300, the film
‘Axis of evil’ seeps into Hollywood
By Kaveh L AfrasiabiNo doubt about it, four years after his famous and also infamous “axis of evil” speech, US President George W Bush’s crusade mentality has finally found its cinematic counterpart – in 300, a major motion picture centered on the epic battle between the Persians and the Greeks in 480 BC.
It is part history, part fantasy, safely buffering itself against potential criticisms, eg of its historical distortions or shortcomings, by the cinematic license optimally exploited meanwhile to preach to the audience about the values of freedom against the evil forces of unfreedom.
Portraying the past world in a contemporary language with the help of voiceovers in case we missed the message, the dramatic feature plunges into the midst of a violent battle that fully resonates with the contemporary discourses on “clashing civilizations”.
More than pure entertainment, it is a movie that wants people to reflect on what they are seeing, by teaching a lesson or two about history, by eliciting sympathy for its exalted Spartan heroes and heroines standing up to the world’s first superpower, the Achaemenid Persians.
Saturated with not-so-subtle Persianphobia, the movie calls for the interrogation of the political agenda behind it, at a time when Iran is constantly threatened with military invasion and “all options are on the table” in Washington. In Los Angeles, the cognitive assault has been raging for some time.
In Into the Night, a leading actress is asked what is her biggest turnoff and answers: “Persians”. In Steven Spielberg’s movie The Peacemaker, actor George Clooney utters four-letter words when referring to Iran. In the more recent Syriana, Clooney, playing a rogue Central Intelligence Agency operative, blows up Iranians in downtown Tehran with a broad smile on his face.
There is a very large population of Iranians in Los Angeles county, many of them affluent professionals and successful businessmen. Many live in luxurious mansions in Beverly Hills, but you would not know that by watching Hollywood’s movies. In House of Sand and Crash, we only see struggling immigrants on the margins of society.
California may be America’s ultimate melting pot, but Hollywood’s tall walls of exclusion and discrimination have yet to crumble when it comes to the movie industry’s persistent misrepresentation of Iranians and their collective identity immersed in a long thread of history.
Speaking of history, it is simultaneously a rich yet exceedingly difficult source material for the art of movie-making, and Hollywood has at best a mixed record on “getting it right”, notwithstanding the controversies swirling about Oliver FULL AT ASIA TIMES
Elliott:
“There is a lot of propaganda pounded deep into our culture and one of the ugliest is, we are the good guys or the civilized guys and everyone else is a barbarian. The Spartans were Dorian invaders who took advantage of the collapse of one of the most civilized cultures in the Mediterranean: the Minoans.
….
So, even as we send our slave/soldiers to Iraq to die miserable deaths, we sit in the movie theaters, cheering the nasty Spartans? We are the empire! We are the PERSIANS! We pride ourselves on being more ‘civilized’ than the Iraqis and Afghanis and yet they are the Spartans. And no one is more Spartan than…bin Laden.
His entire beef with us is nearly identical to Spartan beefs with the Persians! We are corrupt, soft, weak, effeminate while being brutal and over-beefed, we are the big apes, the users of elephants and other battle beasts with heavy armor, no? We are the big, massive army, the biggest on earth, right?”
The author of this article throws around a lot of shibboleths and vitrol pretty carelessy (everyone must cater to an audience I suppose) but I would urge people to read some of her blog with an open mind because I feel she has offered a lot of interesting reflection on various subjects.
http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/war_and_peace/2007/03/elaine_meinel_s_2.html
13 March 2007, 3:56 pmDeAnander:
300 has been compared to ‘Triumph of the Will’
Hollywood has a long ignoble history of cranking out propaganda flicks in support of America’s endless wars. Just another in the series?
13 March 2007, 5:39 pmDeAnander:
… although in light of the review quoted above, perhaps it should be more like “Triumph of the Willies.”
13 March 2007, 9:24 pmRevo:
I think is interesting say: 300 is a hollywood version (conveniente to some politicians) of a comic story writed by Frank Miller (same of Sin City and Robocop 3). Its convenient to George Bush now, of course, but the comic are published in 1998.Sorry bad english
14 March 2007, 8:27 amRandy Morris:
I was hoping y’all would post a critical review of this trash. Thanks.
I mentioned to a friend before the film opened that it sure seemed to be getting a LOT of promotion on the tv for what looked like nothing more than a follow-up to “Sin City.” And just maybe it is exactly that: a spiritual sequel to the blood-soaked paen to American rape and empire culture at home. I was reluctant to follow the “Persia = Iran” out of fear of blatant obviousity, but now I fear I have no choice.
The worst thing for me is that I will be saddled with the guilt of making the decision to play this filth at my theater. Or should I forego the inevitable profits and take a stand on this one? The money generated can (and will) go toward helping promote the sustainability we’ve been talking about here for a while now, but is tainted money worth it?
It’s pretty silly, the things we in America agonize over. I’m well-fed, employed, etc….
I’ve been thinking a lot about earthworms lately, tho.
