The Connection Between The Lighthouse and Our Flag Means Death

There are so many myths, superstitions, and beliefs in the world that trying to figure them all out and attempting to follow every one of them to the letter would be the end of many people since it would be too confusing to keep up with. But when thinking about the myths and superstitions that are held closely while at sea, one can’t help but think about the idea that long, drawn-out periods spent on the high seas might affect a person in a certain way. All the same, the myths and superstitions that are highlighted in various shows and movies are fun to think about at times, and they do tend to link various stories in an interesting way. To be fair, the show Our Flag Means Death and the movie, The Lighthouse, are quite different when it comes down to comparing how they’re presented and what their varied imagery can mean. Between the comedy and the madness, however, there is one superstition that keeps them connected, and that’s the idea that you don’t mess with a seagull. 

That’s it. Plain and simple. It sounds a bit funny, right? Old superstitions and myths make a lot of people laugh these days since there are those who might wave them off and say that there’s nothing to them. Seagulls are often seen as nuisance birds since they eat garbage, they scavenge just about anything, and they’ve even been seen to take food right out of peoples’ hands, sometimes with a healthy snap of their beak to tender areas. Gulls are often seen as nothing more than a pain in the neck since they do appear to have no tact at all, and in some cases don’t appear to fear humans as much as other wildlife. But being cruel to these birds is still considered something that will get a person in serious trouble if they decide to take their frustrations out on them. Some folks even laugh about what happens when one feeds a gull an Alka-seltzer tablet, but even if the myth is considered silly, karma is bound to be just around the corner. 

This is what appears to happen in The Lighthouse and Our Flag Means Death since the killing of a gull in both tends to come with a heavy price as ill fortune befalls those who decide to bring harm to a gull. It’s been believed that gulls carry the souls of dead sailors, and killing one would bring bad luck. However, seeing a gull would bring good luck, and that’s kind of where that particular myth ends, though it’s possible that individuals have managed to add to it over the years with their own personal beliefs. Many would look at a seagull and think little to nothing of it, but would no doubt harbor a bias toward the birds since gulls do have a bit of a reputation. But for sailors, both in fiction and in reality, these birds tend to mean something no matter how troublesome they might become. The idea that people would come up with various myths and superstitions while at sea isn’t hard to figure out and even respect, since the truth is that strange things can happen at sea, and just like anyone else throughout history, sailors have done what they could to make sense of what appear to be signs and omens. 

Many would wonder why such superstitions would be carried into the modern-day when science and rational thinking have apparently taken over and superstitions have been debunked, but the idea of letting go of the old world completely while deriding its simplistic thinking isn’t always the best idea. The fact that Hollywood has ramped up the meaning behind this particular myth and created a reason to view it in a different light isn’t surprising at all since the business of Hollywood is to make certain that people are entertained, and superstition is a great way to make this happen since there are a great number of methods that can be used to bring various legends to life. There are plenty of superstitions that take place on the high seas and have been kept around for many years, and many of them have even been mentioned on TV and in movies. But certain legends get more play a lot of times since they’re more widely accepted than others. 

In the long run, this is a rather passive legend that doesn’t carry a lot of ill portents unless one happens to lose their cool and strike out a seagull. That’s when the bad luck is supposed to start, and on-screen it’s very easy to see how this happens. In real life, well, that kind of depends on what you believe and how it affects your personal worldview. Some sailors still hold the belief that seagulls aren’t to be messed with.