Our Flag Means Death and Black Sails got different audiences for queer stories

[Ed. note: This post contains light spoilers for Black Sails and Our Flag Means Death]

Our Flag Means Dying has change into a little bit of a sensation, to place it mildly. The present skyrocketed in recognition for weeks after its debut, each when it comes to streaming metrics and the outpouring of fan artwork. That’s in no small half because of its centering a romance between two males, Stede Bonnet and Edward “Blackbeard” Train, which captured the hearts of many, particularly amongst queer viewers starved of on-screen illustration. At the same time as queer illustration has improved over the many years, with a number of ongoing reveals that includes queer characters and subplots, it’s nonetheless uncommon for a sequence to focus squarely on queer romance, particularly in style reveals.

Maybe among the infatuation stems from how Our Flag Means Dying marketed its romance story — particularly, it didn’t. These preliminary trailers, teasers, and handful of episodes centered on the comedy hijinks of Stede Bonnet and his inept band of pirates. Not a lot as a longing look between Stede and Ed. For an viewers extra typically used to queerbaiting or typically no inclusion in any respect, the shock that this present actually was going to decide to that romance appears to have include a lot elation, to not point out a viewership which tripled someplace between its debut and its finale. Even creator David Jenkins has commented on the matter; talking to The Verge, he stated, “I feel I didn’t understand — as a result of I see myself represented on digital camera, and I see myself falling in love in tales — I didn’t understand how deep the queer baiting factor goes. Being made to really feel silly by tales, I assume. […] [L]ooking at how individuals had been type of afraid to let themselves consider that we had been doing that was a shock to me, and it’s heartbreaking.”

Oddly sufficient, although, this isn’t the primary time a queer pirate present has buried the lede. Although the reveals don’t share channels, many years, and even sensibilities, the way in which they slowly revealed the queerness of their protagonists reveals how each of those reveals replicate the totally different climates through which they had been launched.

Picture: Starz

Black Sails, which premiered again in 2014, is a sequence that acts as each a prequel to the basic pirate novel Treasure Island and a mishmash of actual historical past. Lengthy John Silver brushes shoulders with actual pirates like Charles Vane and Anne Bonny. Regardless of any misgivings you might need about its gritty Treasure Island take, it’s a genuinely considerate exploration of historical past and fiction. To make certain, it has its fair proportion of bloody violence and intercourse; it was seen as Recreation of Thrones on the excessive seas amongst critics. What it completely doesn’t do upfront is let the viewers know that certainly one of its central characters (arguably the story’s major protagonist), Captain Flint, is in truth a homosexual man, and that his oppression and persecution below British society is the foundation of his whole violent quest.

In Black Sails this twist serves a objective, held again till midway by means of the second season. Flint, initially an enigma to audiences and his crew alike, is a larger-than-life character — an inscrutable, crafty, and ruthless pirate, very like the character first referenced in Treasure Island. He’s allowed to embody a hypermasculinity, the archetypal bloodthirsty captain who will do something for gold. The reveal that he’s homosexual and that his mission is to insurgent towards the British Empire, to create a nation freed from its rule, complicates every little thing he has accomplished and can do, turning him from a mercenary right into a revolutionary.

The truth that Black Sails and Our Flag each smuggled queerness into their narratives is made all of the extra attention-grabbing when contemplating the real-life parallels of the characters. Each reveals play with our conceptions of historical past and well-known figures. Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard actually did hang around, and the present merely makes a leap as to why that may very well be; Jenkins has explicitly stated he’s fascinated by treating recorded historical past as merely a jumping-off level. In spite of everything, it’s unclear how a lot he’s even studying into their relationship. To at the present time, there’s numerous debate about how a lot queerness has been exorcised from data and accounts, both by omission or by people’ personal crucial discretion.

Retelling well-known histories as queer tales is extra about placing again into our previous what has been erased from it. As Black Sails co-creator Jon Steinberg stated to Den of Geek relating to the present’s historic figures, “There’s some freedom within the second you understand that the historic report is severely compromised when it comes to what these peoples’ lives had been like. They’d a motive to lie, and so did the individuals in London. […] It offers us the room to attempt to inform a narrative that may hopefully really feel actual. It most likely received’t essentially match as much as the textbook to what occurred, however I feel we might most likely argue that the textbook is already a story that anyone with an agenda put collectively a protracted, very long time in the past.”

