300

[Gromnir]

oh and btw, since this not seem to be understood, Gromnir gots no problem with pro-bush folks or anti-bush people taking the message of 300 for their own. good art inspires. no doubt miller would be proud if he saw so many disparate peoples and groups adopting his message as their own.

 

the problem we got is your notion that some elements in 300 were so "obvious" political motivated. bull. you is seeing what you wish to, which is your prerogative... but suggesting that snyder or miller were adding material to promote a political agenda Obviously to support some political pov is the stuff o' conspiracy theories

[Azarkon]

Promote a political agenda? No. Angling for political reaction? Yes.

 

Big difference. Both the release time of 300 and the additions to it by Snyder encourage political interpretations. One might even argue that Miller was angling for political reaction in his original writing, though obviously not of the same kind since he was writing in the 1990's. No one's accusing Miller of writing propaganda, or Snyder of changing Miller's work so as to create propaganda. Those are your strawmans and remain so, I'm afraid.

 

actually, no. 300 had an anti-establishment message long before bush became President and that message actually exists beyond politics. even miller has admitted that his works got a strong pro-liberty and anti-establishment message... but assume for a moment that xerxes is representative of no more than xerxes. great. how does that change our observations o' 300 insofar as basic themes is concerned? not at all... which is exactly why the anti-establishment folks love miller. you still got the vigilante freedom fighter flaunting the law to go off and get himself killed in a fight with a seemingly unbeatable tyrant. freedom is worth fighting for. freedom is worth dying for. change the names and dress up bush in xerxes garb or bush garb (HA!) and the core story not change a bit. heck, change the title to TDKR and you still got same message. you quibble over which character symbolizes what nation or leader, but you ignore the gosh darned story.

 

Come on, Gromnir, your reading skills can't be that bad. I didn't say that 300 didn't have an anti-establishment message. I said that message is relevant to our argument only insofar as you can argue that 300 being anti-establishment negates its ability to be read as pro-bush (hence, you gotta cast bush as The Man and not as the vigilante). Here, you keep flaunting the fact that it's a vigilante freedom fighter going after a tyrant (must be pro-liberty and therefore anti-bush, right?), without realizing that 1) vigilantism has never been considered liberal - indeed, it's most often associated with conservatism and 2) there's something very different between a work like 300 and a work like Sin City, even if the basic message Miller's trying to get across (it's freedom-loving heroes fighting against the Man, man!) is the same.

 

Take Sin City, which is pure anti-establishment. The work depicts a corrupt future, American decadence, oppression from the government and people in high places. It's all internalized within a single culture - there is no "Other" to speak of, only the corruption so deeply ingrained in society that man's gotta become criminal to uproot. Now take 300. The basic message (free men vs. tyrant) appears to be the same, until you realize that it's got a basic national and cultural divide. This isn't just about some vigilante Spartan trying to kill the tyrant at home anymore. This is about some Spartan king, who, though he is part of the establishment, is not corrupt but is instead a symbol of freedom and reason who'd take his fight to the enemy and in so doing inspire his nation to follow. Immediately the message changes, even if Miller didn't intend it to. 300, like it or not, is an epic - it's the birth of Western civilization and reason and its struggle against those who would destroy it. You can't get away from this message in 300.

 

Course, it's pretty dense to argue that Miller was trying to be racist or ethnocentric about peoples 2000 years ago, but its theme of Us vs. Them is precisely what makes 300 different from Sin City in its power to inspire political parallels. You take the basic anti-establishment message, mix in some nationalistic comparisons between Sparta and America, cast Bush as the symbol of freedom and reason, and suddenly its interpretation is pro-bush. Obviously this isn't what Miller intended, but my point is that you don't have to go at it very hard to make the connection because the basic story *is* an epic about a civilization's identity. You can't tell me that 300 would be the same story if Leonidas were Persian and he were fighting against Xerxes all the same. This has got nothing to do with your "oh chrissakes one o' your points is the enemy has brown-skin" schtick. Reverse the situation (Xerxes is leading 300 against Leonidas), and you'd have the same epic except relevant to opposite cultures. The key is that Xerxes and Leonidas aren't the *same* culture, nation, or civilization. That's also the divisive point between 300 and Sin City.

