SubscribeOh, and I kid you not that watching this extended trailer is as much satisfaction as you'd get from watching the film.
“300” is about as violent as “Apocalypto” and twice as stupid. Adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, it offers up a bombastic spectacle of honor and betrayal, rendered in images that might have been airbrushed onto a customized van sometime in the late 1970s...And on the history front:
The Persians, pioneers in the art of facial piercing, have vastly greater numbers — including ninjas, dervishes, elephants, a charging rhino and an angry bald giant — but the Spartans clearly have superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities. They also hew to a warrior ethic of valor and freedom that makes them, despite their gleeful appetite for killing, the good guys in this tale. (It may be worth pointing out that unlike their mostly black and brown foes, the Spartans and their fellow Greeks are white.)...
There are a few combat sequences that achieve a grim, brutal grandeur, notably an early engagement in which the Spartans, hunkered behind their shields, push back against a Persian line, forcing enemy soldiers off a cliff into the water. The big idea, spelled out over and over in voice-over and dialogue in case the action is too subtle, is that the free, manly men of Sparta fight harder and more valiantly than the enslaved masses under Xerxes’ command. Allegory hunters will find some gristly morsels of topicality tossed in their direction, but you can find many of the same themes, conveyed with more nuance and irony, in a Pokémon cartoon....
In time, “300” may find its cultural niche as an object of camp derision, like the sword-and-sandals epics of an earlier, pre-computer-generated-imagery age. At present, though, its muscle-bound, grunting self-seriousness is more tiresome than entertaining. Go tell the Spartans, whoever they are, to stay home and watch wrestling.
Myron of Priene, cited by Athenaeus (XIV, 657 D), specifies the humiliations they were subjected to: they had to wear hats of dog skin (κυνῆ / kunễ) as well as sheep hides (διφθέρα / diphthéra) to distinguish themselves from others. The canine symbolism was clear to the Greeks: that of a servile and cowardly animal. Each year, the Helots were ritually flogged, apparently for no other reason than to affirm their servitude; though it seems that only a small group was actually flogged, symbolically representing the whole Helot population.Sounds peachy to me! I'm sure you'll be volunteering for helotry any day now!
Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus, 28, 8-10) also indicates that they were forced to drink pure wine (which was considered dangerous - wine usually being cut with water) "...and to lead them in that condition into their public halls, that the children might see what a sight a drunken man is; they made them to dance low dances, and sing ridiculous songs..." during syssitia (obligatory banquets)[10]. Conversely, it was reported in the same source that the Thebans ordered a group of Helot prisoners to recite the verses of Alcman and Terpander (national poets of Thebes); the Helots refused, on the grounds that it would displease their masters.
What is more, when the Ephors took office, they routinely declared war on the Helots, (Aristotle cited by Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 28, 7), thereby allowing Spartans to kill them without repercussion. Most of the time, this was done by kryptes, graduates of the difficult agoge who took part in the Crypteia. In 425 BCE, 2,000 Helots were also massacred in a carefully staged event. Thucydides (IV, 80, 4) states:"The Helots were invited by a proclamation to pick out those of their number who claimed to have most distinguished themselves against the enemy, in order that they might receive their freedom; the object being to test them, as it was thought that the first to claim their freedom would be the most high spirited and the most apt to rebel. As many as two thousand were selected accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples, rejoicing in their new freedom. The Spartans, however, soon afterwards did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished." [9]Myron of Priene also indicates that Helots who became too fat were put to death, with their masters fined for letting them get fat.
It doesn't matter what Miller or Snyder intended; 300 is about as beautiful and enlightened as Triumph of the Will.As you know, Triumph of the Will is widely considered, by critics and moviegoers alike, as a masterpiece, despite whatever one thinks of the narrative of the film. Want to talk critical distance? My grandparents and great grandparents escaped the Nazi's during WWII, namely because they feared for their lives as Jews. I've seen the film as part of a class on documentary film. Though the narrative turns my stomach in a very personal manner, I can still be entertained, entranced, and in awe of the film. Sometimes you bring critical distance to the art, sometimes the art brings it to you. 300 is not the New Yorker, but it's also not monster, Monster, MONSTER TRUCKS.
And seriously: why is this piece of trash getting all the hype, when one of the best monster movies in years & years just opened?It's called advertising. For someone who is apparently a professional film critic, you seem completely unaware how the rest of the world finds out about movies.
...Helots could be artisans or tradesmen.Perhaps more on-point, you conveniently omitted the section directly below the "Humiliation" portion you quoted, but I'm not really concerned about that. Probably the most telling point is that the Helots almost never revolted, despite the fact that they outnumbered the Spartans by about 7-1. Authorities seem agreed that the Helots in fact lived well, and moreover were assured of military protection by the best army in Greece. (No one's claiming that serfdom is wonderful, but it's better than slavery. More on that in a second.)
