Don’t be shy: the weirdness of the golden age of TV and piracy

[Ed. note: This post contains light spoilers for Black Sails and Our Flag Means Death]

Our flag is death To put it mildly, there has been a bit of a sensation. The show has seemed a bit unfocused in recent episodes, with both streaming metrics and fan art outpouring. This is not a small part of the romance between Stade Bonnet and Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, who captured the hearts of many, especially the bizarre audience hungry for on-screen representation. Although queer representation has improved over the decades with many ongoing programs featuring queer characters and subplots, it is still rare for series to focus squarely on queer romance, especially in genre programs.

Probably a factor as to why they’re doing so poorly Our flag is death Its romance story marketing – that is, it did not. Those early trailers, teasers, and a handful of episodes centered on Stade Bonnet’s comedy hijacking and the infamous band of pirates. Between Stede and Ed, it’s not like a lust. For viewers who often queer or sometimes do not include anything, the show really seems to come with the excitement of being committed to that romance, not to mention the number of viewers that tripled somewhere between its debut and its finale. . Creator David Jenkins has also commented on the subject; Speaking to The Verge, he said, “I don’t think I felt – because I see myself represented on camera, and I see myself falling in love with the stories – I don’t understand how deep the strange temptation goes. Stupid by the stories, I think . […] [L]It was amazing to see how scared people are to believe what we were doing, and it’s heartbreaking. “

Surprisingly, though, this isn’t the first time a queer pirate show has buried Led. Although the shows don’t share channels, decades, or even sensibilities, the way they gradually reveal the quirks of their heroes reveals how these two shows reflect the different seasons they’ve been released.

Black tentPremiered back in 2014, is a series that serves as a prequel to the classic pirate novel. Treasure Island And a mix of real history. Long John Silver brushes his shoulders with real pirates like Charles Wayne and Annie Bonnie. In spite of any dilemma you can be about its scary Treasure Island Take it, it’s a really thoughtful exploration of history and story. To be sure, it has a fair share of bloody violence and sex; As seen Game of Thrones In the high seas among the critics. What it doesn’t already do is let the audience know that one of its central characters (as the protagonist of the story), Captain Flint, is actually a gay man, and the source of his persecution and persecution under British society. The whole violent search.

In Black tent This twist serves a purpose, laid back half way through the second season. Flint, initially a mystery to viewers and his crew, is a character bigger than life – a reckless, cunning and ruthless pirate, much of the character mentioned in the first reference. Treasure Island. He is allowed to embody hypermasculinity, the old bloodthirsty captain who will do anything for gold. Revealing that he is a homosexual and that his mission is to revolt against the British Empire, to make it a nation free from its rule, complicates everything he has done and will do, making him a revolutionary by hire.

The fact is that Black tent And Our flag The paranoid allusions of the critics of this process were completely substantiated, and the paranoid allusions of the critics of this process were completely substantiated. Both shows play with the concept of our history and celebrities. Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard really did hang out, and that’s why the show is just a leap; Jenkins has made it clear that he is only interested in treating recorded history as a jumping-off point. After all, it’s not clear how much he’s reading about them. To this day, how much strangeness has been removed from records and accounts, either by omission or by individuals’ own discretion.

To retell famous histories as bizarre stories is to put back to our past what was erased from it. Such as Black tent Co-producer John Steinberg told Geek’s Dane about the show’s historical figures: “You have some freedom in the moment you realize that the historical record has been seriously compromised in terms of the lives of these people. They had a purpose to lie, and so did the people of London. […] It gives us room to try to tell a story that will hopefully feel real. It probably doesn’t match what happened to the textbook, but I think the textbook is already a story that someone put on the agenda a long, long time ago.

It is not difficult to read the peculiarities in the present histories, even though the terminology and concept of the ideas were different. Romantic pirates have always been portrayed as campers, a picture perhaps inspired by historical figures such as Jack Rackham, who has been nicknamed Calico Jack because of his colorful costumes. OFMD). Mary Reed spent a part of her life under the name Mark Reed, and whether it’s just a disguise or a fluid gender expression or if they were even trans, it lends itself to a Jim-like story. Our flag is death. The accounts of Blackbird, who spent all his time with Stade Bonnet, can be easily deduced from a queer lens that it is surprising that no story has put such a twist on these figures. Our flag is death.

However, the answer to why no one was stopped may be somewhat similar in the response Black tent‘Own journey in bizarre storytelling.

To be fair, Black tent There are bizarre characters from the beginning – two women, Eleanor and Max – but the first season presents them in the eyes of men in general, as if to attract the general audience. The show has seemed a bit unfocused in recent episodes, but it is not until the second season. While this has provoked a stir among some queer fans, it has equally angered gay people who feel betrayed by revealing that half of the cast is bizarre. The Reddit show is filled with guys against the “gay agenda” who thought they were part of a show about “all about pirates” which also commented on Flint’s actor, Toby Stephens. “Before it was sky, I had this big blow from the boys, but as soon as it happened, it happened that they were betrayed. It was a feeling of complete betrayal and I was surprised because I knew it would be a big deal.” Because Flint does not adhere to the strict standards of his male icon, perhaps nothing has been removed.

Nowadays, however, the TV landscape has changed a lot Black tent Broadcast Streaming services have come to rule the roost and break the monoculture, and the epidemic has given it more shape. Black tent Had to compete against Wire, SopranosAnd Game of Thrones To earn your place at the table. For Our flag is deathWhich is more comedy than drama (and not a TV series of any epic genre, although there are still a lot of old-fashioned razors), things are a little different.

While special effects (developed for revolutionary stagecraft) Mandlorian) Allows Our flag is death While this seems to be happening at sea only a few years ago was reserved for many high-budget shows, they thrive for a series that takes place in large, small sets. That could be a small budget sitcom a decade ago. That small measure may have allowed it to take risks, unfortunately, yet in 2022 it feels bold. It’s not just a romance between Stade and Edward, but a whole cast full of queer characters – a quirk that feels largely unforgettable in its own right, with a team that quietly tolerates and respects each other throughout the series.

Things have moved together over the years, but still, both shows have had to operate under a number of circumstances that are important to them. As both the US and UK grow into homophobia and transphobia, with legislation seeking to target those vulnerable groups, stories Black tent And oThe flag means death Doesn’t sound like a purely historical story. They are stories here and now. Pirates are a way of referring society to “others”, who are excluded and marginalized by the mainstream. The shows invite us to ask why anyone chooses to sit on the sidelines, unpacking their history and motives until their popular image is defeated. Taking the most famous of the pirates and portraying them as a traumatic queer outcast is not as a historical rewriting but as a refutation of the idea of ​​history written by the winners.

In both stories, the British Empire is portrayed as an entity, its worst, all-consuming barbarism, and, at best, all-consuming barbarism, driven by the garb of civilization. It is an institution that not only destroys but revolves reality around itself, reshaping history into its equivalence.

In our day and age, weird people are once again mistaken for villains and boogie men. In a way, Black tent And Our flag is death Always dance on the edge of tragedy. Either they meet the same side as their historical counterparts or we see the bittersweet truth of the stories written from history, their actions are turned into evil. Given that other perspective, suggesting another account, these shows are a rallying cry for bizarre people seeking their place in the world who don’t want their very existence – and a reminder to all who stand against us. History is in them.