The glorious imperfection of Our Flag Means Death
One of my favourite pieces of media criticism is Everyone Is Beautiful and No-One is Horny, by RS Benedict.
In this article, Benedict details the hyperreality(1) of bodies present in most modern films and the distinct uneroticism of those within the Marvel machine — where glorious, robot-like bodies make motions towards human sexuality but never quite get there.
Heroes have rock-hard abs and are six foot four, and heroines long blonde hair — if they’re funny, and brunette — if they’re smart. There’s not a single freckle out of place, and not a single belly — unless someone on screen has really let themselves go for comical effect, of course.(2)
And it’s boring.
“No one is ugly. No one is really fat. Everyone is beautiful.” Benedict writes, “And yet, no one is horny. Even when they have sex, no one is horny. No one is attracted to anyone else.”(3)
Desire is not felt in most modern cinema — and it is hardly observed. The camera does not take an active interest in the proceedings, but rather slides between them; watching gleaming couples kiss and then panning away, or observing a meaningless rut on a couch where two people grip at each others faces and kiss no further south than their belly-buttons. There’s no interest, and no climax, and we’re all left feeling unsatisfied.
Which is why I quite liked Our Flag Means Death.
Our Flag Means Death is HBO’s queer pirate rom-com, and it definitely deserves a second season. It’s not a sex-filled show (in the sense that no-one is actively fucking on screen, like in Euphoria and the like), but sexuality and romance do come up quite a bit, y’know, like they do in real life.
And also because it’s a rom com.
From Black Pete (Mathew Maher) and Lucius (Nathan Foad) having a moment in the galley, to Jim (Vico Ortiz) and Oluwande (Samson Kayo) reuniting, and Stede and Ed staring at each other longingly, romantic moments in this show are charged with desire and implicitly important to the narrative. For once, the intimacy is wrapped into the narrative and treated as something important and beautiful, not thrown into the work out of obligation, as a “homoerotic nod” to a more heterocentric narrative.(4)
Framing queer love with warmth and emotion is a key aspect to the filmography of Our Flag Means Death. The camera is a partner in this equation, not voyeuristically looking upon queer moments, but watching them with joy.
Ed (Taika Waititi) and Stede (Rhys Darby) wake up together in the crow’s nest together after a night of revelry. It’s dawn, the light on them is warm, and though they’re not aware they’re in love — yet — the composition of the shot shows us that they are. Beats alone in the dark on the ship, or hiding under golden oil lamps all hold similar moments of intimacy, and a homoerotic sword fight just adds to the overt emotion.
Even in moments of mild peril, like the one below, warmth floods the screen in the form of soft fabrics and tender gestures. Prolonged moments of fond eye contact direct the action, and a lot of scenes are slow, without intense narrative pace, allowing for honest, sweet reactions and (apparently somewhat) improvised dialogue.
This show has very little active sexuality; we certainly don’t see any more nudity than a bare chest, or any more sexuality than a kiss - but it contains a clear sexual tension that runs through the thread of the show until the credits roll on Episode 10.
It’s obvious, it’s prevalent, and it does not let up.
It is also very, very new.
We do not see a lot of people like this on screen, and we especially don’t see a lot of queer people like this on screen. It is an implicitly queer romance, too — one that steps beyond the endless homoerotic cop-out of “they’re just good friends” and shatters the heterotopic world we so often see. (5) The queerness is in their bodies, in their mannerisms, in their words — it is woven into the work.
While the actors in Our Flag Means Death are all attractive folk, they’re not attractive folk in the sense of Hollywood perfection.
Gone is the glistening abs of the Hollywood superhero — born from three days worth of dehydration and extremely restrictive diets.(6) The characters in Our Flag Means Death are built more like people we see in our day to day lives.
They’re lean, they’re hairy, they’re broad, they’re fat, they have lines on their faces or dark spots or limps. They smile, and they don’t necessarily all have perfect teeth. Maybe their hair or beards aren’t coiffed within an inch of perfection. They’re real people, and I think that’s where the drawcard is.
Real people hold an eroticism that’s far more interesting. Maybe their kissing is a little messy, or their desire a little fraught, but it’s imperfect in its existence, and that’s where we find the beauty in it.
(Believe me, by the look of my Tiktok feed, every single person is drawn to the less-than-idolized-perfection beauty of Our Flag Means Death. You would not believe how many fan edits I’ve seen of a five second clip where Taika Waititi’s character, Ed, shows his belly. Or the casts’ beards. Or their stubble. Or their hands. Or literally anything.)
These characters are not portrayed as anything other than what they are — people existing in their own skin, relishing in their own bodies, living and loving as people who aren’t perfect cookie-cutter clones of themselves. There is never any body-shaming, nothing that suggests that any of these folk feel obliged to drag themselves to fit their looks into a certain box (barring the period-typical bigotry, which the show itself does challenge profusely).
That in itself is also queer — a transgressive act that tears through our Euro-centric, heterocentic and inhumanly perfect body standards and allows for audience identification on a much more intimate level.
It’s beautiful, it’s glorious, and it’s hot.
Fuck, it’s so good to see.
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1 —Wikipedia contributors. (2022, May 13). Hyperreality. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality
2 — Plotz, B. (2020). The Funny Fat Body: Slapstick and Gross-Out. In Fat on Film: Gender, Race and Body Size in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (pp. 128–174). London,: Bloomsbury Academic. Retrieved May 23, 2022, from http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350119390.ch-005
3 — Benedict, R. S. (2021, April 23). Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny. Blood Knife. https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/
4 — Tsika, N. (2015, May 9). Blue transfusions: internet porn and the pirating of queer cinema’s sex scenes. Taylor & Francis. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23268743.2016.1174074
5 — de Lauretis, T. (2011). Queer Texts, Bad Habits, and the Issue of a Future. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 17(2–3), 243–263. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1163391
6— Rense, S. (2017, March 8). Hugh Jackman Put Himself Through a Hellish Regime for Logan. Esquire. https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/news/a53724/hugh-jackman-logan-workout/