They were required to hand over a predetermined portion of their harvest (ἀποφορά / apophóra), with the helot keeping the surplus... Having paid their tribute, the Helots could often live quite well; the lands of Laconia and Messenia were very fertile, and often permitted two crops per year. A certain amount of wealth was achievable: in 223 BCE, 6000 Helots purchased their freedom for 500 Drachma each, a considerable sum at the time....
Helots lived in family units and could contract unions amongst themselves. This was a significant difference from chattel-slaves, amongst whom contracts, marriages, and family relationships were not legally recognized. Helots were thus much less susceptible to having the family unit dispersed....
According to Myron of Priene, cited by Athenaeus (The Deipnosophists, VI, 271F), the emancipation of Helots was "common"...
The juvenilia starts with a precredit montage that shows us a baby Spartan being put through the warrior mill, pretty much going straight from toilet to battle-training and then emerging, with a fanfare worthy of the Second Coming, as none other than ... King Leonidas, bravest of the brave, strongest of the strong, most washboard of the washboard tummies. Yet what's this we hear? As played by Gerard Butler, damned if the Spartan ruler, from way back in 480 BC, doesn't speak with a pronounced Scottish burr and, when in a quipping mood, seems to be channelling Sean Connery's Bond � oh, let's be generous and just lay it down to royal prerogative.
Anyway, with the barbarians at the gates � Xerxes and his Persian army of millions are knocking hard � Leonidas consults the Oracle for some strategic guidance. The good news: The Oracle is a fabulous babe semi-clad in see-through gossamer. The bad: She's a tad pessimistic about the future. This mixed result drives the King straight into the arms of his Queen (Lena Headey). More good news: The Queen is half-naked too. More bad: She urges hubby to suck it up and act like �a free man.�
So encouraged, he and a mere 300 of his most buffed soldiers, decked out in short battle trunks accessorized by a fetching red cape, march off to face the impossible odds. On this, as on so many other occasions, some windbag narrator keeps popping up in voice-over to tell us what we can plainly see. �Into hell's mouth we march,� intones the windbag. And later, when the going gets tough: �Spartans never retreat, Spartans never surrender.� Later still, when the tough get going: �We do what we were trained to do, born to do, bred to do.� Oh, there's a lot of to-doing, all right.
Soon enough, as the �Asian hordes� show their swarthy and often monstrous faces, the battle is engaged. A warm-up skirmish allows hack-Zack to establish the directorial style he rigidly adheres to throughout the subsequent mayhem: a succession of cramped close-ups featuring plenty of spear-bisected torsos, an ample supply of severed heads, and buckets-full of comic-book splatter, all shot with a striking absence of kinetic rhythm fortified by a superabundance of cheesy slow-mo.
On it goes, then, as the ferocious band of Spartan brothers, with their unflagging camaraderie and their Marine Corps bellowing, hack through vast chunks of the Persian millions. This prompts an annoyed appearance from Xerxes himself (Rodrigo Santoro), looking rather charismatic in his multiple body-piercings and acres of bling (think of a cross between Mr. T and a back-alley fetishist). In a one-on-one powwow with his opposite number, Xerxes offers our beleaguered hero a final chance to cut-and-run, which gives Leonidas a golden chance to steal a line from the Little Bush book of inflated rhetoric: �The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant.�
Of course, thanks to Herodotus, the world also knows that these particular free men were eventually done in by the traitor Ephialtes, personified here as a wickedly deformed hunchback � his breach of national security rendered literally ugly. Happily, back on the home front, the Queen has successfully lobbied for a troop surge, and the rest, more or less, is history. Athenian democracy gets preserved, safe to give birth to its many worthy successors � you know, those shining examples in Rome, in France, in Britain, in America; all with their same warrior codes and their shared trail of blood; all fighting heroically to keep themselves free, even when it meant keeping others enslaved.
Yes, as visual extravaganza go, 300 is woefully stingy, but there's no denying the timeliness of its pro patria mori sermonette. I'm half expecting a still shot of Leonidas to show up on Coach's Corner, with the pugnacious Don fighting a quiver in his voice to extol �such a fine broth of a lad.� A second of hushed silence, then cut to a commercial � preferably that slick recruitment ad for our very own Spartans.
Xerxes sent messengers to all Greek cities offering blandishments if they would submit, and asking for "earth and water" from their soil as a token of their submission. Many smaller states submitted. However, the Athenians threw their envoys into a pit and the Spartans threw theirs into a well, taunting them with the retort, "Dig it out for yourselves"See? Isn't that more badass?
One famous example comes from the time of the invasion of Phillip II. With key Greek city-states in submission, he turned his attention to Sparta and sent a message: "If I win this war, you will be slaves forever". The Spartans sent back a one word reply: "If".
