I'm Hannah McGregor. And I'm Marcel Kosman. This week, we are traveling back in time to the year 2003. It was not a simpler time, but it was certainly a time when many of us believed. that George W. Bush was the worst American president that we could imagine. And the most incompetent. The most incompetent. The most morally reprehensible. Hannah, before we get into our actual topic, I want to know, because in 2003, we would have been 19 years old. So I want to know.
How did the 19-year-old you think about U.S. President George W. Bush and why? Now, 19-year-old Hannah was, I would say, Political with a small P, but very disinterested in politics. Interesting. She had a lot of opinions. Yeah. But one of those opinions was... There's nothing we can do about the people in power and we shouldn't try. I think that I found...
global politics wildly overwhelming. And so it was just like, well, you know what? Don't even pay attention to it. Don't even talk about it. What I knew was that we didn't like George Bush. And I had a vague sense that we didn't like George Bush because he was not smart. That was definitely a sort of narrative I was receiving. And he... was using 9-11 to justify doing wars. And that's kind of what I had. Yeah.
But then, like, somebody would respond to me and be like, well, what, you know, what is the U.S. supposed to do? They were attacked. And that immediate moment, that, like, first pushback is when I was like, I actually don't know. I actually don't know when I don't want to talk about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think that that is. super relatable I felt very similar to how you're describing but I was
I was definitely political. Like I thought I was going to be an ambassador. That was my career path. When I was in my senior year of high school, I was planning to study political science. become an ambassador to somewhere important. You'd be so bad at that. You hate the country. I know. You'd be so bad at like going around and being like, Canada's great. This was before I had my hard reckoning that I was not a nationalist. This was like, oh. I think I thought that Canada was still salvageable.
Oh, yeah. And that's fair. Lots of people still think that. It's true. Tell me what you thought about Bush. I mean, like you, a lot of the narratives, like he wasn't smart. A lot of the narratives about him were in relation to Bill Clinton. And so there was a lot of like... praising bill clinton as like not necessarily as a man or a husband, but as a leader, as a like person who like... studied the issues at hand carefully. Just sort of knew the names of the countries where he was.
waging a war. And really genuinely seemed like he was making the decisions and not a hand puppet being used by other members of his administration, which is very much how George W. Bush... felt to me as a mildly uninformed 19-year-old with a lot of opinions. Opinions? Who is he a hand puppet to? Kissinger? Rumsfeld? And Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Is Rumsfeld the one who shot somebody in the face when he was out hunting? Or was that Dick Cheney?
Oh, that was Dick Cheney. That was Dick Cheney. Wow. So with this level of understanding of the American political landscape, I hope you feel in safe hands. It's time for Why This? Why Now? The segment that asks the materialist question. What are or were the historical, ideological, and material conditions? for our object of study to become zeitgeisty. And what is our object of study, Marcel? Is it Bush?
It's not not Bush, but we'll get there. We'll get there. This week, we are officially talking about Pirates of the Caribbean. Okay. Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl hit theaters on July 9th. 2003. Once again, were we ever so young? Hannah, could you read this description of the film from my favorite source of all time, Wikipedia, please?
Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl, originally titled Pirates of the Caribbean, is a 2003 American fantasy swashbuckler film directed by Gore Verbinski. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and distributed by Buena Vista Pictures through the Walt Disney Pictures label, the film is based on the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disney theme parks and is the first film in the Pirates of the Caribbean.
Film series. The film stars Johnny Depp, Jeffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley. The plot follows the pirate Jack Sparrow, Depp, and the blacksmith Will Turner, Bloom, as they attempt to rescue the kidnapped Elizabeth Swan, Knightley. The trio encounters Captain Hector Barbosa, Rush, and the crew of the Black Pearl who are afflicted by a supernatural curse, end quote. Perfect. Thank you, Hannah.
The film is an adaptation of the ride of the same name, which can be found at Disneyland, Disney World, and Tokyo Disney. Hannah, do you remember the Pirates of the Caribbean ride from when we were at Disneyland last year? With profound fondness. It's very fun. They put you in a little boat and then that little boat goes down a waterfall and you all get splashed.
And then you're in like a subterranean river, which like the ride broke down multiple times while we were there. At least once while we were on it. Yeah, at least once while we were on it. And it's like... Yeah, this thing has the feeling of built before safety laws. The vibe is we might die down here. Yes. And it's basically like you go along in this little boat and there are all of these animatronics.
