Based on a song from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, the subtitle of Gore Verbinski's newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, “Dead Man’s Chest,” is actually a pun. Taken literally, it refers to the chest cavity of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), the (un)dead captain of the Flying Dutchman. Jones’ torso is of interest here because it is actually empty — Jones having carved out his own heart due to loneliness (or heartbreak), locked it in an elaborate wooden chest, and then buried on a remote island. In this way, Jones was attempting to rid himself of a potential weakness, but in practice he succeeds only in displacing and externalizing that vulnerability. The heart, together with the (wooden) chest now containing it, therefore, become Jones’ Achilles heel, insofar as the destruction of the heart will cause Jones to lose his powers, and all of those (dead or undead) who have previously sold their souls to him would thereby be released from their debts.
Among those who had sold their souls to Davy Jones is the movie’s protagonist, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), who previously made a Mephistophelean pact with Jones in order to acquire his ship, the Black Pearl. Now that his debt has come due (condemning Sparrow to spend a century working on Jones’ ghost ship), Sparrow’s only hope lies in finding the buried chest (and the heart it contains), and destroying it.
Although ostensibly a sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Gore Verbinski, 2003), Dead Man’s Chest can perhaps be more profitably viewed as an unorthodox sequel to Hayao Miyazaki’s 2004 animated feature, Howl’s Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro). In particular, Castle, like Chest, revolves around a displaced heart — in this case, that of the sorcerer Howl (voiced by Takuya Kimura in the Japanese version, and by Christian Bale in the English), who dreams longingly of a fantastic moving castle. In an exquisite moment of wish-fulfillment, Howl’s own heart is then transferred to a falling star, which then becomes animated as the fire demon Calcifer — the soul and furnace of the gothic “moving castle” which Howl had dreamed of possessing. This displaced heart then comes to assume an unanticipated significance when Howl is joined by Sophie (Chieko Baisho/Emily Mortimer, Jean Simmons) — a girl who has been transformed into an old lady by a curse, but who subsequently travels with Howl in the castle and and effectively "steals his heart."
Article comments
1 - Victor Plenty
Thank you for this thought-provoking commentary. I held off on reading it because I did not get to see Dead Man's Chest until just last night.
There is one minor correction I should point out. The phrase used in the attempt to justify denying the rights of prisoners of war to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay is "illegal combatants."
If they were merely ordinary "enemy combatants," the Geneva Conventions would unquestionably apply to them.
2 - Sterfish
Excellent post. I can't believe you managed to find a way to connect a summer blockbuster, a Japanese anime film, and current politics into a cohesive article. Amazing.
3 - carlos rojas
Sterfish--many thanks.
Victor Plenty--there are many varients of the term which have been used in these discussions, but "enemy combatants" is actually the phrase used in the the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA), Pub. L. 109-148, 119 Stat. 2739, which the government cited in its argument to have the case dismissed. As the beginning of the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision itself notes, "Subsection (e) of ยง1005 [of the DTA], which is entitled "JUDICIAL REVIEW OF DETENTION OF ENEMY COMBATANTS" supplies the basis for the Government's jurisdictional argument."