More like at wit’s end. Yes, it will make more megabucks for Disney but it’s success like this that has me questioning if indeed audiences are truly no longer concerned with a good story, as long as the special effects are great and the characters charming.
Like its predecessor, Dead Man’s Chest, the screenwriters have once again buried what was a very entertaining original concept from the first film in layers of confusing plotlines and characters who spontaneously switch sides. Often I couldn’t even tell which ship various characters were on so much whirling of plot and location was there. There is some silliness about the British East India Trading Company having gained possession of Davy Jones’ heart thus making the once-scary scourge of the seas into their compliant lapdog. The Company plans to rid the world of pirates in order to expand their evil capitalistic empire. There also seems to be a hint that the Company symbolizes the spead of the modern world that will expunge the romantic imagination in favor of corporate hegemony (and that’s the Disney pot calling the Company kettle black). You can read more about this seething cauldron of convoluted narratives from almost all the critics. What I’d like to focus on here is how the film perpetuates Disney’s continuing campaign to exploit history like the East India Company, and various cultures, for its own ends.
The film starts with the British imperial forces rounding up anyone connected in anyway to piracy, and those who may have aided and abetted pirates. So we see lots of old men, sad women and even children led to mass gallows and hung. Yep, a great way to start almost three hours of giddy entertainment. An officer reads out the announcement of the suspension of, among others rights, those of due process, trials and others. Such a deliberate setting up of a tyrannical oppression against these poor fun-loving pirate-folk forces us to throw our sympathies on the cutthroats who, if we’re talking historical piracy here, were the terrorists of their day.
By implying that real-world rights have been suspended, the audience it encouraged to take the imperial threat seriously as some hideous but historical mockery of the English tradition of civil rights. But soon we’re back to Pirates: The Ride with Johnny Depp’s swishy rockstar Jack Sparrow and his companions carrying on their fantasy of romanticized adventure. The movie really wants it both ways. If you try to question the draconian injustice of the beginning, you can hear the writers cooing, “Hey, lighten up, it’s only a movie!”
This is of a piece with what Disney did in at least two other pictures, Pocahontas and Mulan. In both we see empowered young women, one a Native American, the other Chinese, who commune with spirits or supernatural characters which in fact become the typical Disney mascots of the animated features. While paying lip service to people’s history and legends, while championing strong female characters, the Disney films actually co-opt the source material in order to turn them into marketable Disney fare. In other words, Disney doesn’t even take their movies’ own revisionist historical, cultural or feminist propaganda seriously–it’s a front to sell products, starting with the feature films.
This doesn’t mean that all adaptations are wrong from the start–many of Disney’s earlier films seem far less exploitative–but such contemporary Disney products have a much more cynical strain running through them than the features of Walt’s day.
Haven’t seen Pirates yet. Probably won’t, since I basically despised the last one. (May give in when it comes to DVD.)
I happened to like Mulan a lot! I didn’t consider it propaganda as much as some other films I could mention. And based on what I know of Chinese history, Mulan was a fairly accurate description of the way women were treated. Not only that, but you realize the character was seeking EQUALITY not SUPERIORITY. Once the empire was saved, she was offered a position in the palace, which she turned down in favor of returning to her village and family to be a homemaker, and idea abhorrent to true feminists. Most women in the feminist movement would not only have taken the position as the cheif scribe, but put in a bill for empress as well. In that way, I didn’t see the film as propaganda.
Pocahontas was a bit more on the propaganda side. First of all, it romanticized the John Smith character, who was historically famous for his tall tales (However good his economic genius was). Second, it overplayed the Native American tribes’ dependence of supernatural forces. While they did look to these spirits for good crops, large families, and strength to fight, they did not look to them to learn how to speak the king’s English. Nor did the settlers readily attack the Native Americans. Historically, when Pocahontas befriended the religious Christian, John Rolfe, converted to Christianity and became engaged to him, the Natives revolted by attacking the settlers as well as Pocahontas herself! If anyone was the target in the historical account, it was Christians, not the local tribes. (Also I do wish they could strike a balance between abusing the earth’s resources, and worshipping them. They overplayed the Mother Earth thing way too much in that film. It was almost Pantheistic. This is what we’re teaching our five year olds? That every rock and tree has a life and a spirit? Please. They’re confused enough as it is!)
