I get more and more into kids’ stuff and I can’t help but wonder about the subject. Pirates are portrayed as funny, innocent, kind creatures that kids sympathise with. As a kid I read Treasure Island, then played computer games related to this theme but I was always aware of who the pirates truly were.
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Because they arrr.
Pirates are fun!
Treasure Island was the first book I read where a child’s trust was totally misused by an adult, Long John Silver. I was a bit shocked as a kid reading it. It was a sanitised adventure but still not pro pirate.
I like the innocent swashbuckling pirate books and cartoons for young kids and there’s plenty of time for them to find out about the darker side. I see your point though.
Pirates are still the bad guys from where I’m standing. Never seen them portrayed as kind or innocent?
Have a look at the history of the naval wars with Spain. The early time of international British imperialism. Piracy was sanctioned by local gentry and royalty. Their pirates were pirates. Ours were heroes, buccaneers, chartered pillagers.
There’s a great book called The Pirate Wars by Peter Earle that covers this, but we can paraphrase with Tim Curry.
>Now take Sir Francis Drake, the Spanish all despise him
>But to the British he’s a hero and they idolize him
>It’s how you look at buccaneers that makes them bad or good
>And I see us as members of a noble brotherhood
Basically, we know they’re criminals, but they’re our criminals. There’s a reason Long John Silver is a much more romantic figure than your average Somalian pirate.
Edit: not buccaneers, privateers.
Glamourised maybe not, but the pirate theme, a bit like the gangsters/mob theme of the 20th century is probably slightly over-romanticised.
Pirates of the Caribbean was arguably a major catalyst, a Disney film aimed at kids, portraying pirates as still pretty unpleasant but at the heart of it kind and friendly, while making Capt Jack a hero. Swashbuckling sword fights, chasing riches and fame, adventure, battling danger, can see why it appeals.
Not aimed at kids, but same for mob movies IMO. Goodfellas, Godfather, Legend, The Sopranos, even more – gangsters were deeply unpleasant people doing deeply unpleasant things, but the core themes of family, loyalty, respect, power are easy to make it seem cool and desirable. Saw Legend reappeared on Netflix the other week and watched it, funny how you were made to feel sorry for Reggie despite all the things he’d done.
The whole ‘Republic of Nassau’ idea captured the imagination of many as this was portrayed as a benevolent and exotic place where Liberty was paramount. Of course the reality was quite different but, with our modern eye, pirates embody a certain freedom alien to the the world they lived in whilst fighting the ‘evil’ Spanish and British navies and (sometimes) freeing slaves to join their crew.
‘The Republic of Pirates’ by Colin Woodward is a great book which picks up on the whole romanticism. Our idea of piracy of course comes purely from the Caribbean, others like the Barbary Pirates (who enslaved thousands from Cornwall and Devon) are overlooked as they don’t really fit the narrative.
I played Treasure Island on the Spectrum, but I could never get past the bit where you have to jump from barrel to barrel with pirates above you reaching down to grab you. Those pirates were definitely the bad guys to me.
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https://images.app.goo.gl/235PEiwWRf7cTasH6
It’s because there are 2 types of pirates:
– Real ones (you rarely hear of outside of the news = essentially criminal gangs throughout history)
– Story book pirates (the majority) which have literally been designed to be glamourised/popular as an entertainment piece (Victorian theatre etc). The pirate accent is in fact a Devon accent one playwright decided to use at some point and became “the pirate accent”. It has no historical basis.
I also have a personal theory (that no-one seems to agree with) that “Pirates” relate to straight men a lot as it’s essentially “permissible drag”.
Drag/putting on a character/persona is quite fun, but culturally not mainstream for straight men, yet is permissible with pirates for some reason, hence the attraction to dressing up as them/being silly with their accents etc.
Do you remember that story from a few years ago, where a village W.I. was told they’d have a speaker at their next meeting to tell them about pirates? They all turned up wearing eyepatches and tricorn hats with skull and crossbones on, waving plastic cutlasses and going “Arrrr” – only to find out their guest was to tell them about his ordeal after being captured at sea and held by Somali kidnappers
Because of increased expense of streaming services.
Certain “professions” get romanticed in later centuries if they have a whiff of adventure about them. It’s a lot easier and more interesting to make a story of a roguish pirate on a quest for treasure than it is say, about an account or a blacksmith.
Same logic applies to Vikings and Cowboys….although I believe cowboys did genuinely spend their time herding cattle and not chasing down bandits and getting into gunfights.
It’s a conspiracy to finally end the Pirates vs Ninjas question.
They’ve had amazing PR. I blame the Victorians.
A group of criminals getting rich and sailing around the Caribbean in the 17th century? What sought after commoditiy do you think they’re trading in? Hmmmm…
Because it was a long time ago and pirates are quite interesting. I don’t think their needs to be much more analysis than that.
As a teenager I knew some folks in a band who liked the pirate theme for some reason. So for their gig they made flags with pirate slogans on. For some reason the text they decided on was RAPE and PILLAGE.
They were asked to leave the gig pretty quickly after setting up the first flag.
because its “ancient history”. not ancient but you know. same as vikings, egyptians, knights, samurai (they were fucking horrible irl).
personally its a good thing. its a laugh and its fun and we can write pirate fiction now which is cool. pirates are a great theme. i wish i was a pirate.
Not all pirates were social outcasts, a lot were sanctioned and funded by the crown and were doing the exact same criminal things you’d imagine that the pirates were doing. Tbh I have a lot more sympathy for the actual social outcast pirates that didn’t want to live under British/Spanish etc rule and went around robbing/killing merchant vessels than I do the sponsored privateers. Privateers were pirates.