 

So yea, 300 has an anti-establishment message, but that anti-establishment message is also a message about national survival and identity. Strip Xerxes of his position as god-king of the Persian Empire, garb him in Spartan, and you have a totally different story. It's not the same as Sin City, TDKR, Give Me Liberty, or any of Miller's other works about the corruption within. In 300, Miller creates a nation built upon freedom and reason, makes its king a hero, and has him fight all the barbaric, freedom-hating, mysticism-loving hordes of Asia. That sure sounds like the same anti-establishment message as a criminal going up against a politician, yeah.

 

You're not making a very effective argument if your point is that 300 is the same anti-establishment story Miller's been writing since he started. It's not - the reaction, in terms of political interpretations, to 300 and to Sin City is most definitely not the same.

Edited March 13, 2007 by Azarkon

[Azarkon]

Oh, and the suggestion that I'm using circular argument for the release time argument is laughable. One does not have to don tinfoil hats in order to see that a film about 300 Greeks (popularly held as the cradle of Western civilization) standing against the vast hordes of the Persian empire (roughly present-day Iran in terms of geography), in a battle that would determine the survival of Hellenistic culture, would spark political interpretations. It has nothing to do with whether the film can be interpreted as pro-bush, and everything to do with whether Hollywood intentionally base release times on political context. You already have my evidence for that (Munich, Kingdom of Heaven, etc.).

Edited March 13, 2007 by Azarkon

[astr0creep]

Perhaps it is because I am unfamiliar with the works of Miller, which prohibits me from comparing these with the film and allows me to first and foremost analyse 300 as a piece of cinematography rather than a comic book adaptation.

 

But I really enjoyed this movie.

 

 

A political statement? Aside from being a war movie in a time of war I really can't make comparisons to the present world situation.

At its core it is the same Hollywood recipe, used for a hundred years to promote American values. Every single Hollywood film ever made(with very few exceptions) use the same very basic premise: An individual or small group of individuals facing unfavorable odds against an oppressor. In drama, comedy, action, horror, sci-fi, the recipe is always the same.

 

300 is no different.

 

[Azarkon]

That's not just a Hollywood recipe. That's a general recipe for whenever you have a protagonist vs. antagonist story, since you always want the audience to sympathize with the underdogs.

 

It's the details and the timing that make this movie especially prone to political interpretation, though I don't think anyone here is saying that it's a political statement or politically motivated (as much as Gromnir would like to accuse me of saying it).

Edited March 13, 2007 by Azarkon

[Gromnir]

and again, if you looks hard 'nuff at the grilled cheese sandwich you will see whatever the heck you want. you donned your tinfoil hat and somehow turned this flick into a movie 'bout the middle-east situation, and then you takes individual details out of context to show that the movie is a vehicle for political propaganda. you hinge so much on the release time of movie, but for that to have any relevance at all we gotta accept that this is indeed a movie with a political agenda, which you prove by pointing out when the movie were released... hilarious circular nonsense. sin city made money. next thing you know, another non-dc miller story is turned into a movie. conspiracy fodder?

 

again, Gromnir can point out individual details in 300 to prove it were a smurf rip-off, and to do so we do not have to ignore the core message o' 300. hell, to try and show that 300 ain't 'bout resisting The Man and the value o' personal freedom, you contrast to ANOTHER miller anti-establishment work. HA! at best you maybe conclude that 300 is less anti-establishment than sin city? more fantastic logic.

 

*chuckle*

 

a small group o' freedom fighters spit in the eye o' the law, of the establishment and they go off to fight a hopeless battle to defend their homelend from a foreign tyrant/superpower. they willingly sacrifice their lives 'cause they is fighting for their freedom and their children's freedom. no matter what you see in the added material (more than simple boosting of run-time and giving the female lead something to do,) it don't change the core story a bit. surely any person not bedecked in tinfoil hats is gonna realize that the basic story o' 300 makes it unsuited as a pro bush propaganda piece 'bout the middle-east conflict. but hey, ignore the story and focus on fact that 300 takes place in greece (not the middle-east) which is the cradle o modern democracy... 'cause somehow that detail, stretched a bit, makes leonidas a stand in for bush?

