# 300 - Best Fascist Propaganda Film Ever made **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 19, 2007, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717 "2007-04-19T01:02:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/41 "2007-04-19T04:03:59Z")
[QUOTE=Cervaise] _Starship Troopers_ is approximately thirty-seven times better than _300._ [/QUOTE] And about 37 times less accurate to the original storyline. ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/42 "2007-04-19T04:17:16Z")
[QUOTE=Uzi] And about 37 times less accurate to the original storyline. [/QUOTE] Only so if you think the comic book is the original story here. ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/43 "2007-04-19T04:23:53Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] Bwah! I like your math. [/QUOTE] Would you like to know more? ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/44 "2007-04-19T04:25:14Z")
[QUOTE=hawthorne] Only so if you think the comic book is the original story here. [/QUOTE] Unless Frank Miller was manipulating the Greeks and the Persians a few thousand years ago… ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/45 "2007-04-19T04:34:35Z")
[QUOTE=Johnny Angel] When they were at the bargaining stage, the messenger only demanded a token amount of land. I wouldn’t seriously believe it would stop there, but I would have sent the messenger home with a firm ‘no’ instead of killing him and his entourage. Ah, but that would have robbed them of a chance to commit a manly act of murder while shouting out their catch phrase. Countries rattle their sabers at us all the time. Would you have us massacre their diplomats just so they don’t get to declare war first? [/QUOTE] Obviously, we are arguing about a movie and not reality here. [Big Stick diplomacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_stick_diplomacy) The Persians were threatening to invade if they weren’t satisfied in their demands. In other words: They were threatening the Spartans with a gun to their heads. If you have the capability, you remove the gun. They did that first with the Persian’s Diplomat. Now, I’d have sent him back with the bit of land they had asked for and then gathered my army. Once done, I’d have tweaked Xerxes nose and then goaded him into his attack at the place of my choosing, not force it sooner like Leonidas did. But his act demonstrated the forthright and action-oriented nature of the Spartans. [QUOTE=kidchameleon] Would you like to know more? [/QUOTE] The movie on its own was okay, but God, I hated it whenever I thought of the original book it took its name from. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/46 "2007-04-19T04:41:26Z")
Gary Brecher, a.k.a. the War Nerd, rips **300** apart [here.](http://www.exile.ru/2007-March-23/war_nerd.html). A must read. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/47 "2007-04-19T05:13:33Z")
[QUOTE=Uzi] Obviously, we are arguing about a movie and not reality here. [/quote] That’s just it – the writers get to make sure their characters are absolutely right. But then people interpret this trumped up righteousness as having something to do with real life. Notice that the show 24 is just a story, and we can get catharsis from watching Jack Bauer delve into the darkness in his artifically created ticking time bomb scenarios and note that it’s just fiction, but in real life [the military fears that soldiers are getting the idea from 24 that torture is okay](http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2264632.ece). But the situations that supposedly justify it in the show are artificial. In real life there is almost never an actual ticking time bomb scenario – not one you know about with enough warning to torture the right people. The artificial situations that justify behavior in fiction really are applied to much less one-sided scenarios in real life. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/48 "2007-04-19T06:26:49Z")
[QUOTE=Lumpy] Gary Brecher, a.k.a. the War Nerd, rips **300** apart [here.](http://www.exile.ru/2007-March-23/war_nerd.html). A must read. [/QUOTE] Loved it – especially the point about murdering envoys. If I recall my readings in history correctly, that sort of thing has in most periods been considered despicable conduct. Honorable men should not do violence to envoys under a truce flag. (A sentiment, it’s true, honored in the breach at times – Iif I recall correctly, the young then-Prince Alexander of Macedon murdered Persian envoys after they’d offered offense to the women of the royal household.) The trailers I’ve seen for this movie positively wallow with delight in the well-kicking of the Persians. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/49 "2007-04-19T06:29:20Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] Exactly. \*Hero \* was little more than an arthouse propaganda piece justifying China’s totalitarian government. Gorgeous, but chilling, and about as complex as your standard Worker’s Opera of Mao’s era. [/QUOTE] It also justified world peace. That’s a bit of the movie that lots of people miss - early on, when Nameless asked the King about his future plans, he answered that after uniting China he would look outward and start adding foreign lands to his empire. But the at the very end of the movie, we see a card saying that the King - now Emperor -was the one who built the Great Wall, bringing peace and turning China’s attentions inward . To me, that was the whole point of the film- the King’s conversation with Nameless brought about the epiphany that the ultimate use of strength was in not using strength, and that unity must lead to peace. ---
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/50 "2007-04-19T07:05:12Z")
