filmthinking

Let’s Discuss Suicide, Masculinity, the ‘perceived’ Sin of Passivity, Gangster Flicks, and … Jack Sparrow wwww

In some deep part of my brain, for roughly the past 10 years or so, since I first became a big Jack Sparrow fan (it seems to have occurred some time around 2009-10ish), i have always thought that the character – particularly the strange philosophy of the character – has saved me, on numerous occasions, from that dark word many are terrified to speak about, called suicide.Yes, it’s very possible that i’m only still alive today, thanks to a fictional Disney character in a movie about piracy in the Caribbean. Hehehe….

Suicide is, for me, a very interesting discussion that, sadly, almost no Americans– particularly American men – are ever interested in having. The fact that few American men are willing to discuss suicide is very sad too, since they are, if we are to judge by statistics, probably some of the most suicidal men in the entire world.This is largely becuse we have more guns than anyone else in the entire world, and most of the guns we have belong to men, and most of the time, all that they wind up being used for is to help those men end their lives, instead of protect them. In circles of males, of course, this is completely forbidden to speak of, and one thing i want to explore with my reader thru this essay, is how i believe there is a distinct connection not just via the gun culture, to US male suicide, but also thru some of our famous and beloved films too. (And then of course i want to make sure to express how Jack Sparrow, as a male character, was a very bizarre deviation from what i see as a suicide obsessed male film culture).

But first let’s begin with the general fear of suicide the American culture has, whether concerning male or female perspective. Let’s discuss the “stigma of suicide”.

For instance, they say that, after September 11th, when many of us watched people literally leaping to their deaths from the Twin Towers, in order to avoid burning to death, many Americans simply “denied” the idea that the people had, inf act, jumped to their own ends. Instead, they tried to say that the people accidentally fell, or were even thrown out, etc. Anything, you see, to avoid that awful whiff of suicide, which of course the Puritanical US culture likes to say it completely abhors. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, in 2011, the Daily Mail published an article with the headline: “the 9/11 victims America wants to forget: 200 jumpers who flung themselves from Twin Towers are ‘airbrushed from history’.”

The American fear of suicide is also the same when it comes to, say, that very peculiar story of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who Al Pacino portrayed on screen in 2011 (in a film that many Pacino fans perhaps ignored).

For those who don’t know, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was a very passionate believer in euthanasia …or what is otherwise known as “assisted suicide”. He believed that people dying of terminal diseases in hospitals or, perhaps, people who are paraplegic, should be able to choose to die painlessly, with a simple injection. The Americans imprisoned him for nearly an entire decade in his twilight years; he was a reviled character. Nevertheless, Kevorkian felt that the current method Americans have for these people – which is that they simply let them literally starve to death in their hospital beds–is completely inhumane. Which, of course, it is. But the American law in many states won’t allow euthanasia because…they’re mortified of suicide! Because Christianity has always seen suicide as very, very bad! And in fact, so too have other Westren cultures, like Ancient Rome, which influences American culture much more than most Americans realize…

You might,of course, be wondering at this point, when the hell I’m going to connect Jack Sparrow with all of this. Wait and see, wait and see…

You see, the really bizarre thing about the American concept of suicide is that, like old Rome, our culture actually seems, in my opinion, to have a contradiction in place, when it comes to the subject. As i’ve illustrated above, Americans clearly despise suicide when it comes to people trying to escape what you might call “unforeseen circumstances”, like a random terminal illness, or a building burning down, taking you with it. To the American brain, the “strong willed folk” are, after all, supposed to try and push through these circumstances, and conquer them. They aren’t just supposed to, you know, give up. They are suppose to FIGHT! To WIN! To be victorious and masculine, etc etc. They re not supposed to take the easy way out.

But you will see a rather different inrerpretation of suicide in our culture, if you look down other alleys. For example, many Americans actually, to me, seem to believe that, even if suicide isn’t alright if one is sudenly paraplegic, it is, oddly enough, “ a bit” alright if someone is humiliated, or even if someone is completely defeated, in other ways.

For example, a middle class man who suddenly loses everything overnight, might be considered someone who perhaps should consider suicide, by many Americans. Someone, in other words, who “falls from grace”. It is often seen as acceptable in US culture to let everyone know, for instance, that, if you became homeless, you would immediately self-annihilate. I’ve often found that virtually nobody in the States will bother debating this – the idea will almost be met with a laugh, even. “Oh yes! Who wouldn’t immediately kill themselves, if they were homeless? It’s really the only logical and sensible thing to do at that point …there’s no reason to live! I suppose i’d just jump off a bridge! Couldn’t do it!”

