"The Brilliance of Our Flag Means Death" Transcript

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Apr 10, 2022 First published.

Dec 07, 2023 Privated post-callout.

May 8, 2024Channel deleted

Apr 10, 2022

Jun 05, 2022

SPOILERS AHEAD

How “Our Flag Means Death” portrays the struggle of being your true self in a world that expects you to lie.

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00:00 Introduction
04:16 Part One - It’s a Pirate Life, Hunty!
12:30 Part Two - The Booty
19:47 Part Three - A Man of Fortune
27:06 Part Four - Dead Men Spill No Tea
36:46 Part Five - Feelings in a Bottle
42:04 Part Six - Buried Pleasure

#OurFlagMeansDeath #GraceAndFrankie #VideoEssay

Pirates are a bit of a mystery, in their personal

lives. Which is probably why they maintain such a hold on our media. Unfortunately, however, the

golden age of piracy coincided with the golden age of English illiteracy, so what we know about them

is largely left open to anti-pirate propaganda. What’s left is mostly historic accounts

from scholars who have risen through the ranks through academic institutions because they

think following the rules is the coolest thing. Suffice to say, the majority of de-mystified

pirate content is owed to modern historians reading between the lines. While pirates are

often depicted as foul-smelling sea-barbarians, this is only partially true. Piracy has

always been an issue around the world, though the early 1700s hit differently. During this period of ongoing cultural genocide,

post-war soldier unemployment, escalating trade warfare, and homeland european unrest due

to the diminishing power of the monarchs resulting in european naval powers having a

diminished capacity to react to martial threats, piracy flourished to the point of not only

being profitable, but developing an ideology. Existing primarily in the North

and South American colonies, some of the more successful pirate captains

took it upon themselves to fill in the gaps left by the English crown and finance well-needed

social institutions. Pirate raids funded schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. I have heard

pirates be described as primaeval leftists, and… well that really depends on some

people’s definition of ‘leftism.’

Prolific pirate captains, such as Blackbeard

and his contemporaries, leaned into a kind of radical social rejection of conventionally-held

bureaucratic government structures. Their actions advocated for a liberation from that conventional

society, in lieu of personal freedoms. Whether or not they explicitly would

have propagated this is case-by-case. Some pirates were, as naval officers, highly

educated. But it may have also been true that they just wanted to shout ‘caw the police’

as loud as they could across the ocean, without necessarily being able to

articulate why the police required a cawing. Fast forward to the 2020s and pirates have basically been adopted as

impromptu mascots of learn’d history queers. Which is funny because, this is an

era where the English were tossing around homophobic slurs at anyone

they were even slightly annoyed by. However, the english rarely labelled

pirates as being homosexual ‘perverts.’ I read this as the fact that many English

pirates were former naval officers and soldiers. Given that the English colonial

strategy was conquering the world by sending wave-after-wave of boys plucked out of

discriminated underclasses, the british labelling pirates as homosexuals may have encited

more British soldiers to mutiny than already did. Fun fact: willful military recruitment thrives in situations where poor people believe they

have no other option to attain a good life. Right! We were fast-forwarding

to 2020. 2022 specifically, where a television program about funky

gay pirates is sweeping the seven seas. So we’re entering into the era of media where

studio and network executives are just throwing money at projects attached to Tika Waititi

in the hopes that he knows what he’s doing. Spoiler alert: He knows what he’s doing. Granted, of course, all due credit

to David Jenkins, the show’s creator. But I feel like having Watiti’s

name on the project certainly helped turn some executive heads at

the network. He’s got a track record. 80s-themed comic book norse gods? We’re good! Socially-awkward camp vampires with weirdly

competent practical and digital special effects? Got it covered! Imaginary friend Reltih? Nailed it. Oddly. A 1717 sitcom about queer pirates

with modern sensebilities? Loosely based on a true story? Well, we can

cross that off the planet earth bucket list. Ugh… I really should be careful.

It’s dangerous to Stan these days… I can’t understand, though I’m not complaining,

why this idea got funding. Period pieces themselves are incredibly expensive. But by some

miracle of executive competence, we have this. Our Flag Means Death! Here to make up for centuries of

tragically heterosexual pirate content! And fantastic that it’s like…

got actual queer representation. The Revenge (their ship) is a fantastic microcosm

of queer spaces. So we get representation, and content that allegorically speaks

to our present state of queerness. And everyone loves it. The

internet has gone nuts for this! Go figure that when you put queer people

in media that’s actually entertaining, it can turn a buck because people

want to watch it. Hot take: ‘audiences’ don’t care if something’s queer

or not, they care if something’s good or not. ahem DISNEY. The central pirates in the show are a

