Just to be clear, and with no great desire to rekindle that fight, you are referencing the movies of those names in all three cases, correct?
Right. I’m afraid that people will see this as a vindication of their notions of white superiority even though the Greeks of the Mediteranian world probably had more in common with the swarthier peoples of that region than with most people we now call ‘white.’
I don’t know that I would insist that they’re intentionally trying to appeal to gay men, but if it were 300 buff women in leather bikinis slaughtering a hoard of Persians, it would certainly be considered heteroerotic. God, I hope they make that movie.
This has been explained.
And still no-one’s mentioned “phalanx symbolism”.
We’re leaving that for Nava – after all, who is likely to know more about Falangistas?
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It just occurred to me that if 300 has stirred up this much controversy, imagine what Harmodius and the Origins of Democracy would cause! 
Diaphragms?
-Joe
Just a thought. When idetermining whether a movie is homoerotic, what is the reference point?
Seems to me that 300 buff women in bikinis should be considered just as homoerotic as 300 buff men. Just sayin.
People are saying it’s homophobic not just because of what it shows, but because of what it doesn’t show.
It shows Xerxes as effeminate. It shows the comment about Athenian “boy lovers”.
What it doesn’t show is that the good-guy Spartan heroes were at least as openly homosexual as the Athenians, and “officially” more so, since man/teenage boy relationships were enshrined in Spartan military practice. Spartans deliberately segregated the boys from the girls and taught the boys to be warriors, then assigned each to an older male warrior as a boyfriend of sorts.
Supposedly the thinking was that no man would allow himself to be seen a coward by his lover.
This wasn’t just “a feature” of Spartan life, it was a fundamental facet of their culture, and more to the point, it was an important subtext to the stand the Spartan 300 made at Thermopylae – sort of the ultimate test of their co-opting sexuality for military morale.
The fact that all this is sanitized from the movie (and the comic) is one thing. The fact that the movie then goes on to make negative comparisons to the famous, but not institutionalized, homosexuality of Athenians and even invents homosexual undertones for the Persians is what most makes it seem homophobic – it whitewashes the Spartan sexuality, and then emphasizes and even invents in others the same behavior it ignores in its heroes, and condemns that behavior. It’s not just homophobia – above the smell of all that man-sweat and oiled flesh rises the stink of hypocrisy.
Even that’s arguably eclipsed by the irony of Leonidas yelling about “Freedom”. Spartan women were confined much of their lives (and men were discouraged from loving them emotionally) and the entire city-state was supported by the labor of helots, a permanent slave underclass. Spartan boys who were not yet old enough for military training were expected to spy on the helots and report back. Over many years, the helots regularly tried to rise and throw off Spartan domination, and were routinely massacred by highly-trained, bronze-equipped Spartan shock troops they could not match. Nobody in Sparta was free – the state interfered even in the relationship between man and wife. The men had to be soldiers and homosexual lovers, the women were essentially prisoners and mostly baby factories, the children were spies and then draftees, the helots were field slaves. Even King Leonidas is trapped by his role and goes to his death. It’s about the least free society in human history.
Sailboat
I think there’s some merit in calling it fascist propaganda, but I think the critical distinction is that it’s fascist propaganda within the context of the movie. The story isn’t even supposed to be an accurate depiction of events as they happened in the film. It’s an over-the-top fantasy retelling of the battle by the “Dilios” character in an attempt to whip the Spartans into a patriotic killing frenzy, glorifying our heroic boys in gold and vilifying the evil, semi-human enemy. It’s a war movie within a war movie.
Somebody made a good point that the modern society that’s closest to the Spartan ideal is North Korea.
I don’t see that anybody has grounds to attack the movie because the Spartans saw everybody as “other” — that is, emphasizing the bright line between Greeks and foreigners. That’s where we get the word “barbarian,” isn’t it, from the original Greek meaning “not-Greek?”
Now, you could attack the movie on the grounds that Frank Miller and the film-makers chose an already-fascist and anti-foreigner culture to lionize, but at least that part has some basis in historical accuracy. I’ve been reading a couple of books, specifically on Athens and more generally on a history of Europe, and both emphasized that this was definitely part of the culture of the times.
I think you might be mixing the Thebans and Athenians in there. I know the Thebans had their “sacred bond” of paired warriors and I know the Athenians had older men assigned to younger ones as mentors with a don’t ask/don’t tell thing on the side. I’m not sure about the Spartans, but I somehow don’t see them as big on attachment.
</nitpick>
Yes. 
