Some hot pirate action

SPOILER ALERT.

Okay, let’s talk megablockbuster “Pirates of the Carribbean 3: At World’s End” now that I’ve gone to catch the movie on opening day. Since in a previous blog post I mentioned that I’ve watched the commentary for “Pirates of the Carribean 2: Dead Man’s Chest”, I’d like to compare some of the more cerebral and literary issues put forward in the second movie, and how they are addressed in the third. In order to do this, I guess I have to spoil some of it, so beware, land-lubbers!

Who is Jack Sparrow? Perhaps what AWE reveals about the character of Jack is that he really is just schizophrenic. I know, real schizophrenia doesn’t have a visual component to it, but it takes this liberty of depiction similar to A Beautiful Mind. I think its plausible to say that captain Jack Sparrow is the legendary, amoral, and crazy person he is because of his schizophrenia. Perhaps that’s how he plans out every little twist in his manipulations, transposing thoughts and people like he transposes himself on the Black Pearl in the opening of Pirates 3. Its like he’s playing chess with himself, internally. His alteregos don’t seem to be the typical angel-devil dichotomy; they all seem to be just as amoral as each other, its just that they want to do different things. I could be completely wrong about the angel-devil dichotomy, I guess that will take a second watch-through.

But that brings me to another point. How the hell did Jack “not die”? Does EVERY sailor that gets attacked and eaten by the Kraken go to the Locker? Does it apply to ships too? And where the hell is the Kraken? Was it mortally wounded or greviously injured from Will Turner’s attack on it, and thus does not make an appearance in AWE?

I think AWE compared to DMC is thematically less coherent. While Pirates 2 was perhaps more philosophically or literally more sophisticated, AWE perhaps is slightly guilty of sacrifices themes for more fantasy. Right, rescuing Jack from Davy Jones’ Locker, a fate worse than death. Lets now look at the themes, the problems they pose and how AWE solves them.

Betrayal and Doublecrossings

I don’t think the whole bargaining-and-betraying thing played out as well as in AWE compared to the original film, Curse of the Black Pearl (CBP). I think it became a bit comfusing because the other characters like Will and Elizabeth were still on the straight and narrow and that Jack was the only one doing the betraying and stuff. Pirates 2 (DMC) only had Elizabeth doing the betraying, and that was at the very end – She betrayed Jack. There was Norrington too, but we all saw that coming anyway. But here in AWE, lots of (political) actors betraying each other.

AWE starts with a betrayal: the company of Elizabeth betrayed the hospitality of Sao Feng by sending Will Turner to steal the map; a mole inside Sao Feng’s company betrayed their position to the EIC, the Chinese sailors betrayed Jack on the Black Pearl once they found Sao Feng; Sao Feng then betrayed Barbossa for the Black Pearl, who was in turned betrayed by the EIC, all for the ownership of the Black Pearl. Sao Feng was again betrayed by the EIC, they sent the Flying Dutchman to destroy Sao Feng; Norrington betrayed the EIC to allow Elizabeth Swann to escape; I remember somewhere Jack tried to give Will Turner away in a deal; Will also betrayed Jack by leaving “breadcrumbs”; which in the end resulted in that parlay meeting on the lone sandbank trading Will for whoever; we’ve got even minor characters, two sailors mirroring so and so betraying the EIC and posing as pirates.

I did like the idea of a “Pirate King”. I mean, seriously, Pirate King? And the “King” is popularly elected? I also liked that out of nine voters only two votes made a popular election legitimate, since everybody voted for themselves, that would only mean that a second vote would be the most popular vote, naming Elizabeth Swann the winner and the Pirate King (Queen?). Pure genius. Its really Jack Sparrow betraying the rest of the Pirate Lords.

Well, I guess Jack really did do the right thing this time, and gave Will Turner the heart to stab to save his from his mortal wounds. Didn’t betray them there. Why, I don’t know. I guess he just felt sympathetic for once. Conclusion: Betrayals are a storytelling convenience in order to give Pirates of the Caribbean its own individuality as a film.

“Jack must find a place in this world.”

Its the double meaning of At World’s End! Is it because they were at the very edge of the physical world… or was it because it was the ending of the world as Jack and the pirates knew it? The world ends in several ways: politically, as the East India company begins to route pirates through sheer force (even without the Flying Dutchman, they’d still be outnumbered), its as though the life and culture of piratry (?) is about to end.

Physically, the world did end – at least an age of piratry did end. Since the first Brethren Court bound Calypso to human form, and this fourth Brethren Court, released her again. I guess now they have to pirate in different ways then. I can’t remember why they bound her, perhaps at the treachery of Davy Jones, perhaps to tame the seas.