ragtag collection of weirdos and misfits who sail together because they

don’t really have any other options. They tolerate and even encourage each-other’s

eccentricities. There are two kissing gay couples, one nonbinary they/them character, an alluded

third gay romance. And a bunch of just… weirdos. And though the cast of these weirdos

tolerate theatrics, violence, seagulls, and all manner of things that could

be considered ‘uncivilised,’ what these pirates struggle with is

the British society gentleman. Stede Bonnet — er… Captain Stede Bonnet is the

central character of the series. Having lived a life of monotony, dreaming of adventure and

freedom, he decides to abandon his estate and family to go be a Pirate. He hires a crew of

anyone desperate or foolish enough to sign on, and pays them a monthly salary out of the

fraction of his fortune that he kept for himself. Among a comune of outsiders, the British gentleman is the outsider. His effeminate, lavish

needs for base-level comfort is seen at odds with a life of roughing it on the high

seas. While the crew is initially annoyed by Captain Bonnet, they appreciate him more as

he stops pretending to be something he’s not. Which… may be the primary message of the entire

first season. Who you are, where you belong, and whether or not you need to justify being

there. And if we DO look at the Pirate community as an allegory for the queer community, then a

theme of belonging carries strong significance. Throughout the show, there are people who try to

insist that some people are meant to be pirates, and other people are just not. Stede, however,

seems incapable of picking up on the implication that he is not meant to be a pirate, in spite

of all evidence pointing to that conclusion. However, even though Stede started out as

a fail-pirate (and… you know by the end of the first season he’s not aces), his crew

isn’t getting 10s across the board either. The pirates of The Revenge don’t exactly have

their crap together. I mean sure, they leaned toward that bloodthirsty pirate stereotype that’s

so damaging to the community in the first episode. But they simmer down pretty quick. But through Captain Bonnet’s very… soft… approach

to pirating, he afforded them an environment where they did not need to be trapped in ‘survival’

mode. Having a base salary for existing is, believe it or not, a great first step to

helping people focus on self-improvement. Additionally, through Stede’s

emotionally-intelligent approach to conflict mediation and human resource management,

his pirate ship becomes a healthy environment to help these troubled men and others to

flourish outside their survival instinct. Various crew members take up hobbies,

hone their existing skills, and develop meaningful friendships and romances with each

other. They don’t… really do much pirating— BUT… They’re growing as human beings,

as a family, and as a community. And this is an interesting

little parallel to queer spaces, and a bit poignient, I think. Queer communities,

as they had been, historically, primarily composed of people who came from homophobic families

to the point of child abuse and torture, may be lacking for… well-adjusted people. A huge utility of queer communities, and

especially the house system in urban centres, was to function as support groups and

surrogate families. People in these communities could relate to each other, and

find support as they needed to keep surviving. Though Stede Bonnet was late to coming out as a

pirate, the coping mechanisms he had developed for preserving himself emotionally was a benefit

to his crew. And I mean… yeah if your life is locked in a state of survival, you’re

going to neglect your emotional wellbeing. However, when the rhetoric of society is focused

almost exclusively on pushing a survival-geared narrative of how you should live your life,

what value does emotional fulfilment have? Especially when children in otherwise good

homes grow up being taught that their value to society hinges solely on their ability to earn

a paycheck from insert-formless-corporation here. People will put themselves in horrible working

situations for the sake of ‘survival.’ When you believe that ‘survival’ alone is the most

important thing to work for, there is a whole lot that gets pushed off to the side. If an

unemployed person even vocalises their need for fulfilment outside of finding a job, they may be

met with aggression from society or even family. Which… I’ve never known what the

point of surviving is just for the opportunity to survive some more. Like. Okay,

you survive. What next? Survive again tomorrow? And when you survive that, you just have

to survive some more. When do you start LIVING? When do you get to stop surviving

and when do you get to enjoy your survival? Nobody’s gonna give you a survival award. “Hooray. You filled the needs of an employer who would

replace you with a robot if they could.” The devaluing of fulfilment is something that

can be exploited. If social values direct us to forgo fulfilment and self-actualization

until the mystical age of retirement which keeps getting older, then we, individuals, can be

convinced into doing anything for ‘survival.’ Those on the top of the heap can

generate a scarcity of comfort, which survivors will do anything to get at. Nothing really freaks out the wealthy and

social elites like people whose identities and sources of fulfilment fall outside the

typical, established channels of survival. Which is another reason why social structures

seek to limit the permissible range of identities, and reject and persecute those who

fall outside the typical identity pool. Which is why you had a situation like the golden

age of piracy, where otherwise ‘properly groomed’ soldiers, officers, merchants, and freelance

sailors would abandon the Crown Values of europe in lieu of a rock-n’-roll, live fast, live

free, die horribly and probably on fire lifestyle. There was, in the world of piracy, an available

space where improper sensibilities had value. And it really just… it was a nightmare for British

industry, for Spanish Genocide, and for the French… in… general. And that’s why I’m perfectly comfortable comparing

baroque piracy to queer communities of the modern world. Only with… less murder. Less pillaging.

