Cutthroat Capitalism: too soon?

Wired magazine recently published an article called "Cutthroat Capitalism: An Economic Analysis of the Somali Pirate Business Model." There's nothing particularly novel here: that historical pirates are economic actors has already been observed, and this article is a clear-cut analysis of how that applies to Somali pirates. The article is based upon an interview with a Somali pirate and includes some rather nice charts and graphs. (I would like to contest, however, the idea that just because pirates are economic actors that this makes them capitalists: Like their historical antecedents, there is no production or exchange of goods and services going on; just extortion and robbery.) Wired has included "Cutthroat Capitalism: The Game" along with their article. Computer games about pirates are hardly new, and indeed, LucasArts has a new Monkey Island game out, but the goofy Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island is a far cry from today's Somali pirates.

In the Wired game, you are a pirate captain in the Gulf of Aden, sailing around and attacking different vessels. After a successful attack, you are supposed to negotiate for the release of the ship and hostages by choosing different tactics that include beating and killing your hostages to prove to the pirate negotiator you are serious about your demands. If you "successfully" negotiate, you are allowed to go back to roving the high seas. There are no EU or NATO ships, monsoon weather patterns, or possibilities for shipwreck and drowning in the game, and while not all attacks are successful, every vessel is presented as a potential target.

It's probably a testament to my incredibly limited experience with computer and video games that it took me six or seven negotiations before I overcame my squeamishness about clicking "beat" or "kill" as a negotiation tactic even for purely experimental purposes, but even without doing so, the whole game seemed more than a little sick to me. (Notice to potential voters in the incredibly unlikely event I ever run for anything ever: I do not think playing violent video games makes you a bad/evil/violent person.) So why am I perfectly happy to fire cannons at the bad guy pirate LeChuck in the Monkey Island game and so incredibly uncomfortable hijacking colored dots in the Cutthroat Capitalism game? The obvious difference has to do with the tone of the two games: Monkey Island is silly while Cutthroat Capitalism is deliberately realistic in approach (if not in graphics). Although both actions are something pirates "actually do/did," Somali piracy has yet to be tempered with that temporal distancing that we have identified as a condition of possibility for the romanticization of Golden Age piracy. Until this happens, I suspect the game will continue to feel a bit "off" to me, though judging from the comments posted below the game, this is not the case for many people who have played it.

That the game would involve acting as a pirate rather than as a US Navy SEAL or a NATO commander was equally puzzling to me, since first of all, there's precedent for this kind of thing and second, increases in piracy have historically resulted in nationalist opposition to the threat. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that this happened when the Somali pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama, Captain Phillips and the Navy SEALS were frequently described as heroes, and the media response was quick to draw upon the "pirate-fighters as patriotic heroes" commonplace we identified as prevalent in the early 1800s, with TV shows and movies featuring the Somali pirates as the villains. I think a possible answer to this puzzle is that the "pirates as cool and edgy" and "pirates as free from the constraints of society" commonplaces that coexist today alongside the "pirates as a security threat" have created conditions of possibility for the appeal of this game, since they have opened up a space in which pirates can be protagonists -- and enviable ones at that. If this is indeed the case, "Cutthroat Capitalism" is a telling example of how our perceptions of contemporary piracy are shaped by historical representations, since I do not think that this game (or a non-electronic version of it) could have enjoyed the same popularity before piracy came to be seen as a purely historical phenomenon.

Oh, the other kind of RPG

With contemporary piracy still very much in the news (though bad weather may change that) and insurgents in Mogadishu further tearing apart the minimal trappings of Somali state authority while threatening to turn the country into a proxy war for Ethiopia and Eritrea, the popularity of pirates continues unabated. Given stories like this one:



it is not surprising that my first thought upon reading a headline about pirates and RPG's went to weapons technology and not entertainment. However, it appears that Disney has announced the creation of a role-playing game (RPG) called Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned that they will release in 2010. The game seeks to capitalize on the popularity of the movies and (one assumes) on the recent upswing in piracy news, but according to Game Director Alex Peters, the idealization of individual liberty associated with pirate identity is also an important part of the game:

[W]e want to make sure our game creates a sense a freedom in how you decide to live your pirate life ... Since the player is cast in the role of a pirate, they may choose to involve themselves in situations that pique their interest or serve their own purposes.*

The game is not aiming for historical accuracy, but it does acknowledge the moral ambiguity of piracy, the prevailing economic conditions, the historic distribution of state power in the Caribbean (or lack thereof), and the importance of a pirate ship's crew.

In an even more explicit Hollywood connection, Columbia Pictures acquired the rights to the story of Captain Richard Phillip's capture by Somali pirates and subsequent rescue by US Navy SEALS (answering a question posed on the Duck of Minerva and discussed here a couple times in the past month). Here's a brief statment about how Columbia Pictures plans to narrate the story:

"We were drawn to this remarkable story of heroism and courage as events were unfolding off the coast of Africa," Doug Belgard, co-president of Columbia Pictures, said in a statement.

This suggests that the Somali pirates will be cast fairly unambiguously (and unsurprisingly) as the bad guys, in stark contrast with their role in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, highlighting the gap between perceptions of contemporary pirates and portrayals of historic ones.

Finally -- because pirates are still kid-friendly --LEGO has a new pirate ship set out, reviewed by John Baichtal at Wired. He thinks the set's pretty great (and with good reason -- this LEGO pirate ship actually lets you fire cannon balls!), but can't help noting how it fits into the greater construction of piratical identity:

Speaking of soldiers, like many LEGO sets, Brickbeard’s Bounty comes with a readymade conflict. The cartoon storyline depicted in the instructions shows a pair of hapless soldiers arriving in a rowboat with a chest full of gold and jewels, which they give to the pirates in exchange for the Admiral’s daughter. Any question who the real stars of the line are? (And does anyone else find it ironic that LEGO is selling a toy that shows authorities ransoming a hostage from a group of pirates?)

Yes. Yes, they do. Competing and dynamic narratives of piracy are the essence (eeps!) of this project, though, so more than ironic, I find it a fascinating puzzle.

*I'll have more on libertarianism and pirates in a future post.