Not as far as I can tell any kind of narrative, just pirate stuff. They're just doing pirate stuff around you. I will say two specific fond memories. One is the moment when we realize that they have placed... several updated animatronics. throughout that are Johnny Depp from these movies. And they're so much more modern than all of the originals. that it's uncanny. Like, it just seems like actual Johnny Depp might just be, like, hiding on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
Which is like, I guess that's what he's up to these days. When you're canceled, you have to go live in Disney World. Anyway, big fan, I would go on a hundred more times. Absolutely. It's a great ride. And based on the reading that I did for this episode, it's a perennially popular one. So looking back, it absolutely makes sense that the Disney Corporation would want to turn it into a money-making movie. Right, Hannah? Yes.
Yeah. Wrong. Very funny. Okay, before we get into the why of the film's popularity, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the circumstances of its production, because it's cuckoo bananas. and how apparently the film almost didn't get made. I mean, I feel like it was the first ride movie, and now they make so many ride movies. Okay, this is so good. Then-CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner, tried to shut down production of Pirates of the Caribbean.
because Pirates of the Caribbean was not the first theme park attraction to film adaptation that Disney had attempted. What? I know, I know, I know. What other one? You're right that it was the first ride. But it wasn't the first attraction. So there was an earlier project, 2002's The Country Bears. And it was such a critical and commercial failure that Eisner became convinced that theme park attractions do not lend themselves to successful movie adaptations.
Okay, sorry. What attraction was the Country Bears based on? Well, you know, the Country Bear Jamboree. You know what? I don't know. And either we didn't see it or it didn't exist when we went to Disneyland. I can assure you that we didn't see it. Does it exist? It does. It does exist. Yeah. Okay. All right. Good for us. Wikipedia describes the attraction as, quote, a stage show featuring audio animatronic bears who perform country music, end quote.
I love that. That's a perfect corollary to a fantasy swashbuckler film if I've ever heard one. So the theme park attraction adaptation was like a major point of contention for the CEO. Gotcha. The other...
issue was that apparently there hadn't been a successful pirate movie to hit the box offices since the 1950s. Oh, that's so interesting. I know, I know. So getting the actual details here was a bit challenging. I found this... archived blog post about Michael Eisner's, again, that was the CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner's attempts to interfere with the production of Pirates.
One of the points that the blogger, Jim Hill, makes is that, quote, every modern attempt to revive the swashbuckling genre, 1976's... Swashbuckler, 1980's The Island, 1983's Yellow Beard, 1986's Pirates, and 1995's Cutthroat Island. had all been miserable, and more importantly, expensive failures. End quote. Okay, what about Muppets Treasure Island?
doesn't make it on the list outrageous i know tim curry walked so that johnny depp could sink to the bottom of the ocean exactly So the blogger Jim Hill does not take Muppets Treasure Island into account, nor, from anything I could tell, did Michael Eisner. So because I'm a serious scholar, I need to stress that I really can't substantiate much of what the blogger Jim Hill writes about. But... a book by James B. Stewart called Disney War. And I was able to preview just enough of that book.
using Google Books. Scholarship. So none of the free preview pages that I was able to access mentioned the commercial unviability of pirate movies. In the book, Stuart does write that Eisner did not like Johnny Depp's braided goatee or his gold-capped teeth. that Eisner complained about the $150 million budget.
and that Eisner was especially stressed about the title. So the author of the book, Stuart, claims that Eisner feared, quote, the key teenage demographic would assume the movie was for children, end quote, because of associations.
with the theme park ride. You know how, Hannah, you're always saying that movies are made for teenage boys, right? Yes. Yeah, exactly. And Michael Eisner was like, well, the teenage boys aren't going to want to see this movie because they're going to think it's for kids. Because this is a non-scary ride for four-year-olds. That's right. Stewart adds that Eisner insisted on giving the film a subtitle to distinguish it from the ride.
So a subtitle that is in no way stuck with anybody. Oh, no, not at all. One of the comments that he makes in the book is that the font... for the subtitle is so small that you can completely ignore it. So that subtitle, The Curse of the Black Pearl, was also a problem for the film's director, Gore Verbinski, because, quote, The Black Pearl was the name of the ship commanded by Barbossa. and had nothing to do with the pirate's curse, end quote.
Gosh, do you think that it's fun being a white man who just can make people do stuff even though it doesn't make a lick of sense? It must be very satisfying and also infuriating when people don't just do what you want. Just do what I said. I know that it doesn't make sense. Just do it. Eisner was wrong, right? The movie was a hit and everybody started liking pirates again. Absolutely. So to prove it.
