Terrorists Are the New Pirates?

In his NPR commentary, Pirates, Real And Phony, Andrei Codrescu examines America's cinematic and romantic pirate fetish. He concludes, "that we've made a fetish out of cut-throats in our culture and we've endlessly turned murderers into romantic figures, from land-pirates like Jesse James, to sea-pirates like the beloved Captain Hook and his comedic heir, Johnny Depp."

He goes on to say that America needs to "rethink" its involvement in Somalia and offer aide to the starving pirates who are simply victims of their own circumstances.

The aspect of his commentary that proves most intriguing to me is the point at which he parallels the pirate fetish of our current culture to the potential future that will romanticize terrorists.

Today in Iraq, 70 civilians were killed in two separate suicide bombings. Almost eight years ago, terrorists attacked American soil killing nearly 3,000 people. Codrescu hypothesizes that like pirates, "[terrorists] are, after all, a few against many, and their willingness to die for something will look very entertainment-appetizing." It is hard to imagine that Americans will ever find cinematic terrorism romantically engaging.

Although not as witty and comedic as Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, Universal's Munich (2005) has already brought real-life terrorism to the silver screen. I have not seen the movie since it was first released, but I do remember asking myself (and my boyfriend at the time, for that matter), "Who are the good guys here?"

So I ask, when movies are boiled down to good guys and bad guys, and few versus many, don't you always like the ones where the few win against all odds? Although it seems completely un-American, I can see Codrescu's point. Terrorists could be the new pirates.