this is a meta on izzy and stede, but it’s also a meta commentary on fandom, and like, american (and canadian and european and white-dominated society as a whole) i guess, but i’m going to start with the reasons i talk about race so much in ofmd in particular
because i’m involved in a lot of things! i watch a lot of shows, read a decent amount of books, follow along with a number of stories, but the one i’m mainly talking about race in, right now, is ofmd, and it’s for - two real reasons.
the first is that ofmd invites the racial conversation. this show analyzes whiteness, and it does it in a way that i think is easy to miss, because its not making a great production of it, anymore than it makes a production of the rest of its interrogation of toxic masculinity (because whiteness/white supremacy are pretty big elements in toxic masculinity), but the thing about all of these characters is, ofmd writes them in such a way that there isn’t the background assumption of white as neutral white as natural white as non-racial, white as default.
a LOT of media writes from the perspective of white as neutral, normal, and natural, mostly because white people don’t tend to consciously think of themselves as white. there’s an awareness, of course, that they are a white person, but i would bet dollars to dimes that the vast majority of white people tend to think of themselves as people more than white people. the tags and comments i see in my activity feed definitely support that this is happening in the ofmd fandom (and no one should feel ashamed of that!)
but here’s the thing: that’s a privilege. because as a black woman in america, i am always aware that i am *not* defaut, that my perspective is not the norm, that to many people writing from the black pov is a Very Special Episode topic at best.
and our flag means death knows that, because they don’t write whiteness to be neutral and default, but as something commented on. stede and izzy in particular, but every white character on the show, are written not just as people but as *white people* and that difference comes from the fact that its got a hugely diverse writing and production team, to be honest. it comes from the actors having input on their characters, their designs, and their backstories. it comes from not being a product of whiteness, but a product of diverse and inclusive writing. by writing in this way, our flag means death invites the attention. it invites its audience not to see stede and izzy and wee john and buttons and lucius and black pete and the swede as just people, but as *white people*.
and the show starts doing this as early as the first episode, when we watch stede invite the british navy to his ship, and dress up most of his white crew and give them outfits and backgrounds - and has roach, oluwande, and frenchie get geared up to be servants. it starts the conversation by showing us how stede misses the barely hidden racism of the british officers, by showing us how roach, and frenchie, and oluwande, very pointedly do *not* miss it.
this is a show that wants us to know that not only does racism exist in this world in general, but one of its chief tools of violence - silence - is present here too.
i think this is missed because a lot of people are just not used to thinking of white as a race and the white perspective as being a racialized perspective, rather than a neutral one. i notice this the most when i see discussions of stede and izzy, because there is a LOT of discussion of the two of them as gay people, of stede experiencing homophobia, of izzy being written as a repressed gay man from another genre, reams of valuable discussion about the class angle, and how stede is rich and that shapes his view as much as izzy’s probably lower-class origins do -
but i only really see other people of color talking about the race angle, especially with these characters, which is astounding because the show very deliberately invites us to see how izzy and stede move through the world as *white* men. we see it in the way that stede sits for dinner with the british navy as they call his crew slaves and insinuate their tea was made by savages - and then see izzy sit down for negotations with the british navy, at a meeting he called - spanish jackie makes it clear that she didn’t call the meeting, saying she doesn’t like having them in her bar - that the british navy would come to. stede and izzy can make these things happen because they’re white men. they have power here, that other characters would not and do not, because they are white men, in a white man’s world.
and our flag means death wants us to know that.
it wants us to know that when stede sits among his white peers, who have never accepted him, that this isn’t just a moment of homophobia (though don’t get me wrong, its there), but of racism, of stede choosing to punch down by agreeing and escalating these men’s otherization of edward teach (“bloodthirsty killer” “born of the devil”) so that he can fit with them - an option *only* available to him because he is white, like they are white, because he is a white man. it wants us to think about the racism inherent in izzy being given ed as payment, being made *captain* and given custody of blackbeard as payment for services to the crown, and it challenges us to see this in any way other than a white man being given both ownership of an indigenous man and a promotion, by the local Great White Authority
our flag means death is having a conversation about race. about whiteness. about the ways that violence is not just physical, but emotional, is not just loud, but silent. if izzy is the overt violence, stede is the silent genteel pressure that comes after the colonization is complete, that asks why are you still so angry, aren’t we past that? don’t pay heed to a man without a single tureen on board (never mind that you also don’t have a tureen ed, that you may have never heard of them, that this is a product of uppercrust whiteness (french uppercrust whiteness, to be specific) )
and that’s not to say these men are ONLY those things, but this IS an element of the show, an undercurrent, and i can tell, again, from the notes and tags left on my posts, and the posts of other people who talk about race dynamics in this show, that these conversations are being missed by a good chunk of the fandom and the fanbase.
if you are approaching izzy and stede and lucius and mary (the white characters who get the most discussion) from angles of masculinity, or patriarchy, or sexuality, or gender expression, or class, and you are not talking about race, then you are missing a huge chunk of the conversation.