I will, because I'm a serious scholar, ask you to read another quotation from the Wikipedia page for Pirates of the Caribbean. Quote, $654.3 million worldwide, making it the fourth highest grossing film of 2003. It received generally positive reviews from critics, and Depp won a Screen Actors Guild Award. He was also nominated for his performance at the Academy Awards, BAFTAs, and Golden Globe. Pirates of the Caribbean was also nominated for additional Academy Awards and BAFTAs, end quote.
So clearly, huge commercial success and positive critical reception. And while a different podcast might insist that Johnny Depp's eyeliner and braided goatee are to thank. I think something more complicated was happening with the movie-going audiences in the year 2003. could possibly have been distressing enough to drive millions of people to a fantasy swashbuckler film or sell.
Well, surprise, there was a reason I started us off by talking about how much George W. Bush sucked. Yeah, I was just about to be like, what does any of this have to do with Bush? We are at the point in the script when we are going to pivot to talking about the war on terror, and in particular, the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Because when pirates came out in the summer of 2003, it was becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. government had been exploiting the American people's trauma from the September 11th terrorist attack. to engage in neo-imperialist military operations with impunity. Let's talk through this timeline here because this is a historical period that I mostly understand in broad strokes. So before the evasion of Iraq, there was the war in Afghanistan.
Canada participated in, right? Yes, yes, exactly. So the U.S. military launched an invasion of Afghanistan on October 7th, 2001. And so that's less than one month after the September 11th terrorist attack. According to the Canadian government's Veterans Affairs website, over 40,000 Canadians served in Afghanistan over a period of 12 years. It was the largest deployment of Canadian troops since World War II.
and the longest military operation in Canada's history. Oh, wow. I did not know that. Me neither. Wow. Bad for us. Yeah. Canada, absolutely. Bad job, Canada. Absolutely allied with the United States. when it came to going to war with Afghanistan. And how was that being perceived? We know Canada was clearly pro that war. How was that being perceived on the international stage? So unsurprisingly, complicated.
So Al-Qaeda, the organization that claimed responsibility for the 9-11 terrorist attacks, was known at the time to be training in Afghanistan. That government website that I just quoted describes Afghanistan as having provided al-Qaeda with sanctuary and states, quote, the Afghan government refused to extradite bin Laden and his militants, end quote.
So there were criticisms of the war, to be sure, but as Canadian writer Ronald Wright explains, many world leaders saw the war in Afghanistan as, quote, legitimate or at least... Okay. But how does that then become a war on a rock? That is a perfectly legitimate question that didn't have answers then, and it doesn't have answers now. This is where things get, for me at least, a little bit hard to believe. So I want us to talk about it.
The U.S. began its military invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003. It's about a year and a half after 9-11. Hannah, what do you remember from that period about the rationale of the invasion? I remember it primarily sort of the pro-American imperialism narrative. Like this was an era of deep Islamophobia of a lot of like seemingly serious intellectuals genuinely saying.
that Islam as a religion was a threat to the world order. I started my undergraduate in 2004, and we definitely read stuff about clashes of world... understandings like world civilizations with fundamentally different views of the world and this idea that like Islam was inherently associated with terrorism, misogyny, the refusal of democracy, and that it was the U.S.'s obligation as like the scion of democracy. to be present in the Middle East in order to...
stop the rise of an international terrorist regime? Question mark, question mark, question mark. Okay, that's what I remember the rationale being. Yeah. People who were like, no, this needs to happen. Or the terrorists will win. Totally. Yeah. And the Middle East and all Muslim people being.
collapsed into terrorism as a perceived threat. I remember that being a sort of major part of the public conversation. Yeah, I think that that lines up with what I remember too. The only other things that I would add are like... There were also conversations about how like George W. Bush was supposedly doing this for his dad because George H. W. Bush couldn't depose Saddam Hussein. during the first Gulf War, so George W. Bush was finishing the job.
That's Freudian. That's a real Freudian explanation for a war. These were wild conversations to have been having at the time. Yeah. So like the other two things that come to mind are like, I think the war in Iraq was... my first encounter with what I now understand to be a very common thing, which is the U.S. infiltrating a country and
choosing somebody that they will support militarily and providing them with a lot of weapons in order to destabilize the actual government in that place, which is like the thing that the U.S. has done. Countless. All over the world. Countless times. And then turning around and being like, oh, these guys we gave all the guns to are running the country now. So I guess we have to do a war. Which again was something that like when I was. young, like, 19. Seemed like a conspiracy theory. Yeah.
