WASHINGTON - If the new Hollywood
blockbuster 300 weren't so homoerotic,
Osama bin Laden would probably make the film
mandatory viewing for all members of al-Qaeda. He
could not fail to be moved by the spirit of
resistance and martyrdom that inspired 300 Spartan
soldiers to hold off a vastly superior and more
technologically advanced - if somewhat effete -
enemy force for three days in the name of
something greater than themselves.
Yet
according to the Greek historian Herodotus and
300, the new film version of the event,
that is precisely what the doughty band
of
Spartans did at the battle of Thermopylae in 480
BC against the invading hordes of the Persian
Empire - much, perhaps, as al-Qaeda held off the
swarms of Afghan, British and American soldiers in
the rugged terrain of the Tora Bora Mountains in
2001 to fight again another day.
So then
why are assorted neo-conservatives and other war
hawks hailing the movie with such enthusiasm?
Is it just because the Spartans are white,
beautifully - if preternaturally - sculptured
fighting machines eager to die for king and
country against the black and brown Other of the
Persian army?
Or does it have more to do
with the fact that successive historians since
Herodotus have depicted Thermopylae as the
critical moment when Western civilization and its
future hung in the balance against Oriental
tyranny?
"Contemporary Greeks saw
Thermopylae as a critical moral and culture
lesson," wrote Victor Davis Hanson, a military
historian, Iraq-war booster, and favorite dinner
guest of US Vice President Dick Cheney, in the
introduction to the book trailer released by the
film's makers. "In universal terms, a small, free
people had willingly outfought huge numbers of
imperial subjects who advanced under the lash."
It may well have been Hanson who persuaded
the filmmaker, Zack Snyder, to include a key
passage that doesn't appear in the popular 1998
graphic novel by Frank Miller, but which frames
the story in a way that would most appeal to
contemporary neo-conservatives worried that
Washington is losing its will to fight in Iraq and
beyond.
When the Spartan Queen Gorgo calls
for urgent reinforcements for the 300-man force
led by her husband, King Leonidas, at Thermopylae,
Theron, a calculating and profoundly cynical
politician, rejects the appeal, observing,
"Leonidas is an idealist.
"Our king has
taken 300 of our finest to slaughter," he goes on.
"He's broken our laws and left without the
council's consent. I'm simply a realist."
Theron proceeds to betray the queen, who
then stabs him to death in such a way that Persian
coins fall from his tunic, demonstrating to all
the world that "realists" are worse than cynical.
They will consort with evil itself.
And
what of the rest of Greece? The Athenians do make
an appearance, but their status as artisans first
and warriors second pushes them to the sidelines
of the battle where there is little use for men of
intellect and commerce.
The portrayal of
realist politicians as disloyal and artisans and
philosophers as weak paints an interesting picture
of what is valued in this cinematic portrait of
society and by those who admire it.
The
film relentlessly beats into viewers that what
free men need is an idealistic leader whose stated
mission in life is to die on the battlefields for
his country. Everything else is petty. Such minor
details as politics and survival are considered
wasteful and destructive to the minds of Spartan
men.
The neo-conservatives have claimed
these Spartan ideals as their own since the film's
release, with a surprising number of laudatory
reviews in periodicals such as The Weekly Standard
- which printed two reviews in 10 days - and one
in The National Review.
David Kahane, in
The National Review, points out the obvious appeal
of the film to a mainstream audience. "When early
in the film a sneering Persian emissary insults
King Leonidas' hot wife, threatens the kingdom,
and rages about 'blasphemy', the king kicks him
down a bottomless well. And yet nobody in Sparta
asks, 'Why do they hate us?' and seeks to find
common ground with the Persians on their
doorstep."
Kahane goes on to praise
300 as a throwback to times when a man
could be a man, a woman a woman and the bad guys
unconscionably evil. In other words, the stuff
Hollywood used to be built on.
Bill Walsh,
who reviewed the movie in The Weekly Standard,
sees the story told in 300 as a defining
moment in the survival of Western civilization.
"A Persian victory would have snuffed out
the Greek concept of freedom under the law,
imposing a highly centralized god-king system
known to past generations as Oriental despotism.
The free Spartans, in this telling, not only
fought better as free men fighting for their
liberty, but their sacrifice helped preserve the
notions and institutions which blossomed into the
glorious civilization eventually built on Greek
foundations," he wrote.
Walsh concludes
that despite the numerous historical inaccuracies
in the film's portrayal of both Spartans and
Persians, it is an occasion "for considering the
meaning of values such as sacrifice, liberty,
honor and valor".
Many other reviewers
have argued that the dehumanizing treatment of the
Persians is a dangerous addition to the public
discourse when relations between the US and Iran
are becoming increasingly tense.
True,
parallels can be drawn between the current
escalation of tensions between Washington and
Tehran. But the Thermopylae story is a classic,
and the "barbarian hordes" play the necessary role
of a frightening enemy in the finest tradition of
melodrama.
Perhaps more strikingly, the
film's depiction of idealist warriors and crooked,
realist politicians does contain many parallels to
neo-conservative views on the troop surge in Iraq
and the opposition of realist politicians.
Neo-conservative film critics and fans of
300 see unrestrained idealism, suicide
through warfare, and a take-no-prisoners approach
to war as the ideals that should be exemplified.
The film takes this one step further. In
imagery reminiscent of Nazi filmmaker Leni
Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will
(Triumph des Willens, 1935), Spartan men,
invariably white as opposed to the darker-skinned
Persians, are shown as finely chiseled reflections
of the perfect masculine image.
Ironically, although the film avoids
nearly any reference to the commonplace
homosexuality in Spartan life, its imagery could
border on pornographic if a few strategically
placed pieces of cloth were removed.
It
should come as no surprise to neo-conservative
reviewers of this film that Nazi leaders held up
Sparta's society as a model on which to build
their own utopia.
Fascist-type militarism,
both in appearance and practice, is displayed
throughout the film as the tool through which free
men remain free and good can be separated from
evil.
Although the 300 Spartans portrayed
in the film ultimately did not triumph in their
heroic attempt to repel the Persian hordes, they
did strike a chord with militarist war hawks in
the US. To the neo-conservatives, 300
represents a triumph of the will.
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