300

I finally worked up the lack of dignity to see 300.

Hollywood has rarely portrayed historical events accurately. Hollywood films displaying historical accuracy are the exception rather than the rule. The criticism of this film is not only about aesthetics versus historical accuracy (at least, I trust that such critics do know that the Elite Persian Guard — which is still around today, by the way — was not and is not composed of orcs).

It is fortunate, too, that we do not expect historical accuracy, because the Spartan characters chide each other with homophobic jests even while Sparta (and Greece in general) is known to have encouraged homosexual relations. The character Leonidas even denounces the Athenians as ‘philosophers and boy-lovers’, an interesting remark coming from a Spartan, the Spartans being known pederasts. I mean, really. If you are going to exclude the Spartans from pederacy, exclude the Athenians as well, or you are being dishonest (rather than honestly incomplete).

But no, this is not the problem most critics have with the film. The issue is much more political. Although it is being defended as a mere highly stylized action film, 300 is revisionist propaganda worthy of the Goebbels team. And it is propaganda with a clear agenda.

Anybody with even the slightest amount of intellectual honesty can see that this is a film that takes sides on a contemporary issue. It is a thinly disguised justification of the US government’s post-9-11 policy of racial/religious hatred. It is an impassioned call to Americans to not ‘cut and run’ from the War in Iraq and the Greater War on Terror.

Frank Miller is an avowed advocate of George W. Bush and the tactics being used in Iraq and all over the Middle East. Miller is quite open about his agenda(s) and always has been been.

Here are some quotes from a recent interview on NPR:

Frank Miller: Well, okay, then let’s finally talk about the enemy [Islam]. For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we’re up against, and the sixth century barbarism that they actually represent. These people saw people’s heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us. I’m speaking into a microphone that never could have been a product of their culture, and I’m living in a city where three thousand of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built.

NPR: As you look at people around you, though, why do you think they’re so, as you would put it, self-absorbed, even whiny?

Frank Miller: Well, I’d say it’s for the same reason the Athenians and Romans were. We’ve got it a little good right now. Where I would fault President Bush the most, was that in the wake of 9/11, he motivated our military, but he didn’t call the nation into a state of war. He didn’t explain that this would take a communal effort against a common foe. So we’ve been kind of fighting a war on the side, and sitting off like a bunch of Romans complaining about it. Also, I think that George Bush has an uncanny knack of being someone people hate. I thought Clinton inspired more hatred than any President I had ever seen, but I’ve never seen anything like Bush-hatred. It’s completely mad.

It is clear from his words that Miller feels that the peoples of the Middle East are just inhuman savages. The Persians are portrayed in 300 as either anonymous messengers or soulless monsters (the only malformed Spartan? Yeah, a traitor). Obviously as these Persians were not yet Islamic, the peoples of the Middle East have always been evil, he is implying. That is a pretty ugly world view and not one that most of us who claim to support democracy will willingly back up.

Miller’s words also reveal a convenient amnesia regarding historical fact. He accuses them of being incapable of even the slightest contribution to world culture, yet ignores the contributions of mediaeval Arabic scientists who kept Greek and Roman science alive while the Europeans were busy destroying this scientific tradition with Christian fanaticism. He is a fascist hypocrite, pure and simple — railing about Democratic principles yet championing the Spartans as the ideal we should follow in this time of national crisis. Spartans! The antithesis and perpetual enemies of the Athenians, the culture that birthed democracy and the best philosophers to this day. By portraying ‘the enemy’ as monstrous degenerates, he paves the way for moral justification of the America’s heinous overreaction to 9-11 and the utter failure of Bush’s policies.

Frank Miller is using negative racial stereotypes to play lip service towards the invasion of Iraq and a continued hatred and mistrust of Middle Easterners in general. He is doing this because he agrees with the Neo-Conservative belief that the Middle Eastern situation is a battle of Good and Evil — that the West is Good, the East is Evil: always has been, always will be. 300 is dumbed-down propaganda for a culture that is rapidly losing it’s capacity for critical thought — a culture that may well ultimately end up as fundamentalist as Iraq if certain trends continue.

Well, I am not buying any of this shit… I know a bigot when I hear one and I know propaganda when I see it. This is a slickly produced commercial for the ‘War on Terror’ and only half a step removed from those Marine recruiting films they play before the feature starts.

~ by Kyle on 2007.03.18.