Queer Chat Time! Our Flag Means Queer Futurity, or Munoz + Waititi 4 Ever

[radiantfracture]

This is the post where we take the Muñoz doll and the Our Flag Means Death dolls and make them kiss.

So I’ve been doing a (roughly) fortnightly series here reading José Esteban Muñoz’ book of queer theory Cruising Utopia (2009, 2019), chapter by chapter.

And then we all watched Our Flag Means Death.

It just seems right to try a mashup and see what happens.

Muñoz’s project in Cruising Utopia is to find and (re)claim visions of queer utopias in order to provide inspiration for livable queer futures outside of the stultifying constraints of capitalist heteronormativity.

Pirates are semi-famous for somewhat similar endeavours. Can Our Flag Means Death do some of that work (and play) with and for us? What visions can we use it to conjure?

We could boil down the central questions of the first three chapters of Cruising Utopia sort of like this:

• How can the utopian visions of past queer communities inform our visions of a future that's livable for all queer folks, not just the privileged few?
• What do the utopian visions of the past tell us about what we are missing and longing for right now?
• What practices already exist in our present communities that could provide inspirations for queer futures?

So some questions about Our Flag Means Death might be these:

• What images from the past (history, media) do you see Our Flag Means Death talking back to?
  • Ex. histories of piracy, readings of history, queerbaiting in mainstream series, Black Sails?
• What are you longing for that these pirates have? How does OFMD illuminate what is missing in the present?
• What about this show (or how it came to be) could be useful in thinking about how to make queer art / art about queers going forward?
• Alternatively, what do you know about queerness and community that Our Flag Means Death doesn’t yet know?

For example, I really like that you do not have to be cool to be part of this queer pirate crew. In fact, trying to be cool makes you miserable, fake, and impossible to live with (Izzy Hands, the French). Being a big ridiculous grimy mess is ideal on the Revenge. I appreciate this.

Anyway, the formal invitation is to think about Muñoz with OFMD, but feel free to party any way you like, provided it's respectful and consensual.

And if part of the way you appreciate things is to talk about what's flawed or disappointing about them, that is welcome, too.

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Previous posts on Munoz:

Munoz Chapter 1

Munoz Chapter 2

Munoz Chapter 3



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Comments

[sabotabby]

I am of course fascinated by pirates and as Problematic as it is, Peter Lamborn Wilson's Pirate Utopias was one of those works that sparked an obsession for me. I think it's overly idealistic in that it very much glosses over the racial dynamics in favour of the "pirate ships were anarchist spaces" thesis but it's a foundation for reimagining pirates as closer to mutual aid societies than the rollicking libertarian thieves of popular imagination.

The obvious antecedent is Black Sails, which, show of my heart. To quote another shitpost, "Black Sails walked so that Our Flag Means Death could frolic in the fields." And in many ways they are such similar shows, not just that they are shows about gay pirates but in that they are very queer shows about gay pirates that spend a lot of time interrogating masculinity and sexuality and actually going much farther than Wilson did in examining the dynamics of race and colonialism. I joke about how OFMD is just Black Sails with the last vestiges of heterosexuality removed, but I can still remember how utterly shocking and subversive the second and last seasons of Black Sails were. Like here is a show with Michael Bay as an executive producer, ffs, and they had two poly relationships amongst the main cast, the macho antihero lead was bisexual, he was motivated to go to war with the British Empire to avenge his dead male lover, with the support of said lover's wife. And if that wasn't enough, they pulled the rug out a second time and very deliberate un-buried the gay and gave all the surviving queer characters a happy ending in a genre where that basically never happens. While, at the same time, portraying Maroons and workers' revolts in fairly historically accurate ways. It was bonkers. I still can't believe they did that.

So, it's just the same show with a different tone.

[yarrowkat]

...i think i must have stopped watching Black Sails too early. i think i couldn't get past the way the women were treated in the first maybe three episodes and i wandered off. maybe i'll give it another shot!

[sabotabby]

Oh yeah, the plotline with Max is absolutely awful and misguided. There absolutely is payoff down the road but I am positive they could have gotten there in basically any other way.

[yarrowkat]

sounds like it works out to be worth it, tho?

[sabotabby]

For me it was. She ends up having an amazing character arc and despite a few fumbles, the story overall is just so beautifully told.

[yarrowkat]

thank you! this is helpful. i'll add Black Sails back to my list.

[radiantfracture]

You'll see in commentaries about Black Sails -- and I'm not the most expert here -- viewers say things like: this starts as a trashy pirate show and turns into a queer anti-colonial revolution.

(Somebody I follow put this sentiment much better, but I can't find it.)

I was also put right off by Max's initial plotline; it was both exploitative and nonsensical.

[yarrowkat]

i finished Our Flag Means Death yesterday and will give Black Sails a second chance! it sounds like it turns out to be worth it. i probably abandon too many shows in the first season.

[radiantfracture]

I definitely do that -- it's quite difficult to get me to attach to a show, or to stick with it over many seasons.

[radiantfracture]

Okay, but I was really hoping somebody *would* bring up Pirate Utopias, so thank you. (I haven't read it, just heard rumour.(

I feel like this is a perfect Munoz Moment, like okay -- Lamborn's history is flawed and idealized. There can still be valuable principles to be drawn from the story he tells or the research he presents.

I'm not entirely sure how I can instantiate anarchist piracy in my own life but by god I'd like to try.

[sabotabby]

Okay, but I was really hoping somebody *would* bring up Pirate Utopias, so thank you. (I haven't read it, just heard rumour.(

I was much, much younger when I read it and it was just before word of Wilson's rather awful beliefs around pedophilia began to emerge, so my memories of it are probably more rosy than the book deserves. I'd give it a re-read but he doesn't deserve any monies.

I'm not entirely sure how I can instantiate anarchist piracy in my own life but by god I'd like to try.

Hard same. My plan to buy a ship, crew it with an anarcho-communist collective, and terrorize the yacht club on Lake Ontario has not really gotten off the ground so I'm looking for advice, really.

[radiantfracture]

Ah, I didn’t know about Wilson. Thank you. That’ll be a No.

[radiantfracture]

it's just the same show with a different tone

If I had one wish it would be fore OFMD to push harder on the anti-colonial angle.

[sabotabby]

Yeah. I think they'd have either needed to switch focus for an entire season, or re-write history substantially more than they did. But I'd like to have seen it.