300 - Best Fascist Propaganda Film Ever made

The BBQ Pit
101

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
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?
[/QUOTE]

I recommend watching the movie to get a better understanding. The Persians were a motley crew, with more than a few negroes (during the first few scenes featuring the Persians, I feared they would all be black because that’s all we saw). Even the masks they wore had negroid qualities, with thick lips and flat noses. Iranians must really love that characterization!

In contrast, the Spartans were quite Aryan looking. There were quite a few tow-headed soldiers in that 300. And they all spoke like they were from the UK, but I guess that’s standard for this genre.

All the talk about “freedom” made me squirm too, especially as it was presented with images of spacious skys and amber waves of grain. But I guess the movie has to appeal to the masses somehow.

Xerxes reminded me of Ra from Stargate. He had the same effeminate and supernatural qualities and the same painted-on eyes. I halfway expected him to take off in a spaceship pyramid at the end. I also wanted him to win.

102

Y’know, someone could argue that the casting and portrayal of the “Persians”, in both the comic and the film, can be seen as a way to show how the Spartans perceived the Persians in Delios’ embellishment of the facts: extravagantly alien. This could be plausible, not to a small degree because the Spartans *were * rather culturally stolid (Remember, our civilization likes to claim we follow in the footsetps of Athens, not of Sparta). But Miller should not make us have to make that kind of a reach, to convince ourselves that we’re watching Delios tell the troops at Platea “oh, you should have seen him, Xerxes was ten feet tall, and decorated with golden piercings (wink, wink, nod, nod)…” when just showing Xerxes as a lavish and grandiose man in contraposition to austere, laconic Leonidas would define the contrast (and even better IMO than making him some sort of absurd supervillain). Miller is just too fond of “larger than life”. (And anyway, would a Zoroastrian king proclaim himself a god?)

OTOH, I have noticed a tendency by some auteurs to portray the Achaemenid Persian armies as being an affirmative-action program for all the exotic ethnicities of the Empire. I suspect that the main core of the force would have been composed of, well, Persians and Medes – people from the “heartlands”, plus their immediate neighbors – Assyrians, Babylonians, Lydians – thst is, Middle Easterners, who would not look too weird to the Greek-on-the-street except for their clothes; yes, there would also be representation of the peripheral provinces, but how much? But to the Greeks in Greece, probably the mere presence of a large number of ANY “barbaroi” in their land was something remarkable and worthy of exaggerating, but one has to wonder if Herodotus may have exaggerated things to make the Greek upset even more impressive.

103

[QUOTE=JRDelirious]
Y’know, someone could argue that the casting and portrayal of the “Persians”, in both the comic and the film, can be seen as a way to show how the Spartans perceived the Persians in Delios’ embellishment of the facts: extravagantly alien
[/QUOTE]

That’s pretty much what I got out of it. For one thing, they did refer to the Persian “grenades” as magic, which pretty much establishes the narrator as not perfectly reliable.

104

[QUOTE=Wolfian]
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.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, while it was socially expected but optional in Athens, the pederastic relationship was legally required in Sparta. Men of an appropriate age to be an older partner (erastes) could be fined for not having a protegée (eromenos).

As to the composition of the Persian army: it’s been a while since I last read the end of Herodotus, but I can’t remember him commenting much on ethnicity. Certainly Persia had control over wide-ranging parts of the world, and I’m pretty sure they had been relying on mercenaries for a while at this point (including, before and after the wars, Greek forces). Which is all to say - I wouldn’t take any bets on what peoples WEREN’T represented.

105

I finally got a chance to see this flick over the weekend. The hell with any possible fascistic and homoerotic or homophobic undertones. The thing is ludicrously overblown and bombastic. I can’t get past that to worry about the rest. I love that sort of thing, but in a bad-movie kind of way. Things are just HUGE and WEIRD because it’s visually impressive. Things that don’t make any rational sense are in it because it looks cool, and damnitall if it makes no llogical sense.

A few random thoughts:

The Persian ambasadors come, are enigmatic, and black. Black? Why the hell are the Persian ambassadors black? This makes about a much sense as Leonidas being an Eskimo. Which might explain why he’s always underdressed.

The ambassadors aren’t diplomats. The Spartans point this out to them by shoving them down this huge well that just happens to be conveniently behind the ambassadors, with no rail. You could use a swimming pool as a dipper for this well. All i could think of was the line from “The Emperor’s New Groove” – “Why do we have that thing there, anyway?” Seriously. It’s too big to be a rational well. They must lose a kid a day over that unguarded edge. (But, hey, it’s Sparta. It’s expected!) Maybe it isn’t a water well, but that big new Foreign Ambassador Disposall, and they were just itchin’ for a chance to try it out. In any case, it’s oversized and bombastic, so it fits the movie perfectly.
King Leonidas takes a leisurely morning climb to visit the Spartan mystic elders. Either those elders are in GREAT shape, or Leonidas just likes taking the difficult route.
Boy, those Elders are gross! They’re not just old, they have terminal acne! They must be the Harkonnen ancestors.