Totally. Particularly because like that was not what mainstream media was saying. Like mainstream media was like, no, sorry, you just have to do it. And the other thing I was sort of starting to become aware of was. resource extraction yes and like to what degree is the u.s just trying to control oil. Absolutely. As a note, people who are interested in this.
conversation about, like, the Gulf War and its relationship to American imperialism and oil extraction, you should listen to our Barbie episode. Yeah, surprisingly, not about the movie. No, no, about the doll. Mostly what I remember about the invasion of Iraq was a general consensus that the stated reasons were bullshit. Like that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
And everybody knew it. Oh, God, that's what they were saying. I forgot about that. Yeah, the WMD discourse was infuriating. One of the authors I drew from for this episode is British expat Canadian citizen Ronald Wright. He's the person who we quoted from earlier. I'm drawing from his book, What is America? which came out in 2008. Hannah, could you do me a favor and read this next quotation from his book, please?
Quote, the war against Iraq in the spring of 2003 had no such legitimacy. That's a callback to Afghanistan. None of the September 11th terrorists was an Iraqi, nor was there any evidence that al-Qaeda ever had ties to Saddam Hussein's regime. There was no evidence that Iraq still held weapons of mass destruction, a shorthand cliche for nuclear chemical weapons in the wrong hands.
As recently as February 2001, General Colin Powell had said that the sanctions applied since the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, quote, Powell have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. End quote of Colin Powell continue quote of.
Two years later, at a televised meeting of the United Nations, Powell, then Secretary of State, was obliged to argue exactly the opposite. He did not make his case. The best evidence he presented was weak. The worst was already known to be false. Yeah, so that quote from Ronald Wright really sums up what I remember feeling at the time, even as like barely out of high school, taking my intro to political science courses, like knowing very, very little.
While the U.S. had no legitimate reason for invading Iraq, it did have unambiguously imperial reasons. I've got one last quote from Ronald Wright that I would love for you to read for me, please. Alan Greenspan, the head banker of the United States government throughout most of Bush's tenure, recently, in 2007, confirmed what the evidence suggested in 2003.
The Iraq War, Greenspan said, was largely about oil. In short, a cabal of weapons dealers and oil profiteers who came to power in the world's took advantage of the September 11 attacks to start an unrelenting war they had been wanting to wage for years, end quote. God, sorry. It's just depressing because it keeps happening.
So this isn't controversial anymore, right? Like this is sort of now what we all know to have been true at the time that it was about oil. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. In my research, the invasion of Iraq started on March 20th.
The oil fields were secured on March 21st. Oh, cool. So they weren't being subtle. They weren't being subtle at all. There's like this one sort of apocryphal story about how the operation was initially titled Operation Iraqi Liberation, but then they changed the name because... That acronym spells oil. I can't. The world's too stupid. I know. I know. Just all of it. Just the whole thing. It's a lot. Okay.
I feel like we could spend, frankly, a whole podcast talking about the War on Terror. I don't mean an episode, I mean an entire series. So, to stay on track. What does the U.S. invasion of Iraq have to do with pirates of the Caribbean? Such a good question, Hannah. I know. I mean, this could have been a really fun episode. And instead, it's going in the classic bummer category for sure.
So we already talked about how Pirates was not a guaranteed success, right? Like previous pirate movies had failed at the box office, previous theme park attraction adaptations about bears had failed at the box office. And Disney CEO Michael Eisner was himself expecting Pirates of the Caribbean to be an expensive failure.
But when the movie opened in July 2003, less than four months after the U.S. began its invasion in Iraq under widely held to be false pretenses, audiences were there for it, literally and figuratively. Oh, that's really interesting, Marcel. What do we think the connection might be? Before I address that most excellent question of yours, Hannah, I think we should bring in some theory. Oh, I love theory. Okay, let's do it. Great.
This segment is called The Theory We Need, and as promised, I'm going to offer a theoretical frame that I hope might help us understand why Pirates of the Caribbean became such a hit. Have you heard of the concept American exceptionalism? And if so, how would you describe it? It's the idea that when other people do an international war, it's bad. and a violation of the world order. But when the U.S. does it, it's good and the spreading of democracy.
Because the U.S. isn't like other countries. It invented democracy and they get to do whatever they want globally because they're doing democracy. Is it that? That's pretty much it. Yeah, okay. So American exceptionalism is one of those terms that, like sex positivity, which we talked about in our Golden Girls episode, It is kind of what it sounds like, but nevertheless deserves some unpacking. So we're going to start once again with my favorite source, Wikipedia, Hannah. Okay.
Here's Wikipedia's definition of American exceptionalism. Quote, American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is either distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations. Proponents argue that the values, political system and historical development of the U.S. are unique in human history. often with the implication that it is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage, end quote. Perfect. Thank you.