Yet, try to bring up the idea that you would perhaps self-annihilate and call Dr. Jack Kevorkian to be euthanized, if you woke up with an illness, and many Americans will be ready to stand and debate with you, for hours, about how wrong you would be for this. In other words, one topic is met with a type of comedy … and the other is met, instantly, with the most serious of arguments. It is all because of that dark belief Americans have about personal choice. The first scenario – loss of all money, homelessness, destitution – is seen as being “your fault”, so yea, maybe you’re just a loser and should off yourself. The second scenario is seen, instead, as a battle that God has decided you must fight, so no, hold on, you can’t kill yourself.No, no. If you dwell on it, this is all really rather bizarre.

Personally, i’d much rather be diagnosed as “homeless” tomorrow, rather than “terminally cancerous”. In fact, i’d rather be homeless than go to prison, too. I’d rather be homeless than forced to fight in a war. But evidently, many Americans don’t actually feel this way. Because they find the lack of money, the dirty clothes, the lack of social status, etc, far more embarrassing. The idea that “its better to be in prison than homeless” is also a rather popular idea in the States. Many fellow men i’ve spoken with have quite literally said it to me. “Well, its better a night in a locked cell than a night on the streets.”

Hmm, I’m not so sure about that, mate.

I find it utterly bewildering, and i think it says an awful lot about the American idea of “freedom”. This is all also completely in spite of the fact that, in reality, only 15% of homeless people are what is known as “chronically homeless”. The truth is that the vast majority are only temporarily in this position, so even if you do wind up homeless, you apparently have an over 80% chance you will eventually escape the predicament!

But to the hardcore mindset of a culture that now lives in complete fear of being humiliated or being stripped of social status, it makes no difference. It is seen as permanent defeat. As totally unacceptable. As something you should not withstand for a moment. Something so shameful, just end it, loser.

And it’s all actually a belief that is largely inherited from the Ancient Roman culture, where suicide was seen as the cowardly way out, in almost every circumstance, except the one in which a powerful man suddenly found himself clearly defeated, with no hope of getting his mansion or, perhaps, his wife, back.

Roman men who, for instance, accidentally gambled away all their money, and humiliated their families, or even Roman men who had their women or daughter stolen from them,would often simply take out a sword and stab themselves thru the gut with it, before walking the “streets of shame”. Roman soldiers, if they realized they were about to be defeated – even if the enemy was offering a pardon– would also quickly kill themselves. A lot of it had to do with the Roman refusal to ever play the “passive” role, for even a second. It’s something the American male and maybe even female is very obsessed with too. Instead of having to appear defeated, just end it fast. It’s “more honorable”, was the idea.

When i was growing up, for instance – before i found out about Jack Sparrow — there was a phrase that all the tough gangster kids in town really, really loved, and which i really believed had some worth to it, too. Many of them had it tattooed on them. In fact, so too do many soldiers, i’ve found, in the US military, have it tattooed as well. The phrase is popular and can be seen popping up in many male cultures and languages. It is “death before dishonor”, and it displays the precise ethos i just explained to you. A male who, deep down, believes in the “death before dishonor” philosophy, might not ever actually admit to you that he would, in fact, commit suicide before “dishonoring himself” – i.e. being raped or losing everything —but what he might instead do is explain to you how, if he ever fell from grace, he would basically go out on what was mostly a suicide mission, to make sure he got killed “accidentally” all the same. He might not exercise caution with his drug intake, he might always get far too drunk and then think it is funny to drive, he might purposely start fights repeatedly with big gangs of men who might kill him, etc.

From time to time, American films that are seen as “much more serious” than the one Jack Sparrow is in, will put the death before dishonor philosophy on display, often painting it as if it is a bit heroic, the only good choice for the true macho man.

In The Godfather series, for instance, it’s my opinion that Sonny Corleone’s death is basically an old Roman-esque suicide case. This is because, literally the very moment that Sonny Corleone starts to realize that the Corleone family itself is experiencing what is going to be a very steep fall from grace, he finds a way to get himself killed in the dumbest and quickest possible way. Not surprisingly, Sonny Corleone is forever interpreted as the “toughest and most masculine son” the Godfather ever created. It is strongly implied, even after he has gotten himself killed, that the reason Michael Corleone (who inherits the broken Corleone family once Sonny is dead) was never really able to run the family properly, is because he was never meant to be the one doingi t. He had never been the toughest, most macho son. Sonny had been, which is why Sonny got himself killed the moment everything got weird and shameful. Again, when the stock market started to plunge, Sonny was out. Michael, it is implied, continued to hang around in the land of the living, even in shame, because he wasn’t “brave enough” to do the manly thing.