Theft… sure. Alcoholism. Comparable theatrics. We definitely have more glitter though.

Which is actually really bad for the environment — did… piracy have a smaller

eco-footprint than the gay community? You know who wouldn’t go

a-fracking? Blackbeard. That’s who. Piracy, as an ‘occupation’ or even ‘identity’ is something that European naval forces launched

extensive propaganda campaigns to prevent. Ships’ commanders progressively

squeezed their crews tighter, which led to more mutinies, which led to more

pirates who decided to make their own societies. Yes, piracy was a game of brutal survival,

but it was seen as preferable to survive on one’s own terms, rather than existing as

just another cog in the machine, unnamed, unknown, printing money and creating comfort

for someone else. Hordes of (usually) men abandoned the society that had convinced

them to live their lives in a certain way, opting for a life of crime and

probably a public execution, simply for the opportunity to be able to

live freely — to express their own identity. And yes a lot of them were… not great people. So that really didn’t help their

public outreach. But then again, people who have worked in contact centres may have the same to

say about middle-management. So again it’s like choosing between the socially-acceptable

sociopath overlords vs. the outlaws. After working the daily grind long enough…

eventually you’re going to pick the one who's going to let you howl at the moon.

Or howl WITH you. What is ‘going crazy’ if not the lucid inability to reconcile the natural

absurdity of modernity which we take for granted as civilization, and our own repressed needs for

fulfilment outside the confines of said society? Just dive into the crazy. If not now, then when? Which brings us back to Stede Bonnet. Baby Bonnet.

Captain bonnet. This boy. Baby captain boy-bonnet. …Ed’s bitch. Stede’s pirate-identity and/or queer-identity

is linked to a mid-life crisis where he decided he couldn’t live his life

anymore. Married with two children, he felt as if he was growing immeasurably distant

from them. There was no chemistry, there was no joy. He and his wife went along with things

because they felt that this was all they had. From Stede’s perspective, the struggle with

queerness is rooted in the issue of coming out late in life. Which, believe it or not — in

spite of the hordes of media about being a queer teenager, late-bloomers still exist. Our Flag

Means Death takes an individual who has endured complex trauma for most of his childhood, and

has been badgered out of his personal identity. Young Stede being in a state at home where

his father despised his natural identity, and being at boarding school where he had

‘natural victim’ tattooed on his forehead. Bullying like that can do a lot of things to

someone, and it’s not out of the question that it would generate a person whose psychological

state is rooted in keeping their head down and hoping everything passes over. Stede was never

really encouraged to pursue what he wanted, because there was never a point in his life where

he was rewarded for expressing himself honestly. To him, it was made clear, both deliberately by

his father, and latently through his peer group, that his sense of fulfilment fell well

outside the socially-acceptable ways for a man of the 18th century to exist. What

could not be done through direct lessons and formal conditioning was accomplished

through a complex, pavlovian gauntlet of aggressive bullying tactics and consequences

for social nonconformity that we call ‘childhood.’ These ideas of conformity to social

order are innate to human development, and detrimental to our species survival

past beating snakes with rocks in trees. And it’s pivotal that we develop communities

and actively seek out common ground with other human beings and communities.

However, this sense of conformity can be very easily hijacked by a morally ambiguous

class of social superiors who twist a definition of social order to suit their own personal

needs, rather than benefit humanity at large. SO. For those of us who seek identity

and fulfilment outside these hierarchically-defined predetermined channels, we often need to find ways to preserve our sense

of self while ‘surviving.’ And yes, some of us may be partial to skipping through steps A, B,

and C-through-G and go straight to moon-howling. Which… you know. In today’s economy

that’s not an invalid option. I’m sure someone would pay me

to howl at the moon for them. But many of us, like Stede Bonnet, run the mental

gymnastics needed to find a way to exist within society in spite of… that simply being not what

you are. Stede, specifically, used the classic technique of procedurally minimising himself to

the point where he barely existed in his own life. The more you retreat from your life, the less of

you have to actually tolerate that miserable life. You kinda learn to… drift along. Exist where

it’s necessary but for the most part you don’t really have a whole lot of awareness of

yourself. Or other people. Or years going by… in a pandemic where your body is ageing

but your mind is still in your twenties… [Dissociate.] But before you know it you have a wife. A

house. A family. A family that you’re not aware why you have or what to do with it aside

from society telling you that you should have it. What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that? Very healthy marriage! It’s abundantly clear that Stede doesn’t really fit in with the family life.