So we're not going to debate the term's contested origins, whether it was Alexa to Tocqueville or Stalin, nor are we going to nitpick its nuances. We simply don't have time. American exceptionalism is simply a concept that... is useful to explain why at the level of global politics, the U.S. behaves as though it's above the rules. Often, the very rules that previous American world leaders helped establish in the first place.
The term is used by academics and politicians, and it can have either negative or positive connotations depending on who is leveraging it, right? So I found a very useful if headache imposing article. on American exceptionalism published by the Stanford Law Review in 2003. So this was published in May 2003. So this is like... a fresh response to the war in Iraq.
The author is Harold Hongju Ko, who is a legal scholar, and he would go on to become the legal advisor of the United States Department of State under the Obama administration. Hannah, could you please read for us how Code describes American exceptionalism? Quote, I prefer to distinguish among four somewhat different faces of American exceptionalism, which I call, in order of ascending opprobium, That's sort of increasing levels of disapproval? Yeah. Is that what ascending appropriate is? Okay.
In order of ascending opprobium, distinctive right, different labels, the flying buttress mentality, and double standard. In my view, the fourth phase, double standards, presents the most dangerous and destructive form of American exceptionalism. Okay, but will you tell us what the flying buttress mentality is? He goes into such detail about all of these. Flying buttress is like, instead of being like a stable pillar, it instead is this like arc.
over top that like does things. I think this is the like setting an example rather than holding up. I regret asking. I know, I know. The thing to keep in mind is that Ko is a patriot, for sure. He's a legal scholar who, at the time when he was writing this, genuinely believes in the positives of American exceptionalism. Much of the paper is about how the dangerous part, the double standards, is actually undermining the US's ability to be that beacon of democracy in the world.
I've been listening to enough American legal podcasts lately that I can tell when somebody's horny for the Constitution. He is horny for the Constitution. This guy's horny for the Constitution. So since we're talking about the illegal invasion of Iraq, we're going to focus on that fourth fate. double standards, which is simply, quote, when the United States proposes that a different rule should apply to itself than applies to the rest of the world, end quote. That's from a quote.
As Canadians, we probably have a fairly easy time coming up with reasons why American double standards pose a problem. And what I appreciate about Coe's paper is that he himself rejects the isolationist impulse as an American legal scholar committed to international diplomacy. In other words, he recognizes that international relations are of benefit to the U.S. as well as to the rest of the world.
By opposing the global rules, the United States can end up undermining the legitimacy of the rules themselves, not just modifying them to suit America's purposes. The irony, of course, is that by doing so, the United States disempowers itself. from invoking those rules at precisely the moment when it needs those rules to serve its own national purposes, end quote. Does Ko go into detail about the invasion of Iraq in particular?
Why that military action was an example of such a double standard? He does. And he unequivocally states that, in his view, the invasion was illegal under international law. Yeah. I have one last quote for you to read, Hannah. quote, administration officials railed against egregious Iraqi violations of the Geneva Conventions against U.S. soldiers, seemingly oblivious to the fact
that much of the world had already concluded that the United States was flouting the Geneva Conventions on Guantanamo. That's the prison camp in Cuba for folks who don't know. This is all before Abu Ghraib. Sorry, Hannah, continue. The president called for prosecution of Iraqi war criminals without relenting in his opposition to the International Criminal Court. Because in 2002, Bush tried to shut down the creation of the International Criminal Court.
So the U.S. has always hated it. Oh, because it's about accountability and they don't like that. Okay. Exactly. And U.S. officials who spoke only days before about the irrelevance of the United Nations to launching our attack. spoke confidently about their expectation that the United Nations would authorize the lifting of sanctions and support the massive effort necessary to clean up and build a democratic post-war Iraq.
In a remarkably brief time, the war against Iraq has turned into a new global debate about American exceptionalism. Thank you. Thank you. So what I want to highlight from that quotation is the way that U.S. officials deliberately framed the UN as irrelevant when it came to the decision to invade Iraq.
Like they're a tool that we can use when we want to do something, but they don't get to tell us what to do. Exactly, exactly. So this was an egregious dismissal of international law. Coe explains that, quote, At the dawn of the post-Cold War era, the international law rules for using force seemed pretty clear. One state could lawfully breach another's territorial sovereignty only if one or more of three conditions were obtained. or an explicit UN Security Council resolution, end quote.