 

HA!

 

ignore the story and hang on some o' those all important details instead.

 

and suggesting that a vigilante anti-establishment is part o' the bush conservative platform is nuts... simply identify that vigilante is typically placed on the right-wing side of the spectrum is more of your bad logic, 'cause you complete ignore just how far to the right o' mainstream consevative thinking the vigilante bit is... which is why even undergrad political science courses is gonna point out to you that the left v. right spectrum is actually a circle, with extreme right and left eventually meeting.

 

regardless, astro is essenially correct in that this is same stuff we see from hollywood over the years... but that not go far 'nuff. 'cause in point o' fact, 300 gots the same basic heroic elements as beowulf had, and that were the first bit o' english writing, and not much 'bout the modern hero story has changed since then... other than the addition o' romance, which is exactly what snyder had to add to 300, 'cause 300 were a stripped down hero story. for chrissakes, you might as well prove to us that lotr were released as part o' a pro-bush propaganda campaign, 'cause it gots similar elements. and the details is even more us v. them heavy... not hard to makes middle-east fanatics a good stand-in for sauron's army... probably easier than the extreme gymnastics you is using to make leonidas into bush... though you admit that bush could just as easily stand in for xerxes, which should make OBVIOUS that your suggestion that 300 is political ain't quite as OBVIOUS as you thought.

 

sin city made money. next thing you know, another non-dc miller story is turned into a movie. conspiracy? do you perhaps read some editorial at The Onion and maybe failed to see the joke? put away the tinfoil hat and eat the sandwich rather than trying to figure out what sort o' political agenda the toasted bread and melty cheese might be hiding. sometimes a sandwich is just a sandwich.

 

of all the movies for the crackpots to latch onto as proof o' pro bush propaganda, 300 is particularly ill-suited, precisely because, as you concede, bush could just as easily stand in for xerxes if you assume a political motivation into the production. for your conspiracy to gain legs, we now gotta assume that the makers o' 300 were so incompetent that they would not have realized how the message o' 300 would undermine their aim to create a pro-bush political piece. 'course that seems unlikely considering miller's history with critics and fans. propaganda ain't never as subtle and as ambiguous as azar seems to believe, 'cause if people don't GET IT, then your propaganda failed... and what would be the point then?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[astr0creep]

When I think about it, there are many more comparisons to be made between Bush and Xerxes than Bush and Leonidas.

Simply set the story in Iraq for example.

 

Meh. I like grilled sandwiches.

 

HA! Good sandwich!

Edited March 13, 2007 by astr0creep

[Gromnir]

When I think about it, there are many more comparisons to be made between Bush and Xerxes than Bush and Leonidas.

Simply set the story in Iraq for example.

 

Meh. I like grilled sandwiches.

 

HA! Good sandwich!

 

 

grilled cheese sandwiches IS comfort food... so maybe Gromnir used the image of the sandwich purposefully to further bend your mind to our will... soften you up with the fond memories related to eating grilled cheese sandwiches as a kid.

 

conspiracy.

 

btw, Gromnir thinks that azas biggest mistake is mistaking the director/producer desire to make 300 a tad more pc, with pro-bush propaganda. should be obvious how far the two is apart... but maybe not. the villains in 300, the comic, is all dark-skinned or crippled. no doubt the producers were aware of how such a thing could irritate a % of viewers. so make leonidas nicer to the hunchback, and add a white bad-guy, and makes xerxes a decadent ruler who gots mutants and monsters in his army as 'posed to simply being a tall black man.

 

is kinda funny. the folks who make 300 add in some minor pc alterations, and now they somehow gots a small % o' people who thinks such changes makes the movie a pro-bush vehicle.... when they were probaly genuinely worried that people would come away seeing bush as xerxes. a zero-sum gain. made film easier to swallow for minorities and handicap, but now you got the anti-bush lobby riled up. no-win.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[astr0creep]

When I think about it, there are many more comparisons to be made between Bush and Xerxes than Bush and Leonidas.

