Flipping Fictive Stereotypes

I recently engaged in an informal chat about characterization and stereotyping in which I used the example of a pirate as a familiar cliché.

We get our image of a pirate from Stevenson's "Treasure Island," and more recently from "Pirates of the Caribbean" and the late Robert Newton's portrayal of pirates in films. The Stevenson/Newton pirate is a guy with a peg leg, an eye patch, a parrot perched on his shoulder. This pirate punctuates all his sentences with an "Aaarrgh!"

But many pirates did not have peg legs, eye patches, and parrots. As for the "Aaaarrgh!" it goes well with a certain English accent, which leaves out the French and Spanish pirates, not to mention others.

Put in context, anyone who commits an act of piracy, regardless of physical appearance or "Aarrghs!" is a pirate. That doesn't mean we can't use the familiar "Long John Silver" type in a story about pirates, however we should consider alternatives, including those that flip the cliché.

In crime fiction, we're familiar with criminal stereotyping based on physiognomy. Shakespeare's Richard III is an excellent example:

"I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them—"

Criminal types marked by disfigurement or deformity are familiar from genre films and comics; just think of the villains confronted by Batman and Dick Tracy.

A little more than a century ago, the Italian Criminologist Cesare Lombroso, held a theory of criminal identification based on physiognomy that I referenced in "The Devil in Montmartre", a crime novel set in 1889, when Lombroso's theory was on the cutting edge of forensics:

"Lombroso, the celebrated Italian criminologist, believed the criminal was a definite anthropological type bearing physical and mental stigmata, the product of heredity, atavism, and degeneracy. Could you read evil in a face, a body, mannerisms and gestures? Would the man Achille was looking for be simian and grotesque like Lautrec? Perhaps alienation from decent society had motivated him to destroy beauty in revenge for the rejection brought on by his deformity. Achille pondered another literary association, Hugo’s hideously deformed Quasimodo. According to Lombroso’s theory of criminal physiognomy, Quasimodo would have been a prime suspect in a Ripper type murder investigation. Nevertheless, Hugo had portrayed the hunchback as a noble, self-sacrificing character who loved the beautiful Esmeralda. But then, Hugo was a great Romantic of the previous generation, not a modern scientist."

Victor Hugo flipped the stereotype with the admirable Quasimodo, as did Oscar Wilde in "The Picture of Dorian Grey." Dorian remains youthful and handsome while his portrait reflects the ugliness of the crimes etched on his soul.

Flipping stereotypes is also the stuff parody is made of; see for example "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." After that, it's hard to watch a film about a stereotypical King Arthur and his knights without cracking a smile.

Appearances are deceiving and character is revealed through actions and words, regardless of appearance. Should a writer use stereotypes, flip them, or avoid them altogether? I don't think I can give a definitive answer. Perhaps it depends on the story and the context in which the character appears.