Pirates of the Ship of Fools

The ship of fools, depicted in a 1549 German woodcut
I cannot help but think of the ship of fools (which I first learned about while reading Foucault’s Madness and Civilization) while watching Pirates of the Caribbean — especially the second one, Dead Man’s Chest when they go to the Tortuga Port to find the “99 souls” to give to Davy Jones.

I think Captain Jack Sparow is the perfect example of a fool on a ship without any idea what he’s doing or where he’s going. I’m surprised I didn’t make the connection earlier. The way Johnny Depp plays the character totally adds to the idea of it, too.

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>