Speaker 1: Five years ago, I did a podcast with Andrew Gould
where at the end of the podcast he dropped a
bomb on the conversation and suggested that there is a
deep connection between Orthodoxy and pirates. I have to admit
that I was very offended by that that remark.
Speaker 2: Not only do pirates and monks both live in a
certain asthetical isolation from the ways of the world, from
the laws of the world. They they both seek their
adventure on a ship. They both accumulate treasure. Of course,
does the monks seeking their spiritual treasure. But even in
a purely material parallel, the monks accumulate actual treasure. These
two little micronations, the monks and the pirates, existing in
the middle of the world, in the Mediterranean, and you've
got the whole sort of boring, modernizing world, the world
of you know, bankers and merchants circulating all around them.
Speaker 3: So I mean, I, yes, now I understand. So what
do you actually mean is that this is Jonathan Peshew
Welcome to the symbolic world.
Speaker 1: So hello everyone, we are here at the Art of
Tamada in Florida, Keys. I'm here with a lot of
my great friends. Deacon Seraphim is running the camera. Neil
the Gray just walked by, and I'm sitting here with
Andrew Gould, and we.
Speaker 3: Thought, you know, five years ago, maybe maybe six years ago,
we did, and Neil, we did. We did a podcast.
Speaker 1: I did a podcast with Andrew Gould where at the
end of the podcast he dropped a bomb on the
conversation and suggested that there is a deep connection between
orthodoxy and pirates. I have to admit that I was
very offended by that remark. But until then, since then,
we haven't talked about it. And I know that people
have actually written emails to Andrews saying, please.
Speaker 3: Tell us the secret, what is the connection?
Speaker 1: So we thought that being here in Florida would be
the perfect place to finally ask the question, what is
the relationship between orthodoxy and piracy?
Speaker 3: And so, Andrew, You're gonna have to lay this out.
Speaker 1: For us, because I have to admit that I have
no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 4: What's to do with pirates?
Speaker 2: All right, So, like orthodox monks, pirates flee the world
for their adventure. And not only do pirates and monks
both live in a certain asthetical isolation from the ways
of the world, from the laws of the world. They
both seek their adventure on a ship, the pirates, of course,
on a pirate ship, and the monks in the ship
of the church. And remarkably, in this adventure apart from
the world, they both accumulate treasure. Of course, there's the
monks seeking their spiritual treasure, but even in a purely
material parallel, the monks accumulate actual treasure in their in
their separation from the world. Over the centuries, the monks
practice beautiful liturgical crafts. They become icon painters, ecclesiastical jewelers,
and the the Orthodox monasteries of the Old World have
literal treasuries full of full of splendid gold and jewels,
just like a pirate ship. It's it's one of the
beautiful paradoxes of monasticism that those who flee the material
pleasures of the world end up in the in the
most beautiful place in the world. The monasteries are the
treasuries of art that can rival any any museum or
any collection of a of a of a royal palace.
So here we have two groups of people. They they
they flee the world. They're apart from society. They're on
their ship. They're accumulating treasures of all kinds, and I
particularly love looking at how they dress. Also because of
course Orthodox monks dress like it's still the Byzantine Empire.
They wear these these these splendid, old fashioned robes that
come from the royal court dress of ancient Byzantium. And
so these these simple monks who in a sense own
nothing or you know, are strutting around, you know, dressed
like princes and emperors. And we see the same thing
in the popular images of pirates, your classic pirate look
with the big broad brimmed hat cocked in an angle,
in the great splendid long coat, and the you know,
the the chorally mustache. This this is all the the
dress of the the cavaliers and the Jacobites of the
seventeenth century. These are the These are the the Royalist
Englishmen who would dress up with this sort of House
of Stuart Catholic swagger in the seventeenth century to show
that their opponents of the Puritans in their in their
austere address. And many, many of these you know Jacobites,
supporters of the exiled House of Stuart. You know, they
they went pirate because they weren't welcome back in England,
and so this popular image of of pirates, all these
pirate stories take place in the early eighteenth century, but
the pirates are deliberately dressed like it's the mid seventeenth century.
