The broken oar and the gear of foreign dead men

[sovay]

So I feel like I owe writeups of several things, including Readercon and the movie I saw last night, but what you're getting right now is a list of different movies altogether. Over dinner tonight, derspatchel and I were pipe-dreaming the program for a festival of maritime film. (I don't even remember. I think we were talking about John Ford.) Inevitably, it's kind of a list of our favorites. So far we agree on—

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), dir. Frank Lloyd

Captain Blood (1935), dir. Michael Curtiz

Captains Courageous (1937), dir. Victor Fleming¹

The Long Voyage Home (1940), dir. John Ford

The Cruel Sea (1953), dir. Charles Frend

The Caine Mutiny (1954), dir. Edward Dmytryk

Moby Dick (1956), dir. John Huston

The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), dir. John Sayles

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), dir. Gore Verbinski²

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), dir. Peter Weir

We very regretfully did not include either 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) or Treasure Island (1950), although James Mason and Robert Newton are deservedly classic and inimitable in each.³ I am uncertain whether A Night to Remember (1958) counts as maritime film or just a disaster movie that occurs aboard a ship, albeit a wrenching and excellent example of the form. (You will notice Cameron's Titanic (1997) is not on this list.) I am also not sure I can count Splash (1984), formative sea-movie of mine though it is, and I know I can't count Pacific Rim (2013), although somehow it feels like one should. There are no documentaries; there should be some. Some more recent films couldn't hurt. And something non-American. Also it has not escaped my notice that this list of directors is kind of a dickfest and I cannot believe women never make movies about the sea. Tell me what we're missing!

1. If, as my husband stipulates, the audience remembers that the very last lines are terrible.

2. The first movie remains the best example of swashbuckling I have seen since Errol Flynn. I love so much about the second and third, but they are so wildly inconsistent I cannot in good conscience include them. Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman and Calypso/Tia Dalma: fantastic. Elizabeth Swann coming into her piracy: could've used more, but that's why we have fanfic. The cannibal island and whatever the hell was going on with Singapore: naaarp.

3. Newton's Long John Silver is extremely imitable, but that is part of his glory.

Comments

[sovay]

(I think the rape plotline is a lot easier to tolerate when you know that Max isn't a disposable character being broken to show how grimdark things are, she's going to be taking over the world for the rest of the show)

Wait a minute, so on top of everything else you are telling me that Black Sails is a TV-length songfic of "Pirate Jenny"?

[rydra_wong]

Wait a minute, so on top of everything else you are telling me that Black Sails is a TV-length songfic of "Pirate Jenny"?

YES!!! *frantic nodding* (For multiple characters in the show, but especially for Max.) To the point where I have already semi-seriously considered re-learning how to vid so I could make the vid.

[sovay]

To the point where I have already semi-seriously considered re-learning how to vid so I could make the vid.

MAKE THE VID. I CAN PAY YOU IN NO CURRENCY BUT MOVIE REVIEWS BUT MAKE THE VID.

[rydra_wong]

personally so far I think it comes down to "it depends how she'd personally choose to identify if brought into the present day and required to choose between two 20th-century terms neither of which even has equivalents in her historical context"

(Having written this, I realized that, if brought into the present day and required to choose between two 20th-century terms neither of which even has equivalents in her historical context, the most likely answer is that she would stab you with a fucking sword. Especially since this is essentially her canonical response to identity crises.)

[rydra_wong]

assuming it doesn't wreck itself in Season Four.

I gather that it doesn't! I am semi-spoiled for S4 (and have hit a point of not wanting to be more spoiled before I watch it); I gather there were things that caused fannish debate and upset, things that made people cry with joy, and the general sense is that yeah, they stuck the landing.

(Such are the advantages of closed canon.)

[rydra_wong]

and I would enjoy seeing what that looks like on TV

Among other things, this (gratuitous gifset): http://havingbeenbreathedout.tumblr.com/post/164064291734

These posts are also great because the original poster appears to have similar feelings to mine about the meaningfulness of romantic vs. not romantic definitions, which I don't see a lot

I actually wasn't entirely sure whether you two knew each other (I'm not sure why I thought you might, but there seemed to be some common interests).

[rydra_wong]

Why so?

It's not the fault of the actor, I think, and it's kind of a hazard of the part -- given that they have a lead character who loathes having forced himself into the role of a pirate, and another character who doesn't want to be a pirate but is doomed by literary destiny to become one, they need a character who is Unconflictedly Pirate Who Just Wants To Pirate. Which is liable to be less interesting.

But they don’t ever manage to give the character any internal conflicts beyond two tropes I find among the most tedious imaginable: ”Must be Strong Man!” vs. “I wish to fuck this woman, who weakens me with her assertion of her own goals!” and “This is a Father Figure!” vs. “Must rebel against Father Figure to become my own man!” (the latter played out twice).

Also, he doesn't give a shit about his crew committing gang rape, which while realistic also puts the character well over a moral event horizon for me, and makes it a lot harder for me to enjoy him.

