Yeah I’m still talking about this, but-
A huge point to be made is the way the narrative obviously views the Shame Plantation we all hate.
It’s played up as a decent place. It’s played up by the writing as being acceptable and non-violent and “there is a place for society’s rejects to go and society is judged by how it treats those it rejects blah blah blah” the narrative and the writers want you to believe that this is an okay place. It’s played up so many times. Even Max, who wouldn’t be able to live with herself for having killed Silver, sees it as a viable alternative free of guilt.
If the writers could help it, you’re not supposed to see this place as bad. And it WORKED. So many Black Sails fans see that as a satisfying and acceptable ending for Flint. God I went to the Thomas Hamilton wiki the other day and half the comments were “it doesn’t matter where he is because he’s with the love of his life! What a beautiful ending! Black Sails watered my crops and painted my kitchen it’s Perfect!” Like criticize Silver all you want but the real problem here is the narrative. Silver is not going to understand or act on the basis that this is a bad place for Flint to go because the narrative does not believe or want you to believe that this is a bad place to go.
Silver sending Flint there was meant to be a decent option assuming Flint became more at peace with Thomas. No it’s not true, but the narrative believed it very clearly and very strongly. It’s pushing that wrongly throughout the entirety of season 4, and it pushes it through Silver as well. The Black Sails writers do not want you to believe they enslaved two gay characters in a terrible place at the end of their story. They want you to believe, and probably even believe themselves, that this is a decent place to spend your life. Silver will never have criticize or considered this to be a bad ending because of who he is as a character, but because the narrative wants everyone to think it’s an okay place.
Logically that being a reason to hate Silver is fine. You can hate him for whatever reasons you want and as flawed as it is writing-wise, it is something he did. But it’s so blatantly clear to me that this is a narrative flaw and not a character flaw. Silver only believes this is an acceptable ending because the narrative does because the writers want you to believe it too. Not because he thinks this is acceptable– but because he exists in a narrative that also thinks it’s acceptable. Don’t expect everyone to ignore that.
A counterpoint that is also valid.
Which is why I love this fandom.
I’d like to respectfully disagree.
Honestly, I think the narrative is not flawed. The writing is not bad – in fact, it’s brilliant, but it’s making a point that some people have missed, which is not their fault – it’s easy to do given that as you said, it’s not explicitly pointed out. The point, though, is made way back when Madame Guthrie tells the story about the cat and her son and the husband that won’t stop beating the boy for being kind. The point that she, and Max, and a lot of viewers took out of that, is that some things cannot survive in the world with other things if society is to survive. The point that the narrative is trying to get across, or at least the one that I took away from it, is that society strangles the innocent to preserve the guilty and it will continue until people have the courage to change it. The shame farm is a direct reflection of that disgusting little parable. What is obvious to most of us is that it is not the poor innocent cat that deserves to die there – it is the root cause of the problem, the husband who insists on beating his son for doing what is right. In the same way, what James Flint and Thomas Hamilton deserve is not to be “strangled” by being enslaved on that farm. What should happen is that the society that has brutalized them should be overturned, but what happens is that one man plays the role of Madame Guthrie in this story and strangles the cat instead of going for the root cause, probably because like her he has been conditioned to think that nothing can change. I can’t blame her or Max for thinking as they do – they’ve been shown their whole lives that they are not the ones in control and they view quests to make things change as doomed to failure, just as Silver does, but it doesn’t make any of them right.
*In case you missed it, Madi serves in Richard Guthrie’s role here, and Silver acts to save her, sacrificing her happiness for her life.
I agree with you, actually, and I’m really glad you brought up that cat story in detail because it’s been something I’ve wanted to hear someone mention for a long time, especially in regard to Max’s stance on it. I agree with you that it doesn’t make them right, and overall I lean toward Flint and Madi’s perspective than Silver and Max’s. But I also find both Silver and Max’s stances extremely understandable, and disagreeing with them doesn’t mean hating them, especially Max who had no connection to Flint or Madi and therefore was not betraying them. But Silver because I do believe that he did everything he did out of selfish love and an inability to watch Flint and Madi get themselves killed for nothing, which was the only way he could see it ending. He didn’t believe in it, and in reality, never should have touched it or them. But he fell in love with them.