It shows that they kind of left the mundane, boring
order of the modern world because they remembered a more,
a more glorious period of history, a more a more
royalist period, more conducive to treasure, treasure seeking from the
old days. And they go out in their pirate ships
and they dress like their aristocrats of the age of
the House of Stuart. And so I think, I think
you can see these these beautiful parallels on so many
levels between the monks and the pirates. There's also some
some literal historical connections because the the the Orthodox monks
of the Mediterranean of mount Athos were constantly under attack
by actual pirates, the Barbary pirates, And just like the
monks of mount Athos created a sort of a little
independent state, the Monastic Republic of mount Athos, the pirates
operated little little little pirate states on other Mediterranean islands
and on the North African coast. These these little sort
of these little sort of quasi kingdoms that existed outside
international law, you know, and of course the monks had
to fortify their monasteries and defend their monasteries against pirate attacks.
The pirates were always coming there because the monks had treasures.
The pirates wanted those treasures. And so the monks and
the pirates were, in a sense, two sides of the
same society, two sides of one coin. They knew each other, well,
they knew, they knew how to fight, they knew how
to negotiate. So in a sense, you have these, you know,
these two sort of these two little micronations, the monks
and the pirates, existing in the middle of the world,
in the Mediterranean, and you've got the whole sort of boring,
modernizing world, the world of you know, bankers and merchants
circulating all around them.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I guess now I understand. So what
do you actually mean is that they're opposite to each other.
That's what I'm getting is that in some ways they
they represent two extremes within their in their extreme opposite
end up mirroring, you could say, having a strange, a
strange kind of weird reflection on one side or the other.
Because I mean I think the best way for me
to formulate what I think in terms of the idea
that they' opposite is I is I see I do
see that in some ways, monks are an image of
continuity and pirates are an image of disruption.
Speaker 3: Right, So when I think of the fact that.
Speaker 1: The pirates would wear these extravagant kind of passe costumes,
I see it as the kind of caricature of death
that there are in some ways carnivalesque in their representation.
They're they're representing a caricature of high society, a kind
of dark a kind of dark inversion that is trying
to imitate but also make fun of this type of hierarchy.
And at the same time, and so in the monks,
what they're trying to do is actually preserve the continuity.
And so although there's something weirdly displaced about, like you said,
them wearing these splendid robes, they're doing it in order
to continue something which was threatened and is falling apart.
And so you have these two images, one which is
disruption and with the image of the skull and crossbones
as this image of death, and then the monks also
But it's funny because now I'm realizing that the monks
also have this kind of aesthetic of death, right.
Speaker 3: But it's a but it's different, right, It's some ways
it is the difference.
Speaker 1: Between Halloween and all Hallows, right, the difference between the
carnival aspect which is characterrol, which is which is h
you know, off off the off the rails, and then
another image opposed to it, which is in some ways
the true orientation towards death.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So you could think that the pirates what they want
to do is cause death to others, right, They are
basically there to kill people and to rape into pillage,
and the monks are saying, no, we need to die ourselves,
like we need to be the ones that die. And
you can see that, like you said, in some ways
both will use the image of the skull as an
image of death, but they're they're opposed to each other,
that's right, That's right.
Speaker 5: Hello there, Well, this is Martin Shaw, and I'm afraid
whatever you had planned for January scrap it. I am
returning to symbolic world gleefully with one of the great
stories of our time, the Epic of Possible, the story
of the Holy Grail itself over five nights I will
be telling the tale. These will not be dry lectures
or PowerPoint presentations. This will be wild, old philosophical storytelling
in its deepest dimensions. It is life changing stuff, this story.
I've written a book about it. I've been studying it
for twenty years. I've told it all over the world,
but I have not shared it with you. I've not
shared it with symbolic world. So what else would you
want to do in the great wintering time but to
sit at the feet of this wonderful story and let
me be your guide. I'll see you there.