He’s kind of looked at as this weird obstruction to normal living by his wife and kids. He

only really connects with his children when he’s playing adventure games with them —

otherwise they’re kinda put off by him. His wife, on the other hand, has all but resolved

entirely to put up with him. It doesn’t seem like she really… dislikes Stede. But it is clear

that she is just as repressed as he is. Their interests are completely out of sync, they have no way of communicating because

each one is repressing a different identity. She’s a sort of free-love artist who doesn’t need

a man, who is living the role of the subservient housewife because this is the role she

has been taught to play her whole life because that is the only life for a woman to

live. And Stede is gay. Tale as old as time. And she GETS to be this strong, fabulous, glowing woman once she no long

HAS to be Mrs. Stede Bonnet. And even though they can’t really be bothered

to do anything more than tolerate each other, this is apparently how it’s supposed to

be. The important thing is that you stay together — for the children. Or social decency.

It doesn’t matter if it’s not who you are. I’m sure forcing kids to grow up in

nuclear families where both parents are ghosts of shells of human beings

will end up perfectly well-adjusted, and never pass along that generational

trauma. The important thing is staying together. Fulfilment is secondary to survival

— and all you gotta put in is the bare minimum. The kids won’t notice. Children: the original participation trophies. And that attitude hasn’t really

gone anywhere since 1717. It’s just as alive and well today as ever.

Epitomised by another hit streaming comedy. During my research for this video I found

a textbook which claimed to be a credible source on the topic of queer disocvery being an

issue in marriages. I wanted to read about the straight partner’s side of the experience. But

it turns out the book was pretty much just a… step by step manual about why

you should divorce your husband if he tells you that he’s bisexual. So let’s

ignore that overpriced piece of biphobia. Coming out isn’t like flicking a switch or

moving to a new city. For many queer people, coming out can be an evolving process of

being honest with yourself, then a confidant, then family members and classmates or co-workers. Recently, a number of surveys report that

queer people are coming out at younger ages than ever before as we benefit

from growing (though not widespread) acceptance and better (though not great)

LGBTQ representation in the media. But coming out is still generally

presented as a rite-of-passage for teens and maybe twenty-somethings. People who are

just getting their lives started and have no chains attaching them to heterosexuality. Grace & Frankie is a Netflix series

that began streaming in May of 2015, with its final season premiering this April.

The show tells the story of the titular Grace & Frankie when they’re slapped in the face

with the realisation that both of their husbands, Robert and Saul respectively, have been

cheating on them for the last twenty years. With each other. And since they’re aging into their

70s, and gay marriage has become legal, they think its about time they stop hiding,

divorce their wives and marry each other. Which doesn’t go over

wonderfully, as you’d expect. Now this is a sitcom, not a hard boiled

drama, but I’ve spoken with enough gay men of a certain age to know that a lot of the

more dramatic issues that arise in the show, specifically about dealing with husbands

coming out, are closer to reality than fiction. As the series goes on the animosity between

the women and their former husbands does die down a bit, leading to them eventually

becoming friends (at least Frankie and Saul), but the first season does little in the

way of painting a rosy picturesque ending for married couples torn apart by homosexuality

or, in Saul’s case, likely bisexuality. The two female leads have contrasting

reactions to finding out about their husbands. Frankie is angry, yes, but mostly sad. Her main focus is on keeping her family together.

While Grace is a ball of anger and resentment. Both perfectly valid reactions to finding out that

the last several decades of life lives were a lie. Crappy situation all around. The

kids are angry at their fathers, but feel like they can’t be angry because their

gay, and they need to be happy for them. That they can finally come out and be their

true selves, even though they kind of hate them at the moment for tearing their families

asunder and breaking their mother’s hearts. But the show doesn’t act like Robert and Saul

are the worst people in the world, either. Outing yourself late in life can be complicated

after having lived through times when being openly gay could get you fired, arrested, put

in an institution or given shock treatment. It's snarled in a lifetime of trudging

along through society's views of normalcy and the resulting fear of being

ostracised by everyone you know. And it's marked by a nagging doubt that all of

the heartache you may cause, all of the potential for things to just get worse after coming out,

may not be worth it with one's years numbered. In the best situation, everyone is

okay with it and you get to have a fabulous third act in your life. But in

the worst situation your entire family, spouse, children, grandchildren, might

never want to speak to you again. Not because of homophobia but because they

feel you’ve been lying to them for decades. Finding out that the partner you believed to be

straight is actually gay can be traumatizing. Especially in long term relationships. This can be

beyond difficult for the straight person involved. They can internalized the sexual