If 300 was fascist propaganda, wouldn’t that imply that the creaters of the film were fascists? I thought it was a homo-erotic gorefest, but I missed the Heil Hitler overtones o\_0; ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/51 "2007-04-19T07:36:00Z")
[QUOTE=Terrifel] I, personally, am deeply astonished that a movie based on a Frank Miller comic book would have undertones of fascism and homophobia. No one could have predicted this. [/QUOTE] 😃 Best line in the thread. ---
**Author:** ![Carnick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Carnick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnick)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/52 "2007-04-19T08:07:26Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] I think _Hero, Triumph of the Will_, and \*Starship Troopers \* are better fascist manifestos. [/QUOTE] Isn’t Starship Troopers a parody of fascist manifestos? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![CaerieD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@CaerieD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaerieD)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/53 "2007-04-19T13:23:07Z")
[QUOTE=EddyTeddyFreddy] Loved it – especially the point about murdering envoys. If I recall my readings in history correctly, that sort of thing has in most periods been considered despicable conduct. Honorable men should not do violence to envoys under a truce flag. (A sentiment, it’s true, honored in the breach at times – Iif I recall correctly, the young then-Prince Alexander of Macedon murdered Persian envoys after they’d offered offense to the women of the royal household.) The trailers I’ve seen for this movie positively wallow with delight in the well-kicking of the Persians. [/QUOTE] For the record–and that article doesn’t mention this–Sparta really did throw the envoys into a well. Athens? Just killed 'em. If I remember correctly, it’s recorded in [Book VII](http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.7.vii.html) of the History of Herodotus. So, that part isn’t some neocon fantasy. And while the Spartans had their faults and were generally seen as crazy hillbillies by the rest of the Greek peoples, their military expertise and sacrifice has been lauded from ancient times on up. Portraying them as heroes requires no agenda whatsoever. Seriously, this movie isn’t making the Spartans out to be heroes. They already _were_. Their sacrifice defined heroism for a long, long time. The movie actually does damage to that heroism, by making it so cartoonish. ---
**Author:** ![Ponder\_Stibbons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponder_stibbons/32/343_2.png) [@Ponder\_Stibbons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponder_Stibbons)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/54 "2007-04-19T13:42:48Z")
I, for one, welcome our new buff half-naked cartoonish possibly gay Spartan fascist overlords. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/55 "2007-04-19T14:03:44Z")
[Here’s what The Village Voice got from the movie.](http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0710,lee,75993,20.html) > [@](#): > > Long ago there reigned a clan of Speedo-wearing militaristic psychopaths called the Spartans. They lived beneath a copper-colored sky, on a copper-colored land, amidst copper-colored fields, in copper-colored homes made from copper-colored stone. Legend has it they would outline their copper-colored pecs and abs with ash to enhance their manly buffness, and yet these were men of action and honor, not “philosophers and boy lovers” like their namby-pamby rivals the Athenians… > > Delicacies of dismemberment aside, 300 is notable for its outrageous sexual confusion. Here stands the Spartan king Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and his 299 buddies in nothing but leather man-panties and oiled torsos, clutching a variety of phalluses they seek to thrust in the bodies of their foes by trapping them in a small, rectum-like mountain passage called the “gates of hell(o!)” Yonder rises the Persian menace, led by the slinky, mascara’d Xerxes. When he’s not flaring his nostrils at Leonidas and demanding he kneel down before his, uh, majesty, this flamboyantly pierced crypto-transsexual lounges on chinchilla throw pillows amidst a rump-shaking orgy of disfigured lesbians. > > On first glance, the terms couldn’t be clearer: macho white guys vs. effeminate Orientals. Yet aside from the fact that Spartans come across as pinched, pinheaded gym bunnies, it’s their flesh the movie worships. Not since Beau Travail has a phalanx of meatheads received such insistent ogling. As for the threat to peace, freedom, and democracy, that filthy Persian orgy looks way more fun than sitting around watching Spartans mope while their angry children slap each other around. At once homophobic and homoerotic, 300 is finally, and hilariously, just hysterical. Whatever… ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/56 "2007-04-19T14:19:53Z")
[QUOTE=CaerieD] For the record–and that article doesn’t mention this–Sparta really did throw the envoys into a well. Athens? Just killed 'em. If I remember correctly, it’s recorded in [Book VII](http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.7.vii.html) of the History of Herodotus. So, that part isn’t some neocon fantasy. And while the Spartans had their faults and were generally seen as crazy hillbillies by the rest of the Greek peoples, their military expertise and sacrifice has been lauded from ancient times on up. Portraying them as heroes requires no agenda whatsoever. Seriously, this movie isn’t making the Spartans out to be heroes. They already _were_. Their sacrifice defined heroism for a long, long time. The movie actually does damage to that heroism, by making it so cartoonish. [/QUOTE] Thanks for the historical correction. The well-flinging isn’t mentioned in Pressfield’s_Gates of Fire_ either – a novel that’s highly sympathetic to the Spartans. I agree their heroism stands as a shining example. Which doesn’t prevent people with an agenda from appropriating it to further their own message. Since I haven’t seen the movie, I can’t say whether that’s been done in this case. ---