Speaker 2: But here's an interesting way in which they're not opposites.
One might argue that there's a similarity between them in
that they both sort of pick aside and go all
the way with it. So, you know, in in you know,
in scripture, those who are lukewarm are condemned, and you
can kind of see the monks and the pirates as
those who are absolutely hot, and they're in there. If
you're gonna sind choice, just sin yeah, so just just yes, yes.
So of course, you know, you know, what is the
difference between ordinary Christians and monks? I think I think
in a in a in a day to day sense.
The difference is that the monks are the ones who say, like,
if if I believe the Christian story, if I believe that,
you know, throwing myself behind Christ and asceticism is the
way to eternal salvation like nothing else matters. There's no
other moral that concerns me. I'm I'm all in. I'm
absolutely devoting my life to that path, and I'm just
going to utterly leave all of the other pursuits temptations
of the world for that. And the pirates say much
the same thing. The pirates kind of say, you know,
I'm I'm all in for like money, money, and pleasure
in the moment, you know, live living, living in the
pleasure of the moment, and the sort of outlaw glory
and excitement that goes with that. That's the only moral
for me. It's like no other ethic, no matter how
obvious and basic, applies to me. I will, I will,
i will do anything in the name of treasure, even
though it is the undoubtedly the path to a short
life and a swift death. And so again you see that,
you see the the the strange sameness of how the
pirates and the monks think and talk, and then that
that leaves all of the rest of us, all the
normal people of the world, in that sort of lukewarm
middle where we're gonna say, well, we're sort of Christians,
we're sort of on God's side, but we also like
to make money and we also like to be comfortable.
It's like we're in between monks and pirates in our
actual practice, our lives.
Speaker 1: And so I see how in some ways that would
explain also why there's a fantasy of pirates, like the
idea that pirates inhabit this space in our imagination and
in our desires. They become an image of the desire
that we have, or the tendency we have to kind
of to stop bothering with all of these constraints and
basically throw ourselves in a kind of nihilist, kind of
nihilist pleasure seeking. And so for that reason, they occupy
a space of fantasy in our life in the same
way that, at least for Christian for Orthodoxricians, the monk
also occupies a place of fantasy in our life because
we know that we're not willing to do that, but
we admire the monks. We admire the people that are
capable of doing it, and we want to get close
to them so that we can kind of get a
little bit of that. But I can see also why then,
because sometimes you wonder, I mean, pirates were ruthless, horrible criminals,
and so the question is why do we fantasize about them.
Why are all these fantasies.
Speaker 2: I think it's because we admire people who are principled,
no matter what the principles are, there's a certain there's
a certain we recognize a certain virtue. I don't mean
a moral virtue, I mean a more abstract sense of
the word virtue. Yeah, we recognize a certain humanistic power
in being absolutely behind a principle. It's like the great
the great men who change the world are are the
men who are absolutely behind some ideological principle and go
all the way with it. It's I mean, it's often
a fallacious principle, and their efforts to live it out,
you know, are often murderous and tyrannical, but nevertheless that's
how they become great men in the old sense of great.
And so we recognize that there's a certain human virtue
in this and and going going outlaw and going all
the way and doing it with a certain a certain
stylistic splendor. Is is it's very very appealing to us
from a human standpoint.
Speaker 3: What's the.
Speaker 4: What's going on with hooks and peg legs, hotan's pig legs,
eye patches, parrots? But is there a monastic parallel to
those things?
Speaker 1: Well, I think that that especially may the parrot.
Speaker 3: We can think about it.
Speaker 1: I have never actually thought about the parrot, but for
sure the hooks and the peg legs and all of
these things are they are an image of incompleteness, there
an image of death that you're living with death, like
you're living with this.
Speaker 3: You're like a here you're half a human.
Speaker 1: You know, you've lost parts for your desires and so
now and you're assuming it and you're living out you
continue to live with these with with this kind of
crippled nature.
