Year of the pirate

“I think it would be very exciting to meet a pirate,” says the young Elizabeth Swann in the opening scene of “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” It is one of those stock lines written to indicate the leading lady’s requisite spunkiness while allowing the audience an omniscient chuckle -- boy, is she living in the right movie.

And the right year. No, not the film’s vague turn of the 17th century, when men wore wigs, women wore corsets and swords inexplicably remained the weapon of choice over pistols. But this very year, 2003, a few baby steps into the new millennium and easily the new Golden Age of the Pirate.

Cinematically, the year is going out as it came in -- on the edge of a swashbuckler’s sword. Johnny Depp’s glam-rock buccaneer Jack Sparrow made “Pirates of the Caribbean” a surprise hit in the summer, and Jason Isaacs’ equally baroque Captain Hook is prowling for Christmas booty in the new live action “Peter Pan.”

In between, marauding French war ships were demoted to “nothing but pirates” status by the stalwart and true cast of “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” while pirate ships filled even the children’s educational toys catalogs, and one of the top-selling picture books of the year was “How I Became a Pirate.”

With their gender-bending masculinity -- flowing locks, earrings, penchant for velvet and really big hats -- pirates have long been much-loved pillars of literature’s glitterati, and, like all celebrities, they have enjoyed a fair number of commercial tie-ins. Long John Silver has his own fast food chain, Captain Morgan is plastered on innumerable bottles of rum. But never before have a group of scurvy dogs and scalawags so informed a culture more accustomed to dragging an icon than swabbing a deck.

This is the year in which 12-year-old honor students, er, pirates were sued for downloading songs from the Internet, in which moviegoers were forced to endure the Very Sincere Testimony of set painters and stuntmen as part of an endless lecture on the Evils of Movie Piracy. This year saw the release of a new video game, loosely based on “Treasure Island,” which allows kids to hunt buccaneers while learning that It’s Bad to Bootleg.

On Wall Street, financial pirates have raided mutual fund coffers, and in the retail world, the Wal-Mart logo has become the new skull and crossbones as the industry giant continues to loot smaller chains of their customers and leave behind empty storefronts like so many burning schooners.

The 2004 Academy Awards were almost threatened because Jack Valenti kept insisting there would be no videotapes or DVDs of Oscar hopefuls released to members, no way, no how, until every movie pirate, including any 12-year-old honor student, was hung from the yardarm and left to rot. (Fortunately, a federal judge thought this was a bit extreme so there is a chance that some of those voting will actually see the films that were released this year even though those obnoxious anti-piracy ads are keeping them the heck out of theaters.)

Pirate semantics

This was the year in which the recording industry hired the outgoing director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to lead its anti-piracy unit, and if that confluence of contradictory terminology doesn’t make you laugh out loud, nothing will.

In the vernacular, “piracy” has replaced “hijacking,” as pundits and columnists decry the “pirating of American culture,” and leaders of the music and film industries would have perpetrators of such crimes join the ranks of “enemy of the state.” If you or someone you know has listened to or watched downloaded music or films, then the pirates have won.

In a way, this is a relief. Pirates are so much more fun to contemplate than most of our more recent cultural bogeymen; they dress better, they get drunk and sing rowdy songs, they have colorful slang. (Sept. 19, if you did not know it, is the official Talk Like a Pirate Day -- not only is there a website but Dave Barry wrote about it in his column, so it must be true.)

Pirates, or at least the ones depicted in film and literature, are more about pillage, less about murder, and they often turn out to be OK guys, like Errol Flynn. One of the themes of “Pirates of the Caribbean” is that you can be a pirate and a good man (and therefore worthy of a multidimensional theme park ride despite many troublesome features), although many of the pirates in the film are obvious exceptions.

In the end, the crimes pirates commit are about money -- “it’s the treasure that obsesses you,” one pirate tells Jack Sparrow. And though harmful and egregious -- just ask that set painter and that stuntman, just ask Jack Valenti -- these crimes are not horrifying. In the years following Sept. 11, much of our cultural imagery and language has reflected the horror the nation witnessed, the horror the nation feared.

Now it seems we’re back to worrying about our stuff. About someone taking our stuff. In the context of a still-active war in Iraq, this seems at once reassuring and unnerving. How bad could things be if we’re back to being worried about movie and record-industry profit margins?

Historically, piracy was often a tactic of war -- privateers were hired to strip the ships of the opposing navy in exchange for a share in the loot. That kept the naval forces off-balance with the added benefit of creating an enemy everyone could despise.

Which does not sound nearly as outdated as it should.