Monday Media Musings: A Sparrow's Flight

     Today(And the release of POTC5) has me contemplating the curious journeys of Captain Jack Sparrow. I'm going to Omit anything here that is not POTC Movie Cannon(intentional). I am also far less concerned with his sea voyages than I am with his journey as a character.

     When we meet him in The Curse of the Black Pearl, he is a genius of improvisational tactics, able to lie like Loki himself, and is seeking the ship that was stolen from him. He has a cutlass, a pistol with one shot, a compass that points to what he most desires, and a list of enemies dead and alive that is staggering. He loves the Sea, The Black Pearl, and Rum. In pretty much that order.

     Bold, Fearless, Obnoxious. He is a classic trickster, carrying the seeds of his success in one hand and the seeds of his own downfall in the other, and juggling...

     When we meet up with him again in Dead Man's Chest, he is being , pursued by the supernatural Entity Davy Jones,

Not him.

Him.

and considerably more fearful. Jones intends to take Jack's life or the Black Pearl, as part of a bargain they made. Sparrow runs from his fate as long as he can, but when he can run no more, he faces his end with style and boldness, running straight into the teeth of the Kraken.

     When we find him in the Locker in At World's End, he seems to have gone somewhat mad, and fragmented into personalities to keep himself occupied-not necessarily multiple personalities, more like highly focused versions of himself. When extracted from the Locker and returned from the land of the dead, he is wrapped in his endgame with Jones and Cutler Beckett, but also wrangling for position with Hector Barbossa. At the end, he is free of that bargain, and while he loses the Pearl and his crew, he has a map in his possession of wonders galore that he can exploit.

     On Stranger Tides finds him athwart the most feared Pirate of them all, Edward Teach, AKA Blackbeard, seeking the fountain of youth. Not a captain now, but a conscripted sailor on Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge. From this spot, he attempts mutiny, and is left alive only because Blackbeard and his daughter need the knowledge Jack has.

     Dead Men Tell No Tales is a curious turn. We Find Jack Sparrow, drunken, broken, still brilliant, but even more self- sabotaging. I think it's here that we truly start to see the shape of this character. There are two personae, the public and the private. And the public Persona has all the good stuff. Jack is a bit like me. I have been described as being always on stage(and not always as a compliment). And when he starts to Dazzle with Dexterity and Baffle with Bullshit, even his most bloodthirsty foes, whom he has delivered the gravest insults to, wind up watching in fascination. Alone, he creates an audience to perform for- he entertains himself, as it were. On stage, if he feels he is losing the confidence of his audience, he will resort to even more extreme behavior until he has their attention back. And I think it comes down to one seminal event, told in flashback in Dead Men Tell No Tales

     When he saves his ship and defeats Salazar, he is given tribute from the crew. It is in this event that Jack the Sparrow is truly born, and set on a path to remain a captain, on stage for his crew to observe his brilliance. When their confidence slips, so does his mask, and we see the lonely child behind the legend...

     This might be why the Rum is always gone.