In my opinion, the entire series often even tries to imply that there is something almost “feminine” about Michael Corleone, in comparison to big tough and of course, eventually, dead Sonny. (In some respect, in fact, it could even be said that to be dead is, in the world of illogical manly morons, the most absolutely manly thing imaginable.)

But here’s a big reason why this all is: Sonny, being the first born son of the “Don”, was presumably beaten by his father, and not “babied”, like it is implied Michael was. Sonny, we are told, never had the chance to go to college, like Michael did. The whole series seems to therfore imply that Michael Corleone’s attempts at performing “ultra masculinity” are almost unnatural. For instance, it is said in the backstory that he fought in the war as a soldier, an obvious attempt to confirm his masculinity – but all Sonny Corleone does is mock him for it. “You don’t need to look anyone in the eyes when you murder them, when you’re in the army.” he says, clearly implying that, since he was made to work directly for his father in the mob, he has been murdering people whilst looking them right in the eyes, all his life. And then, even during Michael’s big claim to fame, when he kills the enemies of the family in the restauraunt in Little Italy, it’s still the case that, afterwards, he has to go on the lamb and hide, in a way that, it seems, neither the Don or Sonny Corleone have ever done. For real men, it is said, never hide. They stand and fight, or evidently get themselves killed.

(One of Jack Sparrows most hilarious quotes is when he gets up and shouts “..and we shall fight! …to run away!”)

Michael Corleone is therefore seen as repeatedly “accepting” passive roles – i.e. feminine roles – that Sonny never would have lived thru, for even a moment worth of time.

One of my favorite scenes in the first film, for instance, takes place just befor Michael is going to perform his first execution. We are shown a dark cellar of some kind and he is hanging around with one of the Don’s right hand men, “Clemenza”. We watch as Clemenza hands Michael the perfect murder weapon, which is a gun that he has carefully prepared for him – i.e. the “real man of honor” sharpens the sword for the impostor – and then we listen as Clemenza starts to explain what is going to happen, after Michael kills the guys. A war will occur in the city, he says, “but thes things need to happen every 10 yers or so. And we’ll be fine. Don’t you worry.”

Michael of course, will be escaping to sunny and safe Italy during the mob war.The Don will not stand to see him stay home – where he might have to die …like Sonny. Italy in this sense could almost be interpreted as him going back to live at his momma’s house, since Italy is the mother country for these characters. Michael goes running back to the womb – the ultimate harbor of femininity and passiveness – again accepting another “submissive” and “womanly” role. It has always stood out to me, for instance, that the scene of the Godfather that has the most women in it of all, & the least men, actually happens when Michael is in Sicily. It is the scene when he first sees the woman who becomes his wife for a brief time, “Apollonia”. He finds her singing with a large group of other women and they are picking berries in a big garden. The scene seems, to me at least, to make yet another implication about the “mother country” versus the “real mans country”. New York City – dark, foreboding, gritty, and often freezing – is for real men of honor, men who aren’t afraid of death, war, and anger.

Italy, safe, sunny, warm, full of women singing and picking grapes off the vine, is, it’s implied, for submissive men like Michael Corleone. “Hiders”. “Wimps”. “Impostors”. “Draft dodgers”. It’s implied that it is a “suckers country”, where you can’t hope to get truly rich. In America, a world of hell, pain and risk, you can.

What, for a real man of honor, could possibly be more humiliating than living at momma’s house, even if only for a few months of hiding from a war? The implication is blatant: Real men always take their chances in the dark world – risking a type of suicide – they do not hide in safe places, waiting for storms to pass. Even if the storm is horrific, they’ll sail right into it. Sonny Corleone never once bothered with Italy for this precise reason. He died in the storm instead, as a real man ought to. The Don never bothered with it again either. As far as we know, the Don only returned to Italy once after escaping it as a very young boy, and when he did he went there to, of course, brutally murder his old enemy . I.e. “The Don, a very strong and real man, moved out of momma’s sunny safe house, and into the dark and violent real masculine world of NYC, so very young, & never looked back.”

