For me, I don’t think it was so much sexism as pessimism. Reading the tone of the scene, I simply didn’t see a woman who has been king of the pirates for the last ten years, kid or no kid. The scene simply showed a faithful wife whose patience was finally being rewarded.

Sure, I can imagine Elizabeth going on adventures, ruling the pirates, kicking butt, and maybe even having a few affairs (though I can’t see that last one not being problematic) but I don’t want to just imagine it, I want to see it!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0365140/bio

What I took from the ending (beyond the credits) was that Will returned to Elizabeth with his soul returned (as assumed by the green flash they show on the horizon). That was supposed to signify a soul’s return to the world. I too thought Elizabeth had too much fire in her to settle down. I hope what some people said here is true–if they do anymore movies–that she was Pirate King Mom in the ten years since she and Will were together on land.

I also wish that Davy Jones’ end would have been better. It seemed to me that he still loved Tia/Calypso–since we saw tears in the near human eyes in the last two films. He gets sucked up into her maelstrom. I wish that there was some sort of union or something.

These questions have real life implications that go far beyond our enjoyment of a summer popcorn movie: how do we, as a culture, treat mothers and motherhood? Why are mothers in fiction so often ridiculed and reduced to a negative role?

Speaking of which, I find it curious that there is near silence on the moment that I found the absolute squickiest in the film: the presentation of Jack’s “mother” who turns out to be a shrunken head, silenced in fact. Now I could see a tragic and interesting story emerge about how she died, but the image is of an old woman, silenced and turned into a pocket ornament.

Terry on Friday, 25 May 2007, at 12:39 p.m.:

>> “I didn’t like the fact that she ended up on an island waiting for Will.”

This critcism is fairly common, and it makes absolutely no sense. It is the equivalent of saying,

“I didn’t like that Jack ending up in a small rowboat for the rest of his life.”

Does it reflect some sort of odd, perhaps sexist, bias — on the part of viewers? If I was watching the film, I’d say to myself, “Ah, so Elizabeth ends up Pirate King, and Will sails off to his own sort of purgatory. Clever, now they can write all sorts of stories and adventures Elizabeth has in that ten year period, before he returns.”

C’mon. Everyone assumes that there will be more stories for Jack. Even Will could have adventures in his realm — and there’s nothing to say he doesn’t come up with some way around the rules. And Elizabeth has not given up her title of Pirate King, last I checked.

Maybe it all has to wait until the first novel comes out, ‘Elizabeth: My Adventures as Pirate King.”

On one hand, I’m pleased in the writers’ minds that Elizabeth continues her adventures, and there is no reason that she can’t be a parent at the same time. But if all our heroes are headed off on equal adventures, it is still problematic that we don’t get an adventuresome sendoff for Elizabeth like we do for Jack and Barbosa and Will.

I don’t mean to say I haven’t internalized sexism, but I think pointing out our own bias in analysis takes away some of the responsibility of filmmakers to treat their female characters with the same respect they do male characters. We’re not the ones, as feminists, responsible for sexism in films by pointing it out. In a trilogy that is problematic in its portrayal of race and gender, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Elizabeth’s pirating days were over. That’s what it looked like at first glance, and few folks who see the movie will watch the extended scene or read online what the writers intended.

But I do find it tweakish that the audience … even a *feminist* audience … sees Elizabeth’s child and immediately assumes … in the most sexist reductionist way possible … that if she’s a mother she’s also stopped being a pirate! Possibly that is what the writers intended, and maybe that’s what we were supposed to think. But honestly I didn’t on the first viewing of the film. (On the second viewing I did sort of see how people saw it that way, but it honestly wasn’t my first reaction.)

But even so … where is this nonsense coming from that a mother is that and nothing else simply because she is a mother? And from feminists yet! (with feminism like this who needs sexism?) That child is 9 years old and change and plenty suggests that he’s raised abord a ship.

What changed my mind is a quote that I came across from POTC writer Ted Elliott at the WordPlay Forum regarding Elizabeth’s fate. I mention it in my own article on Elizabeth and I’ll quote him here too:

“And, there’s this: the question regarding Elizabeth in AWE is not ‘Who is Elizabeth going to be with?’ It is ‘Who is Elizabeth going to be?’ Perceiving her choices as nothing more than becoming either ‘Jack’s lover’ or ‘Will’s lover’ — well, that seems a bit diminishing, don’t you think?”

In light of that, I’m going to be optimistic and assume that in those interceding 10 years Elizabeth continued on as captain of the Empress and as the Pirate King.

I totally missed her wearing pants in that last scene though. I watched it on You Tube since I didn’t stay after the credits. I’ll have to watch it again. While extra scenes are nice, this seems like an awfully important one to stick at the end like this. You can see it here.