Randy
14 March 2007, 12:46 pmRandy Morris:
“300… succeeds where books and narratives cannot possibly pass through the narrow gates of studios ran by a few moguls with known sympathies.”
I’m glad he said it.
14 March 2007, 2:06 pmTellurian:
Sparta was one of the most despotic regimes in history, a brutal slave powerstate where the ruling class Spartans routinely made ‘war’ on the powerless slave-farmers, the Helots. It served as a model for Plato’s Republic, which until Popper, was considered a Utopia among the academic learned. Nothing illustrates more saliently how we are miseducated, misinformed and misentertained by the learned and mass media then how Sparta is portrayed. It exemplifies what the American ruling class means by Freedom and Democracy. The warriors were held together by homosexual ties, they’re being ashamed to drop their weapons and run while their lovers looked on.
They are distinguished by nothing historically but power and violence, to which the emtire society was sacrificed. It serves as as salutory lesson to our military capitalism based on exploitation, brutality and delusion.
14 March 2007, 4:00 pmDeAnander:
Tellurian points out an important thread in the history of patriarchy, the patriarchally-correct form of male homosexuality. The Theban Band, etc. — pair-bonds between warrior males, with the defining events of the “marriage” being not the births of children but the deaths of enemies… With the blanket ban on homosexuality imposed after the Judeo-xtian biblical narrative was adopted by State authority, this theme had to go underground. But it still surfaces: anyone remember Jeff Gannon[Guckert], his livelihood, and his connection to the warlike, posturing Bush WhiteHouse?
The “gayness” that really offends patriarchy is “effeminacy” rather than male/male sex or bonding. I’m reminded of stories from Viet Nam war days, of the sympathetic “blind eye” that was often turned away from young male couples — both macho, both warriors — who bonded deeply in the stress and danger of war. One of the disappointments of Brokeback Mountain for me is that it sells its message of tolerance more or less on the Spartan narrative, of Manly Men Bonding in Survival Conditions (minus the warfare and bloodshed, but the acceptability of the relationship seems to be founded on the impeccable manliness of both men).
One of patriarchy’s many little secrets is the macho homoeroticism lurking under its flailing hatred and denial of “gayness.” What it really fears most is unmanliness in men (or correspondingly, too much “manliness” — i.e. courage, strength, loudness, pride, extroversion, determination — in women).
14 March 2007, 5:51 pmDeAnander:
– Bill C Davis, The Irony of General Peter Pace
14 March 2007, 5:54 pmSR:
It should be noted that Frank Miller’s works reflect the macho, emotionless, Rand-like ideal. That could be why hollywood is lapping up the ink off his paperback pages and urinating adaptations with zeal.
The only close exception to Miller’s fascist formula is Martha Washington: Give Me Liberty, but even the African American woman of the title seems little more than a decoy in usual Man On Fire fashion.
15 March 2007, 10:08 amDeAnander:
“lapping up the ink off his paperback pages and urinating adaptations with zeal”
thank you for that — umm — vivid and quotable phrase SR!
the Randian connection is one not to miss. McKibben notes the strong concentration of Randians in the high tech Silicon Valley (info, nano, and biotech) industry. there is a common theme here of masculinist hubris, panicked flight from mortality, femaleness, and biological reality, and violent fantasies of supremacy and entitlement…
15 March 2007, 3:14 pmAradhanaD:
This is soo cool, I was looking for a comprehensive e-discussion about this movie – but I didn’t find it prior to writing my own entry about this!
I check here infrequently and trailed over from Yolanda’s.
I wrote about this last night here:
How to win a cock-fight: review of the movie 300…
15 March 2007, 11:06 pmCharles:
You got that right, Tellurian and DeAnander. Not just Spartans. Alexander the “Great” was great at conquering. America traces its swivilizational origin to Greece. Hellenophilia is at the core of Western Civ. The meaningful justication of America’s imperialism goes back to there. I’d say capitalism’s conquering ethos in the primitive accumulation of capital is rooted in Greco-Roman conquest. “Rule _Britannia_ ” is latinized for a reason.
That old greek “men loving men” notion seems based on the idea of men being superior beings to women, so “love a superior being”. Aristotle, Plato, Alexander, all of ‘em , I think. So, philosophy too.
27 March 2007, 4:24 pmjohn steppling:
hey stan….
lots of stuff on this at Lenin’s Tomb, Le Colonel Chabert and even by me at Placebo Art (part of Cyrano’s Journal).
The racialism is what strkes one most I think….the demonizing of the *other*…. but also the sadism and the near necrophillia. But then the author of the comic book….er……grahic novel….is a right wing bush supporter.
28 March 2007, 5:40 amZerowing:
In the scene from ‘Syriana’ that the article mentions, George Clooney’s character does not have a big smile on his face when that happens. In fact, he has a very troubled look, as the whole incident did not turn out as he had planned.
I know this may sound like quibbling, but since it’s an example used by the article, I thought it would be important to point it out.
2 April 2007, 6:08 pm