300 Controversy

Reuters reports the Greek spectacle "300" set to reap big numbers. You wouldn't know it to read some of the reviews.

The New York Times' A.O. Scott reviews 300.

“300” is about as violent as “Apocalypto” and twice as stupid.

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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.)

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But not all the Spartans back in Sparta support their king on his mission. A gaggle of sickly, corrupt priests, bought off by the Persians, consult an oracular exotic dancer whose topless gyrations lead to a warning against going to war. And the local council is full of appeasers and traitors, chief among them a sardonic, shifty-eyed smoothy named Theron (Dominic West, known to fans of “The Wire” as the irrepressible McNulty).

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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.

Although the Times review's scathing criticism was difficult to top. somehow Dana Stevens at Slate managed to do so. Dana Stevens has taken the film so seriously, she finds it unconscionable the Director and Producers not paint the movie in a more balanced and politically correct pallet. Stevens is not satisfied with mere critiques about the cinematography or script. She must go much further with wild hyperbole beyond even what I thought were some liberals' most acid-induced dreams:

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.

Hello, Ms. Stevens?... Persians invaded Greece in 480 B.C. Xerxes did not want to simply go on parade with his army. Death and enslavement were a virtual guarantee. Yet, Stevens is not satisfied with simply bashing the movie, she has to attack the viewers, and what she perceives to be their ignorance, as well:

The comic fanboys who make up 300's primary audience demographic aren't likely to get hung up on the movie's historical content, much less any parallels with present-day politics. But what's maddening about 300 (besides the paralyzing monotony of watching chiseled white guys make shish kebabs from swarthy Persians for 116 indistinguishable minutes) is that no one involved—not Miller, not Snyder, not one of the army of screenwriters, art directors, and tech wizards who mounted this empty, gorgeous spectacle—seems to have noticed that we're in the middle of an actual war. With actual Persians (or at least denizens of that vast swath of land once occupied by the Persian empire).

Stevens is aghast that the writers did not take into account her Freudian guilt about not supporting the war, and her clear obsessivenss with Bush and Iraq. I've written more about these writers here. Recall the New York Times article after the Super Bowl, which claimed the commercials were thinly veiled messages to the American public conveying guilt through violence.

Stevens did have some nice words, but quickly adds that Synder and Miller should have considered inserting a senseless "nod" toward antiwar sentiment. Why in God's name would they do that? Do they not have a right to artistic integrity? Isn't that what bleeding-heart liberals always preach?

And visually, 300 is thrilling, color-processed to a burnished, monochromatic copper, and packed with painterly, if static, tableaux vivants. But to cast 300 as a purely apolitical romp of an action film smacks of either disingenuousness or complete obliviousness. One of the few war movies I've seen in the past two decades that doesn't include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment, 300 is a mythic ode to righteous bellicosity.

And if she believes her own drivle here:

Here are just a few of the categories that are not-so-vaguely conflated with the "bad" (i.e., Persian) side in the movie: black people. Brown people. Disfigured people. Gay men (not gay in the buff, homoerotic Spartan fashion, but in the effeminate Persian style). Lesbians. Disfigured lesbians. Ten-foot-tall giants with filed teeth and lobster claws. Elephants and rhinos (filthy creatures both). The Persian commander, the god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is a towering, bald club fag with facial piercings, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a disturbing predilection for making people kneel before him.

Then The Lord of the Rings is the king of all racist, hateful films, is it not? Curiously, the New York Sun also chimed in with many negative comments:

Leonidas had, wrote Herodotus, "proved himself a very good man." No more needed to be said. The Spartan's deeds spoke for themselves. Compared with this, the bombast and bluster of the Miller version is simply tacky, a transformation of history not into myth, but kitsch.

A short aside acknowledging the technical skills employed, but insisting on a less cutting edge approach:

Yes, the manner in which the filmmaker has reproduced the look and feel of Mr. Miller's work is technically impressive (almost all the sets were "virtual"), but "300" would have benefited from concentrating less on the temptations of the digital backlot and more on old-fashioned storytelling.

But Andrew Stuttaford of the Sun makes a statement that contradicts Stevens' proclamation about the necessity for a liberal 'antiwar' them. However, he does try to draw a comparison with the persian's garb as al qaeda/ninja chic. Who are these people? Have they looked at the comic book at all?

The last time Hollywood tackled Thermopylae was "The 300 Spartans" (1962), a blunt Cold War allegory from a time when the threat from the east came from Moscow, not Mecca. This updated version is not so direct. It couldn't be: Mr. Miller's original work predates the fall of the twin towers. But look at the movie a little more closely and the imagery of our current troubles creeps into view, not least in the way some of Xerxes's warriors opt for the Al Qaeda/ninja chic more usually associated with Osama bin Laden's training camps.

Perhaps even more revealing is the way that, like the graphic novel, the movie fails to address the central paradox of Thermopylae: the fact that freedom's most effective defenders cared so little for individual liberty themselves. Of course, in our age of Guantanamo and Jack Bauer, that's a question that still resonates. If Mr. Snyder has chosen to dodge it, he's not the only one.

What really just gets my goat is this: Why can't the movie stand on its own? I am a huge comic book fan. A 'fanboy' to use Ms. Stevens' derogatory rhetoric. I am also a student of history and a movie buff. As I sit here writing this, my 9:15 theater tickets next to me, I'm brimming with anticipation. And why? Because I'm a guy. I like violent movies, they are enjoyable to me. I am well aware what to expect when I see the movie: Swords, slashing, blood, haughty men bragging about their battle prowess - can't I just have that without critics feeling the need to incorporate their mental deficiencies, (possibly brought on by their guilt about deserting the troops in the face of such bold testosterone courage that 300 displays).

Indeed, if 300 blows up, if 300 makes it big, if Americans thoroughly enjoy 300 and praise it, do these liberals not in some way fear it will vindicate the President's bravado?

Who knows? And why bring politics into it?!?!

Hey... they started it.