What can I say? I love the pirate. And I totally think he fits into our discussion of tricksters. Using the list that Babcock-Abrahams, the author of my article, came up with I found that conniving Sparrow fits a lot of the characteristics that she sets up: exhibits an independence from temporal and spatial boundaries, tends to inhabit crossroads/thresholds, have an enormous libido without procreative outcome, follow the motley of principle in dress,
generally amoral-especially defiant of authority, privileged in the case of social norms, and how we just don't know if he is good or bad.
First, exhibits an independence from temporal and spatial boundaries. Did you see the third movie? Hopefully you did. But so he gets eaten by a Kraken in the second one (you don't come back from that easily) and then ends up on this weird island/desert that is supposed to be Davy Jones' Locker. Which is supposed to be the bottom of the ocean.
But the ocean would way too comfortable and easy for Jack because...
He loves crossroads! Granted, his crossroads are tides and winds, but what is more transitional and mediating than the ocean.
And even though Jack Sparrow looks like he probably smelled like salt, W.H. Auden, rum and the most vile dirty hair smell ever, the ladies still love him. He even gets Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) to question her feelings for Will (Orlando Bloom). And Will looks like he at least showered in the last month.
My favorite, and probably least intellectual, reason for loving Jack Sparrow is his clothes. They are adorably insane. And it is a characteristic of being a trickster! (who knew!?) (probably Dr. Abbot...) Did you know that no one else in the series is allowed to wear a leather tricorne? I also love that they are decidedly not like typical pirate wear that we think of before the movies came out, but now that's one of the first things we think of when we talk about pirates!
Also in reference to the possibility of female tricksters, in the new movie, Penelope Cruz is supposed to play a woman who can pull one over on Jack Sparrow!
Great! AND in the first movie, he dies (or enters some zone that lies between death and life) then returns from death -- very much the trickster! AND what about that inimitable style he has (partly the character's, partly Johnny Depp's): wouldn't you say that he plays around with conventional categories of gender? That eye shadow, the way he ... sashays? You're absolutely right about the amorality, too: I think at one point he says to Orlando Bloom that there's only one rule, what a man can do and what a man can't do. Great post, Flippee.
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