orlandos all around us (virginia woolf, jbrekkie, and pirates of the caribbean)
hand delivered morsels from the universe, stories finding their way to you, even far from the source. also, Orlando Bloom.
it’s sunday!!!!!! ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡
first week of keeping my little promise to myself and actually posting on sunday! maybe i should think of a name to call this initiative for myself…is substack sundays kinda too lame and obvious? whatever, it’s for myself heh. is this my way of combating the sunday scaries…
in any case, lots of orlandos that have been circulating through my life lately (⋆❛ ہ ❛⋆)! we have Orlando (1992), japanese breakfast’s Orlando in Love (jbrekkie my beloved), and Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006). of course, this last one feels like a bit of a stretch connection, but it felt too serendipitous for me to not include. i know jbrekkie is alluding to Matteo Maria Boiardo’s unfinished Orlando Innamorato romantic poem, but seeing as i am but a simpleton who is definitely not going to read the 68 cantos in a coffee shop right now, i will be substituting with…my pirates of the caribbean thoughts. free will is a crazy thing—whoever gave me the ability to write and put thoughts together is surely regretting it now ( 灬´ ˘ `灬 )
both Orlando (1992) and Orlando in Love are referencing virginia woolf’s novel, Orlando: A Biography. (shamefully, i must admit i haven’t read this book either. as you can see, i have no credentials, whatsoever!) that being said, i think there’s something to be found in the trickle of takeaways even when you don’t necessarily get it from the source—isn’t that the beauty of adaptations, spin offs, inspired works in the first place? through art, we add a little bit of ourselves to the tapestry. who’s to say when the first thread was made anyway?
the movie adaptation is a wonderful, charming work starring tilda swinton as the androgynous and immortal orlando, and it is filled with such a genuine vision and intentionality, that you can’t help but be whisked away by it. while i do think the pacing of the film suffers for lingering on the whimsy, in an attempt to remain faithful to the events in the novel, i still loved how it attempts to showcase a dreamlike passage through time. across history, across changing conventions, across gender, the titular and timeless orlando navigates what it means to find purpose and fulfillment, when the rest of the world clamors for your attention elsewhere. i’ve since learned that the novel is woolf’s love letter to her lover, vita sackville-west, and there’s something so satisfying and heartwarming of immortalizing sapphic love, even woolf’s own jealousy, via a tale that takes the readers through centuries.
meanwhile, jbrekkie released Orlando in Love last tuesday, as an early look into their next album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women). as a huge jbrekkie stan (not just for their projects like Jubilee, but also the fact they did the Sable soundtrack!! that’s so cool!!), i’m already loving the concept for the album, and i immediately perked up when i read the name of this song. i thought, huh, what’re the chances that i’d see two orlando-named projects just 3 days apart! little did i know, the song itself was based on woolf’s novel too—imagine my delight at that connection (✿ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)⁾⁾
there’s an electrifying feeling that comes with seeing these little consistencies, like the universe is saying “hey! look at this! it’s important right now!” since i watched the 1992 film entirely on a whim, just days before the jbrekkie song was released. maybe there was marketing for the song elsewhere, but as i’ve been off social media since the beginning of the year, i wasn’t expecting it all! and the song fit my flavor profile perfectly—literary references, a string arrangement to ground the song, and Zauner’s usual dreamlike singing. the song is both blissful and ominous. it’s about creation, referencing the Birth of Venus in the lyrics and music video, and it’s also about death, alluding to woolf’s drowning as well as boiardo’s death, which prevented him from ever finishing Orlando Innamorato. there’s definitely something here that speaks to jbrekkie’s own feelings towards success, one that is full of joy and trepidation, since all things must end, made all the more tragic if they end prematurely. altogether, Orlando in Love paints a picture about art, love, and death, iterating on the media it references to add to the orlando mythos, another thread to a tapestry about doomed love and incomplete beauty.