Sorry, I tend to know more about animated movies than anything else. Being a kid at heart, I think it’s where I really belong. This concludes my daily rant.
Comment by Ashley — June 3, 2007 @ 8:35 am |
I liked Mulan as well but knowing how Disney wants to widen its international box office, I detected a imperial reach into the cultures of other nations and converting the original tale into “the Disney Version,” with a wise-cracking dragon and bickering ancestor ghosts. For a company trying to make inroads into other, more ancient cultures, Disney showed very little reverence for those religious philosophies, same with Pocahontas–which also caricatured the bloodthirsty white European exploiters–and this is an historical account that’s being Disneyfied, not a folk or fairy tale. And, in the end, it’s whatever pro-female empowerment message or token acknowledgement of other cultures is undercut by the pre-emminence of the Disney template and leveraging of history and myth into yet another merchandizing platform. Cultural imperialism indeed!
Comment by Alex — June 3, 2007 @ 5:39 pm |
Yeah, Mulan was a bit irreverent in respect to the Chinese cultures. Especially considering how much emphasis they put on family honor, they made the historically united Chinese family into the modern-day dysfunctional Western family.
And, yes, I have noticed Disney attempting to wheedle themselves into other cultures. Lilo and Stitch is centered in a very culturally colorful Hawaii. Brother Bear explored the beliefs of the Inuits in Canada and Alaskan Territory. And so on.
In regards to the Pocahontas issue, I had heard a rumor back when I was in, maybe, middle school, that the reason they made a sequel to Pocahontas was because teachers complained to Disney that their elementary age students were arguing with them. According to the rumor (Which Disney never verified) when they taugh that Pocahontas married John Rolfe and went to England as a sort of Native American ambassador, the students would retaliate saying that the teachers were wrong and Disney was right! After all, if it’s on the BIG SCREEN, it must be true, right? So Disney was pestered into making the sequel to correct their previous blunder. (Which was all right with them, since it was only going to make them more cash anyway.)
I’m usually disappointed when anyone makes a movie about a true historical event, because it’s seldom done correctly. To teach children fantasy is one thing. Children naturally live in their imaginations anyway. But to teach them lies? There isn’t any excuse for that. Especially not when they’ll be more apt to believe a movie than the truth. Disney’s slogan should be “When ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise!”
Comment by Ashley — June 4, 2007 @ 1:07 pm |
Pirates 3 was, in my opinion, waaaaaaaay too violent for a Disney movie. As for Mulan, it’s awesome! They don’t put too much emphasis on ancestoral worship, and as long as you teach these kids it’s not right, it’s ok. Anyhow, do you really think these kids are going to start worshiping their relatives? Yeah right. Pochantus (however you spell it) was good too. Same thing for this movie: tell the kiddies worshiping tress is NOT good. I mean, c’mon, are these kids gonna start praying to the wind?? I knew this one girl who couldn’t watch The Little Mermaid because Ariel was “scantily dressed” and because Ursula was a witch. See how some people get all pharisee like? First of all, Ariel is, yeah, wearing a bikini top…but like boys are gonna start drooling at a cartoon mermaid! And for Ursula, it’s not like little Suzy will want to become like her. Anyhow, this is my opinion.
Comment by Cammy — June 8, 2007 @ 5:35 pm |
I was trying to address Disney’s efforts to, in Mulan’s case, reach out to other cultures, in this case, Chinese, by rendering one of their tales that was the basis of the movie adaptation. You don’t reach out to another culture by making fun of their customs and beliefs, making the ancestral spirits the stuff of comedy. I would imagine that would perplex or offend people from that culture. And it’s not likely to encourage anyone to follow such a philosophy as filtered through the Disney interpretation. I think that Disney’s audience began falling off about this point as the formulaic nature of the animated stories lost the imagination of Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Alladin.
Comment by Alex — June 8, 2007 @ 11:07 pm |
What made u guys want to make a movie like this?
Comment by Angelica — July 10, 2007 @ 7:31 pm |