Because, according to the Pastafarians, they are divine beings. https://pastafarians.org.au/pastafarianism/pirates-and-global-warming/
You mean like the police and firemen?
The serious answer is that transgression is attractive, esp to young people, and therefore glamorous in some contexts.
I studied pirates a little in sociology.
I believe it’s to do with many pirates creating anarchic social groups outside the realms of government that were highly successful, fair and equal in terms of how they organised and looked after one another.
In places they proved that all can be equal and have a say. Which goes against many anti-anarchic views.
At times the Royal Navy had to take a can’t beat em join em approach and which led to privateers being created to defend against piracy. Privateers kinda made their own rules and lacked the order or the Navy.
I think there may be an under current of cultural respect for pirates as a result that has trickled down into our media that we see today.
It’s the same with a lot of historical ‘warrior archetypes’ like vikings, samurai and wild west outlaws. A lot of them were rebelling against society, the establishment and just life in general, they looked cool and had distinct lifestyles making them easy to market as rebellious antiheroes. Many of them did abhorrent things like rape and murder but it’s easy to brush that under the rug in favour of depicting them as being these romantic adventurers and masculine warriors. Pirates in particular had their gangs (suggesting ideas of friendship, loyalty, brotherhood), distinct iconography (a lot of which is admittedly thanks to Treasure Island and its adaptations), their own unique style (ships, flags, etc. to make themselves stand out). Many of them had a code that they followed, instilling a sense of honour, which helps humanise them to a modern audience. The idea of you and your mates going on an adventure across the world on a ship, searching for treasure, hanging out in tropical paradise, drinking and doing whatever the fuck you want sounds really romantic on paper. Yeah it was most likely actually kind of awful, but you don’t need to tell the whole story to sell a product.
Many of them were also from England, Wales and Scotland so they are more relatable to us. Then you have the fact that a lot of them started as privateers and sailors who were originally on the straight and narrow but turned to a life of crime after being screwed over by society, so you can twist them into these Robin Hood-like rebels fighting against the snooty rich people. When you take someone like Jesse James or Blackbeard you can look at the bullet points and see a masculine, fearless badass who did things his own way and garnered the respect of his men and the fear of his enemies. That kind of thing is just inherently appealing to a lot of people. You can even use female pirates like Anne Bonny to add a feminist angle to it if you want.
It’s easy for people to make stories about pirates because you have so many iconic things already laid out for you: setting, outfits, accents, language, character tropes, narrative themes, even music. And again a lot of that comes from Treasure Island, but even if you cut that out and make it historically accurate you still have a lot of easily recognisable ‘pirate stuff’. Pirates and piracy do exist today, but it doesn’t hit the same mark at all.
It’s glamorous, adventurous, egalitarian, friendly, a “crew”. They are big personalities in outsize hats and frilly shirts. It’s fun.
Pirates arr cool
Coming from the deepest, darkest south-west we actually got a reasonable account of pirates even in Primary School.
Pirates had their own culture, renown and historical identity. As dark and horrific as traditional pirating was, we are now detached enough from it to be able to make light of that period and the uniqueness of it.
Saying that, I don’t think pirates are glamourised outside of kids settings (Pugwash gets a pass)…they might sometimes feature in a more playful context, but there’s usually some acknowledgement that they are fundamentally thieves, murderers and worse. It’s peoples disassociation with what that means that is the issue. They sometimes see charismatic pirate characters and the idea that the individual is a monster is lost on them (for more examples of this issue see politicians, actors, popstars, motivational speakers, etc.).
I’m more puzzled by the glamourisation of armed robbers in movies. If you make someone fear for their life to enrich yourself you are worthless scum.
because so little is known about the real side of it all
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and it beats the shit out of cowboys
Are you my Classics lecturer from 17 years ago?
That guy went on a 10 minute rant about how terrible pirates are and how inappropriate it was that that they’re portrayed as happy-go-lucky scamps when they’re actually murderers and rapists. He very seriously advised us all to forgo dressing up as pirates for Halloween (it was October).
Nobody had even mentioned the possibility of dressing as a pirate…or anything at all.
It’s also slightly irritating that they are all Cornish. That’s a real accent that people order a pint in, there, mate. We don’t have Talk Like A Cowboy day in which we all put on bad parodies of a Deep South accent.
Horrible Histories pirates are stuck in my head after my son found them during the first lockdown.
https://youtu.be/uvguUNMvL38
I mean I think it’s a lot to do with Hollywood Peter Pan and the pirates of the Caribbean movies have made it seem like being a pirate is fun and you’ll go on an adventure and have laughs which has then translated to kids shows like jake and the neverland pirates etc in my opinion let kids have their fun and don’t question it always childhood innocence is sweet
Long John Silver had a cutlass and a singe shot black powder pistol. These Somali mofos are rocking AKs and RPGs, seems a tad less fair on the victims…
Do what you want, ‘coz a pirate is free…
Arrrrrrrrrrr.
Because they’ve been romanticised in pop culture for decades now and have been disassociate with there historic actions/ counterparts. I’d bet 90% of people when they think of a pirate, think of pirates from a movie/ book/ TV show and not a real pirate and at this point it has nothing to fo with history.
1920s gangster and western outlaws went through the same thing, and Vikings are currently going through the transition to being a romanticised pop culture figures and being less about the historical figures.
Send your kids to Somalia on a boat.
You can say this about literally anything in media. Why are princesses glamourised? At their most sympathetic, they were pampered brood mares in gilded chains who’s virginity was sold off to the highest bidder, and at their worst they aided and abetted terrible exploitation and abuse of the poor. How can we put princesses in kids’ shows?