Speaker 2: You know, yes, absolutely the part you know that.
Speaker 3: But there's they turned it into an esthetic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is different from someone who lost the leg,
you know, because of gangreen or something and they have
a prosthetic leg. The pirate turns it into a kind
of like look at my glory, look.
Speaker 3: At yeah trophy, Like look at what I lost?
Speaker 1: You know, like the surfer that gets bitten by shark
kind of and it's like, this is this thing happened
to me and now I but I'm still I'm still
going on. And so it's turned the hook turns into
a kind of image of power and glory. It's like,
look what I'm willing to lose to do this, Like you,
you should be afraid of me because I lost an
arm getting treasure, So get out of my way because
I'm gonna I'm gonna destroy everything.
Speaker 3: I don't care.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. My leg was shot off by
a cannon ball and my arm was cut off by
a cutlass. And yet I didn't I didn't give up,
and you know, get an easy job. You know. That
just shows how all in I am, and it shows
that I'm death is the fact that seeking of treasure
is an outlaw inevitably leads to death does not trouble me.
I'm already literally half dead. Part of my body has died,
and I'm still at it. And the monks are kind
of like this also, you know, And and the holiest
of the monks they take the Great Schema, so they're
literally walking around wearing a burial shroud. So showing that,
you know, I've essentially already died to the world.
Speaker 3: But it's the same.
Speaker 1: It's funny because the pirate that type, that aspect of
the pirate esthetic is very similar to to you know,
American gangster aesthetics as well. Right, there is this idea
of being shot, you know, I remember fifty cent basically
becoming famous because he was shot, you know, in a
criminal lifestyle, and that made him the superstar of that world.
But then also even the aesthetic of the of the
excess of gold and bling and this this kind of
caricature of wealth and a caricature of status, which for
people that are actually in the world of status, it
looks like a kind of a like a joke, but
it does function in their own world as a display
of power and status and riches.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: So we've got some props in front of you. Here
we found a coconut on the beach and also a
bottle of rum on the beach.
Speaker 3: This was brought by swallows, though.
Speaker 4: It was so Obviously, piracy has happened in lots of
places in the world, but the only kinds of pirates
that have really captured anybody's of attrivision are the ones
in the Caribbean. Yeah, so what's up with that?
Speaker 3: I mean, you can.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that has to do with what
you're saying. It has to do with something between this
transition between the old world of monarchy and the modern world.
And they represent a kind of residue of a time
that where the state was not as powerful, where the
kind of bureaucracy of the world was not as solid
as it is now. And you feel this sense that
it was a time when anything was possible, where all
of these things could happen, whereas now you know, it's
like there's too many pirates.
Speaker 3: I'll just send a helicopter.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean pirates. Pirates can only throne. Yeah, pirates
can only thrive in a power vacuum between empires. And
that's what we have behind us here in the Caribbean.
Right behind me on my left is Cuba not very
far over the horizon, and on the right the Bahamas.
And so right behind us here we have we have
Spanish and English imperial domains. And it was because the
Caribbean islands were this patchwork of Spanish and English rule,
there was kind of a power vacuum. It was very
easy for people to fly false flags, you know, sneak
past different navies, fined islands that were claimed by no one,
which was true of this island. In fact, the Florida
Keys or Outlaw territory through the entire eighteenth and even
into the early nineteenth century, they were claimed by no
empire and no country, not until the eighteen thirties. So
the Florida Keys, along the outer banks of North Carolina
and many other islands in between, there were places that
pirates could actually build hideouts, just like in the movies,
and not really be subject to anyone's laws.
Speaker 1: So just thinking about the symbols of a piracy, this
is not so much connected to monastics. But you know,
in some ways, what's interesting about that moment is there's
also a way in which the empires are able to
weaponize pirates to their advantage. Right, So in some ways
it's like, we're actually not going to do anything about
this because we can see how it's damaging the other side.