We see a similar character, too, when we watch the Pacino and Johnny Depp film Donnie Brasco. The closing scene of Brasco involves Pacino’s character more or less committing suicide, by handing himself over to his mafia cronies, to be killed. He makes no attempt to escape the city or the mafia cronies. He doesn’t see continuing to live as a possibility ,because….well, who would he be? He has lost his place in the mob, by films end, which is all he had (i.e. he’s lost his job & soon, he knows he will lose his wife too, as a result), and he feels he’s “dishonored” himself, because he accidentally hung out with a rat, an FBI informant. It’s as if he was raped, or caught HIV from someone queer. How could he possibly go on? He has, he thinks, zero choice. It is time to die, he thinks, i’ve lost my “manhood”.

It’s again almost exactly the same with Pacino’s most famous gangster, too, Scarface. The most famous ending scene of the film is when Tony Montana gets himself “gloriously killed” by a bunch of other loco gangsters with machine guns. The reason the audience is given for why Montana must now get himself killed is because…he knows the jig is up. He has lost all his money, or he is about to lose it. He has lost the Florida mansion. He is going to be back to his old life, working at a hamburger stand, not gettin’ “the good bitches”, just another dreary face in the crowd, perhaps homeless.

In fact, in this sense, you can even see how “capitalism” interprets homelessness as, ironically, a type of female womb. It’s a womb because it’s seen, especially in Tony Montana’s sense, where he got so rich, as being a “starting point” again. Wombs are starting points. Tony can never return to the “starting point”. “Starting points” are shameful.

For Tony Montana is a man who believes in death before dishonor! He can’t have that! So he purposely walks into a death sentence, and tries to fight off 15 men with machine guns at once. In short order,he’s riddled with bullets and crashes thru a fancy railing, into a pool of blood and piss. He is dead, and therefore, we are made to think, “free”. He has, after all, died a gangster. He never accepted anything else. He never let you see him “exposed’, “naked”, “broke”, “poor”. He was never raped, never humiliated, never homeless, never defeated…. he died, oh yes, but at least he died a man, with his boots on.

Now, let us discuss Jack Sparrow, to put on display just how very different he really is and was, from not just famous gangster characters in our storytelling history, but even just many, many basic male characters in any sort of film or story, that you might find.

When we first find Sparrow in the original film, he is, for all intents and purposes, actually homeless. He is dressed ragged and dirty, and literally sailing on a small sailboat that, the moment he steps off of it, sinks into the sea. His boots are filled with sea water.

A few scenes later, we also find out some other details about him, when the Commodore Norrington (i.e. the uniformed, titled & far from broke masculine man of honor) mocks him, by looking thru Jack’s things, and noting that he has “a pistol with only one shot, a wooden sword, a broken compass, and no ship. You are the worst pirate,” the Commodore says, “i’ve ever seen.”

It is, of course, not just what Jack has that makes him appear so strange, but also what he looks like and his mannerisms, too. For, in addition to apparently being homeless and totally poor and ragged, Jack Sparrow also seems to look oddly feminine – especially to our 21st century eyes, where long hair on males has become virtually forbidden (which is another obsession we’ve inherited from the old Romans). He is wearing a colorful scarf, he has all types of jewelry on (feminine), he has the odd womanly mannerisms, and he just seems incredibly bizzare, almost as if he is literally from another world, in comparison to all the other characters around him.

Beyond this though, we also wind up finding out something far more interesting about Jack Sparrow, once he has gotten back into contact with the pirates, and bigger parts of his backstory are revealed: As it turns out, Jack Sparrow was once stripped of his position as “Captain” of the Black Pearl, and completely abandoned by his crew. When they threw him out of being captain, we are told that they literally abandoned him on a deserted island, giving him solely a pistol with one shot in it. The one shot pistol was, of course, what he was supposed to use to commit suicide, now that he had been humiliated and defeated, completely losing his “status” in the world. The pistol was given to him as a means to escape female passiveness – to take control of his situation, as men should, and end it. A Roman would have most likely used it. Tony Montana, we have already seen, would have used it. Sonny Corleone would have used it. Pacino’s mob guy in Donnie Brasco would have used it.

The entire story, we therefore see, commences in a world in which Jack Sparrow has, to the shock of essentially all the characters in his universe, decided to go on living, even after suffering the worse possible fate. He didn’t kill himself like he was supposed to, like virtually any pirate captain or masculine male stripped of his title or masculine status would have. He just kept going, even after losing everything. He betrayed the “death before dishonor” code. And at one point, during a conversation between one of Jack’s oldest friends, Mr. Gibbs, and Orlando Bloom’s character, Will Turner (another masculine man of honor who is obsessed with masculine codes), it is even implied that, prior to being stranded on the island, Jack didn’t have the weird & feminine mannerisms.