So preemptive self-defense, which the U.S. continually called for in its rationale for invading Iraq, was not in and of itself a legitimate reason to invade another country. Yeah. Okay. So... In 2003, the U.S. wanted to invade Iraq under the pretense of self-defense. They wanted that to be like a legitimate excuse. But since there was no evidence that Iraq had in any way participated in the September 11th terrorist attack,
the American government couldn't justify it under existing international law, right? They couldn't be like, we're doing self-defense or responding to aggression. That's right. So it makes up this new category, preemptive self-defense, like we think maybe they might in the future do terrorism. We have to do war first. That's right. before they have a chance. And also, we actually don't need the UN's approval anyway. What's the UN going to do? That's exactly it. Yeah.
And so I don't want to give the impression, I don't think folks will have this impression, but just to say the quiet part out loud, I don't want to give the impression that Coe was alone in calling this invasion illegal, like many, many Americans protested the war at the time. And scholars like Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler not only condemned that military action, but also continued to theorize and write about how and why. American exceptionalism made that invasion possible.
In frames of war, for example, Butler argues, quote, nationalism in the U.S. has, of course, been heightened since the attacks of 9-11. But let us remember that this is a country that extends its jurisdiction beyond its own borders. that suspends its constitutional obligations within those borders, and that understands itself as exempt from any number of international agreements. End quote. End quote. End quote.
This is the version of imperialism that the U.S. is doing, right? That's right. Like post-World War II with the creation of the U.N. you can't just go take countries over anymore. That's not allowed anymore. And so the U.S. stepping into the position of like the head of Western imperialism has to find different tactics. It's imperialism. Exactly. Yeah.
Do countries ever do imperialism for not their own best interests? Like, no. No, no, no. Imperialism is about making the center of the empire welfare. Yeah, exactly. By extracting value from places where you dehumanize the population in order to... justify harming them in order to make your own citizens wealthier. Exactly. And I think that given the close ties that Canada and the United States have and have had for our lifetimes and our parents' lifetimes.
It makes sense that Canadians would buy into the same impulses to do international... puppeteering in order to build the kind of world that is good for us, right? And, you know, we had our own narratives and they look different. in Canada because our national narratives are different, but like we were absolutely complicit in this imperialist project. In fact, continue to be. Indeed. Okay, so Marcel, I'm sensing the end of the segment drawing here. So...
What do they have to do with each other? There are two sides to this episode. There's like the Pirates of the Caribbean side. And then there's the war and terror side. Lucky for you, this is the part where they go, ka-ching! So if we think about the trajectory of the movie, right? If we think about the plot, we have Will Turner, who is the hero. He hates pirates. And he joins forces with an infamous pirate.
in order to rescue the governor's daughter, Elizabeth Swan, who he also happens to be in love with. But, you know, that's beside the point. There's this scene where Will actually loses his temper with the governor and Commodore Norrington, the like naval officer in charge of the fleet. Because these two, when it comes to rescuing Elizabeth, they're being so like slow and reasoned. And so Will slams his hand down on the desk and he's like, we've got to act or something, something like that.
So this moment for me was like, oh, this is what was satisfying for the audience. So whether it was subconscious or not, I think that moviegoers the summer of 2003 were drawn to this narrative that applauded and... centered itself around this bold and rash and specifically extra legal behavior because it was for a good cause. You got to do what needs to be done. You got to do it. You can't follow the rules. Sometimes you can't follow the rules, people. You got to act. Oh, that's...
An intriguing claim, Marcel. I find myself immediately wanting to discuss it further. But before I do that, I would appreciate it if you would phrase it in the form of a thesis. Well, I can do that. Okay, Marcel, I'm ready. Thesis, please. American exceptionalism is a long-standing and pervasive ideology. Like all ideologies, it is expressed and circulated through discourse.
In the summer of 2003, less than two years after the horrifying terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, security discourse continued to dominate national and international arenas. That discourse, however, was smoothly weaponized by American politicians with identifiable connections to both weapons and oil industries. These absolute heathens used transparently false pretenses to weaponize the legitimate trauma of a country reeling from an unprecedented terror attack.
in order to justify the invasion and occupation of oil-rich Iraq. The security discourse leveraged by Bush's administration stressed the urgent need to act and dismissed international law as irrelevant when it came to protecting American interests. This urgent need to act, law be damned, is similarly at the heart of the 2003 summer blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl. Our hero, the hardworking and law-abiding blacksmith Will Turner.
aligns himself with the known criminal pirate Captain Jack Sparrow in order to save the governor's daughter from a rogue crew of ruthless pirates. millions of moviegoers were thus assured that when it really matters, even the good guys will break the law. In this essay, I will argue... Okay, I want to talk about sovereignty. Oh, okay. Okay, so... I just want to point out, I was just re-listening to our excellent episode about The Notebook with Vanessa Zoltan. Yes. And in it, we talk about...
