Pirates seem to be riding the high seas of the cultural conscience these days, what with the hugely (and surprisingly for Disney) successful Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise and the recent pirate v. U.S. Navy skirmishes in the Indian Sea. More on the latter later. We love pirates--especially in America. Well, what’s not to love about these seafaring swashbucklers. We romanticize them like we do wild west cowboys, roaring 20’s gangsters, and countless dubiously talented American Idols whose names dot the lower end of the Billboard charts.

Pirates are cool--with their brash self-confidence, their utilitarian yet on-edge fashion sense, and their freedom (they pay no rent; they plunder the high seas; they frequent exotic locales). Furthermore, drinking seems to be part of the job description. The pirate image has been bolstered further (albeit in a new direction) by Johnny Depp’s interpretation of pirate Jack Sparrow as hung-over rock-star/ rapscallion. Indeed, the mannerisms--and the make-up--that became part of the Sparrow character mimic those of veteran rocker Keith Richards, a rapscallion in his own right.

Depp’s Sparrow has attained mythic status in the pirate pantheon and from this point forward will be the iconic representation, the archetype that future pirate performers will be measured against. In fact, he will inspire many an action hero who will subsequently appear on the silver screen, proving that a cowardly, vulnerable, at times pathetic, yet at times heroic protagonist can conquer the box office--and in a big way. Bruce Willis has done the classic burned out cop bit to death. Two of his last movies, Hostage and 16 Blocks, featured him as the burn-out-with-a-badge. Both flopped. Although the movie-going public will always love an underdog, that character is outdated. We’ve seen it.

In our high-speed, media-saturated, multitask culture, we are not easily entertained. We need our on-screen characters to come at us from a new angle. They need to surprise us. Jack Sparrow as a character is comical, cowardly, and strange—yet, in the end, heroic. Depp’s quirky performance is so interesting and different from what we have come to expect in our action heroes that we can’t take our eyes off of him and we gladly hand Depp and Jerry Bruckheimer our twelve bucks several times over. In other words, Jack Sparrow is different and new. In other words, Jack Sparrow is the new kind of underdog, just as John Heder’s Napolean Dynamite, the embodiment of every teen anxiety, was a new hero for countless nerds and dorks. That character--like Sparrow--came at us from an angle we were not ready for. And it is that odd-ball, out-of-nowhere quality that people are seeking for entertainment today. You can flip between Myspace and Youtube and watch thousands of quirky short home-made movies, or read highly-specific blogs. Creativity may be at its nexus, or a nexus at least. Okay, let’s say creativity may be at a certain threshold. There has never been a greater platform for self-expression than today with the internet and the social networking sites in which people alternately live.

There is a shitload of content out there, and every minute that eyes are stuck to computer screens is a minute that those eyes become accustomed to the democratic nature of the internet, to having instant access to the exact type of entertainment they want. If something does not satisfy in the first 4 seconds—boom—it’s on to the next short mpeg, the next blog, the next interesting site. No more sitting through a mildly entertaining, unsatisfying feature film for two hours, when at home your left and right hands are your own personal Siskel and Ebert, and you truly control what you see. We are only in the beginning of this trend.

Somewhere along the line in his career, Johnny Depp came to the understanding that he may never be a phenomenally captivating actor. He seems to have come to the realization, though, that he could become a top-notch entertainer. His skewed viewpoint and his, for lack of a better word, strangeness, are fun and interesting to watch. Bottom line: he entertains. It’s fun. It’s different. He exhibits a sort of strange, outcast quality that endears as much as it entertains. Like the internet where you control your own universe and get instant feedback and gratification almost to your exact, quirky specification—Depp/Sparrow seems to be able to give the public the off-kilter and original performance it asks for.