Simply set the story in Iraq for example.

 

Meh. I like grilled sandwiches.

 

HA! Good sandwich!

 

 

grilled cheese sandwiches IS comfort food... so maybe Gromnir used the image of the sandwich purposefully to further bend your mind to our will... soften you up with the fond memories related to eating grilled cheese sandwiches as a kid.

 

conspiracy.

 

btw, Gromnir thinks that azas biggest mistake is mistaking the director/producer desire to make 300 a tad more pc, with pro-bush propaganda. should be obvious how far the two is apart... but maybe not. the villains in 300, the comic, is all dark-skinned or crippled. no doubt the producers were aware of how such a thing could irritate a % of viewers. so make leonidas nicer to the hunchback, and add a white bad-guy, and makes xerxes a decadent ruler who gots mutants and monsters in his army as 'posed to simply being a tall black man.

 

is kinda funny. the folks who make 300 add in some minor pc alterations, and now they somehow gots a small % o' people who thinks such changes makes the movie a pro-bush vehicle.... when they were probaly genuinely worried that people would come away seeing bush as xerxes. a zero-sum gain. made film easier to swallow for minorities and handicap, but now you got the anti-bush lobby riled up. no-win.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Not to mention all the GAY references! I mean WOW!

[Gromnir]

"Not to mention all the GAY references! I mean WOW! "

 

what is REALLY funny is that in spite of some anti-gay comments in 300, we bets that every gay male in the country is gonna buy 300 as soon as it becomes avilable on dvd. after all, 300 is like 2 hours o' soft core gay pr0n, with high production values.

 

...

 

300 gots one valuable side-benefit. any woman that oggled at 300 cannot now justifiably criticize men who watches such stuff as... dunno, what is the current equivalent o' baywatch? a movie with 300 oiled up guys wearing speedos... and yet we not yet heard one woman criticizing how those poor men were being objectified and degraded.

 

tsk

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hurlshort]

I guess Iran is pretty ticked off about the Persian portrayal in 300. I feel like someone should inform them that most Americans are not educated enough to make the connection between current day Iran and ancient Persia.

[Oerwinde]

Wasn't ancient persia totally decadent and freaky anyway, they just pushed it to the extreme in 300?

 

Also, I still can't get over Faramir being so freaking huge in that movie.

Edited March 13, 2007 by Oerwinde

[Azarkon]

Gromnir, you're still acting like I'm accusing 300 of being a propaganda film, when I clearly said I did not in the last 3-4 posts. You ignore my points, my words, my logic, my explanations... All to latch onto this one idea, which might or might not be some past argument you've had with someone else on another board, or simply the result of pent-up rage as you were reading "nutjob" critics' reviews, that I'm trying to weave a conspiracy theory around 300 being a pro-bush propaganda film designed to build support for the troop surge. If I were a tad more cynical, I'd think that you were trying to divert attention from an argument where you've got nothing more to say because you realized you've misunderstood me from day 1 and didn't want to admit it.

 

The only relevant response in your entire last post is to point out that vigilantism is an extreme form of conservatism that most conservatives don't believe in... Other than that there's not a single point worth responding to as I've addressed them all before. What, Leonidas can't stand for Bush because he can also stand for Xerxes under a different reading? Who made that rule in cinematic interpretation? Your arguments only work if you were against someone who claimed that the film was intended to be a political allegory of the current administration and that this was its only valid interpretation. I never argued such a thing.

 

Once again, to recap:

 

*Can* Leonidas be interpreted as Bush, and the film used to argue for Bush's foreign policy? Yes.

*Must* Leonidas be interpreted as Bush, and the film used to argue for Bush's foreign policy, because these were what was intended? No.

Is it a far stretch to interpret Leonidas as Bush - one that only nutjobs with an agenda could possibly come up with? No.

Was Miller's original *as* privy (relative to the film) to such an interpretation? No.

Did Snyder add material that, intentionally or not, gave more support to such an interpretation, or at least emphasized the film's political relevance? Yes.