Mr. Gibbs explains to Will Turner that, during his stay on the island, Jack was “fried by the sun”, and that by the time he next saw Jack again, he was doing the weird mannerisms. We then witness Will Turner make a mockery of Jacks’ womanly mannerisms, and the joke seems oddly reminiscent of, say, a masculine man pretending to “mock” a feminine woman, with limp wrists etc. For two brief seconds, we watch, rather baffled, as Will Turner, the masculine hero of the franchise, puts on a drag performance. Will Turner was initially who Disney imagined would become the “ultra star” of the franchise too.

It is fascinting if you really dwell on it, because what we are seeing is that, by choosing to not kill himself with the one shot pistol, and to instead go on living, in a world where he had nothing, Jack Sparrow “sacrificed” some former “macho” part of himself, that evidently once existed. and which he now can’t really ever get back gain.A part of himself that didn’t have the womanly mannerisms.

It’s striking how similar this theme is to, say, the theme we have of a man who goes to prison but doesn’t win any of the fights, and winds up being “bitched”, coming back to the outside world as a drag queen or a gay, etc. Jack Sparrow, in this interpretation, could be said to have been “raped” by the intensity of the sun that he was exposed to on the deserted island. Raped,forced into passiveness – and then, in a shocking twist, still not choosing to die, but to go on living anyways. The utlimate sin. The ultimate betrayal of the macho code. No death before dishonor here, folks.

Other male characters in the film purposely avoid taking a Jack Sparrow path, and instead choose to keep with tradition. For instance, the subplot that plays out with Commodore Norringtons character, throughout the series, is very fascinating. In the first film, the Commodore is, as mentioned, the masculine man of honor with the title and the uniform. He has his eye on the main woman of the series, Elizabeth Swann. But by films end, we are shown that Elizabeth isn’t sexually attracted or interested in Norrington. He is forced to accept that she intends to marry another man, whom she sees as even tougher and grittier– even in total spite of the fact that Norrington displayed toughness when he defeats the pirates at the end, in the first film.

The one pirate he didn’t manage to defeat, however, was Sparrow, who he intended to hang dead, but Sparrow escaped his hanging. It’s almost a bizarre sign of Norringtons total impotency in the traditional “male role”. Not only could he not catc Elizabeth Swann, but now he couldn’t even hang what is, for him, a sort of drag queen pirate. This is utterly humiliating, and certainly it is having an effect on his psyche.

When we then see him again in the second film, the Commodore is no longer a Commodore, but is now, in fact, a drunken and dirty bum.He’s been stripped of his status and title; his masculinity levels are beginning, it would seem, to fade rapidly, and he must do something about it, fast. We are quickly told a story about how the Commodore had gone in pursuit of Jack once more, but Jack escaped again. So now, after being defeated yet again, he has completely fallen from grace, and according to the macho code, should be starting to consider suicide or some type of extreme act of vengeance – i.e. vendetta – as a means to get back his honor. The audience is, at this point, on their toes, expecting Norrington to self destrct at any moment, in order to save his machoness.

He can’t bring himself to do it, however, so we watch as he spirals further and further into a circle of humiliation. At one point, we see him covered in pig shit, and then of course the former woman he loved finds him, and he feels utterly pathetic. He winds up joining the pirates, but he has ulterior motives. His entire subplot in the second film is about his desperate attempt, more or less, to regain his masculinity, before the time is up. It’s almost as if he’s running against a clock of some kind. I.e. If Norrington doesn’t manage to do something big, by the end of the second film, he may very well wind up “sun scorched”, ending up with womanly mannerisms like Sparrow. But, lo and behold, right at the end, Norrington manages, by sheer force, to heroically regain his masculinity, when he steals the heart of Davy Jones, and escapes with it, to report back to the masculine military, and present it to “Lord Cutler Beckett”. He bows before the Lord, and the Lord instantly raises him up.

In the nick of time, then, Norrington saved himself from facing a Jack Sparrow-esque fate, and it’s almost as if he, because he started out a Commodore, had a little bit more of a ladder to fall down, than Jack Sparrow did. Jack, because he’s not really titled, only appears to have had one level to fall down, and was almost instantly stripped of his machoness the moment he fell.. In some sense, we almost do see a similar theme between the Commodore and Michael Corleone, with this idea that they had more levels to crash thru, before raching true “bottom”, true lack of macho grit. Michael Corleone was also a military character, so even though he ran to hide in “momma’s sunny womb” in Italy, it didn’t manage to completely scorch him, as the Caribbean sun did Jack.