You know, you see that in a lot of the
Islamic pietry, for example, where you know they're not being
sent by anyone, but we're kind of happy that they're
pillaging sicily, you know, So there's this I think that
there's something about that too, where because of this this
buffer between two empires, they can also exist because maybe
the British see them.
Speaker 3: A little bit as helpful if they're attacking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, Yeah, for sure. In the Barbary pirates
thrived because you had the you know, the Catholic Empires
of Europe to the north, and you had the Automan
Empire that nominally controlled North Africa to the south, and
both the pirates and the monks existed in this in
this odd space between empires. You know, the Catholics nominally
ruled Grease at times, the Automan Empire ruled Grease at time.
Nobody really touched Mount Athos. And just like even though
piracy wasn't really legal under the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman
Empire really didn't trouble itself too much with these North
African coastal pirate city is. Yeah, they existed in a
little bit of a power vacuum, and that power of
vacuum was intermittently helpful to both empires. So you know,
nobody did too much to stop it.
Speaker 3: M Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so do you see a parallel cause I'm trying
to see is there a parallel, opposite parallel in terms
of the monks as being in some ways beyond the
the empire's desires, or are playing a role that is
beyond like the divisions of the empire, Like why was
why did nobody ever care to deal with Mount ATHLETs
And say in that moment of shift between Catholic and
and Byzantine power, Let's say.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I think I think everyone recognizes
that there's some value to society to have monks stand
as I sort of rebuke to the to the decadence
of the world. We don't actually even the decadent people
of the world don't want a world where everyone is decadent,
because the decadent people kind of want to be at
the top of the hierarchy of decadence, which means they
like having holy Men as a foil to that. They
just don't like them being very close at hand. They
like the Holy Men being far away on a distant
island where you can you can listen to them if
you want to, and you could ignore them if they
want to. I think everybody was probably pretty pleased to
have to have Mount Athos located at the at the
border between the Venetian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. They
could sort of rebuke either side, and either side could say,
we don't have to listen to you your way over there,
you're beyond our border.
Speaker 3: Hm hmmm.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I'm happy to at least hear that
the vision is still a kind of opposite. I see
how you're trying to always connect them together, but that
in fact it is in some ways too. Streams in
uh you know that are that are meeting on the edge.
Because that in some ways, that's why the pirates would
attack Montathos is because mount Athos was also kind of
on the edge of the empire. That it that it
wasn't in the middle, like you couldn't attack some monastery
in in the in Constantinople or or you know, in inside.
So there was this contact on the fringe. And in
some it's interesting because you can think about how the
monks also in their extreme practice, they because they are
out on the edge in this way, they also have
this interaction between demons and angels, you could say, or
between the saints and the demons, and they're in some
way closer to the demons than we are, you know, uh,
you know, because they kind of stand on the edge,
and that seems to have been in some ways even
practically when you go to mont Athos, it's beautiful because
it's all fortified, but it's fortified because pirates would just.
Speaker 3: Come and kill the monks and rampays through the monasteries.
Speaker 6: And so how do you see the you know, how
can I say this, like, do you think it's one
of the things we saw with Disney is with their
Pirates of the Caribbean, they were able to give us
a version of piracy that is completely whitewashed.
Speaker 3: Right, So basically these.
Speaker 1: Pirates, they're virtuous. They don't seem to be doing anything evil.
They actually don't seem to to kill and rape and pillage,
although they it's hinted very subtly that they do in
a way that they're able to actually present them as.
Speaker 3: The heroes in the story.
Speaker 1: And so I'm curious to know what you think of that,
the capacity to represent it that way.
Speaker 2: Well. I love those I love those movies, but it
is interesting how they had to for each movie, they
had to give the pirates some adventure that was outside
of just normal pirrating. You get in the first movie,
in The Curse of the Black Pearl when when the
Black Pearl attacks Port Royal, you get you get your
ownly glimpse in those movies of like what actual pirrating
looks like, where they sailed into a normal town and
blasted cannon balls and run in and kill and steel.