Finally, could Snyder have done what he did to promote sales and add publicity to the film? Yes.

 

There is no faulty logic in what I'm arguing. There *is* faulty logic in your imagined adversary's argument, who happens to be named "azar," and who happens to be trying to prove that 300 is a pro-bush propaganda film which was released to coincide with the troop surge so as to boost national morality. But the two - as I said - are not the same. You trying to cast me off as a nutjob because of something I didn't say is a cute ploy, but it doesn't make for good discussion, as after the fifth post stating that I'm not interested in arguing that 300 is propaganda - and you ignoring that statement - you're basically debating with your imaginary opponent, and not me.

 

So I see two choices here. Either you stop arguing with your imaginary friend azar, or you declare victory because I'm bored of talking to myself. No doubt this, too, will be twisted in some way once your reply comes - perhaps further proof that "azar" is a circular logic-employing, tinfoil hat-wearing, 180-turning anti-bush nutjob - but at least it'll save me the trouble of having to butt in on your conversation with "azar the strawman" every now and again just to prevent you from having the last word. You can have the last word, because as far as I observe, you're not even responding to me anymore.

 

Your move.

[Sand]

I think you guys are reading too much into it. Its an fictional action movie based on a comic boo... um, graphic novel, which was very loosely on a historical event. Don't be making mountains out of mole hills as the saying goes.

[Gromnir]

poor azar. is not like he claims that 300 is pro-bush propaganda, per se, but he Does see the added material as being OBVIOUSLY politically motivated, and over and over he explains how leonidas can very easily stand in for bush and how the timing o' release somehow proves that 300 is mid-east allegory, or some such nonsense.

 

...

 

yeah, you is really being misrepresented... and don't even get started on the logic bit, 'cause you clearly abandoned that route early in this thread. tell us again 'bout the conspiracy theory you got 'bout timing o' 300 release adn Gromnir will be able to devote an entire page o' material illuminating all the logic fallacies and bass ackwards reasoning.

 

"What, Leonidas can't stand for Bush because he can also stand for Xerxes under a different reading? Who made that rule in cinematic interpretation?"

 

loosen up the tifoil hat. sure you can see into 300 whatever the hell you wish... just as Gromnir can argue that miller ripped off the smurfs. you gonna go the pure subjective route... claim that there ain't no way you can be wrong 'cause it is all just subjective interpretation? HA! that is a slippery slope indeed, and pretty much kills the last few pages of your contribution to this thread, but go for it if you wish

[Sand]

 

Its just a movie.

 

[Gromnir]

I think you guys are reading too much into it. Its an fictional action movie based on a comic boo... um, graphic novel, which was very loosely on a historical event. Don't be making mountains out of mole hills as the saying goes.

 

that is precisely Gromnir's point. people has been reading political agenda and content into miller writings for a long time... and virtually all of it is imaginary... is people seeing what they wish to.

 

the crazy thing is that azar comes to a conclusion

[Sand]

Okay then... I'm glad we agree.

[Azarkon]

poor azar. is not like he claims that 300 is pro-bush propaganda, per se, but he Does see the added material as being OBVIOUSLY politically motivated

 

Wrong.

 

, and over and over he explains how leonidas can very easily stand in for bush

 

True.

 

and how the timing o' release somehow proves that 300 is mid-east allegory, or some such nonsense.

 

Wrong.

 

tell us again 'bout the conspiracy theory you got 'bout timing o' 300 release adn Gromnir will be able to devote an entire page o' material illuminating all the logic fallacies and bass ackwards reasoning.

 

Conspiracy theory? Hollywood releasing a movie about the historical West vs. the historical Middle-East in a time of tension between the two places, in a bid to sell more tickets by being "politically relevant," is now considered conspiracy theory?

 

You should try to explain why so many West vs. Middle-East movies were released during the last five years, then.

