‘Black Sails’ Changed Course After Its Biggest Mistake

Editor's Note: The following article contains references to sexual assault that some readers may find triggering.

The big picture

• black sails
  it initially portrayed more gratuitous violence against women, including sexual assault, but later diversified its cast of characters.
• Max's assault scene in season 1 was unnecessary and followed a trend in shock value entertainment.
• The show learned from the criticism and focused on diverse characters, resulting in a more successful and inclusive story.

When the final episode of black sails aired on Starz in April 2017, fans were in awe of what they just saw. With a mix of historical fiction and fantasy, the Robert Levine i Jonathan E. SteinbergThe created series had just delivered its fourth season with a story that managed to be exciting, realistic and inclusive at the same time. Instead of looking at history and choosing to focus only on straight, white men, black sails diversifies its way of presenting its universe placing at its center an infinite number of characters who are not usually the ones who tell their stories. This means that instead of going with the traditional entertainment approach and giving us all-male pirates and the occasional damsel in distress, all of whom are ethnically homogenous, the show presents us with the points of view of maroons , sex workers, female pirates and women in positions of power. It was magnificent to behold and, nowadays, it's pretty safe to say so black sails walked so that Our flag means death he could run, at least as far as he allowed himself.

But black sails it has not always been this way. Well, okay, it was, but the way he portrayed his cast of characters changed quite a bit from Season 1 to Season 4. Heck, it changed quite a bit from Season 1 to Season 2! Of course, from the time the show started, it had plenty of room for people of color, women, and queer characters, especially considering what television was like in 2014. However, the series was much more aligned with a sort of game of thrones sensitivity from the beginning which saw brutality as an end in itself and most often reserved it for characters belonging to disenfranchised groups. All of this was done under the guise of realism: since women would have been subjected to violence in those days, it's just a matter of building a cohesive world to represent their suffering.

This line of thinking led black sails to a trap that could have charted a very different course for the show. We are talking, of course, about Max (Jessica Parker Kennedy) rape at the hands of Hamund (Neels Classen) and other members of Captain Vane's (Zach McGowan) crew right at the beginning of Season 1. It's a shocking scene, followed by a sickening plot that lasts about four long episodes. It is an event to which many critics and spectators turn their noses up. However, luckily, it's also an event the showrunners allowed themselves to learn fromturning the series into something completely different.

What Happens to Max in “Black Sails” Season 1

Here's how it all plays out: Max, a sex worker at the Nassau pirate hideout, hatches a plan with aspiring chef John Silver (Luke Arnold) to sell the Urca de Lima schedule, a legendary warehouse that supposedly holds a great deal of treasure, to Jack Rackham (Toby Schmitz), Captain Vane's Quartermaster. However, Captain Flint (Toby Stephens), having realized that Silver has the information, intercepts the meeting. In the midst of the ensuing struggle, Rackham falls into the ocean and loses the pearls he was supposed to have traded for the information, pearls that by all accounts belong to the crew of the Ranger, Captain Vane's flagship. Feeling that they have been deceived and that the wrath of his crew will undoubtedly fall upon Max, Vane tries to help her escape from Nassau. This is episode 3 we're talking about, and this is specifically the point where everything goes wrong.

As he tries to run away, something he's always dreamed of doing, Max is captured by Vane's men, who proceed to sexually assault her. The scene isn't as graphic as it could have been, but it's still enough for sensitive fans to share trigger warnings and timestamps online so others can skip it. The assault is stopped by Eleanor (Hannah Nova), the de facto ruler of Nassau with whom Max has a romantic relationship. There's one problem though: since Eleanor is instrumental in foiling Max and Silver's plan, the two aren't exactly on good terms. So when Eleanor tries to protect her lover and get Vane back by kicking him out of doing business on the island, Max makes an honestly baffling decision: He decides to turn himself in to Vane and let himself be repeatedly raped by his men until her debt is paid, all because she doesn't want Eleanor's help.