(There's no logical consistency in this given the mass-murdering ways of some of the characters I do love; it's just a thing.)

Definitely an individual mileage thing, though; plenty of people seem to have enjoyed the character hugely.

[sovay]

I actually wasn't entirely sure whether you two knew each other (I'm not sure why I thought you might, but there seemed to be some common interests).

Unless they were/are on LJ/Dreamwidth under a different name, no. I don't have a Tumblr. I read about a half-dozen belonging to friends, but that's it. I understand that a lot of fandom has migrated there, but it is the kind of social media platform, like Twitter, with which it would be actively unhealthy for me to interact. I'm not even doing so hot with Dreamwidth right now.

[sovay]

Having written this, I realized that, if brought into the present day and required to choose between two 20th-century terms neither of which even has equivalents in her historical context, the most likely answer is that she would stab you with a fucking sword.

I mean, I consider that a legitimate response to many questions about sexual identity.

[sovay]

Definitely an individual mileage thing, though; plenty of people seem to have enjoyed the character hugely.

That's fair, but I appreciate the answer. It does seem to me that Pirate Who Just Unconflictedly Wants to Pirate is not an archetype that needs to have quite such stereotypically macho tropes attached to it. [edit] Especially not on a show with that many canonically female and/or queer pirates!

[rydra_wong]

*nods* I don't have a Tumblr, but intermittently read some that belong to friends or that I've stumbled across via link-hopping and find interesting (havingbeenbreathedout being in the latter category).

[sovay]

and the general sense is that yeah, they stuck the landing.

Excellent! I'm glad to hear it; even some very good shows don't.

[rydra_wong]

*nods* It's very fair and reasonable, really.

[rydra_wong]

But but but it also possibly needs to be vidded to P.O.S.'s "Thieves/Kings". And Dar Williams "The Ocean", but only if "I" and "you" can at various points mean at least three different characters. Also I need to actually watch season 4. Also I can't vid. It's a problem.

[sovay]

And Dar Williams "The Ocean", but only if "I" and "you" can at various points mean at least three different characters.

I don't see why not. You can do that sort of thing with editing. Also I love that song.

Also I need to actually watch season 4. Also I can't vid. It's a problem.

*hopeful look anyway*

[rydra_wong]

Also I love that song.

*muffled shrieking*

Okay, this is the point where I have to restrain myself and not spam you with all the lines which would be piercingly applicable to Black Sails and Flint is the one who lives with the ocean but also he is the ocean, and the ones who know you so well are the ones who can swallow you whole and that's what the ocean can know of a body and we've all lost people, haven't we? And this town is a song about you, and you are the welcoming back from the ocean. *flails*

Have a gifset and quote that may speak to you: http://waxjism.tumblr.com/post/166048899996/lmwechirrut-and-one-night-he-was-alone-on-the

"It was as if the sea had conjured that man out of nothing and then taken him back for some unknowable purpose."

at least three different characters.

Self-correction: at least four.

[sovay]

"It was as if the sea had conjured that man out of nothing and then taken him back for some unknowable purpose."

That does resonate. Thank you.

(I am listening to both Dar Williams and Peter Mulvey's versions of "The Ocean" as we speak. Lines I have always loved: "What are you trying to find? I don't care, I'm not kind / I have bludgeoned your sailors, I've spat out their keepsakes / Oh, it's ashes to ashes, but always the ocean—")

Self-correction: at least four.

You've already sold me on the show!

I do want you to relearn how to vid so I can know who they are, though.

[rydra_wong]

I do want you to relearn how to vid so I can know who they are, though.

I suspect if/when you find time to watch the show, the possibilities will be very obvious. Honestly, the biggest problem with this song would be vidding it without being painfully on-the-nose.

[rydra_wong]

Basically this show sounds like it is very normal about a whole bunch of things that are normal for people but vanishingly rare for mainstream TV, especially historical fiction which so often behaves as though queerness was invented by the 1960's or at most the 1930's.

*nodnodnod*

But also -- the queerness is not incidental, it's absolutely intrinsic to the heart of the show (Flint's queerness especially). It's very very much about people who are living marginalized lives (whether because of sexuality or race or gender or disability, but sexuality might be the one the show returns to the most), whose lives are not included in the official histories, who are misrepresented and distorted by the narratives of empire.

Competing narratives, storytelling as politics, who controls the narrative, "who lives who dies who tells your story" is a HUGE element of the show.

These say some important things:

http://kolbrun.tumblr.com/post/159374452877/black-sails-in-its-deepest-dna-is-a-story
http://notkatniss.tumblr.com/post/149532884112/reluming-piningflint
http://notkatniss.tumblr.com/post/160392289757/edwardnygmaa-captain-flint-all-this-will-be
http://some-stars.tumblr.com/post/162942603198/candlewinds-flint-monsters

(I realize you don't need further selling on the show, I'm just in the stage where I need to babble.)

[rydra_wong]

Also this is funny because it's true:

https://twitter.com/philistella/status/910075928751038464

(And given that Talk Like A Pirate Day derives from Newton's Silver, it's all a beautiful circle.)