rejection, feel like you’ve become gay because they weren’t good

enough, have a cratering self-image, and increased anxiety about what

else you’ve been hiding from them. And I’m not even taking into account the

spouses of people who come out as transgender because that’s a whole other can of worms. And is, at least from my gay millennial point

of view, a lot more complicated. Coming out as gay has been at least on the

periphery of acceptable since the 1990s, and well before that depending

upon where you lived and what your family was like. But coming out

as trans, even to this day, can be fraught with any number of social and legal

issues. So let’s focus on the cis’s here. Some people have described the

discovery that their spouse is gay as something akin to finding out that

they’ve died. But there’s a very important difference in the situation. When a spouse dies

you have to grieve them and eventually, hopefully, move on to live the rest of your life. But in the situation of a

spouse coming out of the closet, you’re mourning the loss for yourself while

possibly seeing them flourish in a new happy relationship with someone they actually want to

be with. Someone who, at least to your own eyes, isn’t a consolation prize, but what

they were hoping for all along. That kind of thing can be pretty traumatic,

especially for older people like Grace and Frankie who, likely, assumed til death

do us part was a given at their age. So staying in the closet and attempting to live a

straight life, while the social norm, may end up causing more damage than you ever thought. It’s

not just your own inability to live openly that is hindered, causing yourself emotional distress,

but inevitably creates trauma for your loved ones. While some spouses do end up being supportive

in the end, others are driven in the opposite direction. Beginning to support things like

conversion therapy in hopes that no other woman, or man, will have to go through the possibly

life-destroying experience that they have. That’s an extreme case, of course, and most

marriages that end with one partner coming out usually just end up as a messy divorce. But the

longer you stay in that straight relationship, the more painful it becomes when you leave it. Decades

of marriage, with children and grandchildren… it’s much harder than just breaking up and revealing

to your girlfriend that you actually like boys. Or if you’re a lesbian, letting your

boyfriend know that you actually like girls. Well, knowing straight guys, that interaction will

probably end with them asking for a threesome. But it takes a drastic shift away from “I turned

him gay” jokes when you’re in your twenties… to life altering circumstances if

the coming out happens later in life. It’s almost cruel to hold an opposite sex partner hostage in a marriage while you work

up the courage to be your true self. Coming out is almost always frightening, and

certainly doesn’t get any easier with age, but I think we should take the lives and

feelings of the people we’re keeping in the dark into consideration. They deserve

to live their lives to the fullest, not just as your arm candy to

the country club or Sunday mass. It isn’t just the emotional impact you

might have on your wife or husband though. There’s a very real, and very deadly,

impact you might have on yourself. In the early 1990s a study was

conducted by doctors at UCLA to study the health of HIV negative gay

and bisexual men. By estimates about half of the men were in the closet at

the time, and the other half were out. The occurrence of cancer and moderate to severe

infections increased in direct proportion to the degree to which participants

concealed their sexual identity. Surveyed infectious diseases included pneumonia,

bronchitis, tuberculosis, and most cancers. None of these effects could be attributed to

differences in demographic characteristics (such as age, ethnicity, occupation, or

education), health-relevant behavioural patterns (like drug use, exercise, or

sleep disruption), depression, or anxiety. These findings replicated the results of

an earlier study documenting accelerated progression of HIV infections among gay or

bisexual men who were not out of the closet. These findings were also consistent with data

from a 1974 research study that measured both the concealment of one’s sexuality, and

the occurrence of 15 psychosomatic symptoms (such as tremors, headache, loss of appetite,

upset stomach, weight loss, heart palpitations, dizziness, and sleep disturbance). Analysis

of the data they reported indicated that "closeted" gay or bisexual men were more

than twice as likely to show these symptoms. These were only two of many studies over the last

few decades that saw a correlation between being in the closet and becoming ill, physically and

psychologically. Attributed to the incredible stress placed on closeted individuals to

keep their identity hidden at all costs. But it’s not only illness that can come about from

being in the closet. It’s physical danger as well. Closeted men were always less likely to

have friends in the local queer community, and therefore wouldnt be in the know about

what rent boys would steal from them or, worse, leave them bleeding out in

some cheap room somewhere. In the 1980s and 90s, being in the

closet could mean certain death. While gay and bisexual men were

finding out about the HIV virus, creating support groups, and eventually learning

that condoms could slow the spread of the disease, closeted men from the suburbs

were blissfully unaware, or at least under aware, of the dangerous virus

circulating throughout America’s major cities. And once and a while they would find themselves

travelling into those cities from their nice suburban homes and their happy homemaker wives to

meet up with a leather daddy or particularly cute twink they kept around for when their pretend

heterosexuality became too mundane and boring. But these casual sexual partners weren’t always

safe, with them or anyone else they had sex with. They might have been infected, and might

pass the virus off to these married men to bring home to the suburbs with them. And, in

some very unfortunate circumstances, then pass the disease on to their completely unknowing wives.

