I read it like he was fucking with them by exploiting their ignorant predilections. I thought it was funny, especially since it didn’t even occur to me that I was supposed to be bothered by it.
Let me add that in a sense, what Frank Miller is going for in 300 is anti-homoeroticism. It’s against the people who use the term & all that it stands for.
Clearly, the Spartans in this represent not real historical Sparta, but virility & virilism as an archetype. And that is an archetype much abused & lost under homophobia these days. Your “homoerotic” interpretation of the world around you may be swell for you; but I came up in the 1980’s, when among teen boys, there were more homophobes than homosexuals by a large factor, & the fear of appearing “gay” was a guide & a goad for many of us. Maybe times have changed; I don’t think they’re changed that much. I will not sit & take quietly the attempt to co-opt the images of manhood itself for a minority’s particular interpretation.
To be a man & glory in manhood does not have to mean that you’re a queer. The real men don’t have to cover themselves up in big baggy pants to be real men, or to be straight.
And it’s bizarre that I’m making this argument over a movie about Spartans. But then, I don’t claim that Frank Miller isn’t a nutcase.
Yes, don’t use rude names. That would be downright pit-worthy!
:rolleyes:
The director stated that he deliberately portrayed the Persians as homosexuals in order to make them less sympathetic.
I’m not sure I can help you here. If I say, “I will insult you by calling you x,” it would be hypocritical to then say “I don’t consider x to be an insult.”
I got the impression you did: he was trying to make Xerxes alien and imposing, and at the same time vain and somehow effete, with the consequence being that he came across as vaugely queenish. What I took the quote to mean was that he wasn’t actually making a 10 foot tall drag queen to terrorize the young male audience, but the suggestion of him doing so is kinda amusing.
Anyone see Savage Love this week? Dan has a lot to say about 300 (namely that it’s homophobic, not homoerotic).
Of course its subjective. Any emotional reaction to a work of art is inherently subjective. I don’t find depictions of heterosexual intercourse remotely arousing. However, it would be ridiculous for me to object to someone describing a straight love scene as erotic because I, personally, didn’t find it to be so.
Now, I did say that I thought the display of manflesh in 300 was meant to be erotic, and I stand by that. I don’t think it was deliberatly targeted at gay men, because that’s a pretty tiny demographic to target your multi-million dollar blockbuster action film at. I’m pretty sure the intention there was to draw in the girlfriends of all the straight guys who wanted to watch a movie about dudes totally hacking each other apart with swords. I could be wrong: there may very well have been absolutely no libidinous intent in any scene of the movie. But that strikes me as at least moderatly unlikely.
Ooookay… This sounds more like an issue you need to deal with than one I need to deal with.
Thanks for filling me in on what “real” eroticism means in a literary sense. If we were discussing a work of literature, that might even be significant. Heck, if we were discussing a film that had more depth than a leaky kiddy pool, it might be significant. But we’re talking about a Summer popcorn film powered entirely by special effects and action set-pieces. Of course the eroticism is superficial. Everything else about the film is superficial, why would that be any different?
By the way, I really appreciated being called “gay boy.” I do believe that’s the first time someone has deliberatly used my sexuality as a personal insult. That’s quite a distinction you’ve earned for yourself there. I hope you wear it with pride.
Jeez-o-pete. Do you need a porter to carry around all that baggage for you? When I describe any work of art, all I can tell you is how I reacted to it, and that reaction is going to be filtered through a pair of eyes belonging to a gay male. Just because I think something is homoerotic does not imply that you have to find it homoerotic. Similarly, if I say a movie is “good,” that does not imply that the movie is good in an objective, absolute way, and that you have to agree with me. Opinions on art are subjective. They are informed by the life experiences of the viewer as much as the intentions of the artist. I thought large portions of this movie were homoerotic: whatever was intended by the film makers, I found that they were presented in a way that would be uniquely interesting to a gay audience. This is an opinion. You are allowed to disagree with it. That’s how opinions work. But to take personal offence with someone because they have a different opinion than you do is a mark of pronounced immaturity. Particularly when you’re talking about a movie, for God’s sake.