Post 9-11 narratives and the way that they attach sovereignty to freedom. Yes. And that the form that sovereignty takes in these narratives. is a guy with a weapon who's willing to do what needs to be done, laws be damned. That's right. So there's this real through line, right? Of like, we need a hero, and that hero needs to be somebody who has an unerring sense of what's right. Yes. Is unrestricted by...
Anybody else's sense of like how one is supposed to do things, right? Like not restricted by like. laws or norms or politeness, whatever. You know, restrictions, like has absolute sovereignty in relation to their actions. Sovereign even above the laws. But thinking about this as a like... Characters that embody American exceptionalism makes a lot of sense to me. Laws are for other people to control them because they're bad. But I'm a hero.
And because I'm a hero, anything I do is justified. Absolutely. Absolutely. Which, you know, then explains like that whole era of Marvel movies where they're like, but what if... The unbelievable harm that you do in pursuit of being a good guy has consequences. What? Cue 500 fucking movies. I'm so tired of that story. Yeah, yeah. That makes so much sense. The other thing that this really makes me think about is...
There's this book that I love called Cold War Orientalism by Christina Klein. It's a scholarly monograph from 2003. 2003. Good time. And in it, she's writing about... 1950s and 60s American popular culture. That is about positioning the U.S. as a kinder, gentler. version of imperialism that was going to like step into the role that the UK had previously had right and there's this real like this very strong narrative of like
The U.S. were the first ones to escape the British Empire. Right? Like, that's what the War of Independence was. And so when eventually the British Empire is dismantled...
It's like now we are the leaders of this new free world of people who are not under the thumb of the British Empire. And so a lot of those narratives that are about sort of... justifying, romanticizing this new American imperialism, which is an imperial, you know, Christina Klein's argument is essentially that it's a sort of sentimental imperialism, that it's a kinder and gentler imperialism that it's about. Getting to know you, getting to know all about you. That's one of the examples she used.
But that very frequently the bad guys in these stories are stuffy British people. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They stand in as this like, well, this was the bad imperialism. That's right. And we all agree this was very bad. Like, look at what the British military is like. So it's like they represent.
a world order that is about the rule of law, that is restrictive, that is overbearing, that demands that everybody behave in the same way, right? Like British imperialism is really associated with like... a sort of universalized education, a sort of like incredibly... stratified class system and then it's like american imperialism is like cool sexy imperialism where you can sort of like have fun with it and like there's way there's way fewer rules yeah
Which I think pirates just fit in so well, right? That they're like literally anti-imperial. Yeah. Like they were criminals stealing from British ships. Yeah. Often located in... imperially controlled places, right? Like the Caribbean. And... were like stealing from, like kind of, you know, kind of Robin Hooding, except that the poor that they were giving to was themselves. Yeah, yeah. But stealing from the rich, and that's the important part. That's the important part.
Yeah, yeah. That makes so much sense. It really helps to explain why this movie that doesn't have American characters would still scratch that itch, right? Scratch that anti-imperialist. itch of a neo-imperialist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, particularly through a figure like Johnny Depp, who, like, his portrayal of Jack Sparrow is American, but is...
aesthetically very closely aligned with rock and roll. Absolutely. Yeah. People made a big deal about his channeling of Keith Richards in that character. Yeah. There's a sort of like... A hyper-contemporary aesthetic, for sure, right? Like a sort of anachronistic aesthetic happening there that like associates him with... with modernity, but also like with rebellion and the refusal of authority figures. It's sort of a dense text. A dense text. A dense text.
Captain Jack Sparrow. Yeah. I think we can similarly think about Elizabeth Swan. She is kidnapped, but not because she is a damsel in distress. She's kidnapped because... She is interested in pirates. She's drawn to this anti-imperial lifestyle, even though...
She's grown up with all the privileges of British imperialism, right? Because it's freedom. Like piracy equals freedom in the imagination of this movie. And I think in the imagination of like... most movies that follow in the like heyday of The pirate swashbuckling story that followed this game changer of a blockbuster. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to channel my inner Adorno.
and say, what does the popularity of a very silly historical swashbuckler based on a theme park ride have to say about the role of like... escapism in depoliticizing the public because we're very, very funny and popular and cool. we wore Adorno shirts to Disneyland. But that's because Adorno is sort of often...
