught. Not because of Will, but because of the drunk old smith hitting him over the head. And as we see Jack in the prison cell, we see someone who has given up.
He is at this point in the narrative not really a character. He is a symbol. Of the ideals of piracy. The ideal of freedom. But Piracy is over, and freedoms get fewer and fewer. Piracy by now serves the colonizers. Most pirates are buccaneers, sailing under the protection of Letters of Marque, just another part in the mercantile system, and even this is coming to an end.
And Will, while unhappy with his position, has made his peace with it as well.
But of course... Elizabeth falling into the water send out the call to the cursed pirates. But... this also means in a strange way it was her sending out a cry for help. Which is why the relationship between her and Barbossa is so interesting. I would argue it is the most interesting in the trilogy. (Again, dont @ me xD)
So then the pirates arrive. And it is in this situation that Elizabeth acts. Will tries to act and fails. Jack does not even try to escape his prison. But Elizabeth does. She has a moment, and she takes her agency. And it is this moment of agency that actually gets all the plot to happen.
While the rescue operation that follows feels at times as if it is doing the "rescue the damsel" trope straightforward, it does not. Elizabeth refuses to get rescued. Again and again the plot is driven ahead by her refusing to be passive, by her asserting her agency.
To me, the most interesting part of the first movie is Jack and Elizabeth on the island. Because Jack functions in the scene as the temptress from the Hero's Journey. It is the situation from that myth, but genderflipped. But at the same time it also serves another function: in that scene Jack becomes real to Elizabeth. Till this moment he was that fictionalized ideal, and now he is a broken man, who is very ready to sit on this island and drink himself to death. He is the Chosen One, he had his adventure, and in the end he failed, so all he can do is drink himself to death. And Elizabeth once more refuses. She burns the rum.
You cannot talk about Jack Sparrow, without talking about colonialism, because in the end colonialism is the thing that killed Jack Sparrow.
Jack was branded a pirate for freeing slaves. Even before the additional materials were written, this was always a part of the story of Jack Sparrow. It was in the audio commentary of the DVD of the first movie (ah, remember audio commentary?). He was not branded for anything else. He was branded because he was a captain, he was told to ship slaves, and he refused, instead freeing them. Because Jack is an idealist at heart. And his ideal is Freedom. He has a whole speech about that on that island.
And this is where I direct your attention to the rum.
Because on the surface this is just a fun little character quirk, right? He drinks rum. Ha! He is a drunk! Now he is angry because the rum is gone. Because sea folk drank a lot of rum! Sure, we can talk about how this is addiction played for laughs, but there is actually something more going on here.
Rum was a colonial product. Rum is a product of the slave trade. There was no rum at the time that was not created with slave labor. The sugarcane grown in the Caribbean was the basis for the rum trade. Heck, a lot of slaves were purchased in Africa by paying the slave catchers in rum. Those slaves then were shipped to the colonies to harvest sugarcane, tobacco and cotton. Rum is a colonial product. And it is all Jack has left at this point - without a ship and a crew - to delude himself into a sense of freedom.
Am I overanalyzing this? Possibly. But it definitely is a reading!
Either way, the core of Jack as a character is that he is a Chosen who has failed. A chosen who has given up. And this becomes even more important in the second movie. Because the second movie constructs a narrative in which most characters are acting as if Jack is the hero from Campbell's story.
There is an Abyss, and it is calling for Jack.
And the movie ends by seemingly fulfilling this narrative piece. Now Elizabeth is in fact the seductress, and she seduces him, and for it he ends in the Abyss.
Only that it does not resolve the plot.
There is of course one specific mythological text that the trilogy is in dialogue with: the Odyssey. Sure, not very specifically. But the structure is very clearly mimicking the Odyssey. They are people sailing across a sea of monsters. It is the Odyssey, just... in a version where Penelope became Odysseus.
And it is Odysseus that has to go to the Underworld.
The entire scene of Elizabeth tricking Jack into facing the Kraken is really interesting in the context of the trilogy, because it is the one moment where she accepts the classical role given to her as a woman: the temptress, rather than the hero. And, of course, it leads to a situation where everything gets worse. And this eventually leads to her having to go to the Underworld herself.
And it is in the Underworld that the Elizabeth = Odysseus thing becomes clear. Odysseus goes into the Underworld to find a prophet and finds his mother. Elizabeth goes into the Underworld to find Jack and finds her father. It is basically a gender flipped version. Having looked at the Odyssey upon realizing it: yeah, the father in the boat scene was clearly, clearly meant to mirror the Odyssey. No doubt about that.
And narratively this also means: yes, Elizabeth is explicitly the protagonist. For the story to progress she was the one to have to go into the Underworld/the Abyss.