Wow. Okay. I guess it’s clear exactly why you object so strenuously to gay men enjoying this movie. I suppose “gay boy” would have been a bigger clue than this post, but I guess I’m kinda naive, sometimes. Probably not much point continuing this discussion in this forum, anymore. I’ll be glad to take it up again if you want to move it to a more appropriate venue, though.
You said, “in the movie.” What in the movie was homophobic?
As for the director’s comments, I assume you’re refering to the quote linked to by ArizonaTech? If so, I disagree that the comment is particularly homophobic. I think pravnik hit the nail on the head with that one.
Aside, possibly, for the OP, who here has called 300 homoerotic and meant it as an insult? I see a lot of people here joking about the (perceived) homoeroticism in the film, but no one using that as a basis to seriously trash the film.
So, if I use an image that’s likely to squick people out (say, a camel spider (no! Don’t click the link, I said it’s likely to squick you out!!!)) because I want the audience to feel the emotion “squicked out”, then I’m anti camel spider? What if I’m a fan of arachnids and personally think they’re really cool, but I know that’s not a common feeling? Is Lucas a reptilophobe because he put Indy in a pit of snakes?
The director didn’t day “Ohmigod, tall guys wearing eyeliner are so disgusting, I’m going to make my villain wear eyeliner just so’s we’re all clear he’s the baddie.” No, I suspect it was more along the lines of, “Hmm…teenaged boys, god bless 'em, tend to be at an age where crossing cultural gender roles is a little disturbing - probably because they don’t quite have the emotional maturity to feel secure crossing them themselves yet. Since I want the emotional impact of this scene to be disturbing, let’s play with that.”
It’s possible I’m wrong about that, of course. But I like to play this game where I pretend people are basically good and good at what they do (like making visually arresting popcorn movies by choosing visually arresting images) until they prove otherwise. No one’s come up with any evidence otherwise yet.
Then it’s not “homoerotic.” It’s… whatever the high-falutin’ term for “beefcake” is. You seem to be saying that when you call something “homoerotic” you’re just saying you, as a gay man, find it hot. I think that’s either naive or disingenuous. I really don’t care if you find it hot. (Frank Miller, who is notoriously anti-gay, might be amused, as he takes your money, but OK, whatever, you find it hot.) The word “homoerotic” is out there, in the zeitgeist, being used by straights now. And it’s consistently applied to the visual portrayal of the male sex, to the point that it’s the automatic fallback word used, almost as if there’s something “funny” & “abnormal” & “gay” about men being sexy, when it’s the most normal thing in the world.
I don’t expect a gay man to get it, I really don’t. But when elements in the mass media that aren’t wearing the critic’s orientation on the sleeve use the term, it riles me, because they’re saying that male sexualization is gay while female sexualization is normal. And for most of us, you’re still sexual deviants (whether in the clinical sociological sense or the vulgar pejorative sense). So it’s labeling the embrace of the male body as sexual object, simply for being male, as sexual deviance, thanks so much. 'Cos, you know, if we were really straight, we’d all be fat guys with hot wives, like on TV.
Sorry if I overreacted.
So . . . you’re equating the fear of camel spiders and snakes with the fear of a type of human being? So, like, in movies from the 20s and 30s, when black people are made to look like ridiculous animals–animals, say, like camel spiders and snakes–in order to exploit the racist fear and disgust of the audience, that holds exactly the moral value to you as a scary spider image? So when Time Magazine darkened OJ Simpson’s face to make him look blacker, to exploit the fears of white America in order to sell more magazines, that was perfectly OK with you?
In a movie as visual images designed to evoke emotion, yes. In real life when deciding how to treat actual human beings, no. Your OJ example is of a real human being, not a fictional character, so no, I don’t support artistic use in that case.
My point is that, as a director, you use images to evoke emotions in your audience. You choose images based on what your target audience will react to. It’s sort of your job. The guy with no teeth will likely be the racist yokel, the man in the black hat will probably be the bad guy, and the blond in a bra and cheerleader skirt will probably die when she trips while running away from the monster. Cinematic shorthands.