Probably... There's no textual evidence for it. No textual evidence he said this, but he's often quoted as saying that Walt Disney was the most dangerous man in America, by which he meant that like... the most dangerous way that American imperial and capitalist ideology was reinforcing itself was through popular culture. Yeah. But like, he's more interested in the way that like popular culture, like.
numbs the numbs you yeah yeah that it's got these sort of like repetitive aesthetics that like turn your brain off yeah so that like in the little time that you're not working your brain is like still sort of structurally inside the factory. Yeah. Because it's like...
still going through these sort of repetitive factory created motions, but instead it's pop culture doing this. But like, we're not just talking about the blockbuster in general, right? We're talking about like... discourse at work in a particular blockbuster. I can't help but think back to what you identified earlier, Hannah, about like the second that you got some pushback about why the invasion of Iraq was bad or wrong. It was like, ah, it's too much.
It's too much. And I think that too muchness is where the blockbuster like... fits in because the movie isn't about America, right? It's not about America. It's not about Americans. It's not about like...
reductive stereotypes of brown men. So it can be escapist, right? You don't feel like you're like inside the world that you're trying to get out of. Exactly, exactly. And so irrespective of your particular... position on American imperialism, you can sit in this movie theater and be instructed at a subtextual level that Laws are useless. And sometimes you have to act. And so I think whether that's a like... America needs to act and the international laws are useless narrative or alike.
revolutionary narrative that sometimes you have to break the law in order to, you know, lead a revolution or whatever. Like it's the same impulse. Laws are not inherently just and laws are not. Like laws were made by somebody who has certain interests in mind. Right. So like it can be true. I'm going back to Coe and his like multiple levels of American exceptionalism right now. But like you can think about.
this narrative working simultaneously to say that there is value in rejecting an imperial order that believes that it can tell people exactly how to act. based on the exertion of power. And that rejecting laws is vital to the revolutionary era. That's the whole thing that's happening in the revolutionary era. And at the same time... that's being used as like...
Well, we became free by rejecting laws. So even though the world order now depends on this kind of legal structure, structure of like an international legal system well we got free by breaking laws so breaking laws is just what we do like we can just keep breaking laws yeah you can't break laws though no not you not you but me So then I think to go back to Adorno, I think the problem with the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean is that because of the simplicity of its core narrative.
it doesn't give us any additional information to help us think through the ramifications of breaking laws. When is it justifiable? How do we question the figures that have seized authority from the people who previously held authority? His thing about pop culture was that it was too easy. And if you don't have to think about it, then it doesn't help you to develop your own capacity to think critically about the systems that we are entangled in.
simplification and movement away from complexity by associating that with the good feeling of watching a fun, entertaining movie. And it is... Fun and entertaining. It's like, you know, having a conversation with somebody and they're, you know, I get scared as soon as the conversation gets politically complex.
then it's like, oh, let's just go somewhere where nobody's going to ask the follow-up question. Right? And that's like this kind of world that Pirates of the Caribbean is creating is like... You don't have to ask the follow-up question. You don't have to move further into complexity. It's like, let's just smooth out all of the rough edges. of global politics and just be like, listen, being a pirate's better because their clothes are cooler.
I was going to rewatch this movie for this episode, but then I didn't. And then, good thing, you didn't need to. Barely talked about it. Barely talked about it. Did you rewatch it for this episode? I did. You know what? Not bad. Not bad. As far as movies made 20 plus years ago, not terrible. I will say that I found it more boring. I think that says...
a lot about the way that my brain has become attuned to constant action and constant stimulation. Because the world's gotten even worse and so the blockbusters seem to be even more numbing. Yes. And so I think that like a lot of this, the swashbuckling. All right, you guys. Okay. Okay. Come on. This is how I feel about 40X, the new revolution in movie going. It only exists in like a handful of major American cities. Oh, no. But it's like...
movie going experience where you're also kind of on a ride. Oh my God. So like your chair like tips and moves back and forth and forward and backwards and you get sprayed by water and bumped and like. Like it's, but they talk a lot about like the pleasure of watching somebody who's there for the first time, not realizing that they shouldn't have gotten popcorn. Oh, major boats happens. Everybody's.
because you're like on a fucking ride but I'm like I just feel like at this point like our brains are so broken from the constant overstimulation of modernity that our entertainment can't be like An exciting blockbuster. It has to be somebody grabbing you and just shaking you hard for two hours. Yeah, yeah, exactly. While screaming. At a certain point, you're going to, like when you go to a movie, somebody is just going to have to come out from around a curtain and...
dab you in the gut. Like, oh, you came to see a pirate movie? And you're like, ooh, immersive. This blade is immersed in my gut. Material Girls is a Witch Please production and is distributed by ACAS. It's an ill wind that blows no good. So drop your anchor at ohwitchplease.ca and avail yourselves, me hearties, of transcripts, reading lists, and merch. And if you don't know the ropes, spend some time with our other shows, Gender Playground, a podcast about gender-affirming care for kids.
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