marsza:

You: “James McGraw is the enemy.”

Me, an Intellectual: James McGraw Flint is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a morally estranged character. He is a man of grand ambitions, fueled by the trauma of losing his lover to the greatest empire of the western world, and he repeatedly uses violence, dishonesty, and cruelty as a means to achieve his goals. But Black Sails is described as a “novelistic” television program precisely because it forces the audience to engage with the narrative of the monster- akin to the work of great novels, Flint’s story speaks to the experience of being othered by a militant empire that discriminates, exploits, and destroys the marginalized identities within its reach- women, black and African folk, queer and disabled people. Furthermore, the narrative does not flatly condemn Flint for his flaws. Certainly, like Teach, Vane, Eleanor and any other character who upsets the moral system of the Black Sails universe, Flint is a character who is doomed to meet the consequence of his misdeeds. But the narrative still  regards him with profound sympathy, almost chiefly because Captain Flint would not exist had the violent systems of homophobia and militarized masculinity that crucified James McGraw existed first- the tragedy of James Flint lies not only in his battles with madness and grief, but in his lost potential as a good man. The titular “battle with the world” of Black Sails speaks to Flint’s own experiences of invalidation within English society and his further rebirth and destruction in the margins of society, i.e. Nassau and the sea.The James McGraw revealed in season two speaks to the life he could have led as a good English citiszen and soldier- honored, financially stable and socially celebrated, but emotionally inauthentic to his true identity as a gay man. True to Eleanor Guthrie’s own battle with patriarchy, Flint tries to assimilate to a culture that hates him for the sake of survival and, when he attempts to do so, this very system destroys him, Miranda, and Thomas Hamilton all the same. In a show that is built on the graves of so many victims to systematic prejudice and violence, Flint is as much a subject of victimhood and tragedy as those whom he has lost despite or, perhaps, precisely because he is no longer a good man. By consequence, there is something innately admirable in Flint’s audacious determination to desecrate the world that destroyed him. His is the power fantasy that any marginalized identity can understand- not feasible, not easily imaginable, but emotionally accessible all the same. Ultimately, the beauty of his role as the central protagonist and a rich, dimensional character (for, certainly, there is a difference between a good person and a great character in any text) is rooted in the duplicity of his identity- will our protagonist end as James McGraw or as Captain Flint? What is gained and, more importantly, what is lost when one is consumed by the other? And, in a show so fixated on the importance of narrative, how will his story be told and remembered by those who survive him? Just as one cannot understand Shelley’s aims in Frankenstein if they do not at some point anguish for Victor’s monster, if one cannot engage with Flint in sympathy, we have automatically forfeited an understanding of the fundamental aims of this show.