You know, it's and it's very ugly to see. It
kind of sets up this is this is the dark
terror of pirates. But then the plot begins, and of
course the plot is that they they you know, they
have this curse and there's a you know, there's a
there's a piece of gold and they have to you know,
find it and do this magic ritual and and every
one of the movies has some kind of a plot
like that. That is, the plot is more than just
you know pirate agnessy. Yeah, it's it's it's some it's
some legitimate adventure where they have to break some curse
or find some some air to a bloodline. And so
the pirates actually go off on an adventure that you
can really root for them because it's a you know,
it's a great adventure and not an evil adventure. Yeah,
so that is that is that is a difficulty with
pirate stories. Yeah, you have you can't, Yeah, and what about?
Speaker 3: What about?
Speaker 2: It's kind of the same with monks stories though, it's
like nobody wants to hear the story of a monk
where it's just the monk spent and years fasting and praying.
That's a boring story. Any any like really good hagiography
about a monk, because where the monk has to you know,
go off on some adventure and do something that's like
not normal, you know, just monking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, monk. And then there's the other story.
Speaker 1: There's the other story which you can come on with
this this Victorian fantasy of the conversion of the pirate. Right,
So in the Pirates of Penzance, you know, if people
know the story with grbrid In Sullivan, there's a sense
in which if you were able to call upon high
enough for good, right, if you were able to ask
them to submit or to be loyal to the right level,
that all of a sudden you could transform these pirates
into something interesting, in something more so. In the story, basically,
the pirates are doing their pirate thing, and they're being horrible,
and they're trying to kidnap these girls, and at some
point they call upon their loyalty to the queen, and
they all kind of fall into rank and say, well,
we're still pirates.
Speaker 3: Where you know, we love all this stuff.
Speaker 1: But we we love our queen so much that we're
willing to yield and to submit. So obviously, I don't
know if the queen, but the fantasy of in some
ways the criminal or the you know, the gangster. You know,
we see that in the story of Old as the
Black for example, the molds of the Ethiopian. That is,
if he is able to see a high enough good,
then that power gets given to the good.
Speaker 3: So I don't know what you think about.
Speaker 2: That, Well, I agree, I think I think for us
to identify with pirates and root for pirates in a story,
the pirates have to have enough of their humanity left
that that seems possible. If they're if they've degenerated to
the point of being nothing more than the passions, we
really couldn't identify with them as heroes in the story.
But if they seem like broken people that still have
a kernel of virtue somewhere down there, that they can
rise to the occasion of doing good when it needs
to be done. And you see that constantly through the
Pirates of the Arabbean movie. Yeah, that allows for us
to to to root for them as the sort of
the noble outlaw.
Speaker 4: So I have two questions. First question, is uh, anything
going on there symbolically, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know anything about. I'm sure Andrew knows about.
Speaker 2: If I know a few sea shanty is, I mean,
they're they're typically just work songs. They're not exactly pirrating songs.
There are songs about pirates. Yeah, of course, the actual
reality of historical pirates is they did not live very long,
and they tended to They tended to you know, meet
meet their end, you know, watery Grave. So it's like
if the pirates had actual pirate songs among themselves that
were that were any good, I'm not sure. I'm not
sure any of those survived to us. But there's certainly
plenty of a good ballads about pirates. I love those because.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that in the world of pirates, and that's
important to notice that outside of the story vision or
the mythical version, you know, they were as much in
danger between themselves as they were as what they would
encounter on the outside. Probably had a tendency to kill
each other as much as they did you kill the others?
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: The second question for each of you will start with you, Jonathan,
what's your favorite pirate movie?
Speaker 1: What's my favorite? I don't have a favorite pirate movie.
I think that the Pirates of the Caribbean, obviously antip
I could know.
Speaker 3: Look, I like the.
Speaker 1: Pirates of the Caribbean, the first movie, but I also
despise those movies for how convoluted and narratively empty they are.
