Even though I can get rather violently upset at acts of racism, I didn't mind the cannibal parts a bit -- didn't even think of it in terms of race, to be honest. That might be because I grew up with a lot of old movies and TV shows that showed things we now know as racist, not because the makers were racist, but because no one gave it a thought at the time. (Gilligans Island and its cannibals would be a good example for this case.) If a drama, or even an action film set in the present day, had shown the same characters, I probably would have been at the lead of the picket line.

Once you pointed it out, I thought about the natives shown in Pirates and realized they didn't have to be portrayed as cannibals at all -- there could have been just as much jeopardy if they'd just been planning to use Jack in a ritual sacrifice. For that matter, most of the cannibal scenes were totally unnecessary to the plot, at all. That leaves me wondering, in these days of politically correct thinking, if there wasn't one person at the studio who didn't stop to think about how this might look to more sensitive viewers, or how it might effect the young and impressionable. Mindless entertainment is fine, but in this case I have to reverse my normal "live and let live" attitude and say they could have avoided the objectionable parts.