Friday, July 7, 2017

Bonus Post: Okay, So, About Pirates...

Okay, kids fellow adults, we have to talk about Pirates of the Caribbean.
The internet has been losing its collective mind over the past several days concerning the announcement that major changes are planned for Pirates in no fewer than three parks—Paris, Orlando, and our own Anaheim. The one garnering the most attention is a proposed overhaul of the Auction scene, where instead of male pirates auctioning off women as “brides,” including a very sultry (and suspiciously cooperative) redhead, the redhead herself will be a pirate auctioning off inanimate loot such as luxury furniture.
The announcement has garnered two basic flavors of reaction. Long-term fans of Disney theme parks are deep in mourning over the imminent demise of one of the most iconic scenes in the single greatest theme park ride every constructed. On the other hand, many feminists are celebrating the fact that a chronically objectified female character is finally being empowered and made the captain* of her own destiny.
As a long-term fan of Disneyland who is also a feminist, I can see both sides. As I suspect most of my readers are more familiar with (and in accordance with) the theme park fan arguments, I am going to play a bit of devil's advocate and explain the feminist point of view, as well as addressing some of the common complaints from the fans.

Please do not take this to mean that I am in any way in favor of the announcement. I think there is a bona-fide dilemma here, in that it's pretty obvious something ought to be done, but there is no indication as to what the best, most appropriate something is.
See, here's the thing. The Auction scene is not only iconic, but genuinely brilliant in its design, with layers and layers of vintage Marc Davis wit. But that doesn't change the fact that it is, in fact, a depiction of sex trafficking. Played for laughs. In a family theme park.
In 1967, after the Sexual Revolution but before second-wave feminism, this must have seemed a real corker. But there's no way we'd tolerate it if the ride were first built today. Awareness of the horrible realities of sex trafficking, and sexual violence against women in general, has never been higher. I have heard from people unfamiliar with the ride who were flabbergasted that such a scene a) was included in the first place, and b) has lasted as long as it has.
A common defense of the Auction scene is that, well, pirates are bad people who do bad things. If we are too sensitive to witness those bad things, why even have a ride about pirates at all? This argument misses a great deal in the realm of context. We witness a wide variety of nefarious deeds on this ride, from the cannon attack on the fort to the torching of the town, and most of it rarely sees criticism from the public. This is likely because we don't witness the effect of most of it on the victims. We don't see soldiers injured by cannonfire or children rendered homeless and destitute by the ransacking of their hometown. We do see the gentlemen of the town, lined up and made to witness the torture of the mayor for information, in a direct parallel to the auction scene, but I think even it comes across less harsh than the auction by current sensibilities, perhaps because a) the victims are men,** and b) the nature of the crime against them is something that most people don't worry about happening to them in real life.
But there is another reason the “pirates are bad” argument doesn't sit right with me, and it's that I'm not sure Pirates of the Caribbean does take the position that pirates are bad. The ride has always presented its buccaneers a bit ambiguously; distinctive characterization and witty dialogue cannot help but make them sympathetic even as we are supposed to deplore their choice of career. And now that the film series has gotten involved, things are even muddier—Curse of the Black Pearl pits one morally gray pirate against an entire crew of utterly villainous ones, but the sequels present the pirate characters in a progressively rosy light and mostly cast non-pirates as their antagonists. I would argue that the franchise, taken as a whole, encourages us to identify with the pirates, to see their marauding as good messy fun and approve of what they do. The townsfolk are probably horrible stuffed-shirts anyway. They deserve to be raided.***
The next objection is along the lines of “But it's art, and art sometimes makes people uncomfortable or violates social norms,” and this is absolutely true. Much of the cleverness and humor in the Auction scene is rooted in its trangressiveness, in the sheer audacity of depicting what it depicts. But we must face the fact that those of us who engage with it as art are surely in the distinct minority. The vast majority of guests in those boats, particularly the children, are instead engaging with the scene as entertainment. Now is probably not the time to go into the relationship between art and entertainment, but I think we can all accept that there is a difference, and that engaging with something on the level of entertainment is usually a more passive and shallow process than engaging with it on the level of art. It comes down to an issue of what sort of message Disney is prepared to send to people who are not prepared to address said message critically.
And that, basically, is where we find ourselves and where the decision-makers in charge of Disney theme parks find themselves. As a society, we have finally reached a point where the Auction scene as we know it is no longer acceptable. Again, this does not mean I am in favor of the proposed change. But I don't consider it a travesty as such. Rather, I consider it a shame...and the crux of the shame is that we reached this point now, and not at a time when we could be confident that Imagineering was equipped to give us a quality replacement.


* Pirate pun.
** It's not cool that we as a society are more comfortable with men being victimized than women, but it is what it is. I'm just analyzing the issue here.
*** I'll leave the implications regarding the Auction scene up to your own deductive reasoning abilities.

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