So I like the characterization, of course that Johnny Depp
brings to the pirate and that's really it's fun because
it's so weird and it's so out of whack that
you can't stop but look at this person, because it's
so fascinating to see something like that.
Speaker 3: But I get annoyed with those movies.
Speaker 1: Because it's so convoluted and so I don't even know
what's going on anymore.
Speaker 3: Do you know? What are they doing?
Speaker 1: What are they getting this one thing so they can
get the other thing, so you can get the other things,
so that you don't even know what's going on.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you my favorite scene in a pirate movie.
This is in Pirates Caribbean number five. I believe it
is watched number five, so in in in movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So so this is Dead Men Tell No Tales. Captain
Captain Barbosa has taken over Queen Anne's Revenge from Blackbeard,
and he's built up a whole fleet of pirate ships
because Queen Ann's revenge is undefeatable among ships. And so
he's now a pirate admirable admiral, and he's unimaginably wealthy.
And so you see this scene where he is at
his leisure on his pirate flagship, and he's he's converted
the the captain's chambers of Queen Anne's Revenge into like
an aristocrat's splendid, splendid parlor where all the walls are
gilded and it's just mountains and mountains of treasure. Of
all the decks of the ship are overflowing with gold
and jewels. And he's, you know, he's lying back, twirling
his mustache in his chamber. And and and the part
that absolutely thrills me is he has he has a
little baroque chamber orchestra that he has hired. There's you know,
there's there's you know, a musician there, you know, cellos
and violins and oh it is it is it is.
So he's got his little he's got his little he's
got his little baroque chamber orchestra you know, in there
with him, you know, playing Hondle or something like that.
And he's just lying back, twirling his mustache, the most
successful pirate of all time. And then, you know, and
then his doom comes for him. His doom is is
is the the ghost the Spanish ghost Captain Captain Salazar.
Speaker 3: I've already stopped knowing what's going on.
Speaker 2: The movie, but anyway, Captain Captain Salazar, he he essentially
died decades ago. He was lured into some magic cave
by Jack Sparrow. His ship was wrecked, you know, he
and anyway, due to various you know, instances of sea magic,
the Captain Salazar, who's basically now a ghost captain on
a ghost ship, emerges from his cave. And his ship
was a you know, a huge Spanish five decker, the biggest,
the biggest ship's ever built, and huge enemy of pirates.
And he's he comes out as this ghost captain on
a ghost ship, and the ship is skeletal. It just
looks like bones, it looks like the it sort of
looks like the bones of Leviathan, just its ribs and things,
and it comes up to Captain Barbosa's pirate ship, which
is much smaller, and and his his ship, Captain Salazar's
ship opens up like a monster, like like it's going
to be the monster, you know, swallowing job. But it's
this sort of skeletal demon mon stir with a ghost captain.
And it looks very much like the the orthodox icon
of the Last Judgment with as the giant monster coming
coming up, you know, out of the out of sort
of this fiery ocean of hell or to swallow everything.
And it's a it's just a magnificent image of this
sort of end point of the most successful pirate and
his and his end point of hell coming for him.
Speaker 3: So I have to say, I just figured out the parrot.
So I'm like, it's just running. I'm like, I need
to figure this out for the end the conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, but that I think that that it is
it's related to this idea of caricature that we're that
I'm talking about when I talk about pirates, is that
the parrot represents an illusion of meaning, right, It's an
illusion of coherence, and it's an illusion of sense, and
so this idea of the parrot is, I think is
an image of the fact that the pirates are this illusion.
Speaker 3: They're this caricature of civilization. Right, they wear all this
gold and they.
Speaker 1: Look like like a kind of joke on an aristocrat,
but it's empty ultimately, and I think I think that
that's what the parrot represents it. It is it's like
a it's like a burp, right, it's like this, it's
like this this reaction to to meaning or this this
this fake version of of what meaning is.
