It’s not that I want to be pretty, I just want to have the Gay Awakening™️ power of Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swan in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, July 9th 2003.
i can’t talk shit about the pirates of the caribbean films as if elizabeth swann becoming pirate king didn’t hand my entire ass to me and make me the gay i am today
these 2 looks basically defined my sexuality and i’m not afraid to admit it
things pirates of the caribbean got right:
1. will and elizabeth’s love story
2. elizabeth becoming pirate king
3. avoiding sexualizing elizabeth or the other female pirate characters in the first 3 films by allowing them to wear period-accurate pirate outfits that aren’t tailored to be revealing and impractical for ‘sex appeal’ just because they’re women
4. hans zimmer’s entire score but especially the iconic ‘he’s a pirate’ main theme
5. When the movie came out, morally-gray characters like Jack were actually not really a thing yet in pop culture, and it’s not Pirates’ fault that there are a ton of stupid shitty copycats out there.
6. I run a corseting panel at cons and literally use Elizabeth’s lace-up scene as a video clip of what historical corseting was actually like, because the only thing they got wrong in this scene is that tightlacing wouldn’t be a thing for about another 200 years (and you couldn’t tightlace with the corset style Elizabeth is wearing anyway). It’s one of the most accurate corseting scenes I’ve ever seen.
7. Will’s hat.
8. That scene with all the pirates on the gallows where that little boy starts singing Hoist the Colours? Yeah, that’s fucking legendary. The rest of AWE was kind of a trash fire, but that scene gave me goosebumps.
9. There’s this great shot in the first one where they really drive home the class differences inherent in this time period by having the governor talking about progress and civilization to Elizabeth in their carriage, and then they cut to a shot outside the carriage where a beggar gets splashed by mud from the wheel. It’s a perfect way to underline that everything is not, in fact, a nice little upper-class fairytale, and to give some weight to Will’s storyline, because he has a lot more in common with that beggar than with the governor.
10. For its time, the CGI was fucking amazing.
11. And let’s not forget the work of the makeup department, which had to actually invent new ways of putting on makeup for this movie.
12. The governor’s death scene. Holy shit.
13. They could have gone with a Jack/Will/Elizabeth love triangle, but they didn’t. There are some hints Jack is in love (or at least in lust) with Elizabeth, but he recognizes that she loves Will, and that’s that.
14. You’ve got to admit that wedding was unique.
15. The introduction of fantasy elements to historical fiction outside of Tolkein-esque fantasy, and how it contributed to and expanded the Fantasy Media boom we’re still enjoying today.
1. They had a woman of colour play a goddess.
2. They had a woman pirate right in the first film, when the tradition is to only show male ones (hell, the PotC ride at Disney had a wench auction scene until recently). And it was a female pirate of colour at that!
3. Elizabeth may not have known how to fight in the first film, but she wasn’t helpless either. Her first instinct was to fight, but she also had the brains to recognize when it was best to hide instead. Plus when given the chance she stabbed Barbosa that one time.
4. Elizabeth’s lack of fighting ability was not simply because she was a woman, it was clear it was due to her societal circumstances, since we saw other women of different socioeconomic backgrounds being able to fight (and when given the opportunity to learn Elizabeth took to fighting like a duck on water).
5. The Hoist the Colours scene where we see pirates of multiple ethnicities and their varying flags, reminding us that pirates came in all shapes and sizes and weren’t just white men.
6. One of the Pirate Lords being yet ANOTHER woman of colour. She may not have had much of a speaking role if memory serves, but even her presenceis already a big deal.
7. The pirates accepting their King is a woman without much fuss.
Pirates is amazing I will not here a bad word
Davy Jones CGI is legendary and a ton better than some of the stuff done today
I’m pretty sure that female Chinese pirate was a nod to a real, documented female pirate king who was Chinese and had a whole fleet of ships at her disposal but I can’t remember her name rn
My favorite part about the Bretheren Court voting wasn’t that they were against Elizabeth for becoming King as a woman and newcomer. They were pissed at Jack for being a chaotic neutral who broke the decades long tradition of an egotistical stalemate by voting for someone besides himself.
Also, the deleted scenes from Black Pearl and At World’s End that divulge more of Jack’s troubled past, like how he was branded as a pirate by the East Indian Trading Company because he stole a ship full of slaves and freed them.