I do agree that Silver believed in what Max believed. I think seeing Max, and even Julius, was a huge factor in what made him doubt Flint and Madi so much. Two people from the same world as Flint and Madi, who had the opposite standpoint. How hard must it to have been to cede to their ideas because they know better than he, while two people who were in the exact same boat vehemently supported the direction he truly leaned toward? Silver doesn’t give a shit about the world or changing it or who suffers in it if it’s not happening right in front of him. He’s never existed in it. He cares only about Flint and Madi and becomes overwhelmed with the belief that their war is not only pointless, but will be their end.
But I don’t think he believes Flint needs to be killed or even removed the way Max and Guthrie do. I also don’t think he gives a shit about the restoration of Nassau or Jack and Max’s plan. He has three things on his mind.
1. Jack wants to kill Flint for this plan. It’s a plan that will put him in power and seal his name into history. It’s unlikely very much will stop him from destroying Flint for this, and that puts them at war with Jack. Which, isn’t a huge problem in reality, but it’s another enemy on the pile.
2. The destruction of the war. Silver doesn’t believe in this war, you’re right. He agrees with Max. He wants to believe in it, I think he’s always wanted to, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t face that until 410. Until he realizes he doesn’t just not believe in it, he believes it’s going to destroy everything he cares about.
3. The best way to end it. Not for England, not for Nassau, not for Jack or Max’s plan, but for Flint and Madi.
I don’t think the writing overall is bad. But it is flawed. I just think it’s important to consider that Silver really did not need to send Flint away forever. He didn’t need to kill him. He didn’t need to do anything except change his stance and start speaking against it and the pirate King would be gone, as well as well as his most promising connection to the maroons– the one among them the maroons had mostly strongly come to trust.
But Flint would have died fighting him, and everyone else who agreed and followed him away from it. Madi may have very well done the same.
My argument isn’t that Silver would not have sent Flint there. That’s where Thomas was. And it was a place Flint could stay with Thomas and perhaps find peace and lose a need for this war that Silver was destroying, if he was ever going to. If Silver needed to remove Flint, even just temporarily, it was the best place for him to go. Not because it was secure or would keep him away, but because Thomas was there.
My argument is that if the narrative understood that this wasn’t a happy ending for Flint, Silver would have also understood that, and would have had no reason not to remedy the situation once the war has dissipated. But the narrative wants you to believe that plantation is Thomas and Flint’s happily ever after. It doesn’t consider anything else, and therefore Silver is never shown considering anything else.
Even though I believe logically, and based on Silver’s intelligence and care for Flint, he would have.
I get what you’re saying. Really, I do, but I think what I really am trying to say is that yes, Silver’s version of the story is meant to show the plantation as a good place, but what the entire narrative of the show is leading us to is the reality of the situation. It’s asking us to distinguish between what Silver’s story is and what’s truly happened and to be horrified rather than defending his actions as being in any way acceptable and it’s a bar that a lot of people are tripping over, unfortunately. The narrative is about shame, and what society considers unacceptable and whether or not that society is right, and I think the show’s answer is a resounding no. That’s why Woodes Rogers is there as a character. It’s why Alfred Hamilton and Peter Ashe are there – to show us that the society that Silver and Max and Madame Guthrie view as immutable is deeply, horrifyingly WRONG. I get why Silver did what he did. I get why Max and Madame Guthrie are the way they are, and I think what kind of irks me is that their perspective is being accepted as right by so many people when that’s not the message that’s being imparted here.
As to Silver and whether or not his character writing was flawed at the end – again, we’re going to have to agree to disagree, because honestly I see the finale as the culmination of four seasons of John Silver failing to get the point that survival is not happiness. It is not the ultimate good – there are other things that are more important, and what he does at the end of the last episode proves that for all he’s changed, he still hasn’t gotten that. He hasn’t realized that making sure someone is alive is not the extent of what love is supposed to look like and I think he only starts to realize it when Madi won’t forgive him for what he’s done. That’s the first moment that he starts to understand that He Fucked Up and I think it’s going to take him a very long time to truly understand why she is so very angry at him.
I don’t really think you’re understanding and are getting a little too bigger-picture. I’m speaking from a perspective of criticizing the narrative for believing that the plantation is an acceptable place for non-criminals (like Thomas) or people you care about (like Flint if you’re Silver) to end up. That it’s an acceptable place to exist. I’m completely agreeing with you that it’s not, but I disagree that the narrative understand that, or is trying to push what you’re saying it is. I think it’s very clear the narrative thinks it’s an acceptable ending with a prospect of happiness.
The narrative not indisputably side with Flint and Madi, and it presents the plantation as a happy, acceptable ending. It presents Max and Silver’s standpoints as viable, even though they very well may not be. This narrative is not remotely on Flint’s side, and that’s something that bothers me about it. I wish I could say it was.
