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.
Meg's Mumbles 