Speaker 3: What do you think do you think that makes sense yet?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: So my favorite pirate movie is Aero Flynn Olivia The
Heflin Basil Rathbo Captain Blood, which I think was Flynn's
first film, and to me, it is the It is
the quintessential like swashbuckling pirate film, and it has actually
all of the elements that you're describing. He's basically he's
like a surgeon that helps a wrong person during the
English Civil War and gets driven out of England, and
so because of that he basically ends up taking up
this life of piracy and then totally eventually just totally
gives himself over to it, kind of loses himself in
in the identity of a piracy, and then he meets
this this young woman who he like basically captures from
another pirate.
Speaker 2: I think is that Eli.
Speaker 4: I think it's Olivia to have a win in that
movie anyway, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. So he meets this,
he meets this young young woman and then basically she
becomes Yeah, basically she becomes a way for him to
redeem himself. In order to do that, he's gotta killed
his big pirate rival and the climactic duel of the film.
So it has actually all the various elements of like
the outcasts and the kind of the dissipation and then
ultimately the big scene at the end. The most quintessentially
English thing to me is this idea that oh, yeah,
you might be a bad guy, but as soon as
as soon as you you know, like, oh but you
could do this for the king, you could do this
for the queen, and you're like, oh right, yeah, sure,
didn't think of that before. And so the big thing
that happens is that at the end of the movie,
they it's announced them that William and Mary are you know,
have come in and they've taken over things, and so
he's they're all pardoned, and so then they're like, all right, great,
let's go kill the Spanish now. And that's how that's
how the.
Speaker 3: Movie that ends.
Speaker 2: Well, I love that ends with a certain redemption. And
I have to say another reason that I so enjoy
Pirates of the Caribbean number five is because it ends
with a redemption like that. For Captain Barbosa. The story
of the movie is essentially that a woman appears who
turns out to be Captain Barboza's daughter, and he's sort
of gradually figuring this out over the course of the
movie that this that this woman is his daughter. And
she challenges him at one point for his lifestyle and
says his treasure worth dying for, and he responds, I'm
a pirate and walks away. Of course, treasure is worth
dying for for a pirate. But then eventually Captain Salazar
comes for her, and Captain Barbosa has a moment of
trial where he the only way he can save this woman,
whom he now realizes is his daughter. The only way
he can save her is if he gives up his
own life fighting Captain Salazar, and in this moment of
struggle among the three of them, she pulls back on
his sleeve of revealing a tattoo on his arm that
matches the matches a symbol that she knows from her past,
and she realizes, all of a sudden, in this moment
of death, that he is.
Speaker 4: Fun to get those tattoos when your kids are young,
so they know, separate, exactly figure it out.
Speaker 2: So in this, in this, in this moment of struggle
where it's clear that two of the three of them
are going to die, she suddenly realizes that Captain Barbosa
is her father. And he suddenly sort of makes a
move to put himself in front of her, and she
is astonished, you know, because she thinks he's the worst
of a selfish pirate. And she says, she says to him,
who am I to you? And he just looks at
her and says treasure. And then he gives up his
life to take out to take out Captain Salazar. Oh
it's oh, it's splendid. So the point that point is,
at the very last moment of Barbosa's life, he's actually willing,
He's actually willing to value something something.
Speaker 3: Other hmm, more valuable.
Speaker 2: Than you know, gold and jewels. But he's not willing.
He's not willing to say, like, I'm not a pirate,
I'm not giving up my life for love or family.
It's still treasure. It's just I'm going to say, you're
the treasure. It's it's it's I love that that sort
of partial, partial repentance.
Speaker 4: So one of the one of the things I did
not expect to come out of Art of Automada was
a simultaneously from the same person, a take on why
Thomas Kincaid's paintings have bad theology, but then also like
an apologia for the parts of the Caribbean franchise. I
just couldn't have foreseen any of us. This is why
you have to come to these things.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, everybody has to come to Florida, to
the Keys to hang.
Speaker 3: Out with us for sure.
Speaker 4: All right, thank you guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks veryone. This was a lot of fun.
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