Dead Mans Chest, Part 3: At World's End?

EVENT

In the end, I liked Round Two of Discussion at lot more than Round One. There's something sexy and exciting about being challenged, to say nothing of being schooled, but nobody enjoys being dismissed. So I'm ready now to give some ground. I still think there's something, though...

JUST IN GENERAL

I'm going to type up a statement of my approach to critiques in general, which might be useful in preempting misunderstanding in the future. Last winter, I posted some commentary on Orbital albums, and I was always waiting to be soundly put in my place, since my knowledge of techno and house is exceptionally limited. Well, that shoe never dropped, so maybe I got a little cocky.

Point being, my base of knowledge is very broad but not very deep, and I couldn't safely call myself an "expert" on anything except Flint, the Smashing Pumpkins, and maybe Antonin Artaud. That said, breadth is useful for allowing the possibilities of generalization. I'm ready to find out I'm wrong, but I'll generally expect a bit more than a "you don't know."

INTENTIONALITY

SAM: "As an artist, think its amusing when people analyze and deeply read my work, comparing it to mythos such as the Ballad of Enkidu or the Tale of Giglamesh, or teh Bible. I get giggly. I highly doubt Mr. Bruckheimer and the writers of DMC had any notion to even suggest and symbolism in the way you describe. But it does work, nonethemore."

SUMARA: "As for reading these things into the text, I have no problem with that. Whether or not the writers of these films were consciously using myths and religious symbolism in their story and characters is in some ways beside the point - they are there anyway. As with the compass that doesn't work and yet does work, somehting doens't have to be "fact" or be "right", to be true."

I commented in brief on this, and my thoughts are essentially in line with Sumara's; that is, I don't think an artistic choice/action (depending on how/what you want to define) need be explicitly "intentional" in order to be evaluated as a component of a work. I'm glad that the discussion isn't focusing on this issue, but I do want to call attention to it, at least briefly, as an assumption and somewhat of a liability. I'd be interested in tackling this question with more rigor another time.

But for now, we'll go on and assume intentionality is moot.

MISCALCULATIONS

My biggest mistake was claiming that the films tactics were "unprecedented." I should have known that this sort of assertion outstepped my knowledge of the subject. That is, I simply have not seen enough films, nor am I familiar enough with the subject to be able to back a claim like that up.

My second error was in levelling the continuum between "superhuman" and "Force of Nature / god / Act of God." Christian slightly misses the mark (but just slightly) in saying that I'm creating an arbitrary distinction between Davey Jones and Magneto or Jack Torrence; rather, my logic their can be consistent if I allow all three characters into the "pantheon," but that raises the issue of what makes Dead Man's Chest so unique in the first place.
Christian's best point, however, is that there isn't a challenge, at least not for an audience, in maintaining a psychological "antagonist empathy" with Davey Jones. That is, the claim that "he's just a bitter octo-man who's all out of love, and so lost without her" is valid.

MYTHOLOGIES

A third clarification.

I understand what Dan is saying about the "tickling" effect of the self-referentiality (is that part of Mxzzy's frustration as well?)... but I was discussing this with my friend Reinhardt yesterday, and I think he may be understanding mythology in a somewhat different way than I am. That is, I haven't seen many Westerns, so I'm pretty well paralyzed there, but I think he's hinting toward mythology as something interextual, or at least defined within a tradtion. The importance of archetypes within Westerns, a blatant lack of regard for plausibility and, closely related, the commitment of the genre to its own trophes and legends rather (and their own evolution) rather than a psychological or sociological engagement of historical fact are probably his emphasis. (Dan, please correct or refine this, if you think I'm mistaken). Which I would agree with, but it's not my understanding of mythology.

* * * * *

A quick A Time To Kill-inspired exercise.

Suppose we all went to go and see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End together. Imagine that it's every bit as long and considerably more convoluted than Dead Man's Chest. They do succeed in offing Davey Jones, and the Kraken, and maybe even casualties are kept to a minimum. Then, at the very end, at the end, they do meet Captain Jack at world's end, but they are unable to do anything to help him. Likewise, the Black Pearl nothing but a wreckage. Why? Because; you can't bring the dead back to life. Without a curse, without the intervention of some greater-than-human entity, it does not happen.

Now clearly that won't be the way the franchise ends; it would lead to a de facto boycott and probably kill a couple careers. But since the film hasn't been released yet, we could speculatively keep it in the realm of possiblities, since it's well within the compass of the plot at this point.

My point here is that Christian's argument that "that's not the sort of crap you pull with Zeus," is... well, wrong. People pulled that crap with Zeus all the time. That's why women he wanted to rape got away by being turned into bulls. In fact, half of Greek mythology involves mortals pulling one over on the Gods -- but ALWAYS at a heavy price. On the other hand, are we to consider the divine lineage of Achilles and Heracles to be irrelevant in their respective stories. What about Gilgamesh, who bests the gods for a stab at immortality (though he then loses it to a snake)? Even the Judeo-Christian god who present texts depict as a good bit more austere and omnipotent than the rest, still saw fit to come down and wrestle with Jacob.

The connection between Dead Man's Chest which I've drawn narrowly to The Passion of Joan of Arc and less closely to The Ten Commandments is the pervasive, almost casual, correspondence between the divine and supernatural and the human. It seems suggestive of a text or document that attempts to embody, or at least imply, a whole explanation of the cosmos in addition to or even above a consideration of the story.

So to sum up:
1) I cast the net too wide; I should have made a more limited argument, excluding
2) that this narrative relationship is essentially unprecedented in film (b/c I don't know),
3) that the antagonists are not psychologically driven, and
4) that the antagonists are essentially like forces of nature and essentially unlike humans.
That said, I still/believe:
5) that Dead Man's Chest is unambiguously mythic in its use of archetypes, its personification of natural forces in a way that enables interaction and negotiation with humans, and that this is suggestive of a distinct cosmic order that the film actively argues,
6) that its plot is not incomprehensible and flawed, and that most criticisms I've read are unfair in that they evaluate it as a fundamentally different story than what it is. (That is not to discount faults in editing, poor editing, or Dan's "tickling," all of which I can see),
7) that #5 and #6 render the film unique if for nothing else than that they have been achieved in a big budget, commercially-driven film marketed to an audience accustomed to more linear, character-driven story.
8) In my humble opinion, I think the mythology still overshadows the psychology, though I will no longer argue that psychological justification is not present.
9) Is it Important? I don't know. I'd like to think so, but maybe that's just because it's made a somewhat dreary, bug-bebothered summer a bit better.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm confident that the franchise will find a way to resurrect Jack, but I don't think that invalidates the claims I've made (though it is, perhaps, a bit of a copout). I'm looking at mythology as an expansiveness of vision and point of contact between humans and their universe.

That, and they're totally crossing the Styx in the next film.

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Keep writing. Keep agreeing and disagreeing.

This really has been one of the highlights of my week.

END OF POST.