So, really, how the heck did Jack find a place in the world? He could have done it by stabbing Davey Jones’ heart, truly establishing him as the last pirate in the world. Well, if the East India company is threatening to destroy this “world”, then I guess he cut off the head of this snake. Therefore we must assume that Lord Beckett was the only leading the revolution against the older order, spearheading it through pure political power alone. Once he died, the EIC resumed normal business, and no longer was a threat to Jack as it was under Beckett.

So we conclude that Jack challenged the changing world by successfully resisting and defeating the motion of change. Not really all that applicable then. Conclusion: Summer flick concession.

“What vexes a man the most? A woman.”

You know, when Tia Dalma (the witchwoman in dreadlocks) was talking about Davy Jones when Captain Jack first visits her in AWE, and Pintel and Ragetti (the two bumbling fools) try to summarize the story of Davy Jones, and one said “I heard he fell in love with the sea.” Dia then says all the versions are true. That riddle is solved now that we know that Tia is Calypso, the sea-goddess, which makes it true – he did fall in love with both a woman and the sea because they are one in both! Therefore, we can trace the cruelty and bitterness that makes Davey Jones the worst scourge of the sea to his love for Tia Dalma.

So now they release Tia Dalma from her human form, and she truly becomes that which vexes men the most – or at least to sailors and those who venture out into see. What becomes of it, we don’t know. In the few scenes after the battle, there doesn’t seem to be a difference in the nature of seafaring. For this, I conclude that: inconclusive, with respect to Tia Dalma. With respect to the death of Davey Jones and Will Turner’s succession as the captain of the Flying Ductman, I guess that kinda changes the world a bit now that sailors lost at sea do get ferried to the afterlife and there’s no longer an invincible submersible terrorist ship floating around the Carribean.. all because of the love for some goddess. (whoops, that’s suppose to go into the previous section.)

The only other woman in the film remaining is Elizabeth Swann and she does seem to vex quite a few of the characters. (Keira Knightley? She can vex me all night!)There’s Norrington, who died because of her. But dying is not the same as vexing. Vexing is like, legitimate irritation, like a permanent limp in your otherwise easy-going gait, or a ship that tends to list towards starboard. There’s this entire love triangle between Jack Sparrow, Elizabeth and Will Turner. I’ll nominate AWE for BEST WEDDING SCENE at the Oscars. No electric guitarist in a top hat though.

So Davey Jones became the terror he was because Tia Dalma wasn’t there in his one-day-a-decade shore leave. Apparently, Elizabeth Swann was there this time, so we can assume that captain Turner’s not so bitter after all. I just wonder, how come she just can’t go to sea instead?

Therefore, conclusion: Women, try not to vex men in power.

“What vexes a man the most? The dichotomy of Good and Evil.”

One thing I do like about Pirates of the Caribbean is that even the villains are a little bit more nuanced than the standard Saturday morning cartoon variety of villain. Lord Beckett, in his speech, rings of neoliberal discourse on globalization and trade.

My sister complained that it didn’t seem logical that Lord Cutler Beckett would freeze once both the Black Pearl and the reborn Flying Dutchman turned on his ship. His overly-dramaticized computer-generated death scene where the entire bridge and staircase disintegrated from cannon-fire was also too fake. I gave the reason that Beckett was not a experienced captain with a steely will, but rather a politician and a company man, therefore it is plausible that Beckett freezes up in realization that death is near.

However, I think also that, to an extent, it was necessary that Lord Beckett freeze up. By allowing him to freeze up, we can clearly mark him down as a villain and not an anti-villain. (An anti-hero differs from a traditional hero by the fact that the anti-hero does villainous things but is yet the protagonist. Similarly, I suppose an anti-villain is a villain who might commit some heroic acts but remains the antagonist.) If he would have resolved to continuing fighting or even jump off the ship in cowardice, it might show that he believed that his life was vital enough to the cause to not sacrifice. He had to let himself be killed because he didn’t believe that his cause was great enough to live for, therefore establishing his side as the morally weaker side, and thus, the villains.

Notice that Lord Beckett’s side is the mainstream side in the reality. A good deal of people do work with many multinational companies. Ever hear how all this international trade is good for the national economy? Pirates are not all that different from terrorists at sea. Nevertheless, in order to cast The opening scene containing the hanging of innocent men, women and child also helped establish that (1) the company was not at all good, (2) that the pirates were slightly justified in their non-abidance of the law because the enforcers of the law was just as morally corrupt as they were.