James Norrington did nothing wrong. His only crime was being a Jane Austen hero in a Disney movie based on a theme park ride.
Okay, no. I tried, but couldn’t just let this post stand. Listen, OP, I agree with you 10,000%, but it is so much worse than that.
In CotBP, where the criticism that James is boring is most likely to come up, we can see in his introductory scene that James is head over heels for this woman by Regency standards. I mean, the unflappable, highest ranking Naval officer in Port Royal is reduced to a stammering, awkward mess around Elizabeth. If this were an Austen novel, y’all would be fucking swooning.
And what of the deleted scenes? (Don’t even get me started on this, I will rant for hours about how salty I am that they cut them.) We see James agonizing over the fact that he believes Elizabeth has only accepted his proposal as a means to an end. His stony veneer cracks, and we get to see him vulnerable!
‘Is it so wrong that I should want it given unconditionally?’ is such a fucking incredible line, and in a period drama, would be seen as a declaration!
But James isn’t in a period drama. He’s in a Disney movie based on a theme park ride. The film is an unapologetic mishmash of genres, and he has committed a cardinal sin by falling in love with Elizabeth, a modern character. She practically rolls her eyes at his heartfelt confessions! She wants nothing to do with his subtle emotional advances!
While, in a Austen novel, James Norrington would have been the clear hero and most obvious choice for Elizabeth to make, she is completely uninterested because he’s made the mistake of being period appropriate and not a product of the early 2000s like the rest of the main cast.
And the worst part is…once James changes so that he fits into their world…he is killed.
But that’s a discussion for another time.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
@meganphntmgrl and i talked about this endlessly when I was in NYC (and i’m trying to make her read Pride and Prejudice just to prove this point lmao). I’m not even convinced that Elizabeth has this degree of non-interest in him, though. I think she just already has a really big crush on Will and thinks, due to the circumstances of their meeting, their being the same age and everything, that they’re meant to be together. (Is that a convention of modern storytelling? Little bit, yeah, but it’s not unknown to either mythological romances or period romances - the class divide between them, and importantly, Elizabeth’s desire to be with him overwhelming her sense of convention and propriety, is what stands out to me the most as a 21st century detail.) All that said, she doesn’t expect she can actually be with Will at the start of COTBP, and seems to be really considering James’ proposal. He’s not what she wants in life, but she’s not disgusted or rolling her eyes at him. In her words, more or less, she kind of knew he might propose, and knows her father is all for the match, but it still took her off guard. She’s having to decide on a realistic course for her life and to put aside her dreams, because she’s a woman now, whether she feels ready for that or not.
COTBP is a film written by men that thinks it’s a story about a girl being forced to choose between reality and romantic fantasy, and it’s very clear that Elizabeth knows that Norrington is an appropriate match for her. Even though she does, in the story, accept his proposal as a means to an end, her acceptance is still fully serious. (And for all I might joke about her dumping him or whatever - the proposal doesn’t get a big, dramatic rejection. He sees her standing beside Will and asks if this “where [her] heart truly lies”, and she confirms it. The breakup is implicit, but he instigates it, seeing this is what shewants.) Elizabeth’s heart might belong to another man, but there’s no sulking or anger or even too much reluctance when she accepts James; she might even know they could be happy together.
When Will reminds her that her fiancé will want to know she’s safe after the climactic battle, as much as it hurts her, Elizabeth leaves.
tl;dr Elizabeth isn’t so much of a Spunky Modern Heroine Rejects All Trappings Of Period Drama stereotype that she doesn’t compromise on what she wants as society, her family and her fiancé dictate. She accepts James’ proposal and is prepared to marry him; she never tries to run off with Will; it is James who breaks their engagement for her happiness. There is no indication that Elizabeth particularly dislikes him; he just isn’t Will.
Then I just really really love their relationship dynamic in DMC and AWE because it’s not founded on expectation or obligation anymore and it isn’t hindered by propriety. As soon as those things go away, they actually relate to each other like two people who have known each other for ages. Elizabeth isn’t an unfriendly sort of person, but she doesn’t just go around relating to the other characters she doesn’t know very well. The bits of conversation she has with James Norrington in Dead Men’s Chest are more real conversation than she and Will ever have in the entire film trilogy. Will and Elizabeth get these pining, lovelorn speeches and bits of drama, but James and Elizabeth just talk like old friends. You already know about the deleted scene where they casually strike up conversation on Isla Cruces; I love the moment where he makes a comment suggesting his dark mental state, and she gives him a look I can only describe as Suddenly Interested.