I don’t know about you folks, but I have had it up to here with Hollywood using homosexuality as shorthand for evil. (...) In an interview running in this week’s edition of Entertainment Weekly, 300 director Zack Snyder admits to doing exactly that. According to the article:
The director says that the film’s (homo)sexual undertones were intended to make young straight males in the audience uncomfortable, because “What’s more scary to a 20-year-old boy than a giant god-king who wants to have his way with you?”
Gee, where on earth do you think 20 year old straight guys get the notion that homosexuality is something to be afraid of? It didn’t hurt the box office any, however, as 300 hauled in $70 million which makes it the highest grossing March opening ever.
Oh, joy.
No doubt, Snyder’s homophobic comment will pass largely unnoticed by the mainstream press, but imagine if he had made his villain a hulking black man and said he’d done so because nothing scares white women like a giant black god-king who wants to have his way with you.
I suspect he’d get trashed for a bigot trading in ugly stereotypes which is exactly what he’s doing.
And this is from an earlier interview Snyder did with EW:
"The movie, true to Miller’s vision, is also loaded with sweaty hunks running around in those tight leather Speedos and capes. None of this is played for gay appeal, but could induce snickering among some teens. Snyder shrugs it off. ‘’Some people have said to me, ‘Your movie is homoerotic,’ and some have said, ‘Your movie’s homophobic.’ In my mind, the movie is neither. But I don’t have a problem with people interpreting it the way they’d like to.'’ As long as they buy tickets first.
Why worry about people interpreting your movie as homophobic as long as you get $9 out of the audience, right Zack?
None of this comes as a surprise to us here at AfterElton. Last Monday we ran our article Frank Miller and 300’s Assault on the Gay Past which documented how Miller, upon whose graphic novel the film version of 300 was based, had previously used coded in homophobia in his work, and done so again in 300 while at the same time erasing gays from the historical record. Then we followed that up with our review of the movie by Brian Juergens which confirmed Hollywood was giving us yet another villain whose creepiness was amped up by making him seem gay. Now we’ve got Snyder confirming it was done to really freak out the 20 year old male demographic.
What an ass.
Just how egregious is 300’s offense? Well, given that graphic novel and movie are supposed to be “historical”, you wouldn’t think either would stray all that far from the historical record. You’d be wrong of course. Not only does the film do away with the Spartan’s known homosexual practices, but check out the difference between the actual King Xerxes (300’s villain) and the way he is portrayed in the movie.
Add just in case the creepy, homoerotic subtext isn’t clear enough, how about this.
Yep, nothing says predatory, sinister, and creepy like an effeminate, hairless man dripping in jewlry. I’ll say this for Snyder: at least he admits to what he’s doing.
As for the gay men who can’t wait to see the movie for the eye candy, do yourself a favor and get your candy somewhere else. These people don’t deserve a cent for flinging more homophobic garbage like this at us.
Just how egregious is 300’s offense? Well, given that graphic novel and movie are supposed to be “historical”, you wouldn’t think either would stray all that far from the historical record. You’d be wrong of course. Not only does the film do away with the Spartan’s known homosexual practices, but check out the difference between the actual King Xerxes (300’s villain) and the way he is portrayed in the movie.For the record, 300 makes no attempt to be historical. It does not draw from the historical events directly. Instead, it is unabashedly based on Frank Miller's graphic novel. So, let me help you and AfterElton make a direct comparison of King Xerxes in Frank Miller's work (on the left) and Zack Snyder's work (on the right).
We know little of King Leonidas, so creating a fictitious backstory for him is understandable. Spartan children were, indeed, taken from their mothers and given a martial education called the agoge. They were indeed toughened by beatings and dispatched into the countryside, forced to walk shoeless in winter and sleep uncovered on the ground. But future kings were exempt.Now, aside from a couple of toss-off references to "Cryptiea," I don't remember reading about this in the thread. Of course, we might quibble about whether or not the helots were oppressed "slaves" held down by their cruel masters, or merely goodly "serfs" who benefited from the stability of being lorded over by an armed ruling caste. We might also quibble about whether or not it is appropriate to call ancient Sparta a "brutal apartheid state" from the comfort of our modern perspective -- hell, the much praised Pax Romana was built on a foundation of slaves and boneyards. However, this little factoid does give us some small insight into the nature of the freedoms in the society in question, the freedoms that Leonidas and his fellow hoplites were fighting for.
And had Leonidas undergone the agoge, he would have come of age not by slaying a wolf, but by murdering unarmed helots in a rite known as the Crypteia. These helots were the Greeks indigenous to Lakonia and Messenia, reduced to slavery by the tiny fraction of the population enjoying Spartan "freedom." By living off estates worked by helots, the Spartans could afford to be professional soldiers, although really they had no choice: securing a brutal apartheid state is a full-time job, to which end the Ephors were required to ritually declare war on the helots.
