#im no longer responsible for my actions it's steinbergs fault

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Black Sails and Facial Hair - Part 2, Captain Flint

Part 1 Here, in which I give a 1000 word history of the beard in Anglo culture and its place in defining masculinity and empire. Let’s start with the Pirate, Flint, and his journey of presenting Empire. Flint at his origin, or his McGraw, the absolute picture of 18th century moral appearance. His hair is long and neat, his face is clean, his clothes are correct for the story (though the English naval uniform didn’t exist until 1748). He is The Picture of English Empire In Our Collective Imaginations. The story tells us as much too. He’s had to be perfect in every way to get to where he is and that includes his physical appearance. He is, too, not conflicted about his place. Visually, he fits. Arguably he fits in place better than Thomas in the scenes by the docks. This is his space and he is comfortable in it. 

Compare that to when he returns from Nassau. His beard is overgrown. It’s not particularly cared for and is, in fact, the some of the most beard we see on him until S4. It wasn’t unusual for a sailor to grow a beard while away at sea, but barbers traveled with both the navy and army, and to return to polite society with such a set of whiskers is a conscious disregard for propriety. All his other actions and appearances are correct, but his inner criminality is showing. He is, in the language of beards, obscuring his true self. His sins (Thomas, rejecting perceived wisdom, wanting to start over in the Hinterlands) are starting to take precedence over Love of Country. 

And when we first meet him, 9 years later. His hair is tied back, not so long but still reasonably respectable. His beard and twirly mustache, however, is distinctly Jacobean. Strangely, besides his resistance to England itself, we never actually learn what Flint’s politics are, but we do know that Flint himself is a construct designed to be as frightening as possible to England and their ships. And in 1715, a visual Jacobite armed to the teeth is nothing if not a terrifying and direct rejection of King George I and the English State. But the longer hair still keeps him tethered to the idea of respectability (and Miranda, who keeps up the trappings of civilization despite their circumstances etc). He is caught between his two selves but neither is authentic, both require extensive upkeep and both are constructs that visually fit within a story that is not his own (the navy and his pirate persona). Remember too, his calling card is his Ninja Outfit which isn’t a ninja outfit, but the outfit of a Barbary Pirate, a North African, and those connections to barbarism and barbers. He is literally balancing the line between the Other (Barbary) and resistance in appearance (Jacobism)  

After Miranda dies, all bets are off. Friendship with civilization ended. His last ties of society are cut, literally, with a shorn head. Ironically, this is one of the more accurate cuts in the whole show - if a gentleman wore a wig, they did not have a nice tousled cut underneath a la Thomas or Guthrie, they shaved their heads to avoid lice, fleas, and other pests. But! A shorn head is also the signature haircut of, wait for it, Bedlam. He has literally cut Miranda and her tether to civilization and become wild, uncontained, and, like Thomas, mad by association. Maintaining a Jacobean flip in your ‘stache takes work, it’s always been part of his construct and theater and there is no more Flint Theater. There is only Flint. There is no going back. He is no longer pretending one way or another, he is and will be judged for who he is, not who is pretending to be. 

He keeps this cut through S4, which, even if it takes place over 5 months, is going to require an occasional trip to the barber (or Silver does it for him though I doubt Flint’s letting anyone put a knife to his throat even if it is his one and only). It’s a classic ‘devil’ cut, and one that speaks to the Faustian nature of the show, where the theme of trading spiritual torment for power is always an undercurrent. 

And finally, Flint returns “home” to Thomas by means of Oglethorpe's plantation. Apart of society, it takes the outcasts, the dregs, those that cannot participate in civilization. And in doing so, there are no longer requirements to fit within a role or story. And what do we see there? Thomas with a beard. He is no longer a member of Empire, no longer concerned with propriety. He’ll kiss a man in broad daylight. He’s wearing the outward signs of a madman. Neither of them require any trappings of civilization, they are firmly apart from it, never to return. 

This show is the gift that keeps giving and I feel like the mirrors of analysis are endless and but boy am I pushing it. 

Part One - History of Beards Part Three - Long John Silver