ANOTHER black Persian! Fer cryin’ out loud, does Frank Miller understand geography? And his eyes Glow In The Dark! Just like that wolf’s!
Quasimodo’s not a hunchback! (Pulls out Ephialtes, does Paul Hogan voice) That’s a hunchback!
They don’t just stab and slice, every swipe seems to completely and cleanly remove a head or a limb! With Bronze Age weapons!They built the freakion’ guillotine to guarantee that heads would be cut off in a single swipe, you know, because iron or steel axes still frequently took more than one chop to do the job. L. Sprague de Camp, in “Rogue Queen”, described a bronze blade after a battle as looking “like a saw”. But these Spartan weapons keep going and going…

It’s not just a rhino. It’s The Biggest Damned Rhino in the World.
Ditto for the Elephants. And the Giant the Immortals drag along.

The Persians are ruled by Mr. Clean?

No, ebidently the Persians are the ancestors of the Harkonnens. Scarred and deformed Giant, armless courtesan, blade-handed Executioner…

Well, of COURSE the Persians have gunpowder a millenium and a half early. Just as long as the damned grenades don’t actually do any damage to anyone besides themselves.
Right – throw out Ephialtes because he can’t lock shields with everyone else at the proper height, then show your guys hardly ever fighting in locked-shield formation, or only locking them together ON THE GROUND. As far as I can tell, Ephialtes would’ve fit in perfectly, except for that hump. Leonidas was probably lying about the reason, letting him down easy.

Y’know, they could’ve ended this pretty early and easily if they brought in those archers to shoot the Spartans when they were showing off their gymkhata moves, and not within shield-locking range. You mighta got a few of your own guys, but the Spartans woulda gone down easy while they were concentrating on their nearest guy.

106

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
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.”
[/quote]

This isn’t every ‘blessed thing.’ No one here has suggested that we rate every episode of American Idol for implications about race relations. What we’re talking about here is one case-in-point that is stark enough to deserve comment.

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
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.
[/quote]

Of course, a lot of the evidence that one or another culture may be superior or inferior actually amounts to the kind of deck-stacking you see in this film. That’s what I’m objecting to. If the movie presented, somehow, nothing but objective truth I’d be tempted to agree with you that we should just suck up the social consequences of presenting that truth. I’m not so willing to accept the social consequences of lies.

The rest of what you’re objecting to is something you’re projecting on me.

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
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.
[/quote]

If signs of “fascism, eugenics, racism and whatever” are politically correct quibbles by you, with sactimony standing as a bigger sin, then at least we have some common ground. The movie was also sanctimonious.

[QUOTE=monstro]
I recommend watching the movie to get a better understanding. The Persians were a motley crew, with more than a few negroes (during the first few scenes featuring the Persians, I feared they would all be black because that’s all we saw). Even the masks they wore had negroid qualities, with thick lips and flat noses. Iranians must really love that characterization!

In contrast, the Spartans were quite Aryan looking. There were quite a few tow-headed soldiers in that 300. And they all spoke like they were from the UK, but I guess that’s standard for this genre.
[/quote]

And the voiceover narrator does give a couple of spiels about how the Persian army is composed of people from all over Asia and also from the “darker parts of the empire.” This last part is mentioned as a rhinocerous is seen charging the Spartans. The implication of white vs. everybody else seemed pretty blatant to me.

[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
I finally got a chance to see this flick over the weekend. The hell with any possible fascistic and homoerotic or homophobic undertones. The thing is ludicrously overblown and bombastic. I can’t get past that to worry about the rest. I love that sort of thing, but in a bad-movie kind of way. Things are just HUGE and WEIRD because it’s visually impressive. Things that don’t make any rational sense are in it because it looks cool, and damnitall if it makes no llogical sense.
[/quote]

They do make it clear that it’s a fantasy story, for all that it’s based on historical peoples and situations. That’s at least some account for the things I myself object to – the audience is supposed to realize they can’t take this shit seriously as soon as they see the wolf with the glowing eyes. But then again, does the addition of a few fantastic elements put it beyond criticism?

107

Personally Id like to protest about the the "Tom and Jerry "cartoons being used as a subtle vehicle to promote sado-masochistic practices and those cartoons were DELIBERATELY TARGETTED AT OUR CHILDREN.

Its good to know that our freedoms are being safeguarded by those whos constant alertness and ability to “read between the lines” foil always those who wish to promote evil within our midst.

I havent seen 300 myself but I am now in no doubt whatsoever that it must be racist ,Fascist ,sexist ,promotes paedophilia,homophobic,promotes religous hatred,undermines American values ,is a tool for communist subversion and encourages Satanism.

I will never ,ever trust any cartoonist ever again .

108

One thing I love is at the very end of the credits (I’m a credit-watcher. I’ll stay to the bitter end to read the damned things, and to see if they sneak in anything extra during or after), and I was interested to see that they stuck in the customary disclaimer, which goes something like this:

This Motion Picture is fictitious. Any resemblance between this and any persons, living or dead, is coincidental
I’ll say.