Ed, Jim, and The Beard as Metaphor

[copied from original post here, written July 21, 2022]

i cant stop thinking about my own ed/jim parallels post and the way that their stories and gender experience actually soooo closely mirror each other, and how the beard is such a critical locus to understanding both these parallels and their trajectories as characters

like, to articulate in actual words what i was thinking in that original post, i think of “beard” in this show, and certainly with these two characters, as being metaphorical for responsibility, outside expectations, and, as jim puts it, a prison of one’s own making

because in both cases, that’s exactly what it is. despite the social pressures and familial expectations that drove them there, both “Blackbeard” as an identity and the disguise of he/him, capital M “Man” that Jim takes on as part of their path to revenge are things that they build and choose for themselves. Ed built the legend of Blackbeard to escape the dangers of home, and to fulfill the things they needed to be to survive. Jim built their masculine persona to do the same thing: get revenge and survive the fallout of getting it. The beard is, in many ways a prison, which both Jim and Ed articulate in various ways: Jim commenting directly on the physical discomfort of the fake beard, and Ed mirroring this by talking about the emotional discomfort of outside perceptions of them as Blackbeard

one of the most critical moments in the whole show to me, honestly, is when Lucius explicitly brings in queerness to our understanding of what “beard” actually means in the logic of the story. “not all beards are actual beards” both cements “beard” as a metaphor, AND acknowledges “beard” in the gay sense as part of that. a beard as a concession to what the world thinks you should be, to your own need for safety, to your fear that the people you care about won’t accept you as you are. A beard is explicitly a signifier of hiding your queerness, as much as it is a signifier of Responsibility to other kinds of social expectations. This is textually true for Jim in both senses: the beard hides their nonbinary identity AND keeps them locked into their hunt for revenge

When we meet Ed, it’s immediately clear that Ed is being crushed by the latter in the same way Jim was–the responsibility and expectations of being Blackbeard are boring, wearying, so oppressive in some ways that Ed would rather die than keep bearing them–with the queer implications of the term left, at first, unspoken. I think it’s also important that the show textually (both literally and through the ol’ “run me through” scene) tells us that Ed has sex with men, and that they’re comfortable doing so. so, if the metaphorical beard of queerness isn’t about sexual orientation, the way it is for Lucius, maybe, like Jim, it’s more about an expression of gender that feels right and true…

as i laid out in my original post, over the course of the show (though at different moments) both Ed and Jim shed some of the traditional expectations of manhood for something more nuanced. They ditch their beards, take on new (old) names that better fit who they are now, experience love at the hands of their new family–and finally rejection at the hands of the old. Nana and Izzy function in much the same way here: making Jim/Ed’s newfound acceptance of who they are seem like a bad thing. a dangerous thing. the loss of their “beards” as something shameful.

what’s interesting here is that in the text of the show so far, Jim’s experience of “beard” has been more explicitly aligned with gender expectations and Ed’s has been more explicitly aligned with responsibility and other social expectations. but in these moments of rejection by family, they’re reversed.

Nana doesn’t have much of a problem using Jim’s new name and pronouns–it’s their rejection of their responsibility, their destiny, the expectations she has for them that drives the rejection. With Izzy and Ed, what has previously only been a subtextual conversation about gender and presentation becomes very nearly explicitly gendered. Ed insists “I’m still Blackbeard,” as an assertion of their capability, their ongoing acceptance of responsibility to crew. But it’s Ed’s PRESENTATION that Izzy takes issue with. It’s Ed’s new name, Ed’s softer way of being, their acceptance of a life without the “beard,” both literal and metaphorical, that Izzy can’t stand.

It’s a textbook transphobic rejection, and it makes it difficult to read what follows as anything other than a detransition: changing back into old clothes, taking back the old name of Blackbeard/the Kraken, LITERALLY drawing back on a beard, wearing a facade of that old identity and the responsibilities of it that Ed has found so oppressive for so long.

lots of people have read this as a detransition (and lots of people have read it otherwise, which is fine), but what i haven’t seen talked about almost at all is that jim has their own detransition era! we just don’t tend to think about it that way because a) it’s so brief, and b) they aren’t transitioning back to the gender they grew up with, but the one that’s synonymous with disguise and pretense

after their journey recognizing that they don’t have to be a man or a woman, they don’t have to wear the literal or metaphorical beard to be loved and accepted, they can take on a name that suits them as they are, not as they once were–after all this, they dress up as a man again as part of their taking back on the burden of responsibility and expectations. when they go back to Jackie’s, they dress up as a priest to get close to Geraldo. it’s only for one scene, but they’re taking back on that male persona to fulfill their nana’s expectations, rejecting their newfound comfort being nonbinary

both Ed and Jim literally dress up as men, take back up their “beards,” as a response to rejection from the people who have been in their lives the longest. the difference is that, for Jim, they found someone who would speak to them frankly about what the “beard” means. about what they’d be giving up to wear it. and critically, they have the possibility of distance from the person who would force them to keep wearing it. Jackie acts as a kind of grounding force for Jim, an equal who has seen her own share of revenge and lived with her own kinds of metaphorical beards, who shows Jim that when they’re being forced to choose between A and B….they can just choose C instead.

as part of Ed’s healing next season, i think it’s going to take a similar kind of acceptance from an equal, and almost certainly some distance from Izzy to stick. Maybe Jim could even be that person for Ed, closing the loop of their parallels, allowing Ed the space to be who they want to be, to ditch the beard in both the literal and metaphorical sense. or even to open up a Plan C, where Ed doesn’t get rid of the beard entirely in either sense, but finds a happier, healthier relationship to it!

i just cant get over the fact that they had the line “not all beards are actual beards.” literally spoken out loud in this show. EXPLICITLY referring to queer gender identity. and then a character named BLACKBEARD……expresses dissatisfaction with the way they’re perceived and they way they’re expected to move through the world………there’s so much happening here with the way gender and presentation and expectation and responsibility intersect with experiences of masculinity, and i both hope and fully believe Ed will get space to explore it next season the way Jim has gotten to in this season