July 07, 2006

Pirates parodies Indians

The new Pirates of the Caribbean is out and so are the reviews. Apparently, Caribbean Indians appear in only one segment, but it sounds about as bad as people feared. Let's see how mainstream reviewers, who ignored the blatant stereotyping, described it:

Depp revives iconic swashbucklerThe film's comic highlights come out of a sequence in which Sparrow believes he's become the king of a tribe of island cannibals, not realizing that the feast they're preparing will feature him as the main course.Pirates of the Caribbean:  Dead Man's ChestPanicked that he'll be sunk by Jones' pet sea monster, Sparrow grounds his ship, the Black Pearl, on a remote island populated by cannibals. While Sparrow sets himself up as the tribe's king, his crew is imprisoned in round cages hanging above a gorge.

The escape of Sparrow, who becomes a kind of human shish kebab, and the crew members, who run with their feet sticking out of the cages like a pack of Fred Flintstones, scores pretty high on the fun-o-meter.
Pirates of the Caribbean:  Dead Man's Chest[T]here's a cannibalistic tribe that's mostly played for laughs despite presenting a necklace of severed toes.'Pirates' sequel entertaining, lively--and exhaustingOther entertaining new elements in "Chest" include a tribe of cannibals that speaks a language that's apparently made up of goofy double-entendres and flat-out gibberish ("ooboogie snickle snickle" is one of their phrases).Yo-Ho-HumThere is one scene where Sparrow is captured by the aforementioned islanders and speaks to them in the sort of condescending nativespeak you'd expect to hear from Johnny Weissmuller in the old Tarzan movies.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

typical Hollywood ...keeping the myths alive ...

Anonymous said...

I don't know whether or not the Carib people really practiced cannibalism, but I have to emphasize the fact that the tribe in the movie, AFAIK, DID NOT ACTUALLY EXIST. You can't criticize the accuracy or offensiveness of the portrayal of a non-existent people.