Our Flag Means Death Creativity
Released on HBOMax in March of 2022, Our Flag Means Death brought a breath of fresh air to the cultural landscape of the workplace sitcom. Instead of focusing on the daily grind of office life or on a dysfunctional group of young professionals like The Office or Friends, David Jenkins, the show's creator, tells the fictionalized - but largely historical - story of "The Gentleman Pirate," Captain Stede Bonnet, and his mishap-filled adventures as he tries to make a name for himself on the high seas.
Jenkins and the cast of Our Flag Means Death show pirate life through a fun, comedic lens, but never shy away from any of the real - and sometimes bloody - aspects of pirate life, but they put special emphasis on highlighting the stories and experiences of the real people who lived in this time period. Him and his team put special emphasis on representing the experiences of queer people in the time period, telling the story through viewpoint of mainly queer characters and focusing on queer relationships, exploring how a pirate's life during this period was one of the few ways individuals could escape from the oppressive laws and cultural norms of the empires that dominated the "legal" world.
In creating the show, Jenkins demonstrates both extrinsic and intrinsic creative motivation. Of course, everyone who works on Our Flag Means Death works on the show for the extrinsic motivation of payment from HBO, but the excitement and the passion that the cast and the showrunners bring to every episode demonstrate a much deeper intrinsic motivation, seeking to not only get paid, but to tell a compelling, important, and most of all enjoyable story for their prospective audiences. Beginning as a deep dive and a topic of dinner conversations with his family, David Jenkins turned a single idea and his own intrinsically motived creative project into a show that encompasses much more than just his original ideas and the wiki-page he first read about, further demonstrating the investment theory of creativity by leveraging his long career as a comedy writer to convince HBO to give him a show with a huge amount of creative freedom and the confidence to overcome the obstacles of creating a new project in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Flag_Means_Death
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11000902/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jenkins_(television_writer)
Thanks for sharing Our Flag Means Death. It's interesting to learn about the show's creator, David Jenkins, and his motivation for creating a fresh take on the workplace sitcom. It's great to see a show that focuses on historical fiction and the untold stories of real-life sailors from the Golden Age of Piracy. I appreciate that the creator is really trying to create a compelling, well crafted narrative and not another shitty "original" to pad out HBO's lineup.
ReplyDeleteIt's inspiring to see how Jenkins used his setback from the cancellation of his previous show as an opportunity to explore new ideas and take a fresh approach to his work. It's clear that Jenkins and the cast are motivated to tell this story, and I'll be sure to check it out. It's exciting to see a show that's not afraid to take risks and tell important stories in a unique way.
I've heard a little bit about this show, but I haven't had a chance to watch it. I like how Jenkins didn't shy away from TV after his first show was cancelled. It's also interesting how conversations with his wife became the show- I feel like this really showcases how the creative process is often collaborative.
ReplyDeleteThis show was so fun to watch, I agree that it was like a breath of fresh air. It's cool that it started as a series of Wikipedia deep dives; I enjoy getting lost in a Wikipedia or YouTube rabbit hole and learning tons of new information that way.
ReplyDelete