There’s something to be said about eternal life too, there’s elements of it in all three films. But I’m not about the wax philosophical about it.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

On a side note, every time I hear “Tia Dalma” being said, all I really hear is “Ti Adama”. Must be too much Battlestar – or a lack of season 3.5.

ADDITIONAL PISSOFFANCE:

They mistranslated “right to trial by a jury of peers” to something like hak untuk di-something makhamah di hadapan “bangsawan”. This is bloody political agenda to subvert democracy in Malaysia, to engender conservative thinking such that people only put faith in the wisdom of their leaders without learning how their leaders became leaders or even why they ought to be leaders in the first place.

In Soviet Russia… Sidewalks Parks Car!

But In Malaysia, cars park on the sidewalk.

Crappit, I’m walking here.

Watching TV and Thinking About It Too

I’m out of class because its the holidays and I have no immediate job. I have books in front of me, but I am too lazy to read them. So I flip out the remote control and watch television. I watch movies. Pretty mind-draining, but I refuse to lean back altogether. Spoilers ahead.

I’ve watched an episode of Prison Break; the pilot for Kidnapped; a bit of anime (with lots of patience); a made-for-TV movie, Safe House starring the captain himself, Patrick Stewart; episodes of CSI, all three series; a season four episode of Enterprise, Awakening; an episode of Season 6 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Conscience; an episode of Criminal Minds; an episode of Robotica; an episode of Wrecks into Riches; some MTV; and endless channel surfing. I’ve also managed to get out of the house to take a look at 28 Weeks Later. Lets look at some of these things that I spent my precious living moments watching, and try to get something more than what’s its worth at face value, eh?

I liked Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, episode: Conscience, very much. Its basically about a psychologist and a child sociopath who murdered his son coldly without remorse. The former was initially sympathetic to the latter, but once the detectives found out that the child was misleading him and everyone else to think that he was a victim when even boys at a “tough camp” said he was crazy, the psychologist used a moment of opportunity to shoot the boy with a snatched handgun. The remainder of the episode dealt with the trial of the psychologist, whom was eventually acquitted on the charge of 2nd degree murder i.e. “the intentional killing of a person without premeditation”. However, a word with Detective Stabler reveals that he did intentionally kill the child on grounds of what he had written as a psychologist: child sociopaths are dangerous to society and are as culpable as adults.

The title, Conscience, is doubly apt. While sociopaths are remorseless, the father psychologist acted purely out of conscience. His last words to Detective Stabler were something to the tune of “The difference between him [the child sociopath] and me is that I won’t kill again.” So there are several important issues that we can deal with in this episode. Classically, its whether the actions of the father-psychologist are justifiable; the next would be the effectiveness of the jury system to serve justice.

Luckily for me, Sheu Fei also watched the episode, and when asked, he thought that the father was indeed justified; he was preventing another cold murder. To a certain extent, I think that the child sociopath’s murder is not merely justified through blood mathematics — save one or more lives by killing another — but that the child manipulated and lied his way through for his own selfish gain. There is something more personal to the direct abuse of trust relationships, more personal than the cold abstraction of preventing another murder in the future. Its like a slap in the face. Nevertheless, according to this line of reasoning, I don’t know why trust is more valued than abstract reasoning.

Its interesting that the psychologist decided to murder the child through abstract reasoning, while the normal person would think that one would only commit 2nd degree murder out of anger or some intense emotional outburst. Then the psychologist used his knowledge in the field to plead temporary insanity and manipulated the jury to think that he killed his child in rage. He said he stood by the standards of his peers; that the child should really be locked up forever. So there’s another parallel between the sociopath and the psychologist: the manipulation of others. However, it can be said that he can be justified: he was acting according to his conscience for the betterment of society, and perpetuated a minor evil in order to prevent a larger one.

Thus it spawns a larger, more general question: whether the conscience is a part of the rational mind, or is it another separate faculty altogether? Sadly, I am not equipped to deal with this issue at this moment.

However, what I am better equipped to do is to deal with the effectiveness of the jury system. The jury system acquitted the father. I would like to think that they did it because in his shoes, they would not have liked to be convicted. After all, this was a father struck with betrayal and the murder of his child in cold blood. However, I think that the reasoning is faulty. Nobody can ever be in his shoes because he is a psychologist who has written on the dangers of child sociopaths. Call it karma, call it convenient story-writing, but the chances are a normal person couldn’t even fathom the danger of a sociopathic child like the father-psychologist can. On principle, he ought to be acquitted. No NORMAL person ought to be charged like that because they would be truly acting in the heat of the moment. However, he is an exception to the principle. He had a reason to act purposefully. Whether or not he was temporarily insane is irrelevant because that knowledge which can only be processed rationally will play a part in determining his actions.

The point is that because of the jury system and how they tend to impose an “if I were in his/her shoes…” method of justice, the outcome of the trial was such. Perhaps in a system of judges he would have been found guilty because judges are more, “impartial” and “wise”. This reminded me of an article I once read about a notable Malaysian (either a politician or a judge) defending the jury-less Malaysian judicial system by claiming that judges are indeed fairer and ensure that justice is served.I guess I can accept that if I can be somehow be assured that the judges are independent from politics. That’s my Political Theory lecturer speaking in me, he wants an independent judiciary too, although we might want them for completely different reasons.

But I guess a jury system is indeed more democratic than not. Is a jury system wiser than a judge? That’s far from the point. The point is the people judged the people. While the judge pronounces if the case can be tried and the sentence if guilt is found, the people have the power to find him or her not guilty. That’s what democracy is about, power to the people. My political theory lecturer says that its

Nevertheless, will a jury be prejudiced along unreasonable lines? Will a jury deliberate at all? Is it even important if they deliberate? Well, I don’t see how a single judge or a panel of judges can be more free from unfair prejudice, or how a professional body will deliberate more than a random selection of people. (Of course, I’m making a purely theoretical claim about something empirical. Sure, lawyers, would love to hear from you.)

Moving on to the pilot episode of Kidnapped. The protagonist, a certain Mr. Knapp, is a specialist in kidnap recovery. He prides himself on emphasizing recovery; The FBI prioritize many other things too, including evidence gathering for charging kidnappers in court. Knapp himself is shown to be merciless in vigilante justice. He’s shown to in a previous job to use a kidnapper as a human shield against other kidnappers, and returns fire without hessitance.

Now the thing with the show was one of his quotes, to the FBI agents who compromised the rescue. “You guys are the ONLY people playing by the book.” One of the agents ordered SWAT to storm an apartment based on a phone call trace. However, it was a trap and the entire SWAT team died. The agent justified himself by saying, he made the call based on the book, on regulations and standard operating procedure.

Sartre rings in my head when describing this. Its going to be difficult for the agent to explain to family members of the deceased that he ordered them to storm the trapped apartment “by the book”. There’s something here about what rules are for, when they are best followed and when they are not, and why we have rules, but this entry has gone on long enough already.

One last thought on 28 Weeks Later, also involving conscience. Britain has been wiped out by zombies, and they have all died of starvation. A US-led resettlement of the British Isles takes place. Two children, break the rules and exits the resettlement zone to return to their London home, where they surprisingly find their lost mother, still untaken by the virus. It seems that she has a genetic immunity to the virus, but still is a carrier. However, the father, being an administrator of the resettlement community, abuses his all-access pass to see his wife, he gets infected too, and the outbreak could no longer be contained. An army doctor, realising the value of the children as potential cure to the infection, tries to protect the children from extermination. In the end, the children unwittingly spread the virus to continental Europe in escaping from the British Isles.

Would anybody have killed the children given the chance? The immunity served to preserve one life, but threatened the life of the rest of the world. I could say that the children acted not out of reason but of conscience to go back home against the rules. I could say that the husband acted also not out of reason in abusing his privileges. The helicopter pilot wasn’t supposed to rescue the kids or anybody for that matter. Could it be said sometimes that conscience doesn’t always act in our best interests?

All in all, I quite enjoyed 28 Weeks Later having also watched 28 Days Later, despite the whole Blair Witch “bad camerawork” thing going on. “Stupid kids” should be the tagline for the movie. Could be an argument for resolute action too. The children were effective in their acting, but nonetheless irritating in how they couldn’t get anything done for nuts.

So I’m sick of Xanga

I’ve been on Xanga for nearly 2 years now, and I think its fair to comment that it has its ups and downs, but the fact of the matter is, I don’t think Xanga suits me that well. So I’ve decided, its better to let go, and migrate. Xanga’s all short and community-ish, obviously the stuff I write isn’t suited for that kind of thing. I’ve gotten sick of it anyway, so I’m leaving. Ta.
Now I’ve got to tell all my friends. Yay.

For all new visitors, expect long dreary posts about lots of things. Take time to digest it. I write when I feel like it. I rather have a few good posts than lot of hot air.

For old friends,  don’t expect any less.