After that, things get much worse before they start to get better. During the episodes at the end, we are forced to witness Max scrambled back to his feet, only to be tackled again. And we mean that literally: when she tries to turn her, um… relationship with Vane's men into something resembling a consensual relationship, Hamund beats her up and throws her to the ground. Her humiliation seems to be endless, until the only woman in Vane's crew, Anne Bonny (Clara Paget), decides he's had enough. Bonny approaches Eleanor and the two come up with a plan to kill Hamund and the others and make it look like they've left the island. It is only then that Max is released from captivity and returned to the brothel, which is now run by none other than Jack Rackham.

Max's assault is an unnecessary plot point in “Black Sails”

We might start to question how free Max really is if he returns to the very place he so desperately wanted to leave, but frankly, that's not the point here. The real point is this black sails Brutalizing Max doesn't really accomplish anything in such a horrifying way. The end of his relationship with Eleanor was already set, and Eleanor already had more than enough reason to banish Vane, and he beat her in the first episode and plotted against Captain Flint. Also, the men in Vane's crew could have threatened his well-being in any other way as a form of punishment. Anne Bonny herself tells Max that she thought men would just kill her, so why did the show see the need to make her a victim of sexual violence?

Well, to answer that question, we need to take a look at the media landscape at the time black sails came out More specifically, we need to examine a show that we've already mentioned in this article, a little show that you may have heard of. In 2014, game of thrones it was in its fourth season, and audiences were still reeling from the Red Wedding and Joffrey's (Jack Gleeson) murdered. The show was by far the biggest thing in entertainment, and part of its mystique was how it wasn't afraid to be violent and explicit. Anyone could die at any time, and nudity, especially female nudity, was far from a rare commodity. This gave other networks the opportunity to make their own extremely graphic shows hoping to replicate the HBO phenomenon. This is where black sails come in

Full of gratuitous female nudity and gore, the first season of black sails fits perfectly into a world of entertainment in which game of thrones reigned supreme However, in 2014, game of thrones he was already starting to catch some flak because of some of his scenes. The rape scenes, in particular, were being criticized left and right because of how they felt eroticized or because they were included just for shock value. A year after the rape of Max black sailsa scene a game of thrones would destroy the entire castle: After marrying Ramsay Bolton (Ivan Rheon), young Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) is assaulted by her new husband. Suffice it to say, audiences weren't happy, and it became even more so when the show treated Sansa's rape as an essential point of character development for her.

So, in a way, the reaction to what happens to Max black sails anticipated the reaction to Sansa's story. Both scenes felt and still feel incredibly pointless, almost like misery porn centered around the suffering of women. When it comes to Max, there's also the fact that she's a woman of color, which plays into debates about whose bodies we see violated on screen. Of course, defenders of these scenes tend to argue that these forms of violence were common in the times depicted in both shows, but neither game of thrones neither black sails are closely linked to reality, the first being a fantasy series, and the second, a treasure island prequel

“Black Sails” learned its lesson after Season 1

But even if they were perfectly faithful portrayals of times past, why would violence—and especially sexual violence—be the only thing that could be reserved for its female characters and characters of color? The past is also made up of rebellions centered on disenfranchised groups, of figures who managed to have a semblance of power despite their original status, of women, queer people, and people of color who just managed to exist against all odds in versus. Why is this not what is shown in the historical media? well, black sails he heard these complaints and his ship completely changed course.

In Season 2, or even at the end of Season 1, black sails began to give more space to its female, queer and black characters. The story stopped being about a group of straight white men with a few black women and focused on multiple queer romances. Eleanor rose to prominence, as did Anne Bonny, and Max herself became a force to be reckoned with in Nassau. In Season 3, the show introduced the Maroons, formerly black slaves who managed to escape and form their own communities, as an essential part of Captain Flint's fight against the British colonial empire. The series became not only a story about pirates, but a story about disenfranchised people fighting for their own freedom. And in the end, despite its somewhat bittersweet ending, it pulled it off very well.

Now, Max's rape is never exactly addressed black sails. We don't get to see her heal from her trauma or get back at those who hurt her, even though they are punished by the narrative. However, at least black sails never did this route again. Instead of doubling down on violence, he chose a different path. And, as he navigated these waters, he created something truly memorable and unique.

black sails is available to stream on Netflix in the United States

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