Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Spartanizing 300

Several weeks ago I got into a discussion about the fascist/militarist tendencies in 300 on the TCJ forum. Now, with the film's opening, the discussion restarted with many of the same things being said once again. Nevertheless, I was tempted to jump back in but was able to resist until someone posted this interesting article about the historical distortions in the film. The following paragraph inspired me to go do a little Photoshop variation of a 300 movie poster:

...it is strongly implied Xerxes is homosexual which, in the moral universe of 300 qualifies him for special freakhood. This is ironic given that pederasty was an obligatory part of a Spartan's education. This was a frequent target of Athenian comedy, wherein the verb "to Spartanize" meant "to bugger."





I'm not sure if it's subversive or merely pubescent (or both?), but I had fun doing it.
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4 comments:

Luke P. said...

Good thing FUFU. I was thinking of starting something up at TCJ about 300 when I returned for real to internet land.
Miller has become exactly what he wrote about in the 80s' - a creepy totalitarian crank. The commercial for 300 is being played, I've noticed, right before Military recruitment ads on cable channels like G4 and SPIKE - channels who target young men.
It's just ridiculaous for Miller not to address the reality of Spartan culture- the guy travelled to Greece, did a bunch of "research" and came up with an EXTREME ( as in Mountain Dew) version of the movie from the 60s' about the same subject.
I understand his over-the-top , Pulp thing, but once you try to bring that into historical fiction, you just look dumb.

March 15, 2007 at 3:15 PM
Human Mollusk said...

Welcome back to internet land, Luke!

March 16, 2007 at 2:15 AM
Aeron said...

I watched a recent documentary on the events that took place around this film and was surprised at many of the things left out or changed in the film. Murdering unarmed slaves as a passage into manhood for example. I was particularly surprised they left out the bridge built by the Persians out of hundreds of ships, that would have made for a good scene in the film but I guess monsters aren't supposed to be good engineers.

March 16, 2007 at 2:31 AM
Luke P. said...

Yeah, it's not even secret history or anything ; it's just wanton, unscrupulous revisionism.

March 17, 2007 at 2:24 PM

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