{"id":6826,"date":"2022-06-22T22:59:56","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T20:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/?p=6826"},"modified":"2022-06-23T00:06:54","modified_gmt":"2022-06-22T22:06:54","slug":"damsels-in-distress-in-film-groundbreaking-women-in-real-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/6826\/damsels-in-distress-in-film-groundbreaking-women-in-real-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Damsels in distress in film \u2013 groundbreaking women in real life"},"content":{"rendered":"
Historically, women weren\u2019t allowed on ships, they were considered bad luck, but to a certain extent you can still find them there.\u00a0 There are few known female pirates, but we don\u2019t need to look far away to find a place where two women with very different stories would be recognized in history as pirates: Ireland. \u00a0Anne Bonny and Gra\u00ednne O\u2019Malley, two women who went against the norms of the time, were both Irish.<\/p>\n
Grainne O\u2019Malley was born around 1530, in Umhaill, into a lordship and a great seafarer clan. She would come to rule not only her father\u2019s lordship but her two husbands as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe kept doing things that she technically was never supposed to do. She became really a female chieftain, and she went out with her men and ran her lordship and went around the West Coast of Ireland and traded and levy taxes on ships. She became a figure of fear\u201d says Dr. Gillian Kenny, specialist in the history of women in Ireland and Britain during the later medieval and early modern period.<\/p>\n
Gra\u00ednne is often referred to as the Pirate Queen of Ireland, but Kenny feels it\u2019s a misleading title. Gra\u00ednne would most probably not have seen herself as a pirate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think pirates are very neat description of her and of what she did. Certainly, she boarded boats and she took things from them, but it doesn’t describe what she was doing. She probably wouldn’t have thought of it as illegal. She was a lord putting her taxes on people. So that’s how she would have thought of it\u201d Kenny explains.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Malley\u2019s is often seen as rebellious and as a symbol of Irishness abroad. According to Kenny O\u2019Malley wasn\u2019t really that. She was a rebel when she had to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe also cooperated with the English because above all else she is an aristocrat. She is an Irish aristocrat, and she would do whatever she needed to do to hand over her land. If that meant cooperating with the English who killed one of her sons, then that’s what she had to do. She made very difficult decisions in a very difficult time\u201d says Kenny.<\/p>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/378\/2022\/06\/random-3-scaled.jpg” panorama=”off” align=”center” lightbox=”on” captionsrc=”custom” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n\n\n
Born over 100 years apart O\u2019Malley and Bonny don\u2019t have much in common.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could say O\u2019Malley was much more sophisticated than Bonny. Bonny was simply a pirate whereas Gra\u00ednne for example married politically\u201d says Joe Varley, president of the Maritime institute of Ireland and doctor in naval history.<\/p>\n
Anne Bonny (n\u00e9e Cormac) born around 1697 as an illegitimate daughter to a lawyer in Kinsale. Anne and her parents emigrated to Charleston where she would marry sailor James Bonny against her fathers\u2019 disapproval. They moved to the Bahamas, where Anne would eventually leave James for pirate John \u201cCalico Jack\u201d Rackham. She would roam the seas with him and his crew, and another female pirate called Mary Read. They would later be captured and sentenced to hanging. Bonny and Read plead pregnancy and avoided hanging. Read died in prison, but it is not known where Bonny ended up or how she died.<\/p>\n
\u201cO\u2019Malley and Bonny were put in situations where there were possibilities. And why they would have well broken out of the bounds of what was considered femininity and correct behaviour at the time. There were strong enough people to do it\u201d says Varley.<\/p>\n\n\n[aesop_quote type=”block” background=”#000000″ text=”#ffffff” align=”left” size=”1″ quote=”Gra\u00ednne O\u2019Malley
\n\u2022\tBorn in 1530 in Umhaill, County Mayo
\n\u2022\tAlso known as Grace O\u2019Malley, Granuaile and Gr\u00e1inne N\u00ed Mh\u00e1ille
\n\u2022\tHer father was the lord of Umhaill and chief of the O\u2019Malley clan, the title she would come to inherit
\n\u2022\tAfter the death of her second husband, she would rule his land and men, which was highly unusual ” parallax=”off” direction=”left” revealfx=”inplaceslow”]\n\n[aesop_quote type=”block” background=”#000000″ text=”#ffffff” align=”left” size=”1″ quote=”Anne Bonny
\n\u2022\tBorn in 1697 in Kinsale, County Cork
\n\u2022\tMoved to Charleston, South Carolina with her parents
\n\u2022\tMarried sailor James Bonny and moved to the Bahamas with him
\n\u2022\tAnne left James for the Pirate \u201cCalico Jack\u201d and became a pirate
\n\u2022\tCalico Jacks crew were sentenced to death in 1720, but Anne was freed
\n” parallax=”off” direction=”left” revealfx=”inplaceslow”]\n\n
\u201cPirates and smugglers by their very nature did not leave records. You know, it was illegal. The last thing they wanted was the limelight. So, to that extent there is a lot more on Grainne O\u2019Malley than there is on Bonny\u201d says Joe Varley.<\/p>\n
Most of what is known about Gra\u00ednne\u2019s life comes from English records and Irish folklore. She is not mentioned in Irish records at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s like she doesn’t exist, which tells you something about the people at the time and how they viewed her. She would have been seen as a maybe a woman who was not normal. A woman who was unacceptable. She would have been viewed as something very strange indeed within her own culture\u201d says Kenny.<\/p>\n
