Black Sails
Aug. 13th, 2023 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleI watched Black Sails recently, and for the last twelve episodes of the show (out of 38), I just sat and watched without doing anything else because I was so absorbed in it.
The show is one of my absolute favorite kind of stories, where you have a master manipulator only out for themselves (Silver) who meets a master manipulator doing it for some greater good (Flint), starts to work with the greater good one for their own reasons, then starts to believe in the cause and care about the greater good one. Plus, there are all kinds of other people also trying to get what they want, and you can see how their plans all intersect and disrupt each other. It really fulfills the same thing I love about fantasy court intrigue books. It made me want to reread Captive Prince and maybe Queen's Thief, and part of the reason I powered through it was because my brain can only handle one twisty intrigue story at a time and I needed to finish this before rereading Captive Prince.
And, then, of course, I also went to Tumblr to find some things to reblog. I was mostly looking for images, but I am always drawn to words and started reading some of the posts about the show. I am living up to my "Disagreeing with fandom since 1999" tagline and my #FannishRebel4Life nature with my reaction to what appear to be the mainstream views about the show.
Part of what people talk about is the storytelling element. Throughout the story, various people talk about what's happening in terms of telling a story: Flint says that if they say he's a monster, then he'll be a monster; there are discussions about who is the villain of the story; at the very end, Jack says, "A story is true. A story is untrue. As time extends it matters less and less. The stories we want to believe - those are the ones that survive, despite upheaval and transition and progress. Those are the stories that shape history. And then what does it matter if it was true when it was born?" The fandom seems to have latched on to this as a thing that reshapes the very idea of narrative. But I'm skeptical. I've been skeptical for a long time about the idea of the importance of story. I love stories and narrative structure, and yet it hasn't escaped my notice that the stories about how important stories are are written storytellers who have a vested interest in making that argument.
There's a recent New Yorker piece about this by Parul Seghal. I found it unsatisfying - she talks about cleaning the word story but I didn't think she did a good job of saying what would be left of it - but it does also raise some of the questions I have. And here's one of the biggest problems I have with the idea that the story is the most important thing: I do think it matters if it's true. Maybe the point the show is making is that the story's usefulness doesn't rely on its truth, but the fandom seems to take this as a moral lesson, and on moral grounds, it matters if it's true.
The other moral lesson people proclaim about the show is that it foundationally says that acting on queer rage against a homophobic world is justified. I don't know about that. I am all on board with the rage being justified (I recently spent a year trying to use my queer rage to try to change an organization I no longer belong to), but I don't know that the show's lesson is that everything Flint does is justified. I'm not even sure the show's message is that Flint is fighting against the system.
I think a different reading of the show, and one I'm more inclined to go with, is that Flint has merged his grief at losing Thomas with his rage at the system that caused it, and he is all in on his war because at least if he wins, he will have done what Thomas wanted and created a self-governing Nassau.
The stickiest thing for me about seeing the show as justifying whatever atrocities you commit out of queer rage is that it doesn't work. At the end of the show, the system is still in place and intact. Flint either dies or gets what he really wants - to be reunited with Thomas - depending on whether or not you believe the story Silver tells Madi is true. But if he got a happy ending, the war isn't what got him there, and he certainly didn't do anything to change the system.
More importantly, I think the only person who most got what they wanted in the end is Max. Max has Ann, she has power and influence, she has a peaceful and prosperous Nassau. But she didn't get there because of the war or any sort of partnership with Flint. Yes, she took advantage of a destabilized Nassau after Eleanor's arrest to snatch up as much property as she could get, but ultimately she gets what she wants because she figures out how to carve out a place within the system and compromise. She can't be seen to be the one with power because it's a sexist world that requires a man be the governor, but everyone knows she's the one who wields power, and it was ultimately her and Jack's deal with Eleanor's grandmother - an extremely wealthy white woman - that got her there.
I saw a post saying that the show is about domesticity and about whether you would choose the war over your loved ones. The answer is that in the end, almost everyone who survives chooses the well-being of their loved ones over the struggle. Max has been trying to avoid the war the whole time, because she's the only person who loves Nassau for itself, and she's the one who wins. In that way, I think Max is the moral center of the show, which completely upends the argument that it's saying atrocities are fine if you're doing it out of queer rage. Charles Vane is right that if you give people prosperity, they won't fight anymore.
And for that reason, I'm having trouble squaring what happens at the end of the show with the idea that it's about the moral value of struggle against a system. It's not. I would say that it's about how war against the system ends up with a lot of dead people, but you can carve out places around the edges of and cracks in the system to make a life for yourself and the people you love. Max even says, "You cannot fight civilization from the outside in." That's not a particularly radical position on the queer politics of changing the world, and I'm surprised by how much of the fandom seems to think the show is presenting a radical new idea.
