300: Top Gun in a loincloth
You're going to be hearing a lot of nasty things about 300 in the next couple of days, and let me be the first to tell you: it's much worse than you think. 300 is not just criminally bad, though it is DEFINITELY that. It is not hyperbolic in the least to call it militaristic, fascistic propaganda.
It is frontloaded with the stupidest bumper sticker politics you could ever hope to find this side of Michael Savage, with characters actually mouthing slogans like "freedom isn't free". Yeah, the king of a psychotically brutal slave state vigorously extols the virtues of liberty and "culture" in the face of "tyranny". This comes shortly after we see a ravine filled with tiny skulls, the unlucky victims of a society that murders its underweight babies. It's almost dumbly funny in a campy sort of way.
The movie is suitably anti-intellectual and rife with intentionally conflicting sexual messages. Taking notes from Leni Riefenstahl, 300 is outwardly homophobic but inwardly lusting for cock. Explicitly derisive of anything that has a whiff of teh ghey, King Leonidas mocks Athenians as "boy-lovers" and "philosophers" in the same breath. On the flip side, just in case you didn't get the point that queers are to be reviled, the enemy king is a towering transvestite. At the same time, every Spartan sports an oily super-hero physique that is fresh from a session at the waxing emporium. Lots of thrusting spears and blood geysers. 300 is perfect for the self-hating macho closet-case: it tells Biff what he thinks he wants to hear and shows him what he secretly desires. It plays like a Marines recruitment video, or like Top Gun in a loincloth.
I'm not even going to get into the racism or chest-thumping nationalism on vulgar display, and I'm not going to give it props for the hyperreal CGI and supposedly balletic Peckinpah beauty of this pile of MTV shit. It is a deeply disturbing contemporary Triumph des Willens that is aimed squarely at 14-year olds, and I don't believe for a second the director's claims that he didn't mean it to be exactly that. If I were a betting man, I'd be inclined to wager that this garbage was underwritten by the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence.
By the way, Warner Bros has tapped the director of 300 to make Alan Moore's Watchmen, which is now guaranteed to be a heartbreaking travesty.
[ADDENDUM]
This is written long after the fact, but I've decided to address the issue of race in 300. I've avoided it thus far because I thought the racism was so thumpingly obvious, but after reading reams of reviews, including Neal Stephenson's shockingly obtuse analysis in the New York Times, I see that I'm clearly wrong.
There have been plenty of people to point out that in the world of 300, the Greeks are white and the Persians are largely swarthy folk. But I don't think enough has made of the fact that the Persians are more than simply darker, they are inhuman. Their mini boss is a cave troll, their executioner had bone swords for arms, and beneath the mask of an Immortal is the face of an orc. Xerxes is eight feet tall and sounds like Vader without the wheezing. These pop culture references are no accident; they are exactly the connections director Zack Snyder wants his viewers to draw from the movie. The Persians are the very definition of Edward Said's concept of the Orientalist "Other", and you can't help but feel revulsion at the fact of their existence in this movie. The propagandic qualities of 300 certainly haven't been lost on the Iranians, who are understandably apoplectic over this film, viewing it as an act of overt cultural aggression.
It is frontloaded with the stupidest bumper sticker politics you could ever hope to find this side of Michael Savage, with characters actually mouthing slogans like "freedom isn't free". Yeah, the king of a psychotically brutal slave state vigorously extols the virtues of liberty and "culture" in the face of "tyranny". This comes shortly after we see a ravine filled with tiny skulls, the unlucky victims of a society that murders its underweight babies. It's almost dumbly funny in a campy sort of way.
The movie is suitably anti-intellectual and rife with intentionally conflicting sexual messages. Taking notes from Leni Riefenstahl, 300 is outwardly homophobic but inwardly lusting for cock. Explicitly derisive of anything that has a whiff of teh ghey, King Leonidas mocks Athenians as "boy-lovers" and "philosophers" in the same breath. On the flip side, just in case you didn't get the point that queers are to be reviled, the enemy king is a towering transvestite. At the same time, every Spartan sports an oily super-hero physique that is fresh from a session at the waxing emporium. Lots of thrusting spears and blood geysers. 300 is perfect for the self-hating macho closet-case: it tells Biff what he thinks he wants to hear and shows him what he secretly desires. It plays like a Marines recruitment video, or like Top Gun in a loincloth.
I'm not even going to get into the racism or chest-thumping nationalism on vulgar display, and I'm not going to give it props for the hyperreal CGI and supposedly balletic Peckinpah beauty of this pile of MTV shit. It is a deeply disturbing contemporary Triumph des Willens that is aimed squarely at 14-year olds, and I don't believe for a second the director's claims that he didn't mean it to be exactly that. If I were a betting man, I'd be inclined to wager that this garbage was underwritten by the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence.
By the way, Warner Bros has tapped the director of 300 to make Alan Moore's Watchmen, which is now guaranteed to be a heartbreaking travesty.
[ADDENDUM]
This is written long after the fact, but I've decided to address the issue of race in 300. I've avoided it thus far because I thought the racism was so thumpingly obvious, but after reading reams of reviews, including Neal Stephenson's shockingly obtuse analysis in the New York Times, I see that I'm clearly wrong.
There have been plenty of people to point out that in the world of 300, the Greeks are white and the Persians are largely swarthy folk. But I don't think enough has made of the fact that the Persians are more than simply darker, they are inhuman. Their mini boss is a cave troll, their executioner had bone swords for arms, and beneath the mask of an Immortal is the face of an orc. Xerxes is eight feet tall and sounds like Vader without the wheezing. These pop culture references are no accident; they are exactly the connections director Zack Snyder wants his viewers to draw from the movie. The Persians are the very definition of Edward Said's concept of the Orientalist "Other", and you can't help but feel revulsion at the fact of their existence in this movie. The propagandic qualities of 300 certainly haven't been lost on the Iranians, who are understandably apoplectic over this film, viewing it as an act of overt cultural aggression.