Jack Sparrow, meet Jim Crow.

Spoilers for POTC2: Dead Man's Chest are contained under the cut.

EDITED TO ADD: Cowardly anonymous replies will be deleted from now on.



Jack Sparrow, meet Jim Crow.

Please tell me I'm not the only Caucasian moviegoer who noticed the racism in Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest.

I understand that there are certain unspoken rules for action films. The black characters die first (unless they're children); they feature an all-white or nearly-white cast; and 99.99999% of the protagonists are good-looking white American males in their 30s; a black man may be graciously permitted to be the white hero's sexless sidekick, and he may still die at the end. I don't attend enough action films to be accustomed or resigned to these rules, however unconscious the filmmaker may be about their racist nature.

But there are the films that are not only unconsciously racist, but deliberately racist – racist in such a blatant, obvious fashion that white people notice it – stare at the screen with their mouths open, blinking, thinking What year is this? How in the hell did this ever pass muster in this day and age?

Films like Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest.

There are difficulties of a racial nature that must surely arise when one sets a film or three in the late 1600s-early 1700s in and around a cluster of European-colony South Sea islands that relied on slave labor. The people giving the orders and the people taking the orders were divided by color, in the real world.

Yet this film's milieu is that of a supernatural pirate movie, twice removed from reality. One of the protagonists is a governor's daughter who prefers acting like a pirate to staying in her correct social place. Surely the filmmakers could have allowed a touch or two more of unreality in favor of making their film more accessible to more people. Even the reality of piracy could have done that! Pirates came from all nationalities and walks of life, pirate ships of the time were thoroughly integrated, and they were more democratically run than Royal Navy vessels.

I'd come to the film wanting only to enjoy Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow and some fun, swashbuckling derring-do...and wound up squirming in embarrassment at so many scenes that my enjoyment was spoiled.

I'd like to stand this film on a gibbet, unroll a parchment, and read out its list of crimes. They've been enumerated better, by people more attuned to racial injustice by necessity. But here are the ones that pinged my radar:

1) Anamaria? Anamaria?

Anamaria was not only a female pirate but the only pirate of color on Jack Sparrow's ship at the end of the first POTC film, Curse of the Black Pearl. In DMC she's missing altogether – and she's not even mentioned. I don't know if Zoe Saldana's lack was deliberate (the filmmakers didn't want to complicate things by having two chicks on the same ship?), or if she didn't want to come back, or was busy making other films, but her loss leaves an all-white cast of principals on the good guys' side.

2) Well, We Had Some Black Pirates This Morning, But They Died.

This goes beyond the standard "the black guy dies first in the action movie" scenario. Is there any earthly reason why the Pearl's antagonistic crewmembers should just happen to include every buccaneer darker than Jack Sparrow's tan? (By the way, they were doing what real pirate crews did in those days: question and vote out captains they didn't like.) And why, when everyone is caged (by comical cannibals, more on that below), one cage just happens to hold all the dark pirates and one cage holds all the white ones – and the cage full of black pirates just happens to be the one that snaps and sends every one of its inhabitants to their immediate deaths? Oh, I'm sure nothing sinister was intended. Yes, we're left with the protagonists and principals...every lily-white one of them. But it just happened to turn out that way, honest.

3) Ooga Booga!

The less said about the Cannibal Island sequence, the better. Starting with the fact that it doesn't help the plot. This half-hour brings the film to a screeching halt. The only thing gained is Pintel and Ragetti rejoining the Pearl – which could have been handled in 30 seconds of screen time by the pirates fishing them out of the sea. In that half-hour, there's not a single moment that deviates from an identical scenario in a 1930's Tarzan or White Jungle Goddess movie: Our (White) Heroes land on an island full of superstitious brown-skinned heathens who live in skull-festooned huts, speak an "ooga-booga" language that's not important enough to translate, worship the first white person they see, and cook their captives alive over a bonfire; they chase the escapees with blowguns and spears – until a dog diverts them into a new chase (and ends with them capering around a fire worshipping the dog).

4) Massa Jack, We Sho Is Sorry You's Dead.

The bayou. Dear God, the bayou scene at the end was straight out of Song of the South – mournful darkies standing around with candles singing laments for a Good White Man. (Er, did we ever see Jack do thing one for any of these people? Did anyone even freakin' mention anything Jack did?) The only thing missing was Hattie McDaniel in tears over some poor white child. But instead of Hattie, we got...

5) She Be A Fearsome Voodoo Debil-Woman, Mon!

Sharper watchers than I recognized the voodoo witch immediately as the film's Magical Negro, whose job it is to make sure the movie's White Hero wins the big game/saves the world/gets laid by his white girlfriend. (Or kill a big squid, in Jack's case.) She's just sexualized enough to give the male viewers a thrill and to tease the Johnny and Orli fans, but of course she's never a true sexual threat to any of the relationships in the film. Can't have a sexually active black person, can we?

***

I can already hear the angry rumblings from white POTC fans. How do I know you're white? Because if you complain that I'm "making too much" of any or all of the above stuff, or that I'm "over-reacting," you're white.

If you say any variation of "It's just a harmless fantasy" or "It's all make-believe, anyway," you're white.

If you say "Why do you have to notice racial things anyway! You're the real racist for mentioning it!" you're white.

If you say "White people act badly and get killed in this movie too!" you're white.

If you say "Well, Jack Sparrow is a terrible example for white males, so it's just as bad for white males!" you're a white male who's feeling extremely threatened.

If you say "Racism? I didn't see any racist stuff in the movie," you're white.

And if you use the phrase "politically correct" to sneer at anything that posits that there are others in the universe besides straight white Christian males, who have a right to define what is offensive to them...man oh man are you white.

By the way – yes, I did notice: Whites do act badly in POTC2. (The one thing that piqued my interest in DMC was the complications, reversals and betrayals of the relationships established in the first film – far more interesting than a CGI talking squid.) Whites get killed too. But if whites got killed or left out in exactly the same percentage as blacks in this film, there'd be nobody in the cast but the background people and the dog with the keys. Too many of the same people who get indignant at any portrayal of a white Southerner as an ignorant, racist hick (even for comic purposes) don't see what the big deal is when a film portrays indigenous South Sea Islanders as ignorant, brutal cannibals (only for comic purposes).

Whites do not like to admit that racism exists, that it's still here, that it can so deeply ingrain itself in our entertainment that we pale people have learned to not-see the elephant in the movie house. The fact that it's harder for most whites to see what people of color must see and live with every day makes it all the more important that we try – that we not pretend it doesn't exist; that we acknowledge that someone might be offended by a one-sided portrayal of everyone who looks like them, made by an outsider; and that we add our voices to those who protest such portrayals in the name of entertainment.

Even if it means missing a three-way sword-fight atop a moving water wheel.