Of course, the pirate movie series stil doesn’t actually allow Norrington to survive to what many fans consider the true end of the trilogy, which is of course the end of the third film. He dies, just like we wind up seeing Michael Corlone die in the third Godfather film.

This is because, in the third pirates film, we see Norrington choose to basically commit suicide and follow the Sonny Corleone path, when he decides to stay on board a ship of pirats who want to kill him, instead of run and hide with Elizabeth, who begs him to escape with her. He refuses and instead faces down certain death, fighting pirates, in order to compelely regain whatever masculinity he had lost. So basically, he successfully overwrites that entire fall of shame he had in the second film, etc. If the Commodore had chosen to run in the third film, it’s implied that it would have sun scorched him without any doubt . This is precisely why it was a woman who begged him to think abouti t. No man would ever dare ask. It’s implied that he already fell once; he now has no other opportunity to fall. Once, okay. Twice, absolutely not.And keep in mind, these are movies whose primary audience is children.

But now let’s examine one last thing when it comes to all of this cultural obsession with males needing to commit suicide and cash out, when the time calls for it . In specific , let us examine the manner in which the public audience began to sternly reject both the Godfather and the Pirates film series, only after it became clear that they were both starting to break what i believe are these macho codes, without apology.

As i wrote above, the first three pirate films are basically considered “quite good” and “acceptable”. To me, the main reason for this is because, although oddball Jack is important in all 3 of those films, he is not actually, as we see, the sole focus. For 3 movies, audiences had a variety of other, usually more macho characters, to connect with, which helped them forget Jack, when necessary. They had the story of Will Turner chasing Elizabeth Swan, they had Barbossa’s story (where we never see him fall from grace, only die), and they also had Davy Jones, Norrington, Lord Beckett, etc. In addition to this, there was also, in the first 3, always the idea that Jack Sparrow was, in his own way, perhaps chasing something specific. I.e. There was the idea that Jack Sparrow actually had concrete goals, like all machos should have, as a rule.

By the fourth film, however, which many critics literally despised and which fans rejected on a mass level, we see that the ruse is up. Jack Sparrow, by the fourth film, has been completely revealed as being someone who doesn’t really seem to have concrete goals, and because this is a total rejection of macho codes – all machos need firm, stern goals of becoming strong and powerful, of having some direction in life, yearning for some specific female etc– it absolutely enraged, i believe, audiences everywhere, specifically in the USA. For in the fourth film, its basically the case that Sparrow is revealed, finally, as essentially being some type of beach bum. He doesn’t have goals; he evidently just enjoys sailing, he doesn’t even really care about treasure, as it turns out. He doesn’t kill himself or get obsessed with “defending his honor” because..well, who even caes about any of that? He just wants another day at the beach, relaxing.

The plot of the 4th film deals with the Fountain of Youth. In the beginning, it’s said that Sparrow is eager as all hell to drink from it, to live forever. I.e. “To gain total control over the outcome of life”. This sounds like something someone very “maho” and powerful would have – the ability to defeat even death. However, by the end of the film, it seems that Jack was never actually pursuing the Fountain of Youth. He apparently doesn’t even care about it at all. All he realy wanted was to get the ship back, so he could carelessly sail the sea again.

The last scene of the 4th movie concerns Jack having a casual stroll with Mr. Gibbs down a quiet, serene looking beach, with nobody except them on it. It’s actually an odd place for two male characters to be chatting alone, in some regard. Mr. Gibbs then remarks to Jack that “there was a real chance you could have drank from the fountain and lived forever, Jack. So why didn’t you do it?”

Jack then says he thinks the beauty of life is all wrapped up with its mystery. He says, in fact, that he doesn’t like having total control – and that he doesn’t think he would be very happy if he knew he would never die. What’s the fun in certainty, in a guaranteed and therefore “rigid” (masculine) outcome?

He likes , in other words, to be passive, he enjoys mortality instead of a God-like macho immortality, and the thought of one day submitting to death when it comes to claim him – perhaps without even putting up a fight – doesn’t bother him. I can’t help but be reminded of Dr. Jack Kevorkians entire euthanasia idea when it comes to this: Instead of trying to fight against something that its obvious is going to get him, and suffering tons of pain and trauma & stress in the process, Sparrow perhaps would be interested in simply being euthanized, “going down easy’, with his boots off, instead of on. Unlike Norrington or even Will Turner, he evidently has no interest in dying in battle. He’d rather die in his sleep, which for centuries was often actually seen as something men should not wish for. We even see echoes of this in pop films like Titanic, when DiCaprio’s character keeps telling Rose, the woman, that she should grow old and eventually die calmly in her bed, passively. As for him, he subjects himself to a torturous hypothermic heroes death at sea.