This was a horror story back in the day, meant to demonize bisexual men in particular. But it wasn’t

just bisexuals hiding in closets. Plenty of gay men were just as deeply hidden in the shadows,

between Ralph Lauren polos and Gucci neck ties. Theft and murder were also frequent in known queer

areas of a city. Theft; because it would be easy to get a man’s pants off and steal everything he’s

got before running away. And murderers would hang around looking for their next victim because

if a body was found in the gay areas of town, it wouldnt be likely that the cops

would do a whole lot of digging to find out who took them out. Just one

less queer they had to worry about. An infamous example of this was

the serial killer Ronald Dominique, who murdered twenty three men in south eastern

Louisiana between the years of 1997 and 2006. The reason he was able to go about his sick

hobby for so long was because he was targeting poor black men who were either gay, or sex workers

willing to go home with a man for the right price. Looking back in history the closet was ALSO a vice used to trap men in legal proceedings.

Take for instance the trials of Oscar Wilde. Wilde, who was in a long affair with Alfred

Douglas, was not taken down by blackmail or bad press, as he long expected he would be,

but by his lover’s ill-tempered and mentally imbalanced father, The Marquess of Queensbury.

By early 1894 Queensberry concluded the Wilde was most likely a homosexual and began

demanding that his son stop seeing Wilde. He wrote to his son: "Your intimacy with this man Wilde must either cease or I will

disown you and stop all money supplies.” To which his son replied simply: "What a funny little man you are.” Queensberry began taking increasingly

desperate measures to end the relationship such as threatening restaurant and hotel managers

with beatings if he ever discovered Wilde and his son together on their premises. In June of 1894

Queensberry, accompanied by a prize-fighter, showed up without warning at Wilde's house

in Chelsea. An angry conversation ensued, ending when Wilde ordered

Queensberry to leave saying, "I do not know what the Queensberry rules are,

but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on sight." On February 14, 1895, Wilde's new play The

Importance of Being Earnest was set to open at the St. James Theatre. Wilde learned that Queensberry

planned to disrupt the opening night's performance and harangue the audience about Wilde's alleged

decadent lifestyle. To thwart the plan, Wilde arranged to have the theatre surrounded by police.

Blocked by officers from entering the theatre, Queenberry prowled about outside for

three hours before finally leaving. Queensberry proceed to spread rumours

of the affair between his son and Wilde all over London. And this is where the closet

slammed shot directly onto Oscar Wilde’s face when he sued the man for libel,

declaring that he was not a homosexual and that Queensberry was

patently lying. All at the urgence of Alfred. In the opening speech for the defence,

Queensberry’s lawyer announced that he had located several male prostitutes who were willing

to testify that they had had sex with Oscar Wilde. Following this declaration, and upon advice

from his own lawyers, Wilde dropped the charges. Under the Libel Act of 1843, Queensberry's subsequent acquittal rendered

Wilde legally liable for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred in his

legal defence, which left Wilde bankrupt. …And also footing the bill for

every one of Alfred Douglas’ whims. After Wilde left the court, a warrant

for his arrest was issued for charges of sodomy and gross indecency. To which he was

eventually found guilty and sent to prison. Oscar Wilde’s closet, as fabulous as I’m sure it

was, in fact was what lead to his swift downfall from a darling of high society, to

a sodomite sentenced to hard labour. Of course there should not have been any kind of

prison sentence for being gay or bisexual, and he never should have been put in that situation

in the first place, but the facts remain. It was the closet door that he let hang

so limply ajar, that led to his downfall. After leaving prison, he died in November of 1900,

less than five years after being found guilty.

I just want to take a second to clarify

that I kind of am railing a bit against heteronormative social structures. I’ve been

growing concerned, when I cover this topic, that people feel like I’m calling them out

for not being ‘the right kind of queer.’ Which… no, I’m not doing that.

When I rail against heteronormativity, even when I’m making a joke out of

it, I want to clarify that I’m not targeting individuals. Having rights as an equal

citizen means that you ought to have the ability to choose how you want to live your life. Suss

out those wild parties in abandoned warehouses, or have a night in after a PTA meeting.

I encourage people to be who they are in spite of social conditioning. I’m not a fan of

our society still having these expectations.

And I similiarily have no patience for

queer people who try to gate-keep other queer people based on these approved

queer identities, established for us by cisgender heterosexual people.

I thought the whole point of queerness is that you had permission to be different. We’re not

really getting rights if those rights come with caveats and terms and conditions. An ally who

holds their morality hostage until we make them comfortable, is an ally who has no intention of

accepting us — but is willing to tolerate us.

