"There's no reason we can't be civilized. Is there?"

[elfs]

So, I went and saw 300 tonight with j5nn5r tonight. It is a manly movie, about manly men doing the manliest of things. It has good humor, for its moments, but it is mostly a ballet of blood, of warriors in the thick of battle showing the difference between a disciplined army and a rout.

I tried, I really did, to see the political in it, and I failed. You can't make a movie about Thermopylae and deny that the Greeks were pale and the armies of the east weren't. Xerxes was a decadent SOB, but hey, so he was in real life. Yes, the movie was over the top in its goriness. Yes, it out-woos John Woo for it's fast/slow/fast illustrations of battle and gore. And it has more severed heads than a good Freddy film.

But the movie's heroes are dedicated to reason and nobility, two qualities that do not lend themselves to the Bush administration, or the U.N., or to any govermental entity currently stalking the Earth. In the end, 300 is a paean to doing what is right and just. It had nothing to do with your sexuality or your politics.

The camera work is beautiful. The men are handsome. The Virtual Studios work is amazing. The choreography is freakin' gorgeous. It's a manly film. Go see it.

Comments

[ibsulon.livejournal.com]

wait...

Sparta... who was much closer to the Soviet Union than freedom and reason loving Athens (though the whole citizen distinction is not lost on me there)

Sparta... who in the movie denegrates Athenians for being boy-lovers when the exact opposite prejudice can be found -- in fact, there is more than one alligation that the Spartans were a mainly homosexual/bisexual (I won't say gay as that implies much more than I wish) culture as the boys entering the army were given a mentor - and part of that relationship was sexual.

Sparta... which looked surprisingly like American masculinity and Persia somehow takes on the characteristics of feminity? (Forget decadent.. that man was a drag queen!) Oh - and how about the depiction of the lesbians when tempting the hunchback?

Or the scene in front of the council? "Freedom is not free?" I remember one advertizement calling it the west's first battle for freedom.

All I'm saying is that it's perpetrating some very proto-American memes while using as contrast the ancestor to a country currently in rising conflict with the United States.

[themassivebri.livejournal.com]

Sparta... who in the movie denegrates Athenians for being boy-lovers when the exact opposite prejudice can be found -- in fact, there is more than one alligation that the Spartans were a mainly homosexual/bisexual (I won't say gay as that implies much more than I wish) culture as the boys entering the army were given a mentor - and part of that relationship was sexual.

this was pretty well hashed in the comics. a possible interpretation is that the Spartans were looking down on the Athenians for being boy-lovers, because the Spartans were _men_-lovers.

as for mainly homo/bisexual, little Spartans had to come from somewhere, but I believe there is extensive documentation that women in that time were largely considered baby-machines, and it wouldn't surprise me that pleasure taking was a male thing, to be done with other males.