‘Our Flag Means Death’ Has Purposeful Anachronisms

Time plays a very interesting role in historical fiction. Obviously, if a storyteller is going to care enough about a historical event to utilize it as a jumping off point for their story then they should care enough about that history in order to handle it properly. But this isn’t always the case. It depends not only on the story but the tone and the characters involved. What’s even crazier is when a story uses a particular historical event as inspiration and adheres to it up to a point before going in the complete opposite direction. It can make for a very quirky and fun experience, which is exactly what Our Flag Means Death pulls off.

The overall plot of the series, starring Taika Waititi, may seem preposterous: a wealthy landowner (Rhys Darby) abandons his comfortable life in order to become a pirate. He’s not very good at it. In fact, his ship is taken over by the legendary Blackbeard (Waititi), and the two form an unlikely partnership. But this really happened and is used for the basis of the show, which then dovetails into fiction by depicting a romantic relationship between the pair. The fiction doesn’t stop there, though. Despite honoring the historical accuracy of how the characters came together, the show purposely places anachronisms all over the place, thus undermining any historical legitimacy it may have.

It’s kind of the point. The show is first and foremost a comedy. So purposely dropping anachronisms throughout the plot is a wink to the audience about absurdity. By its definition, an anachronism is an object or event that’s placed outside of its proper place in time. The most notable in the show is the story of Pinocchio. The tale of the wooden puppet wanting to become a real boy is referenced several times. It’s even an important plot point as the captain reads it to the crew as a bedtime story.

The only problem: Pinocchio was published almost a hundred years after these events were supposed to take place. Its inclusion wasn’t an accident, though. It was deliberate and chosen to highlight the captain’s journey of wanting to become a real pirate. It just goes to show that a story doesn’t have to be one thing; it can be a merger of both historical realism and time displaced absurdity.

Our Flag Means Death is now streaming on Max.