And again, this is interesting, because out of our three central characters, Elizabeth is the one who is not a Chosen. She is the one who chooses. She is the one character who enacts agency.
The Hero's Journey and why Elizabeth should not Wait at the Shore
And here we are back at Campbell. Because again, these movies are in a constant conversation with Campbell and his Hero's Journey. Only that they are clearly recognizing something: the hero's journey is a colonial narrative. Campbell was in his writing of this analysis performing an act of analytical Imperialism, if you will.
Are there a lot of stories that follow this formular? Yeah, obviously. Because this is how mythology developed. By stories being told and retold and changed. The Brothers Grimm have done a lot of analytical work on this, you should look it up.
However, Campbell did not look at it in the same way the Brothers Grimm did. He tried to make all stories fit this narrative, and it was a colonial, patriarchal narrative. In his Monomyth there is only men as heroes, and women are mothers, temptresses and lovers, but never the character who has agency.
There has a lot of commentary been written on this, I will not go into it too much.
But here it is the point in Pirates.
Because that is what the characters are working against.
So, the post that triggered this post was the one about how Jack and Will are Chosen, but Elizabeth - the only not Chosen - is the protagonist. And this is because the Pirates trilogy is an antithesis to the Hero's Journey, that actively recognizes the Hero's Journey as a colonial narrative.
Jack is a failed chosen. He quite literally is that. He is a failed chosen, who has largely given up and is drowning himself in the liquid that itself came from the colonial violence. And he has failed as a chosen - he is a captain without a ship - because he refused the colonial violence. Jack was born a pirate, but he refused that role originally. He wanted to be a classical hero of sorts. But he could not stand slavery. He freed the slaves. And for that he was branded a pirate, and his ship was sunk. So he made the contract with Davy Jones to retrieve the Pearl from the depth. Only to lose her again almost instantly, once more by refusing to participate in colonial violence (stealing of native treasure). So now he has given up. The narrative quite literally punished him for not participating in the colonial violence.
And Will does try to perform the role of the hero. Only that he cannot, because in the colonial narrative him, who is not a prince, but a pauper, does not have a place either, and he is too agreeable to rebel much against this. He should be the dashing hero, and at times he does manage. But in the end... Well.
And then there is Elizabeth. As many a character notes in the trilogy: a woman. The kind of character who in Campbell's colonial Monomyth was erased and pushed to the side. And she becomes the hero. Because she is the character to push back against this narrative. Because she is a woman. Because she is the character that under the colonial myth should not have a place. She is Penelope who decides to leave, who becomes Odysseus.
And that... is why the ending is bullshit.
The entire point of the story is to say: "Hey, those adventure stories, they do not work. They are built on systems of oppression. That's bad, actually. So these characters push back against their preassigned roles."
But then the ending goes: "But also Penelope waited at the shore." And that just does not make any sense. That is what those movies deconstructed. You cannot go back on that.
Now, of course, the typical answer to this that will be on the lips of those who know me: "For you, everything is about colonialism!" Which... is fair. 100%. You are right. That is one of my favorite analytical frameworks. Guilty as charged.
But there are two things that make me think this entire reading was at least to some degree intentional: Tia Dalma and the specific wording for the chosen.
Tia Dalma is Calypso. And Calypso in this universe is the sea herself. And she is by the narrative a bound Black woman. The pirate lords bound her, because the pirate lords are not actually originally against colonialism. They are tools of it. And as these tools they tame the world. They tame the sea. And the sea is a Black woman. And I am sorry, that does feel very, very on the nose.
And secondly the wording. Destiny. Touched by Destiny. Not fate. Almost all older narratives, legendary narratives would call their heroes fated or fate-touched. Not touched by Destiny.
But where do we see the word Destiny creep up again and again?
Yeah, it is manifesting real hard here. Destiny is the word used in the colonial myth.
Because here is the other thing: the Pirates movies provide us with a very lived in universe. It really feels alive and lived in. But it also is dying. And the noticable thing is... the pirates have all those myths. And they have tamed the sea. And Davy Jones is a legend. Only... that it is fake. Calypso was bound probably 80 or so years ago. Not even yet a century. Which tracks. The Golden Age of Piracy did not last that very long. The Pirate Code? Probably written about 60 or so years ago. (I should note that while the movies reference a lot of real pirate history, Morgan and Batholomew writing the code is kinda hard to imagine, given that Morgan died when Batholomew was 6.) It is fake.
Because the colonial myth is fake. It is an attempt to justify and mythologize oppression. And at least that these movies are clearly very aware off.
So, am I overanalyzing? Maybe. But the movies were definitely cooking. And they were cooking good.