This particular example gets a big o’ roll eyes from me, because I don’t get exactly why young men are threatened by guys in eyeliner (having never been a young guy, it’s an intellectual exercise for me), but I don’t think it’s particularly damning evidence of the director’s homophobia in this movie.
You sidestepped the question on a minor irrelevancy, which suggests furthermore that your sympathy is for OJ in that instance. Do you really miss the point that the TIME cover exploited, and indulged, and reinforced, racist stereotypes?
So, you’d shrug your shoulders and roll your eyes if every Arab character that appeared in a movie was a wild-eyed terrorist? or if every black character rolled his eyes and blubbered his lips while raping white women? That’s all exactly the same as a bat flapping at the camera out of a dark room?
Hey, you may have missed this, but you’re in a forum where people talk about what they think about books, movies, music, and so forth. If you don’t care what other people think, maybe you find a different forum to post in? Because staying in Cafe Society is going to be really frustrating for you.
If Frank Miller is a homophobe, he’d probably be pissed off that people are interpreting his work as homoerotic. Which is enough reason in and of itself to call the movie homoerotic.
Oh, bullshit. It’s applied to this movie, because this movie features three hundred buff, shaved Greeks in leather underwear. In a historical context, that’s completely meaningless, because a dedicated warrior culture has enough sense not to go into war without any fucking armor. And in a modern context, that screams “Big giant fag.” To top it off, these three hundred twinks appear in a movie that features a grand total of two women, only one of whom has a speaking role. When you get three hundred half naked, sweaty, muscley men together without a pudenda in sight, it comes off as just a little gay.
And this is not done “consistently” in modern movies. 99% of all movies have some display of male sexuality, because 99% of all movies are about straight people in relationships with other straight people. And these movies are not “consistently” called homoerotic. There’s an extremely narrow range of male sexual expression that gets tagged as “gay” with any sort of regularity, and 300 manages to hit just about all of them short of showing Leonidas go down on one of his hoplites.
Spare me your patronization. I’m gay, not retarded.
Well, fucking get over it. Watching you go into a screaming gay panic because someone thought a flick you liked was kinda gay isn’t nearly as entertaining as you think.
In the “clinical sociological sense,” homosexuality is not considered sexually deviant, and hasn’t been for more than thirty years now. And if the basis of your complaint is, “I don’t like being lumped in with you perverts,” well, consider me unmoved by your plight.
:rolleyes:
I don’t understand what was irrelevant about setting up different guidelines for real and fictional people. I don’t approve of what TIME did because they did it to a real person. If a movie director darkened a black actor’s skin to make his fictional character more intimidating, then no, I wouldn’t have a problem with it any more than I would with makeup on anyone for character effect. I’d remain sad that darker = bad in our culture, but that’s something the director is exploiting, not creating.
Well, I’d see less movies, that’s for sure. I don’t share the popular notion that moviemakers have any “responsibility” to social or political correctness. Their job is to tell good stories and, if they choose, to raise social consciousness or deliver a message through their art. I’d hate to see some sort of quota system put in place where a studio had to show 4 “positive portrayals of black people” for every 1 negative portrayal or something. Let the market decide and give filmmakers their freedom. ETA: I reserve the right to bitch about it on a message board, of course, and to try to convince other people not to see it, but I still support the director’s right to make whatever he wants.
In fiction, yes.
Wow. “Quota system”? Wow. I have seen some straw blown around in my day, but between you and Bryan E, this thread has been a real eye opener to me.
You do realize I hope–both of you–that the lengths of illogic to which you’re willing to stretch in order defend your defensiveness comes off as, well, a little defensive. I’m just sayin.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that . . .
Well, I was just positing a system by which moviemakers could be limited in their stereotypic portrayals, since that seems to be what **you **want. I’m just fine with guys in eyeliner playing bad guys and there being nothing homophobic about it.
'Cause, remember, I’m pro-leather speedos and thrusting spears. There’s really nothing homoanything about *my *love of beefcake. 
Um, exercising my right to comment on it is the same as calling for legislation against exactly how? Although, I can’t quite be sure that’s what you wrote; it’s hard to read through all this straw.
A goad? What does that mean? Had some “fun” with the gay boys, did you?
Yeah it is!