Don’t forget “Troy”.
Donahue?
Anytime you see a woman in some state of partial undress, it’s usually called erotic, as well. Is this really that different?
I think part of it is that straight guys are used to seeing women put out there as sexual objects and consider that the norm. When it is guys that are shown that way, they have to put a label on it. I’ve noticed that many uses of the word homoerotic are couched in terms to make it sound like a put down.
Jarhead is way gayer.
I think the point is that, according to some theories (makes perfect sense to me), such imagery is the only “safe” way for straight men to deal with whatever homosexual thoughts* they might have: if you excuse the exhibition of rippling manflesh by putting it in a historical context, and if you turn the images of male-on-male penetration into subtext by metaphorizing the penis as a sword, then you’ve safely removed all such thoughts from the conscious mind to the unconscious.
No, I’m not saying that all men are secretly gay. But to whatever extent one has such thoughts or idle curiosities or, yes, even sublimated desires, to that extent the imagery in **300 **is, indeed, homoerotic.
And I think it’s true that for some men who might have such repressed thoughts that they’re afraid to deal with consciously,** the adrenaline and emotional intensity of the violence is a good cover for the emotional response that might be caused by the homoerotic imagery.
*I didn’t say urges, I said thoughts.
**I said *some *men.
*Jarhead *is pretty gay. But gayer?
*Jackass *is gayest.
[QUOTE=Antinor01 ]
I think part of it is that straight guys are used to seeing women put out there as sexual objects and consider that the norm. When it is guys that are shown that way, they have to put a label on it. I’ve noticed that many uses of the word homoerotic are couched in terms to make it sound like a put down.
[/QUOTE ]
I don’t consider it a put down (I’m not gay though). I just think that there’s a certain humor in being SO manly that it can only appeal to another (probably gay) man. Especially if the man in question is outwardly homophobic himself. It’s kind of like a bunch of sweaty college wrestlers or Marines walking around all jacked-up with no shirts on, flexing for each other and yelling “fag” this or “homo” that. It’s like “dude…you do know that’s kind of gay, right (not that there’s anything wrong with that)?”
Anyhow, I’m still going to see 300 in IMAX. Does that make me gay?
The pistol-twirling scene in Red River was the gayest thing that ever happened in straight cinema.
[two guys in The 40-Year-Old Virgin ]: You’re gay for saying that. [/two guys in The 40-Year-Old Virgin ]
Yeah, but like Freud said, sometimes a cigar is only a huge, throbbing penis.
I mean cigar. Huge, throbbing cigar.
That, and whenever Rock Hudson pretended to be gay in a movie to seduce a woman.
Fair enough. Among movies I’ve actually seen, I’d say Jarhead outgays The 300 just because the inclusion of homoerotic elements in Jarhead is so blatantly and utterly pointless, while seeing them in 300 (or, rather seeing them in the combat scenes in 300, as opposed to the decadence scenes involving Xerxes’ entourage) requires a willful act.
Sure, spears penetrate bodies and so do penises. Big deal. Balloons are hollow and so are piggy banks, but that doesn’t mean one is symbolic of the other. The Spartans used spears and phalanxes because they proved useful at mowing down waves of attackers, not to exercise some kind of sexual symbolism. How could it be homoerotic to depict Spartans doing what Spartans did?
I find The 300 has numerous flaws, but being “gay” isn’t one of them.
Then it’s a good thing the Spartans didn’t make the movie. In any case, how or why it was made is utterly irrelevant: the act of writing and the act of reading are two separate acts entirely, and what one reacts to in a movie is none of the moviemakers’ business. Just because–or even if–there was no homoerotic intent, that alters not one whit the fact that the imagery therein will resonate homoerotically, at some level, for some viewers.
You’re calling it a flaw, which surely reveals something. I call it the movie’s sole strength.
Homoerotocism is only a flaw where it hurts rather than enhances a film. In this particular case, I don’t think The 300 is a particularly homoerotic film and the flaw is choosing to interpret it as such.
I’d just like to throw this one out there and let it speak for itself.
My wife wants to know what I’m laughing so hard at.
It’s 300, not The 300.
Oh. I thought the running line was that it was homophobic.
Although that article says that Xerxes spoke with a lisp and clutched at his pearls the whole time, so I don’t know WHAT movie he was watching.
For the record, Zach Snyder said he included homosexual elements in Xerxes to scare the hell out of the target audience – young, straight males. “What’s more scary to a 20-year-old boy than a giant god-king who wants to have his way with you?””
But homoerotic? Ah, no. I think the Athenian line is there to dispute that.
Um, no. Once you put the word “depict” into the mix, you acknowledge a third party’s–the filmmakers’–influence on the material.
And if you guys are claiming that **300 **is a historically accurate depiction, well, then, let me just tell you that you are lone voices crying in the wilderness. I really don’t think historical accuracy is gonna count for any kind of defense, of anything, with this one. I have rarely seen a movie where the filmmakers have with such gay abandon painted *“Fuck historical accuracy!” *with such a wide brush all over a movie.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that; I think the scifi/fantasy approach the filmmakers took to **300 **isn’t anything they would deny. It’s as fantastical a representation of “history” as **Amadeus **or Domino, both of which I enjoyed. Hell, I enjoyed the experience of watching 300, for that matter. But the Historical Accuracy Card is *not *a card the defenders of this movie will find in their deck.