The show is one of my absolute favorite kind of stories, where you have a master manipulator only out for themselves (Silver) who meets a master manipulator doing it for some greater good (Flint), starts to work with the greater good one for their own reasons, then starts to believe in the cause and care about the greater good one. Plus, there are all kinds of other people also trying to get what they want, and you can see how their plans all intersect and disrupt each other. It really fulfills the same thing I love about fantasy court intrigue books. It made me want to reread Captive Prince and maybe Queen's Thief, and part of the reason I powered through it was because my brain can only handle one twisty intrigue story at a time and I needed to finish this before rereading Captive Prince.
And, then, of course, I also went to Tumblr to find some things to reblog. I was mostly looking for images, but I am always drawn to words and started reading some of the posts about the show. I am living up to my "Disagreeing with fandom since 1999" tagline and my #FannishRebel4Life nature with my reaction to what appear to be the mainstream views about the show.
Part of what people talk about is the storytelling element. Throughout the story, various people talk about what's happening in terms of telling a story: Flint says that if they say he's a monster, then he'll be a monster; there are discussions about who is the villain of the story; at the very end, Jack says, "A story is true. A story is untrue. As time extends it matters less and less. The stories we want to believe - those are the ones that survive, despite upheaval and transition and progress. Those are the stories that shape history. And then what does it matter if it was true when it was born?" The fandom seems to have latched on to this as a thing that reshapes the very idea of narrative. But I'm skeptical. I've been skeptical for a long time about the idea of the importance of story. I love stories and narrative structure, and yet it hasn't escaped my notice that the stories about how important stories are are written storytellers who have a vested interest in making that argument.
There's a recent New Yorker piece about this by Parul Seghal. I found it unsatisfying - she talks about cleaning the word story but I didn't think she did a good job of saying what would be left of it - but it does also raise some of the questions I have. And here's one of the biggest problems I have with the idea that the story is the most important thing: I do think it matters if it's true. Maybe the point the show is making is that the story's usefulness doesn't rely on its truth, but the fandom seems to take this as a moral lesson, and on moral grounds, it matters if it's true.
The other moral lesson people proclaim about the show is that it foundationally says that acting on queer rage against a homophobic world is justified. I don't know about that. I am all on board with the rage being justified (I recently spent a year trying to use my queer rage to try to change an organization I no longer belong to), but I don't know that the show's lesson is that everything Flint does is justified. I'm not even sure the show's message is that Flint is fighting against the system.
I think a different reading of the show, and one I'm more inclined to go with, is that Flint has merged his grief at losing Thomas with his rage at the system that caused it, and he is all in on his war because at least if he wins, he will have done what Thomas wanted and created a self-governing Nassau.
The stickiest thing for me about seeing the show as justifying whatever atrocities you commit out of queer rage is that it doesn't work. At the end of the show, the system is still in place and intact. Flint either dies or gets what he really wants - to be reunited with Thomas - depending on whether or not you believe the story Silver tells Madi is true. But if he got a happy ending, the war isn't what got him there, and he certainly didn't do anything to change the system.
More importantly, I think the only person who most got what they wanted in the end is Max. Max has Ann, she has power and influence, she has a peaceful and prosperous Nassau. But she didn't get there because of the war or any sort of partnership with Flint. Yes, she took advantage of a destabilized Nassau after Eleanor's arrest to snatch up as much property as she could get, but ultimately she gets what she wants because she figures out how to carve out a place within the system and compromise. She can't be seen to be the one with power because it's a sexist world that requires a man be the governor, but everyone knows she's the one who wields power, and it was ultimately her and Jack's deal with Eleanor's grandmother - an extremely wealthy white woman - that got her there.
I saw a post saying that the show is about domesticity and about whether you would choose the war over your loved ones. The answer is that in the end, almost everyone who survives chooses the well-being of their loved ones over the struggle. Max has been trying to avoid the war the whole time, because she's the only person who loves Nassau for itself, and she's the one who wins. In that way, I think Max is the moral center of the show, which completely upends the argument that it's saying atrocities are fine if you're doing it out of queer rage. Charles Vane is right that if you give people prosperity, they won't fight anymore.
And for that reason, I'm having trouble squaring what happens at the end of the show with the idea that it's about the moral value of struggle against a system. It's not. I would say that it's about how war against the system ends up with a lot of dead people, but you can carve out places around the edges of and cracks in the system to make a life for yourself and the people you love. Max even says, "You cannot fight civilization from the outside in." That's not a particularly radical position on the queer politics of changing the world, and I'm surprised by how much of the fandom seems to think the show is presenting a radical new idea.