Jack Sparrow Condemns Freedom: How the Film Disagrees with Michael Blitz and Judith Butler

Jack Sparrow Condemns Freedom: How the film disagrees with Michael Blitz and Judith Butler

Captain Jack Sparrow is the quirky protagonist of the film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Michael Blitz and Louise Krasniewicz, in "'Johnny Are You Queer?': A Pirate's Life For Us" discuss how pirates and in particular, how Sparrow is a widely celebrated character that embodies the hope of challenging society's norms. Indeed, Blitz writes that Sparrow advances the notion that keeping to the rules and laws of everyday society can be "an ambiguous activity" (159). Judith Butler, in "Gender Trouble: Feminism & the Subversion of Identity", posits that drag "reveals the imitative structure of gender". Though Sparrow does not perform drag per se, he performs both physical and behavioural features that, Butler might argue, also reveal the imitative structure of gender. Thus, Butler could support Blitz by explaining how Sparrow could challenge society's notion of a pre-existing gender divide. However, through an analysis of three scenes from the film, I will argue that although Sparrow does challenge the societal norm of gender, he also suggests that such a challenge might not be hopeful. Prima Facie,

The first scene entails Sparrow's first appearance in the film, where he first arrives in Port Royal looking to commandeer a ship. In this scene we are able to observe both Sparrow's feminine physical and behavioural characteristics. Roger Ebert, in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl" describes these most succinctly. He describes that Sparrow seems to be "channeling a drunken drag queen, with his eyeliner and the way he minces ashore and slurs his dialogue ever so insouciantly". Indeed, Sparrow's exaggerated thick black eyeliner and long hair are feminine signs. After he bribes the caretaker of the dock, he walks along the dock in a sassy manner that even the women of the film do not parallel. His speech could be considered as more weird than feminine. However, the way he leans in to talk to people, compounded by feminine flicks of his wrists, are inflated feminine signs. Thus, Sparrow has embellished feminine characteristics.

Considering Butler, Sparrow's exaggerated feminine characteristics might reveal the imitative structure of gender, like drag would. Drag entails a male being dressed up, and even acting totally like a female. A drag queen might exaggerate certain features. To Butler, drag "plays upon the distinction" between the anatomy of the performer and the performed gender. Sparrow performs a feminine gender through the aspects discussed above, though his biological sex is obviously male. He grows a moustache, his voice is male, and his body shape is visibly male (though arguably not an especially masculine one). Because we know that Sparrow's sex is male, the fact that he imitates feminine characteristics point out that gender is simply an imitation. Sparrow points out that gender is a cultural fiction that is disconnected to sex, and that gender behavior is imitated such that a