 

loosen up the tifoil hat. sure you can see into 300 whatever the hell you wish... just as Gromnir can argue that miller ripped off the smurfs. you gonna go the pure subjective route... claim that there ain't no way you can be wrong 'cause it is all just subjective interpretation? HA! that is a slippery slope indeed, and pretty much kills the last few pages of your contribution to this thread, but go for it if you wish

Edited March 14, 2007 by Azarkon

[Sand]

Why make any interpretations of the movie anyway? What is wrong just watching a good action flick then forgetting about it?

[Gromnir]

gotta love reply/quote. that way you not answer the post, but instead respond to sippets... mostly we see that you rest on notion o' mid-east v. west, with leonidas somehow standing in for bush simply 'cause he represents west (HA!) or somesuch nonsense... but this bit really took cake.

 

"Lord of the Rings, another film you brought up as a possible candidate for the same sort of "political foolery," did not receive nearly as much flak, either among major critics or the average netizen."

 

 

HHHHAAAA!!!!

 

we gotta thank you for that bit son... made our day to get such a laugh, though we did stop reading at that point. you gots a mighty selective memory, and maybe a streak o' narcissism to deal with if you think lotr, book and/or movie got less political commentary.

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps how many copies o' 300 were floating 'round previous to last couple months? you mention the debate raised by 300 previous to release, but most o' that were relying on as shallow an interp as you got: simple west v. mid-east. why? 'cause aside from the comick book geeks, nobody really knew the miller 300 story, and the miller fans were, as we has said til we is blue in face, near unanimous in acknowledgment that 300 were an anti-establishment tale that made bush looks bad IF you were to make 300 a political allegory.... which, as you may recall, is reason why you keep bringing up the ADDED material for your support.

 

*shakes head sadly*

 

we been going so long that you forgot how you got started.

 

HA!

Edited March 14, 2007 by Gromnir

[Azarkon]

we gotta thank you for that bit son... made our day to get such a laugh, though we did stop reading at that point. you gots a mighty selective memory, and maybe a streak o' narcissism to deal with if you think lotr, book and/or movie got less political commentary.

 

The films, which is what I'm talking about, did have less. Go to rottentomatoes.com and count the number of critics who mention politics in their review of 300, and compare that to LOTR. LOTR had an almost unanimously positive record, whereas half of 300's bad reviews were complaints about its political and moral messages.

 

Then feel free to look at the aicn.com thread for 300 and compare it to the aicn.com thread for FOTR.

 

Selective memory and narcissism's got nothing to do with it. Tolkien's work has been read for far longer and there *is* a group of critics who latch onto topics like racist undertones and political allegory. I should know - I had to research nearly the entirety of it. The difference is that most of these comparisons are pretty flimsy and required a good deal of effort to support. Take the WW2 allegory, for instance - you couldn't come up with that yourself unless you knew the context under which Tolkien was writing. You might notice that Hitler and Sauron were both trying to dominate the world, but other than that the obvious connections end. This is also why when the films were released, only a few popular critics and netizens actually thought there was anything there - because with Tolkien you had to dig deep for the evidence. You couldn't just make some random crap about Sauron = Hitler and expect it to make any sense - such a comparison maybe valid, in the end, but Tolkien made an actual effort to disconnect the two.

 

The difference with 300 is that you don't have to go very deep to find parallels, and that's why every other garage critic is doing it. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to realize that a story about the conflict between the West and the Middle-East is *gasp* actually a story about the conflict between the West and the Middle-East. It doesn't take a propagandist to realize that it's the Persians who are dehumanized, and the Spartans who are deified. And it doesn't take a subtle critic to realize that some politically isolated king spouting off about "freedom," "never surrender," "we need more soldiers," and "we stand for all that is rational and free in this world" might hold a parallel or two with a modern president, especially when he stands against arabic religious fanatics led by a self-proclaimed god. If Sauron spotted a moustache, or started talking about how his orcs needed living space and how the elves were to blame for the world's problems, that'd be the equivalent in LOTR - the comparisons are skin deep.

 

Skin deep... Which also means that if you look hard enough at them, discuss them with enough depth, they fall apart - because in the end there is no message and no political allegory other than the obvious one - which is that 300 is an epic about the triumph and identity of Western civilization and its values. This doesn't mean that the comparisons and the parallels aren't there - they are - it just means that they don't add up to something as insidious and subtle as a hidden agenda, propaganda, message, or whatever the hell you want to call it.