There are a LOT of messages that the story conveys and shame is only one of them, and frankly I think it pulls away from that message and starts to build into a different one after 205. It starts to face how to deal with the way society reinforces shame, casts people out, and the best way to do it, who is hurt depending on which way you do it. Whether I agree with it or not, and I don’t– truly, I have a lot of agreement in Madi and Flint’s idea of revolution and very few qualms with violent revolution in general (my fandom history also supports this) I have no problem with them flipping the world up-side-down to change it. I honestly do not think Max or Silver have a problem with that as well. I think what they believe is not that it’s wrong, and I think the message of the show is certainly not that it’s wrong or right. I think the message is a question, not an assertion.
The question being: does it work? Is it worth it? Is it going to make a difference? That is what Max challenges Jack with. That while changing the world might be something we’re in dire need of, fighting and death will never be the answer. She doesn’t believe in drowning the cat as a principle, but she does believe there is no other option to save the boy. Murder the father. The police try to imprison you. Murder the poilce, armies try to imprison you. I think Max’s true stance is that you’re not going to be able to take out those armies. It will have all been for nothing, and someone else is still going to drown that cat anyway. It’s a terrible viewpoint to force yourself to have, and a horrible truth to face. And I’m not saying it’s truth– it becomes truth with lack of faith in something better, lack of strength to fight. I don’t agree with it by principle but you also don’t see me off fighting to rip apart our shitty society. I’m living fairly comfortably in this shitty world as we speak, so you can see where disagreeing with something on principle is different than throwing yourself away for it. The question is, is it wrong to have been through hell and just want to spend the rest of your life living? More wrong than it is to sacrifice millions, including those who are just trying to make it, those too weak to fight, too young to understand, to tear down everything? Both sides are making sacrifices, letting innocent people die for what they believe. One is doing it all at once, the other slowly, over time. Both options are full of death and tragedy and horror. That’s what war, slow or fast, is.
Again I can’t stress enough that I really do not agree with Max or Silver and I believe in what Flint and Madi were doing as a principle. But I think Silver’s problem in particular was not that he didn’t believe in the principle, but that he didn’t believe it would work, and would cause him to lose everything he cared for.
I think it becomes very different when you’re living in it. Some people just aren’t strong enough to fight, choose to find a place in it instead, and those are the innocent people who will be destroyed when those that can and will fight choose to rip it all to pieces. One could argue it’s a necessary sacrifice. It’s an extremely complicated debate that spans across pretty much every fandom I’ve ever been in, and exists in most narratives. But rarely do narratives assert a certain side, and I don’t think Black Sails does either. It’s far too complicated a thing to face and assert, especially for people who aren’t living it.
The question is that while society is flawed and destroys people to keep going, is it wrong for those who do not fit to try and find happiness within it, rather than try to rip it to pieces? You say Silver did not understand survival is not happiness, but I think in reality he simply had a different idea of happiness, and what happiness could be. He never had a place in the world, and happiness was not forcing it to accept him, finding a place in it, or rebuilding it. I think he also believed that the world was the way it was because of human nature, not because of the way it was built. That people would always be this way, that even those most wronged by society would still hurt those smaller than them, that people would always end up ripping each other apart and that the only true happiness was to find someone you cared about and exist within the chaos as best you could. It’s a selfish way to live, and Silver is in his own way, and like most of the Black Sails protagonists in their own way, a selfish person. But he’s seen too much and been through too much to stop believing it.
I don’t think he changed his mind, or believed he made the wrong decision. I think it throws him that Madi is so angry and can’t understand, but I don’t think he changes his mind.
See, the problem I have with interpreting the narrative as trying to present people living within a flawed society as a valid choice that can lead to happiness is that the characters that choose to do so or have that choice made for them still end up miserable. Madi has lost the man she loved through his actions. Silver has lost everything important to him by trying to live in the world as it stands. Max is secure for now but we know what happens to Jack and Anne historically. Eleanor tried to live within that flawed society and she died. Miranda, Thomas, and James all tried to live in that society and we know what happened to them. So while I think that the narrative is asking a question, I also think that in some measure it’s answered it already. It’s shown that you can try to live in that kind of society all you like, but it doesn’t make you any safer in the long run. idk – maybe I’m giving them too much credit, but I can’t help but read a pretty resounding condemnation of society as it stands in the form of a show.
Meg's Mumbles 