Abstract
When Disney dared to bring a pirate movie to theaters in 2003, Captain Jack Sparrow rather unexpectedly sailed brilliantly into the hearts of the audience. Although a pair of young lovers were the main characters, Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, stole the show from everyone. Sparrow stands out from all the other characters: He is contrasted with the young and still idealistic couple, with cursed pirates and also with the representatives of social order. The character draws much of his fascination from the fact that he oscillates between different binary pairs, which marks him not least as an adventurer. This article argues that Jack Sparrow is the epitome of the adventurer—representing an almost ideal (though perhaps sometimes exaggerated) embodiment of the concept of the adventurer as described by German philosopher Georg Simmel in 1911.
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Notes
- 1.
In this article the film titles are abbreviated as PotC and numbered consecutively.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Simmel explains further: “[…] to him whom the unlikely is likely, the likely easily becomes unlikely” (1959, 236). The same laughter is often found distorted and with a bitter undertone in the villainous pirate, who embodies an adventurer in a negative fashion. In PotC 1, this applies to Barbossa (who becomes more positive in PotC 2/3).
- 5.
Zhanial analyses the ongoing play with Jack’s identities and fragmentation throughout the series (2020, 70–78).
- 6.
Steinhoff notes that the Black Pearl is the real damsel in distress for Jack in the film series (2011, 52–53).
- 7.
Although Jack flirts with immortality multiple times, he deliberately misses the opportunity each time because it would ultimately rob him of his mobility.
- 8.
Jack’s character also blurs gender boundaries: see Steinhoff 2011.
- 9.
Instead, characters from PotC’s ‘courtly world’ (Will, Elizabeth, and, at the end of PotC 3, also the two soldiers Murtogg and Mullroy) become adventurers themselves—they become pirates.
- 10.
Because of the combination of grandiosity and clumsiness and his willingness to negotiate, Steinhoff, among others, sees Jack as a trickster figure (cf. 2011, 46–47); Zhanial emphasises that he can also be seen as a response to uncertainties in the age of information (cf. 2020, 69). Indeed, the scriptwriters mention being inspired by the trickster motif (Elliott et al. 2004, 00:36:30, 01:04:28).
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von Holzen, AA. (2022). Jack Sparrow—the Ultimate Adventurer. In: Dettmar, U., Tomkowiak, I. (eds) On Disney. Studien zu Kinder- und Jugendliteratur und -medien, vol 9. J.B. Metzler, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64625-0_12
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