And she holds his gaze for a couple of frames!
So, not like, romantic interested. But like. Realizing this guy she’s known since forever has depth, and she wants to see it.
They’re interrupted by Jack, who is in this film particularly (a lot more than I realized, actually, but on the writers’ commentary Ted and Terry cannot stop bringing it up) is hoping to get Elizabeth to himself, and clearly picks up on this moment as infringing on that hope.
Curse of the Black Pearl was consciously written to frame Elizabeth as the protagonist, and when she chooses Will at the end, it’s because he and he alone among her potential love interests embodies her romantic dream. Torn between the reality of Norrington, a man she’s always known might propose to her, a lawful man, a good and honest man, but embodying the smothering sense of obligation that comes with her class and gender role - and the reality of Jack Sparrow, a pirate she’s read about with eagerness who shows her that pirates genuinely are pretty scummy people, dirty and disloyal to everyone - Will appears to offer her a third option: someone who breaks the law, but only for the right reasons; someone who defies social convention, but only to better society.
Except Ted and Terry are men and what seems obvious to me is that the third option Elizabeth really needs is to graduate from the damsel role life appears to have slotted her into and become the romantic hero she dreams of. Sure, I buy that she loves Will, with a sort of infatuated and light-hearted love that could develop into something more but could just as easily not - but most importantly, what Will represents to her is a projection of the life she wants for herself.
And acquires, in the next two films.
Elizabeth’s narrative arc, if it weren’t tucked underneath or behind everybody else’s, is the most well-developed narrative arc in the trilogy, well beyond the first installment which is the only one that they actually wrote to particularly revolve around her. Jane Austen heroine? Maybe. Probably not. But the protagonist we deserved, most definitely.
And as much as I do like Will as a character - I actually think his storyline would have gotten the resolution and impact it deserved if he hadn’t been treated as the protagonist, as much as I think hers would have been, but this post isn’t an excuse for me to air my grievances lol - the character whose storyline most follows hers is Norrington.
Her arc is about finding her place in the world, rejecting the specific oppressive reality she believes is inevitable as a well-bred 18th century female and embracing the heroine swashbuckler she’s wanted to be all her life but projected onto male love interests. And this arc is a microcosm of the larger plot in a way no one else’s is - Beckett’s threat to end the age of piracy and keep the entire ocean under his thumb threatens her specific character growth and reflects the world she’s trying to escape in a way that is not half so resonant for anybody else.
Will’s story is, excepting turns of the plot in which he’s trying to save Elizabeth, entirely about his relationship with his father, and how that affects his identity. It has nothing to do with society beyond the tensions in the first film where he wants to be respectable but has learned his father really was a pirate all along - after that film, there is no thematic or actual connection to society in Will’s plot, which is why it gets so exclusively connected to the supernatural storyline. But Norrington’s arc is also about his place in the world. After the first film, in which he and Jack and Will operate as foils to one another, each of them demonstrating one of the paths Elizabeth may follow as she grows increasingly experienced and consequently disillusioned, Norrington has his fall from grace and subsequent identity crisis. His maintaining the wig and coat while a drunken, miserable wreck on Tortuga, and his willingness to throw everything away to regain his former standing, implies that the role of Naval Officer was the wholeextent of his identity. So, yes, the man lacks a viable personality in COTBP - it works out to seem intentional by the sequel, because it becomes clear the role he was inhabiting was the only person he knew how to be, and without it he discovered how little of a person he was. This is a grim inversion of Elizabeth’s storyline. Elizabeth becomes more and more her true self, including symbolically casting off and manipulating her wedding gown, while Norrington symbolically clings to the relics of his former life and wallows in existential despair.
By the time of AWE, Norrington has discovered that his is not, in fact, nothing, without his social role - as evidenced by his willingness to betray all that he must stand for when that role has been resumed, to “choose a side”, and to choose Elizabeth’s. But yes… then he dies.
Both in the substance of their actual conversations, which, owing to their rarely being about love, convey a greater sense of compatibility than Will and Elizabeth’s conversations never being so casual and often running to the dramatic, and the symmetry of their narrative arcs, the story of Elizabeth and James Norrington really would have made a perfect romance.
@morethanprinceofcats really out here bringing the “in this essay I will…” meme to life
