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Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2024.htm
Start Date
2-17-2024 12:00 PM
End Date
2-17-2024 12:50 PM
Description
Although the television series Our Flag Means Death presents on the surface as a romantic comedy, it is enhanced by mythic elements that infuse the narrative with a clear sense of the fantastic. Here, the pirates exist in a Secondary World that openly draws upon the Primary (both in terms of historiography and legend); hence 18th-century piracy and British colonialism can interact seamlessly with human-to-animal-transformations (paying homage to the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone) without seeming either disconcerting or anomalous – all co-exist comfortably in Faerie. OFMD both inverts and deconstructs mythopoeia; the Primary World myths of the Gentleman Pirate, and of the ‘dread pirate’ Blackbeard are simultaneously further mythologized in the series; in particular, the historical friendship between the two undergoes its own Ovidian metamorphosis, portrayed as a queer romantic relationship, one of many highlighted over the two seasons. Indeed, in a crew that is both diverse and queer, (including queered/Othered bodies, sexualities, and identities), queerness is not only a norm, but embraced and celebrated; the ‘chosen family’ of the Revenge’s crew is also depicted as the ‘norm.’ In terms of storytelling, this raises a pertinent question: When queerness is a normalized and predominant culture, who is being Othered for dramatic tension? This paper will explore the ways in which OFMD identifies the antagonists in a queer world, examining how the show challenges and inverts the definition of the Other.
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Our Flag (and Spaceship) Means Queer: Monstering the Majority Culture
Although the television series Our Flag Means Death presents on the surface as a romantic comedy, it is enhanced by mythic elements that infuse the narrative with a clear sense of the fantastic. Here, the pirates exist in a Secondary World that openly draws upon the Primary (both in terms of historiography and legend); hence 18th-century piracy and British colonialism can interact seamlessly with human-to-animal-transformations (paying homage to the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone) without seeming either disconcerting or anomalous – all co-exist comfortably in Faerie. OFMD both inverts and deconstructs mythopoeia; the Primary World myths of the Gentleman Pirate, and of the ‘dread pirate’ Blackbeard are simultaneously further mythologized in the series; in particular, the historical friendship between the two undergoes its own Ovidian metamorphosis, portrayed as a queer romantic relationship, one of many highlighted over the two seasons. Indeed, in a crew that is both diverse and queer, (including queered/Othered bodies, sexualities, and identities), queerness is not only a norm, but embraced and celebrated; the ‘chosen family’ of the Revenge’s crew is also depicted as the ‘norm.’ In terms of storytelling, this raises a pertinent question: When queerness is a normalized and predominant culture, who is being Othered for dramatic tension? This paper will explore the ways in which OFMD identifies the antagonists in a queer world, examining how the show challenges and inverts the definition of the Other.