If Jack Sparrow had been onboard the Titanic, it’s safe to say he not only would have never died a heroes death for Rose, but i also have serious doubts that he would have ever even met her at all. I also get the odd feeling that Sparrow might have attempted putting on a drag queen performance – i.e. dressing in womens clothes, using womens voice— to try and score a seat aboard a lifeboat.

DiCaprios’ character, for example, is shown as being a type of feminine artist, and it’s implied that he’s nothing at all like Rose’s rich and abusive macho fiance Cal, but he also seems to have a very real determination to compete with Cal all the same. DiCaprio’s character, then, who in the end insists on dying hard and committing a type of warriors suicide, is more in line with the Will Turner archetype, rather than the Sparrow one. For Will Turner is also the poor boy who decides to compete with Commodore Norrington in order to “win” Elizabeth Swann. Jack Sparrow would have simply never concerned himself with “winning” high class Rose, or competing with macho Cal. Throughout the pirate films, we do often get the chance to see the types of women Jack likes. They’re always prostitutes, and they often even abuse him and mock him. In other words, Jack doesn’t bother getting up in arms to win status with women. He just goes after the easy ones that anyone can have. For many centuries, prostitutes were oftne considered a type of “public pool”, and “real men” either sold and controlled the access to the prostitutes, or they went out and got themselves a wife, i.e. a “private woman” they controlled completely. It’s interesting too because, in Titanic, we are actually told that DiCaprio’s character hung out with lots of prostitutes back in Paris, and even drew them, but it seems that now he’s perhaps tired of the prostitute lifestyle. He wants a private woman to himself, and Rose is the one he’s set his eyes on. The implication is that the character was living a young and carefree life in Paris– now he’s growing up. He’s got bourgeois dreams.

Jack Sparrow never grew to this level of “maturity”. Very strange for a pop character…which is precisely why he ultimately wound up, once the fourth and fifth films came out, being despised by much of the very confused American public. “How,” they all wondered, i’m convinced, “has Jack Sparrow not found himself a woman or a real goal yet? What in hell is wrong with him? We are four fucking films into this franchise now…he should be married or something! Or at least looking for someone!”

Now let’s discuss how the Godfather’s third film ironically connects with all of this. For years now, it has been very popular for people to openly express an almost psychopathic hatred for the third film in the Godfather series. For men who might insist that they really quite like the third Godfather film, it’s almost as you’re breaking some unwritten law. How in hell could you like this terrible film? It’s officially off the list - don’t you dare try to put it on the list.

To me, the hatred for this third film is very similar to the hatred we began to see for the fourth pirates film. And one reason i’m absolutely convinced that everyone completely despised it is because Francis Ford Coppola , the director, robbed us of the death most people wanted ot see Michael Corleone die, which was, of course, the macho heroes death. Something tells me that people would have absolutely adored the third film, if Michael Corleone had, for instance, died in a gun battle in New York City, between mob families, if he had been blown up in a car by some rival mob boss, or of course, if he had died like the Donnie Brasco character, and gotten killed by his own traitorous men. Basically, they wanted to see him die like a man, with his boots on, in some dark and foreboding place of fear. Had Michael Corleone died such a death, all of his sins might have been forgiven. He could have been transformed into a hero, like Commodore Norrington. Everything he lost…could have maybe been regained.

In another beloved gangster film, Casino, which audiences generally “adore”, one of the most famous ending scenes involved a very gruesome death, where we witness Joe Pesci’s character being taken to a cornfield, and then being viciously beaten to death, along with his brother, by scowling & angry men with baseball bats. They beat him over the head mercilessly with the bats, break his bones, swing it into his back and arms, etc, before finally tossing him and his brother into a shallow grave they’ve quickly dug, and then begin to pour dirt all over him. At one point, we are shown a close up shot of Pesci;’s character, now brutally beaten and covered with dirt and blood, still breathing a bit. It’s horrifying.