No, the Spartans were into man-boy love as well. Which is part of why I disagree with this:
Miller and the film-makers cherry picked Spartan history. They left out the parts - like homosexuality and slavery - that didn’t fit their message. So what’s there is there because Miller and the film-makers approved of it. If they hadn’t wanted the Spartans to be xenophobes, they would have just dropped that aspect of their history as they did other undesirable aspects. Leonidas could have made a speech about how despite our political differences with the current Persian regime we must remember the common bonds of humanity that unite us all. Sure, the real Leonidas would never have said that, but he wouldn’t have gone around proclaiming how much he loved his wife either.
And *Showgirls * doesn’t because it’s done withuot a shred of humor or intelligence.
Well…if the Spartans are only white by revisionism ( :dubious: ), is it OK to root for 'em if you accept that they were (black…asian…Persians)? I don’t personally give a flying rat’s patootie; it’s totally irrelevant.
Get the color-conscious chip off yer shoulder, wouldya please? We will be better off as a family of man when every blessed thing is not analyzed by adherents of the Religion of Equality to make sure it celebrates diversity and fights “fascism.”
Newsflash, Pookins: We are not all equal as individuals. We are not all equal as populations nor equal as cultures–there is not a shred of evidence that we are. Only the witless care; only twits consider it an accomplishment that they were born as a particular individual. It may feel noble to pretend that we are but it’s not in the fine print of Mother Nature’s contract guaranteeing genetic drift among populations. Nor did Og bless every population with the same opportunity and the same circumstances out of which to develop a culture.
You cannot champion diversity without defining differences. Bad move. Every effort to embrace “diversity” must, of necessity, segregate. Else you don’t have separate categories to bring together. Plus you make not like the results of population analysis and then you gotta spend all your effort 'splaining that so-called differences among populations is bad data and not just bad luck on Mother Nature’s craps table.
Nothing is more divisive than a diversity-colored lens through which to view and analyze the world.
But sometimes a cigar really is a cigar. And sometimes symbolism really does symbolize something.
If I decided to make a movie about the Battle of the Bulge and decided to cast all black actors in the Nazi parts, I’d have a movie about a small band of white Americans holding out against an army of evil black men to preserve the western way of life.
Now somebody could argue that the situation was historically accurate. The Americans were outnumbered and were holding out against an army and were defending the western way of life and the enemy was evil. But changing the Germans to black men would have completely changed the message.
I grow weary of breathless pronouncements like this one:
"300 - Best Fascist Propaganda Film Ever made "
and this one:
“This is a fascist masturbation fantasy.”
Exposing a putatively horrid underbelly of fascism, eugenics, racism, and whatever other politically incorrect sins you can come up with in a comic book story is a fixation for the petty-minded. It is indistinguishable from the Church Lady reprimanding the faithful. Only the tenets of the Religion are different; not the urge to be more sanctimonious than thou.
And reminding everyone that they need to think carefully about which actors belonged to which populations instead of just enjoying a superficial story is divisive. Sheesh.
Hmm. All the clips I saw, the Spartans were copper colored. And the Persians were copper colored. Just like everything else in the movie including the sky, ocean, dirt, trees, houses, and so forth. So how does the movie turn Spartans into caucasians and the Persians into negroes? OK, we’re asked to identify with the Greeks and hate the Persians? What the fuck does that have to do with race?
Aaaaand back to Showgirls. Yeah, Showgirls is apparently done without humor, intelligence, or erotic appeal. And that’s the point. It is a deliberately hideous movie designed to make the viewer ashamed of his desire to watch cute girls dance around and shake their boobies. The trouble with Showgirls is that Verhoevan made it TOO awful, there was absolutely no way to enjoy the movie straight. And this is the main failure of Showgirls, that it’s so unerotic and stupid that it fails to implicate the audience. No one can root for Elizabeth Berkely in her “quest for stardom” only to realize later that she’s a monster. No one can honestly leer at Elizabeth Berkely only later to feel disgust at themselves.
And this was corrected in Starship Troopers, which is well made enough that many people honestly did like it as a straightforward celebration of young nubile studs and sluts killing hideous insects.
But the “bad” parts of both movies are done deliberately. Both are satires. But Showgirls is too clumsy and angry at the audience to work as a satire. Starship Troopers is more clever, perhaps because Verhoevan actually does like action movies enough to empathize with the action movie audience enough to really get under their skin.
If the battle was undocumented, how can there have been any accounts of it? :rolleyes: