More fandom wank
Jul. 13th, 2006 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veronica_richActually, there's no real wanking; I just like the sound of the word.
I have more fandom-related thoughts on the whole DMC thing. (I have nothing at the moment on actual news in the world. There really IS too much wank on that front to make sense of it at this point - suffice to say the day the U.S. can successfully tell China what to do is the day more stuff in our homes will have "Made in USA" stamped on the bottom.)
I'm sure someone else somewhere has brought up these two points. But I haven't read them, so I'm going to make them as my own, since I came up with them on my own.
First, I can honestly say I've now squared with the J/E thing in DMC. It was one of those odd, random thoughts you have in the shower somewhere between putting the shampoo in your hand and putting your hands in your hair.
I just had to remember that Jack is not so obvious about what he wants.
Let me repeat that: Jack is not so obvious about what he wants.
Granted, we see nothing going on belowdecks involving Jack and Elizabeth. But we know the place exists, and there's no reason NOT to have a scene belowdecks if that's where it belongs, so we have to assume what happens up on deck out in the open happens there for a reason. Pay attention to how Jack's responses to and seductions of Elizabeth are all up on deck, in the middle of the day, with the crew present.
Part of what I always liked about the J/W dynamic is how Jack wasn't terribly obvious about it. He never is terribly obvious about what he really wants - when searching for the Pearl, he kept his own counsel about *why* he wanted her. As Gibbs told Will, "Jack plays things close to the vest now, and a hard-learned lesson it was." When explaining first to Will, then to Elizabeth, that he wants Davy Jones's key, he says nothing about WHY he needs it, nor does he say just how desperately it's needed - until forced by Will's hand on the beach (and even then, he's still not forthcoming as to the full WHY of it). Why would a man who does such things be so OBVIOUS in public about a woman he truly loves and wants, when he wouldn't even do it for his ship?
A man *would*, however, have no problem publicly swaggering around an attractive female he hopes to bed, which would enhance his reputation. That's something you can see in any bar you walk into, frankly.
Second, while Jack may be a world-class pirate, he's really not a very good captain at all. He knows how to operate a ship; he can probably even teach a new swabbie his skills, one-on-one, learning to get around one. But leading quantities of people on a daily basis doesn't seem his forte. In modern parlance, he's neither an employee nor a manager, but rather, an independent contractor who occasionally has to make use of casual labor to finish his jobs.
I don't think it's that Jack is incapable of being a good manager. I think he doesn't *want* to do it, and that forced to do it for any length of time is boring and taxing and too much like responsible employment ("Somehow, I doubt Jack will find employment the same thing as freedom" - couldn't have put it better myself, young Will). Yes, he wants his ship, but I think he realizes having a crew to run it is more necessary than desirable - if Jack could find a way to be alone on his ship with his rum, Gibbs, a woman now and again, *coughWillcough*, and invisible hands to pull at the oars, he'd be a blissful little pirate.
I have more fandom-related thoughts on the whole DMC thing. (I have nothing at the moment on actual news in the world. There really IS too much wank on that front to make sense of it at this point - suffice to say the day the U.S. can successfully tell China what to do is the day more stuff in our homes will have "Made in USA" stamped on the bottom.)
I'm sure someone else somewhere has brought up these two points. But I haven't read them, so I'm going to make them as my own, since I came up with them on my own.
First, I can honestly say I've now squared with the J/E thing in DMC. It was one of those odd, random thoughts you have in the shower somewhere between putting the shampoo in your hand and putting your hands in your hair.
I just had to remember that Jack is not so obvious about what he wants.
Let me repeat that: Jack is not so obvious about what he wants.
Granted, we see nothing going on belowdecks involving Jack and Elizabeth. But we know the place exists, and there's no reason NOT to have a scene belowdecks if that's where it belongs, so we have to assume what happens up on deck out in the open happens there for a reason. Pay attention to how Jack's responses to and seductions of Elizabeth are all up on deck, in the middle of the day, with the crew present.
Part of what I always liked about the J/W dynamic is how Jack wasn't terribly obvious about it. He never is terribly obvious about what he really wants - when searching for the Pearl, he kept his own counsel about *why* he wanted her. As Gibbs told Will, "Jack plays things close to the vest now, and a hard-learned lesson it was." When explaining first to Will, then to Elizabeth, that he wants Davy Jones's key, he says nothing about WHY he needs it, nor does he say just how desperately it's needed - until forced by Will's hand on the beach (and even then, he's still not forthcoming as to the full WHY of it). Why would a man who does such things be so OBVIOUS in public about a woman he truly loves and wants, when he wouldn't even do it for his ship?