in any case, consuming both the movie and the song was one of those little miracles, tiny coincidences, that makes me believe in signs from the universe. bringing me to, of course…PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST ⁽⁽(੭ꐦ •̀Д•́ )੭*⁾⁾.
i watched it over the weekend, and i have VERY strong opinions about this mf pirate movie LOL. i’ll leave most of my thoughts about the film itself in my letterboxd review, but i definitely saw it as a missed opportunity. there’s so much of this movie’s plot that’s centered around love: davey jones’ literal beating heart, a story about guilt and betrayal, will turner’s love for elizabeth swann, elizabeth’s love of freedom, her eventual betrayal of jack sparrow. if the movie wasn’t burdened by the need to be uncomplicated disney fun, which only ended up making the relationships feel convoluted because all the focus was on jack-sparrow-shenanigans, i really think this could have been a genuinely fantastic and compelling adventure-romance.
maybe i wouldn’t have felt so strongly if i hadn’t already had so many other orlandos on my mind (because let’s be honest, my first exposure to any orlando will always be mr. orlando bloom). but the more i thought about it, the more i connected pirates of the caribbean: dead man’s chest to the other orlandos—elizabeth swann in drag, using her own dress to trick other pirates, betrayal both personal and mythic for the sake of freedom. there was so much of the film that centered gender as a plot device, almost self-aware, yet at the same time, it couldn’t help making jokes at gender’s expense. horny and women-obsessed crews, swann pretending to be a fainting damsel in distress, elizabeth-in-drag seemingly being rejected by jack sparrow. the center of this film is gender, is elizabeth swann’s womanhood, and it’s critical to why she wants to escape society’s expectations of her. the first film starts with her unwilling marriage to the commodore, for god’s sake!
in dead man’s chest, elizabeth swann is a parallel to calypso—both “betrayers” to men who love and forsake them—and she is also a consistent reminder of gender limitations. in this sequel, swann’s gender is once again at the forefront, but now it’s connected to a sweeping narrative about love. will turner asks, in his pursuit of davey jones’ heart, “what vexes all men?” to which the answer is: a woman.
“See, it was a woman as changing and harsh and untamable as the sea. Him never stopped loving her. But the pain it caused was to much to live with, but not enough to cause him to die.” — Naomie Harris as Tia Dalma
the layer between elizabeth swann and calypso is thin here; they are both the reason for all these events unfolding, for the resulting anguish and grief. and yet they’re also nothing more than plot fodder, rather than what they should be: protagonists.
there’s even a scene where swann’s three (3) love interests are all fighting each other, completely ignoring her, and while i know it’s only there for comedic value, i can’t help but feel as though that’s exactly how the film treats her as well. elizabeth swann should be the heart of the franchise, but instead, she’s relegated to the shoreline, waiting for attention, for when the jack sparrow plot needs her, rather than charting a course on her own. it’s so ironic! how can she escape the confines of gender within the in-world story, when she’s trapped by those same limitations because of a Hollywood bottom line? it frustrates me because this film is yearning to be more, and i can see why they’re so beloved. i just really think they could have been great.
altogether, these different orlandos make me think of original sources, woolf’s work and boiardo’s poem, and whatever even-earlier thread that exists out there. all of which are still unfamiliar to me, but at the heart of even their derivative works is a conversation about gender conventions, what public consensus expects of you, and love as a simmering connection between it all. it made me see keira knightley’s elizabeth swann in a different light than i think i usually would.
maybe this is just a sign to do add my own thread to the mix, building off these observations and frustrations. i guess that’s the fun of using writing as your own playground—things like fanfiction are so human because we can’t help but want to add our own twist to things. is this what it means to heed a call, when the universe delivers things into our laps? maybe we give it different names—accident or inspiration or the muse—but there’s something here that is impatient and eager to be fed. we’ll see if i’ll be the one to feed it! (⸝⸝> ᴗ•⸝⸝)
happy sunday substack all!
love,
xtina ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ♡‧₊˚