When it comes to Bonny, historical records of her life can only be found about the two last years of her time as a pirate. Her childhood, personal life and piracy is described in the book A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates <\/em>(1724) by Captain Charles Johnson, which cannot really be proven to be true, but neither untrue.<\/p>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/378\/2022\/06\/random-2-scaled.jpg” panorama=”off” align=”center” lightbox=”on” captionsrc=”custom” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n\n In general, there are three types of female characters in pirate stories: the damsel in distress, the female pirate, and minor characters such as prostitutes, mother figures and teachers.\u00a0 When you compare female pirates to male ones, the men have more freedom of certain categories and stereotypes. The only big differentiation is the categorization into good pirates and bad pirates.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have a female character, it’s very difficult to put her into one of these two categories because as soon as a woman turns into a pirate, to a certain extent, she also moves to the evil category, because she transgresses the norms that we know as Western viewers\u201d says Susanne Zhanial from Austrian Academy of Sciences, who has written her dissertation on the pirate motif in film.<\/p>\n A female pirate\u2019s story revolves around the struggles of identity and being a woman, and her road into piracy is often driven by a wish for freedom. In recent years, female pirates have gotten more room in pirate films and more space for their actions.<\/p>\n \u201cThey’re also allowed, for example, to use swords and guns and to really fight with the man and fight against the evil characters, although if you look at for example Cutthroat Island, which was published in the 1990s, you have a very, very strong female character figure, and also Elizabeth Swann of course in Pirates of the Caribbean, is a very active figure. However, you always have to set that in relation to the end, says Zhanial.<\/p>\n It is the end of the pirate films where the female pirates\u2019 fate is usually different to their male counterparts. The male pirates can continue being a pirate with a somewhat happy ending or reject the pirate title and go back to society. The women are not as lucky. They have to submit to the Western society, as Elizabeth does in Pirates of the Caribbean<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cShe’s given a lot of freedom to make her own decisions. She even defies the male heroes, and she does what she wants. She goes to sea with Jack and sales with him and actually, she’s the one who then saves Will when he’s in trouble. However, the problem is that Disney is still a very conservative company, so in the end, in a very final moment of the film, Elizabeth is always pushed back to the normal controls of Western society. And that’s very disappointing, I think\u201d says Zhanial.<\/p>\n The only pirate film where the female character is relieved of their fate as a woman is Cutthroat Island<\/em> from 1995. This is the only pirate film where the female character is allowed to survive, to keep the treasure and to sail away with it, and with the male hero.<\/p>\n \u201cThe film was very, very strongly criticized, because the male hero was portrayed in a very negative way, like a male hero in distress. So, he replaces the female damsel, and actually the female main character was then put in the role that was normally reserved for a male character, so you have in a way a reversion of the gender roles.\u201d says Zhanial.<\/p>\n The film was rewritten many times, had many problems during the production phase and ended up being a box office failure.<\/p>\n \u201cMany critics argue that it the time was not right for the movie, so maybe if it had been produced 10 or 15 years later, at the time of when The Pirates of the Caribbean<\/em> was released, it might have been more successful, but in the 1990s it was a complete flop\u201d says Zhanial.<\/p>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/378\/2022\/06\/random-1-scaled.jpg” panorama=”off” align=”center” lightbox=”on” captionsrc=”custom” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n\n Anne Bonny, as the most famous historical female pirate, is a somewhat popular character in film and television. She is in the tv-series Black Sails <\/em>(2014-2017) and the film Anne of the Indies <\/em>(1951) is loosely based on Bonny. She also appears in graphic novels and video games. Zhanial believes Anne Bonny\u2019s story is taken up a lot because of the historical reporting of Captain Johnson.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have the two stories of Anne Bonny and Mary Read in Johnson. [\u2026] And of Mary Read, we know that she died in prison, but there is no record of what happened to Anne Bonny. This openness in the historical source provides the opportunity to use her story again and again\u201d says Zhanial.<\/p>\n[aesop_gallery id=”6980″ revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n When it comes to Gra\u00ednne O\u2019Malley she can be found in some popular culture; there has been plays about her, she is featured in James Joyce\u2019s Finnegans Wake, in Renaissance fairs in the US and in the book Goodnight stories for Rebel Girls<\/em> (2016).<\/p>\n \u201cShe’s really popular now because people see her as a kind of a feminist icon and also a lot of people see her as an icon for old age because she started being a rebel when she was in her 60s\u201d says Gillian Kenny.<\/p>\n But when it comes to film and tv there is almost nothing on Gra\u00ednne.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy would they get unearned money when you have people like Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, and Captain Flint; when you’ve got Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Because pirates have always been a good story. And there is the simple reason that most of the people who wrote these stories were men. That’s just the way they do things\u201d says Joe Varley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Courageous anti-heroes hunting treasures and ruthless captains seeking revenge \u2013 pirates have been around for centuries in popular culture. There are fictional pirates, like Captain Hook and Jack Sparrow, as well as historical ones such as Blackbeard and Henry Morgan. Do they have something in common? Yes, the fact that they are men. So, did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2135,"featured_media":6896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acls","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWomen in pirate films<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Bonny and O\u2019Malley in film<\/strong><\/h2>\n