In our group discussion, as Jackie mentioned, we talked about the repertories that surround the word “pirate”. Obviously there’s the “Ahoy matey”, Blackbeard, Pirates of the Caribbean group of ideas. There’s also the idea of modern technological piracy (remember the video that the MPAA put at the beginning of some DVDs? There’s a really funny parody of the video that appeared in The IT Crowd, one of my favorite shows. Disclaimer: the parody is slightly crude and gory). I found the catachresis between the original (and real or authentic?) term “pirate” and the one that pervades pop culture and costume parties today to be a little bit disturbing actually. According to the former, a pirate is a lawless, theiving rapist, and in the second he’s a jolly, slightly grumpy bearded (usually English) man with a weird accent who says “arrgh!” and has a pirate, eye patch, peg leg, etc. So when a little 4 year old comes to your door dressed as a pirate, what are they actually saying? What does that mean?
I think the weight of the word “pirate” and the pop culture associations are extremely difficult to separate. I decided to look at some political cartoons about the pirates and the vast majority contain a pop culture pirate reference. I chose to look at the first two cartoons in the post because I liked the way that cartoonist extended the idea of pirate to anyone who steals (like Wall Street CEOs) – even if he is wearing a suit and is not on a boat.The third one reminded me of Jackie’s comment in class about the conflation of the Pirates of the Caribbean escape scene, and the rescue of Captain Phillips.
http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/6/g/2/Wall-Street-Pirate.jpg http://economics.today.com/files/2008/11/112108cartoon.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3342/3441274911_57dfd42ddc.jpg?v=0
Filed under: Uncategorized