**Author:** ![CaerieD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@CaerieD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaerieD)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/57 "2007-04-19T14:59:58Z")
[QUOTE=EddyTeddyFreddy] Thanks for the historical correction. The well-flinging isn’t mentioned in Pressfield’s_Gates of Fire_ either – a novel that’s highly sympathetic to the Spartans. I agree their heroism stands as a shining example. Which doesn’t prevent people with an agenda from appropriating it to further their own message. Since I haven’t seen the movie, I can’t say whether that’s been done in this case. [/QUOTE] I don’t think the filmmakers had an agenda aside from some chest pounding manly-manness, but I can easily see how others could appropriate the imagery of the film. It’s extremely xenophobic, making the “other” so very other that it ceases to be human. But, then again, _Brokeback Mountain_ could be used by some people to reinforce their homophobia. My feeling was that _300_ was essentially action porn. There is no point, no substance to it, beyond getting one specific, visceral reaction: adrenaline. For what it is, it succeeds magnificently. For a piece of fascist literature…eh. As I said, it has about as much substance as a pornographic film. It’ll get a visceral, emotional response, but it’s only going to reinforce what’s already there. It can’t convert anyone. It lacks the depth to do so. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/58 "2007-04-19T15:24:25Z")
[QUOTE=CaerieD] My feeling was that _300_ was essentially action porn. There is no point, no substance to it, beyond getting one specific, visceral reaction: adrenaline. For what it is, it succeeds magnificently. For a piece of fascist literature…eh. As I said, it has about as much substance as a pornographic film. It’ll get a visceral, emotional response, but it’s only going to reinforce what’s already there. It can’t convert anyone. It lacks the depth to do so. [/QUOTE] Incidentally, anyone who prefers extreme \*left-\*wing gay action porn (btw, it actually admits it’s gay, and porn) should try to locate Bruce LaBruce’s _Raspberry Reich_. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/59 "2007-04-19T15:55:00Z")
[QUOTE=Lumpy] Gary Brecher, a.k.a. the War Nerd, rips **300** apart [here.](http://www.exile.ru/2007-March-23/war_nerd.html). A must read. [/QUOTE] That was terrific and astute. Thanks. Personally, I’m amazed anybody (let alone so many people) found this film entertaining. TETO I suppose, but usually, even if I don’t like something, I can “get” why some people like. Here, I’m genuinely confounded. Here’s [Dan Savage](http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/300)’s take, btw: > [@](#): > > I mean, my God, the lengths the filmmakers went to in order to reassure the straight boys in the audience that there was nothing homoerotic about staring at men in thongs for three hours. > > The King of the Spartans—among the most notorious boy fuckers in ancient history—dismisses Athenians as weak-willed “philosophers and boy lovers”? Hilarious. And Xerxes, the Persian Emperor, is so gay—how gay is he? mascara! nose rings! eye liner! leather!—yet he fills his tent with… lesbians? He he he. The King of the Spartans telling his three-hundred soldiers—recruited from and outfited by International Male—that Sparta is “the world’s one hope for reason and justice.” Bah! That would be the same Sparta that owned slaves and made running off into the woods and murdering a slave a right of passage for young boys—basically, the Spartan Bar Mitzvah. Holy crap! The endless sex scene between the Spartan King and his wife? Not funny, just pornographic. I went to the bathroom. > > 300 reminded me of Troy, another recent Hollywood film set in and around ancient Greece. When we first see Brad Pitt as Achilles he’s shown in bed, naked, with two nude and completely spent females draped over him. “See?” the filmmakers were screaming. “He’s an ancient Greek soldier and he wears a skirt and he’s oiled up like a porn star—but he fucks girls! Two at a time!” > > 300’s homophobia is so over the top it ultimately functions as a satire—see? I get satire sometimes!—of its presumed audiences’ homophobia. So is it a homophobic movie? That’s debatable, I guess. > > What isn’t up for debate is the film’s politics. There are times when the Persian army looks unmistakably like a crowd of chanting Islamic radicals. And if the Spartan King has to break the law to defend Spartan freedom? Well, sometime a King’s gotta do what a King’s gotta do. Because, as the Queen of Sparta points out, freedom isn’t free. And, yes, she uses exactly those words. ---
**Author:** ![Omegaman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e480ec/32.png) [@Omegaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omegaman)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2007, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717/60 "2007-04-19T16:11:32Z")
[QUOTE=Uzi] And about 37 times less accurate to the original storyline. [/QUOTE] Does this thread need to sink to the level of disrespecting Starship Troopers ? Sheesh ! 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/300-best-fascist-propaganda-film-ever-made/400717.md?page=4)