Someday, maybe, the "entertainment defense" will no longer hold water. But for now, we're slogging through the era of the completely implausible denial. Like many films that seem to riff on everything without stooping to make a point (which would be just so hopelessly earnest and dorky), "300" proudly claims to be about nothing. Or rather, like another type of purchased pleasure, it claims to be about anything you want it to be. As long as a movie is dumb and violent enough, it can quote whatever cultural allusion is handy, then deny that it did with impunity.
[7.136] And afterwards, when they were come to Susa into the king's presence, and the guards ordered them to fall down and do obeisance, and went so far as to use force to compel them, they refused, and said they would never do any such thing, even were their heads thrust down to the ground; for it was not their custom to worship men, and they had not come to Persia for that purpose. So they fought off the ceremony; and having done so, addressed the king in words much like the following:-Relating this to current events (although of course this wasn't the intention of the filmmakers), I'd suggest that the position of the US is much more analogous to that of Persia than that of Sparta. Persia was the dominant Great Power of its day, commanding enormous wealth and power, attempting to conquer a peripheral, relatively poor region. Another story from Herodotus, following the Persian defeat at Platea:
"O king of the Medes! the Lacedaemonians have sent us hither, in the place of those heralds of thine who were slain in Sparta, to make atonement to thee on their account."
Then Xerxes answered with true greatness of soul "that he would not act like the Lacedaemonians, who, by killing the heralds, had broken the laws which all men hold in common. As he had blamed such conduct in them, he would never be guilty of it himself. And besides, he did not wish, by putting the two men to death, to free the Lacedaemonians from the stain of their former outrage."
[9.82] It is said that the following circumstance happened likewise at this time. Xerxes, when he fled away out of Greece, left his war-tent with Mardonius: when Pausanias, therefore, saw the tent with its adornments of gold and silver, and its hangings of divers colours, he gave commandment to the bakers and the cooks to make him ready a banquet in such fashion as was their wont for Mardonius. Then they made ready as they were bidden; and Pausanius, beholding the couches of gold and silver daintily decked out with their rich covertures, and the tables of gold and silver laid, and the feast itself prepared with all magnificence, was astonished at the good things which were set before him, and, being in a pleasant mood, gave commandment to his own followers to make ready a Spartan supper. When the suppers were both served, and it was apparent how vast a difference lay between the two, Pausanias laughed, and sent his servants to call to him the Greek generals. On their coming, he pointed to the two boards, and said:-I'm curious whether the New York Review of Books will publish a review. Daniel Mendelsohn (who reviewed Troy and Alexander) has already drawn the parallel between George W. Bush and Xerxes, in this review of United 93 and World Trade Center. He describes Aeschylus' Persians:
"I sent for you, O Greeks, to show you the folly of this Median captain, who, when he enjoyed such fare as this, must needs come here to rob us of our penury."
Set in the imperial capital of Susa, the drama focuses on the grief of the Persian court as it awaits the return of its defeated emperor, Xerxes, following the Greek victory at Salamis. It must be said that to the eyes of anyone who didn't have the personal pleasure of defeating Xerxes' overweening invasion, the pageant of humiliation often feels rather too much like a pageant to be what we think of as great drama. The play consists of a series of fairly static tableaux in which, one after another, anxious courtiers and royals—among them, Xerxes' mother and the ghost of his father, Darius (who, we are meant to understand, was a less foolhardy, sager autocrat)—express their fears about the fate of the Persian army. These tableaux culminate in the appearance of the ill-starred emperor himself, dust-covered, despairing, defeated. ...
You could write a real tragedy, a Greek tragedy, about September 11 and what it has led to—a story with a true Aristotelian arc, a drama with a beginning that leads organically to a middle that leads organically, reasonably, to its inexorable end. This tragedy could, for instance, be about the seemingly inevitable way in which even the greatest empires can be thrown into confusion by a small number of enemies whose ideological fervor makes them unafraid of death. Or it could be about a specific empire, one whose contemptuous refusal to take its enemies seriously has made it deeply vulnerable. Or it could say something about a foolish and unseasoned autocrat whose desire to outshine his more accomplished father has an unfortunate effect on his policymaking, with the result that he ends up seeming even more foolish and unseasoned in comparison to his father. Or it could be about the seemingly irreducible strangeness of the West to the East, and vice versa. Or it could even be a kind of black farce (a genre not strange to Greek tragedy) about the injustices of autocracy—about a ruler so inept that he brings his country to ruin and yet never suffers, personally, for his errors. You could write such a tragedy today and to some people, at least, it might have a larger meaning. But then, someone has already written such a play; it's called Persians.
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posted by Burhanistan at 8:29 PM on March 9, 2007 [4 favorites]