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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Wretchard: viewing 300 through postmodern lenses |
| 2007-03-12 |
Armed Liberal at Winds of Change is planning to watch the movie 300 and, reading the reviews, was horrified to discover that "Kenneth Turan of the LA Times was the only one who 'got' the historical context of Thermopylae". Could it be? One of WOC's links was to Dana Stevens at Slate, who posed this objection to the movie:If 300, the new battle epic based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, had been made in Germany in the mid-1930s, it would be studied today alongside The Eternal Jew as a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war. ... I have no idea whether 300 is a good movie, but Steven's review is an entertaining example of how all events, including those which happened nearly 500 years BC, must be judged according to prisms of contemporary political correctness. Miller had to remember, for example, "that we're in the middle of an actual war". Did he not realize his duty to denounce it? But what if Miller had made a movie about the fight against Hitler? Would it have been necessary to remind the audience that Hitler was a nonsmoking, animal-loving, vegetarian artist? Or had he remade Zulu to include some white faces among Prince Dabulamanzi's impis? The most interesting thing about those who habitually denounce ethnocentricity and cultural blindness is that they are not without such sentiments themselves, the difference being that their cultural point of view is rooted in the mid-20th century, rather than say, ancient Lacedaemonia. Now I'm truly surprised that nobody 'gets' the background of 300. Everybody knows it deals with what happened to Hercules after his epic battle with Maciste on his way to a rematch with Conan. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #6 " some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment" Why? Idiot reviewer, in case you didn't notice, it was : a) A reproduction of a very stylized story telling artform, namely the comic book, writ large as the "Graphic Novel" by Miller. Its every bit as limiting as is Chinese opera or Kabuki theater in style and content. b) It was told from the viewpoint of the Spartans, because thats what we have, thanks to Herodotus and other historians of their time. Liberals liek the reviewer may want to present the ideals of a slave driven army of slaves led by a king who considers himself to be a diety, but this movie presents the side of the good guys unabashedly. There is non-negotiable good and evil in the world, and if you are a good person you should want good to win. Deal with it. c) The "bellicosity" belongs there because that is what the Spartans are: Warriors. So of course there arent going to be antiwar sentiments. DUH! Spartans glory in battle and death in battle for a ust cause was the highest form of acheivement for a Spatan. Directed to the original reviewer: The Spartans, like warriors now, look forward to a battle for ideals, like freedom. Then again you pantywaisted liberals just never seem to understand that some ideas ARE worth fighting and dying for, no matter how hopeless the cost. "Better to die a free man on my feet than live a slave on my knees" - that may as well be encrypted for all the understanding you have of it. THAT ideal is what drove the Spartans, and THAT ideal is what you don't get. You better pray to God (and yes He is there whether you believe it or not) that such men continue to exist - for the day they do not is the day this republic dies. And that will be the day you effite snobs get driven to slavery or put up against the wall for execution, by those who are held off by our modern Spartans. /spit |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2007-03-12 23:11 |
| #5 Very disappointing. I thought it was about My car. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2007-03-12 22:27 |
| #4 A lot of movie reviewers are little more than gossip columnists in drag. Sometimes literally. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-03-12 21:12 |
| #3 at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment Dana, you get no nods! |
| Posted by: Clinesing Bucket8193 2007-03-12 17:08 |
| #2 Well, it was bad history,(for example there were always 2 kings in Sparta, the Ephors were a 5 man ruling council, not corrupt leprous old lechers running an oracular temple, and the oracle herself was in Delphi not Sparta,) but it was fun to watch Middle Eastern slavers driven forward by whips to their just desserts at the hands of a relative handful of elite trained warriors. That part was true enough. On the whole a wonderful metaphor for today and what must be done. |
| Posted by: imoyaro 2007-03-12 13:19 |
| #1 300 is a mythic ode to righteous bellicosity. They teach ya that one in Film Critics 101, Dana? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-03-12 11:45 |