Curiously enough, as all of this is happening, and even after Pesci’s character is literally in his grave, he himself is the narrator of the entire scene, explaining his own death to us. In other words, it’s almost as if Joe Pesci’s character in Casino is such a hardcore macho dude, that he maybe didn’t even really die from this brutal baseball bat attack, where he was buried alive. After all, if he’s truly dead, how is he still narrating the scene of his own death? So it’s almost as if he isn’t really dead, he just went some place else, maybe even resurrected in another very similar world, and he’s still a macho mob guy there. The ultimate macho male fantasy: no one, no thing, can ever, ever defeat you. You are immortal. You are a God. You are the hardest working, hardest cussing, most defiant son of a bitch who ever walked the dark earth.

So, you see, audiences adore Casino, because it tells the story of a man who, even when you really think there’s no way he can come back again, is still so strong and so macho, that he’s even got the power to narrate his own brutal death. Incredible, and of course, remember, this could not possibyly be more different than the ending of the third Godfather film , which all men generally hate. Because there is no violent death at the end of it. No violent male death, at least… which is all that counts!

For example, in the first movie, it’s true that the Don himself – the Godfather– actually does die a fairly easy & passive death, when he evidently suffers some sort of heart attack in a small tomato garden on a sunny day, behind his rich house. But there is a specific reason that this death was accepted by audiences, and the reason is because the Don had earned it. He had, after all, lived his entire life in the warzone, and in fact, he nearly did die in it when he got shot in the begining of the film, on the cold streets, but then he “acidentally” resurrected in the hospital. In fact, it’s almost even strongly implied that Michael Corleone steals the Don’s second chance at dying a proper manly death, when he goes running to the hospital and stands on the steps in the cold NY night, to prevent the murderers from sneaking in and murdering his father.

Michael “interfered” with the Dons rightful fate, which was to die like a man in war. He robbed the glory – its one of his many sins. And this actually really upset people, and i’ll explain why. You see, when Michael saved his father from the gun thugs who came to kill him at the hospital, he actually didn’t display his own “toughness”. It was all just the opposite. He instead displayed what some might say was a “childlike love” of his father.

Michael Corleone was, in fact, according to old male tradition, supposed to let his father be murdered, because then the throne would be up for grabs. There is a reason Sonny Corleone never made any attempt to keep his father alive: He was hungry for power, to take his inheritance, as a real man “ought to be”. Michael Corleone instead robbed his father of glory, and interfered with fate, standing in the way of murderers, and blocking Sonny from the throne. He did it all out of only love and, not only that, but an eagerness to continue playing his role as the “passive and babied daddys boy”.

As a result of all of this, audiences, by the third film, presumably wanted him going down to die in a warlike scene. They wanted to see him gutted alive. They did not believe he had earned an easy death, because remember, they were already very offended by the fact that he went and ran to momma’s house during the war and all, years ago! When everyone else was in a warzone, Michael Corleone was getting easy peasant pussy, eating tomatoes, living a sunny life.

So this guy was really supposed to die in a bad way. Instead, what happened? Coppola lets him die easy as he’s sitting on a wooden chair. No guns. No screaming. No shouting. Threr’es not even any blood! And beyond that, where was he when he died?

He was back at momma’s house, relaxing underneath the Italian sun, hiding from the “dark world”, from “reality”, from “the warzone”. He was, in effect, a beach bum, just relaxing, waiting passively for death, apparently totally unconcerned with status and titles.

More than this, too, was the fact that Michael Corleone, by the end of the third film, had been hanging around in momma’s house in Italy for awhile. It’s again inferred, i believe, that he wasn’t supposed to be there at all, ever, because what happens before he dies in the wooden chair? He is leaving an opera (could anything be more suspicious for a macho?), and then, during an attempted hit on his life, his female daughter, of all people, accidentally takes a bullet in the chest for him, and dies in his place.

In the first Godfather, the Don sits a younger Michael down and tells him “i lived my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children, michael, they can be careless, but not men.”

I have always felt this line connects with the final scene because, by going to the opera, by being in Sicily with his family, by attempting to take it easy with them & go on a type of vacation with them, it’s revealed that he basically causes his daughters death. In other words, Micahel Corleone, being a man, had no right to be carelessly watching an opera, or carelessly hanging out in Sicily. By doing this, by committing this giant sin, he got a woman killed. If he had only resisted the urge to take a vacation with women and children, to the opera, to Sicily, the daughter would have never died. The scene is really, i feel, shining a light on the cultural idea that “real men’ and women are supposed to live a few degrees apart from one another…that they are not supposed to share something like a vacation together. For, a real man never takes a vacation at all.

Would the Don have taken a vacation to Sicily, to relax and see an opera? No.

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