If we look at the queer folks who try to badger

other queer people into hetero-approved checkboxes of identities, there is an opposing, and perhaps

even equal group in the queer community that tries to do the opposite thing, and badger queer

people away from that ‘heteronomative’ lifestyle. Even if it is — and it is perfectly valid if it

is — the most honest expression of their self.

And yes. Our Flag Means Death does have…

or may have something to say about this?

Stede, even though he continues to

live gentlemanly in spite of being the odd one out among his crew, still has

value in the community and has a place.

And the show makes a point of making villains

out of people who think he is ridiculous, and has no right to be a pirate. And,

perhaps, the primary villain of the show is the one who will not shut up about it.

Okay. We get it, Izzy. You don’t like embroidery.

Izzy Hands is a character in the show based on the historic figure of the same name, who

was, in fact, the first mate to Blackbeard. Who… I don’t know if I've mentioned it yet, but he’s

also a character in the show! And played by Tika Watiti. And is totally gay for Stede Bonnet.

But you know THAT because the internet has been nothing but gay pirate fan art for the last week.

Izzy does not like Stede in general, but would probably be willing to just kind

of… ignore him. But what gets under his skin is that Blackbeard, his bro, is…

adopting some of Stede’s eccentricities.

This is a great symbol because instead of

being allegory it is, as Tolkien described, Applicability. Meaning this one object

or icon (Piracy) has any range of ways it can be reapplied to the real world.

Izzy sees Blackbeard’s increasing warmth, his growing softness, and his newfound emotional

intelligence to be the work of Stede Bonnet. That Bonnet had somehow bewitched Blackbeard.

Because Izzy’s view of Blackbeard is as the ideal pirate, who is cruel, chaotic, rough, and ruthless

– and he believes that this vision of Blackbeard is the true expression of his self. Whereas the

idiosyncrasies he is borrowing from Stede Bonnet are nothing more than the tempting and addictive

soft comforts of conventional society.

Stede, as the primary influencer of what Izzy

may view as ‘normativity of the conventional,’ must be removed from the community in order to

keep piracy ‘true’ and ‘pure.’ He’s all about that pirate purity. He loves that P.P.

In a similar way, gatekeepers tend to be married to this language of ‘purity.’

You see this all the time in toxic nerd communities. Things like separating ‘star

wars fans’ from ‘TRUE star wars fans.’

And out of everyone, it makes no sense to me why

the queer community has this kind of thing going on. Some of us left our families because they were

making demands about who we are and how we express ourselves. What’s the point of a found family if

the family we find does the exact same thing?

Blackbeard’s experience with

identity, despite what Izzy thinks, is not too different from Stede’s.

Ed Teach did not come from a great home. His dad was abusive so he murdered him and

blamed a sea monster, you know the drill. Drawing attention to himself as tough, mean,

and cold was just as much of a response to identity suppression as Stede’s introversion.

Where Stede made a persona that was invisible, as Blackbeard, Ed projected a personality

not only did everyone see plainly, but made it clear he was not to be crossed.

Both projections succeeded in the same thing: keeping people away from the

truth of their identity.

The difference was: Stede decided enough

was enough, and threw himself out into the world ready or not. Could have handled

the family thing a bit more upfront but…

Blackbeard it seems, was a little

bit more tender underneath it all. In spite of Izzy’s persistence, Blackbeard

would privately confess his sensitivities, and his exhaustion with having to be

Blackbeard. And how he was simply much more comfortable as a normal name — as just Ed.

In fact when he introduced himself to Stede as Ed, I thought it was a joke, and I had

to look up Blackbeard’s real name.

The show uses Blackbeard as a SYMBOL and I think

that lends it a lot of credit to the show.

Because Blackbeard was much

more sensitive than he seemed, but was putting on a mask for the approval of his

peer group. He had to hide a truth about himself, his sensitivity, his love of fine clothes, and a

willingness to put his heart on his sleeve — for the purpose of blending into an environment.

How is this any less of an allegorical closet than the one Stede was in?

The thing about Izzy is that he doesn’t really care about Blackbeard. He

doesn’t care about Blackbeard’s sense of fulfilment, what he wants out of life, nor how

Blackbeard would like to express his freedom.

Whether or not Blackbeard gets anything out of

it doesn’t matter. Blackbeard is more important as an icon for Izzy to use as a representative of

pirate lifestyle, than whatever fulfilment he may get out of doing anything else. And this is how

gatekeepers justify this kind of behaviour — by finding some way that enforcing their own

sensibilities can actually be a moral necessity.