Picture: Starz

Photograph: Aaron Epstein/HBO Max

Not that it’s laborious to learn queerness into present histories, even when the terminology and conception of the concepts differed on the time. Romanticized pirates have all the time been portrayed as camp, a picture maybe spurred on by historic figures like Jack Rackham, nicknamed Calico Jack on account of his colourful outfits (who additionally makes an look in OFMD). Mary Learn spent a portion of their life below the title Mark Learn, and whether or not it was merely a disguise or fluid gender expression or in the event that they had been even trans, it lends itself to storylines like that of Jim on Our Flag Means Dying. Accounts of Blackbeard spending all of his time with Stede Bonnet can so simply be understood by means of a queer lens that it’s stunning no story put such a twist on these figures earlier than Our Flag Means Dying.

However the reply to why nobody had is perhaps captured considerably within the response to Black Sails’ personal voyage into queer storytelling.

To be honest, Black Sails does have queer characters from the outset — two ladies, Eleanor and Max — however the first season typically presents them below a leering male gaze, seemingly meant to titillate common audiences. The present’s curiosity within the revolutionary qualities of queerness didn’t take heart stage till its second season. Whereas it spawned a fervent following amongst some queer followers, it equally drew the ire of homophobes who felt betrayed by the reveal that half of the solid was queer. Reddit is plagued by rants towards the present’s “homosexual agenda” by lads who thought they had been getting a present “nearly pirates,” all a part of an outcry that even obtained Flint’s actor, Toby Stephens, to remark. “Earlier than the revelation I had this enormous following from guys, however as quickly as that occurred it was like that they had been betrayed. It was the sense of utter betrayal and I wasn’t shocked as a result of I knew it was going to be a large factor.” The diploma of discomfort amongst males, that just by being homosexual Flint now not adhered to their inflexible customary of a male icon, is hardly one thing that’s gone away.

Within the current, although, the TV panorama has modified significantly since Black Sails aired. Streaming providers have come to rule the roost and fracture the monoculture, and the pandemic has solely additional formed that. Black Sails needed to compete towards The Wire, The Sopranos, and Recreation of Thrones to earn its place on the desk. For Our Flag Means Dying, which is far more a comedy than a drama (and by no means an epic style TV sequence, although there are nonetheless loads of old school stabbings), issues are a bit of totally different.

Photograph: Aaron Epstein/HBO Max

Whereas the particular results (the revolutionary StageCraft developed for The Mandalorian) that permit Our Flag Means Dying to appear prefer it’s happening at sea would have been reserved for a lot higher-budget reveals just a few years in the past, they’re a flourish for a sequence that largely takes place on small units. It might’ve been a tiny finances sitcom a decade in the past. That smaller scale could also be what allowed it to take dangers that, sadly, nonetheless really feel daring in 2022. It’s not only a romance between Stede and Edward however a complete solid filled with queer characters — a queerness that in its personal context largely feels unremarkable, with the crew quietly tolerant and respectful of one another all through the sequence.

In the previous few years issues have moved alongside, however even nonetheless, each reveals needed to function below the very circumstances of which they’re vital. As America and the U.Ok. each ramp up in homophobia and transphobia, with laws looking for to focus on these susceptible teams, the tales of Black Sails and Our Flag Means Dying don’t really feel like purely historic tales. They’re tales of the right here and now. Pirates are a method to recontextualize those that society “others,” who’re made outcasts and fringe by the mainstream. The reveals invite us to ask why somebody would select to dwell on the sting, to unpack their histories and motives till their standard picture is vanquished. To take probably the most well-known of pirates and to reframe them as traumatized queer outcasts isn’t meant as a historic rewrite however as a rebuttal of the very concept of a historical past written by the conquerors.

The British Empire current in each tales is depicted as an entity that’s, at its worst, all-consuming barbarism and, at its finest, all-consuming barbarism propped up by a veneer of civility. It’s an entity that not solely destroys however warps actuality round itself, reshaping historical past in its likeness.

In our current, queer persons are as soon as once more being miscast as villains and boogeymen. In a method, Black Sails and Our Flag Means Dying all the time dance on the sting of tragedy. Both they meet the identical ends as their historic counterparts or we see the bittersweet fact of tales which might be written out of historical past, their actions twisted into one thing evil. By giving that different perspective, by suggesting one other account, these reveals are a rallying cry for queer folks searching for their place in a world that doesn’t need them to exist in any respect — and a reminder to everybody who stands towards us which aspect of historical past they’re on.