and honestly, a part of me is surprised to be making this post at all! because these are things that JUMPED out at me when i was first watching. these are things i saw on first watched, or understood on second, because as a black woman watching this show it is impossible for me to miss the racial dynamics here. it is impossible for me not to see stede as a WHITE man first, izzy as a WHITE man first, lucius as a WHITE man first.
and when there is a racial discussion, often its focused on blackness, or on ed’s maori heritage, and these are good and valuable discussions - but we HAVE to analyze the whiteness! we have to talk about WHITENESS. white is a race. white is a race. white has a central role to play in race dynamics and letting it go unsaid and unremarked - it clouds the conversation. evades the nuances.
so thats the first reason i talk about race all the time, when i make meta on this show.
the other reason i talk about race a lot, when i dig into this show, is because in the most honest and sincere way i can say it: there’s a whole lot of fucking racism in this fandom man, and its amazing because the show *evades all of this racism*.
and i need people to not hit the back button when i say this, to not run away, because racism and racist have somehow, to a portion of the population, especially in white spaces, become a matter of insult rather than a matter of harm. people here “you did something racist” and think they have been insulted and make it about them, instead of thinking about the ways this means they’ve hurt someone, the ways that they’ve exposed a part of themselves they need to work on. and like. we are all racist. we all have implicit bias. it is part and parcel of living in the world.
and it manifests in two ways!
there’s the racism in how ed is depicted and talked about in fanwork and meta, in how he is infantilized, otherized, made both a monster and an infantile child, too unstable to take care of himself, too monstrous to be trusted alone, in need of a (white) (man) person to mind him.
there is a truly astounding number of fanworks that feature ed just monstrously beating down on izzy, making him his ultimate victim, working out his temper with terrifying rage that we never see him display, in the show.
when we see ed angry in the show, its always in response to direct and cruel provocations, like being called a donkey, like being mocked for mourning being dumped, like realizing he’s been the subject of a party full of white people’s mockery without knowing it, and that anger is always pretty damned focused and controlled. it’s channeled into having the captain skinned, into a single push and threat to shut izzy up, it’s calmly reaching for his gun, it’s purposefully cutting away a single toe. the one exception is when a snake literally falls from the sky on top of him, at which point *massive aggression* is called for, to be honest. but what we don’t see is ed throwing dishware and bottles at walls, even when they’re available. what we don’t see is him brutally beating people down, stabbing them mindlessly, shooting them carelessly.
the caricature of a man that ed becomes in some fanworks is just, mind-boggling because i genuinely don’t think people recognize the specter of racism they’re summoning when they exaggerate ed’s capacity for violence in this way.
i’ve made a couple of posts (and seen yet more) about how ed is a genius, is beyond capable, has control of himself and his surroundings, and yet, there is an equally prevailing amount of fanworks that suggest that ed can’t take care of himself. that he can’t remember basic details without someone to remind him, that he needs izzy to put on his knee brace, that he needs stede to keep him on an even keel, never mind that izzy and stede are both more erratic than ed -
they are white men. their competence is assumed and understood and accepted.
ed is indigenous. ed is brown. his instability is assumed and understood and accepted, never mind that it is unsupported in the show.
the benefit of the doubt given to izzy, that he means well, that he isn’t homophobic, but just hates infidelity, that he isn’t controlling or cruel but poorly expressing his worries for ed - this are the olive branches afforded him by whiteness, because the history of film and television is the history of exploring the humanity of white men, even when they are cruel, even when they are unkind, even when they revel in their capacity to hurt others
the way that stede’s faults are softened, the way that fans rewrite the show to say that he went home for closure, for clarity, that he was always going to come back. that he couldn’t control himself when he fled, that it was trauma, that it was dissociation that made him travel all the way home to his family and spend several days to up to a week or longer there -
the devil works hard but white fans determined to see culpability washed away from their white faves work harder.
and meanwhile, on the flip side, some of those same fans will say that actually, ed is at fault for everything izzy has done, and that when ed invited izzy to speak his mind, he lost the right to be angry when izzy called him a thing and said he should have been killed by the english and called him a namby-pamby pining for his boyfriend. that he deserved that because he hadn’t been listening to izzy and now izzy is pissed.
can you see the difference in good faith, in compassion, afforded here? izzy can be pissed that he was metatextually dumped and therefore tell a man he supposedly loves, supposedly sacrificed everything for, that he is a thing rather than a person, that he should be dead, but ed can be told those things but doesn’t have the right to get angry or make it stop.
this is what i’m taling about when i say there is racism deep in this fandom. the implicit bias. the overt good faith offered to white characters, the bad faith turned towards ed. the exaggeration of izzy and stede’s good characteristics and ed’s bad ones.
none of this is to say that the ofmd fandom is a garbage fire or that its hopeless. i actually love this fandom because i love this show and i love seeing people’s passions for it. but if we don’t talk about these things, they’ll never get better. and frankly, i want to see this fandom get better. i think this show deserves it. i think the fans deserve it.
i think if we want to really appreciate this show, we have to see the all the characters, from all the facets of their identity, because this writing team, and this production team, and these actors, they are showing them to us on purpose.