The sacrifice of Blackbeard’s individuality

is a necessary one because the utility he gets from happiness is less significant than the

utility his fraudulent personality can provide as a role model to other pirates.

Queer circles and Our Flag Means Death Pirates are communities focused

around rejecting dishonest lifestyles. However the fact that we still have to deal with

internal identity policing indicates that we have not abandoned the components of culture which are

comfortable with dishonesty in the first place. Our culture of dishonesty goes a lot deeper than

I think most people would be willing to admit. The messaging of nearly every piece of

90s media was ‘just be yourself, kids.’ At which point the programming would outline

a very specific way to ‘be yourself.’ Conform to nonconformity. Fast forward to when we’re writing our

first resume. The advice we get? Lie. Beef up your work experience. Rebrand your hobbies

and interests so they sound more impressive. Downplay your shortcomings and under NO

circumstances EVER talk about your disabilities. In general. The very culture in which we are afforded

success is one which encourages us to behave more like robots, and less

like people. Because people are messy, people are flawed. People have problems,

and hangups, and triggers, and traumas. But an employer can justify how any one of

those things make you an unsuitable employee. So these are parts of ourselves that we HAVE

to conceal. Except Stede. Stede doesn't care. I mean, when we’re nervous over going into a first

job interview, and the advice we’re given is ‘just be yourself and act natural’ — that advice

isn’t meant to mean: ‘it’s okay to talk about your potential panic attacks.’ So when people say: ‘just be yourself,’ they

actually mean ‘be the version of yourself which is held up to an impossible standard and

which contains no trace of personal flaws.’ The pressure to exist as a flawless individual

in society begins here but doesn’t get better. Think about the last time you wanted

something. Doesn’t have to be a job. Maybe it was an application for a grant, or a bursary

or scholarship for school. When did an authority figure tell you that in order to get it, it’s

okay if you had to bend the truth a little bit. What if it was a student loan.

And you were asked the question: “have you ever had depression” or “been

diagnosed with depression?” Of course you had. But banks see depression and

mental illness as a liability. So where once we were talking about

society’s widespread comfort with keeping queer people in closets, there

are a whole lot of other ways that society pressures us to conceal elements

about ourselves. The hilarious part is that we’re in a culture which likes to

pretend like we need to be more open. But that just ends up with Banks putting out

promotional material for mental health awareness while selling life insurance policies which

disqualify applicants who have been diagnosed with depression. Like my mom, who paid into

an insurance policy with RBC for nine years only to have it yanked away from her after her

death, because in 2014, when she was doing great, she forgot to mention that she’d been

diagnosed with depression in 2005, after suffering an injury that

meant she couldn’t work anymore. Sorry, but who hasn’t been depressed these

days? Who isn’t struggling with keeping their head above the water? Who doesn’t feel small

and insignificant when they’re just trying to be the change that they want to see in a world

that’s out of their control? Who doesn’t feel like they messed up somewhere in life when family

sitcoms still try to sell the two-car garage and white picket fence as the ‘standard’ milestone

for life? When people buy starter homes. And if this is EVERYONE, then why the

hell does everyone have to pretend like it’s not something that’s happened to them? Why do we live in a culture where

you have to act like you're something completely different than you are,

and then end up pissing off friends and acquaintances as they begin to learn

that you’re actually completely different? Why do we have to ‘act our age’ when you turn

30, because all the other age’d gays badger you into beleiving you’re too old to get

your kicks out of clubbing on the weekend? Why do we present introverts as people

who have nowhere to go on a Friday night, rather than people who would actively choose

to stay in if they could choose anything? …The short answer is that

profit-driven media is really only capable of depicting a limited

number of identities because there’s an unwillingness to experiment with new ideas that

have not already been shown to be profitable. Which is why I’m so surprised that

something like Our Flag Means Death made it into production. That a giant media

conglomerate like Warner Bros. Discovery saw fit to okay a budget for a show about a bunch

of weird, queer pirates who break every convention of traditional society. Multiple instances of

queer love, at least one instance of polyamory, a ship filled with people of different

races, and the biggest villain of the show is the guy who wants Blackbeard to

be your typical masculine archetype. How did this happen? How, in this media landscape of “first gay characters” and coming

out stories did we get this show? In the beginning of the show, when Stede

first meets Ed, he shows him around his ship. And the place he’s most comfortable is literally

his closet. And by the end of the show, he’s a lone man on a raft rowing to save his crew

of queer misfits. His fount family, if you will. The people who have grown to accept him

for what he really is, and not what they expected him to be. We need more of that

in this community. Less gate keeping. Less dictatorial instructions on who is and who

isn’t being queer the right way. We’re all on the same boat, and we sink or sail

together. And I think it’s better if we sail. Under as many flags as we damn well please.

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