A man *would*, however, have no problem publicly swaggering around an attractive female he hopes to bed, which would enhance his reputation. That's something you can see in any bar you walk into, frankly.
Second, while Jack may be a world-class pirate, he's really not a very good captain at all. He knows how to operate a ship; he can probably even teach a new swabbie his skills, one-on-one, learning to get around one. But leading quantities of people on a daily basis doesn't seem his forte. In modern parlance, he's neither an employee nor a manager, but rather, an independent contractor who occasionally has to make use of casual labor to finish his jobs.
I don't think it's that Jack is incapable of being a good manager. I think he doesn't *want* to do it, and that forced to do it for any length of time is boring and taxing and too much like responsible employment ("Somehow, I doubt Jack will find employment the same thing as freedom" - couldn't have put it better myself, young Will). Yes, he wants his ship, but I think he realizes having a crew to run it is more necessary than desirable - if Jack could find a way to be alone on his ship with his rum, Gibbs, a woman now and again, *coughWillcough*, and invisible hands to pull at the oars, he'd be a blissful little pirate.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-05 09:07 pm (UTC)Young, innocent Will asks, in CotBP, if heatstroke is "the reason" for all that wobbly bad-boy swish and rumspice slurring, and Gibbs answers that reason's got nothing to do with it; but, really, the sway and the spinning is the only thing I can guarantee is coldly calculated: as Gibbs also says, Jack plays things closer to the vest now. Who the hell knows WHAT he's thinking?
And you're all right, I think: Captain Jack Sparrow is a lazy, opportunistic, brilliant (yet often dim) creature out to save his own skin, take what he can, and give nothing back. Would he do Elizabeth is given half the chance? Yeah, probably, if for nothing else but achieving (probably not for the first time) the trifecta of a) having someone ruined for all other men forever by the sheer blinding force of how good he is in bed; b) the obvious, you know, orgasm thing; and c) getting to see the pretty fireworks between her and her intended afterwards: God knows he says enough explosive stuff just to totally enrage people (as soon as they figure out what it means). And it's not like he's been proven exactly *picky* about his, ah, company. And if it drives Will and Elizabeth apart and Will wants a bit of revenge or a taste of what drove Elizabeth mad, well, then, so much the better.
But Elizabeth's possibly (*possibly*) very right to think that the driving force of most of Jack's decisions (right after the oh-so-immediate sense of self-preservation) is curiosity. You can count on a dishonest man to always be dishonest, you can count on an honest man to be generally honest with flashes of doing somethings incredibly stupid; but you can't count on a curious man for anything, and that's Jack to a T.
So we get to make it up. In a way, I think DMC affords every last fanficcer's mother's son (or daughter, as the case may be) an ENORMOUS opportunity to basically do whatever they want to with the characters. There is no way to tell what the hell's going on with any of the them, or how any of them will end up, or what fate any of them will choose, especially because we have no concrete evidence as to why they've done what they've done already. Why did Jack trick Will into paying his debt to Davy Jones? was he really all that wrong in saying that it would save Will's life? would he really have left him there forever? why, if he was so thrilled to have someone else pay his debt, did he try to talk Jones out of keeping him, TWICE? Why was he messing with Elizabeth? why was he messing with Elizabeth in full view of everyone on the crew? when Elizabeth messed back, was she teasing him, or teasing herself? does she want Jack, or does she want the selfish and utterly free life he represents? did she kiss him because she wanted to, or did she kiss him only to get him into that shackle?
The magic of Jack is that he might indeed be the aforementioned ruthless amoral son of a bitch, and he might be curious enough to try honor and see where it gets him (kissed and then dead, apparently), and he might be in love--with Will, with Elizabeth, with the *Black Pearl*, with freedom, with that horizon--but Jack's not going to tell us, and neither, suggests the end of the movie, is anyone else. Odd behavior and unjustifiable weirdness is not, in Jack Sparrow's case, necessarily a threat to a happy ending.
the Scarlet Pervygirl
no subject
Date: 2006-08-05 10:39 pm (UTC)That's not necessarily a bad thing. It basically just means that I've thought of much of this, too, and have concluded, as you, that anyone can get anything they like out of all of this tentacled mess. Probably why the whole shit-and-shebang's made a couple billion dollars in B.O. and DVD sales worldwide.
As I've said, I don't begrudge the J/E 'shippers their stories and meta (although if I'm being brutally honest, I'd have to say it's my LEAST favorite pairing in POTC), nor anyone else. It just means I don't have to like it and, by what you say, I can plausibly explain, with examples, why I don't. ;-)