 

Throughout this thread you've been operating under the impression that I'm calling the film out for pro-bush propaganda. I know that's why you keep bringing up the Miller fanbase because you want to prove that the only political allegory 300 can be is anti-bush. And of course all of this is very silly because I never said that 300 was pro-bush propaganda, or that we even needed to look at it as some sophisticated political allegory. It is neither. All that I'm saying, and what you've been missing all this time, is that 300 is a film where a variety of factors (ie the political context into which it is released, its imagery, its dialogue, Snyder's choice of filler, its pre-release buzz, etc.) combine to make the film especially attractive and amenable to political commentary and comparison. I might've added a point or two about Miller's personal politics (in response to people who thought he was purely libeal) and talked at some length about the effect of Snyder's additions, but those are besides the point.

 

In the larger picture, just as you are defending Miller from the accusation that his work is politically motivated, I am, I suppose, defending critics from the accusation that they're reading too deeply into the work. They're not, because everything is on the surface: the comparisons are skin deep and can be picked up by anyone, even those who don't bother trying. In fact, the best critics who do look deep enough see absolutely nothing worth talking about - it's just a bunch of pointless political comparisons that go nowhere because the work is about as deep as the characters are shallow. When you start seeings things from the angle of how easily the work lends itself to political parallels and comparsions, based on the factors I mentioned, and stop thinking about whether these parallels and comparisons are actually intended or serves some nefarious political purpose, is when you start seeing things as I do. The difference, ironically enough, between someone who posts about how 300 is a political allegory and someone who says that it's not might simply be that the person who thought it was political allegory hasn't looked deeply enough.

 

In other words - it's not that I forgot how I got started, it's that you didn't understand where I was to begin with.

Edited March 14, 2007 by Azarkon

[metadigital]

Oh, and the suggestion that I'm using circular argument for the release time argument is laughable. One does not have to don tinfoil hats in order to see that a film about 300 Greeks (popularly held as the cradle of Western civilization) standing against the vast hordes of the Persian empire (roughly present-day Iran in terms of geography), in a battle that would determine the survival of Hellenistic culture, would spark political interpretations. It has nothing to do with whether the film can be interpreted as pro-bush, and everything to do with whether Hollywood intentionally base release times on political context. You already have my evidence for that (Munich, Kingdom of Heaven, etc.).

I'm not sure why you are taking (or at least emphasizing) this interpretation; actually, the more relevant comparison (and one that has been made previously) is about the hubris of a superpower and the valiant sacrifice (for a principle) of a small group of independents.

 

To quote Tom Holland's Persian Fire, which is the narrative historical analysis of the era (well, this is the marketing blurb on the back cover):

In the fifth century BC, a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the most powerful man on the planet is as heart-stopping as any episode in history.

 

About a hundred years later, at the end of the Peloponnesian Wars (with the Spartan hegemony against the Athenians), the Spartans borrowed money, equipment and men from a Persian satrap (in the modern Dardanelles, where the Athenians had a strategic base of operations for their food supplies from the Black Sea). It seems that the idea died with those martyrs ...

 

As an aside, the Spartans were regarded as peculiar by the other Greek city-states not because they had slaves (everyone did), but because they had Greek slaves (the Helots were neighbours they forcefully indentured). That, and Spartan women were equally as free in society as the men (and no chores to do, so they were more administrators of the household).

 

Once again, to recap:

 

*Can* Leonidas be interpreted as Bush, and the film used to argue for Bush's foreign policy? Yes.

*Must* Leonidas be interpreted as Bush, and the film used to argue for Bush's foreign policy, because these were what was intended? No.

Is it a far stretch to interpret Leonidas as Bush - one that only nutjobs with an agenda could possibly come up with? No.

Was Miller's original *as* privy (relative to the film) to such an interpretation? No YES.

Fixed.

[astr0creep]

How come we didn't have a debate like this over Taladega nights or Norbit?

 

It's the same story!

 

[metadigital]

Because I didn't and will not watch those.