There's been a lot of talk about 300 and its various possible political meanings, but I thought this was a pretty good disection of what's going on:
The Metropolitician's review of the reviews
"The popular reading of King Leonidas as Bush, Xerxes and his empire as Iran, and the 300 who go into battle against the wishes of a corrupt and reticent people is superficial and facile at best, given the fact that this is one of the oldest and most retold stories in Western civilization on the one hand, and finds its origins in a comic book written well before the present crisis was at hand.
The styling of Xerxes as exotic, erotic Other is as old as British Orientalist depictions, and an ancient, decadent Orient steeped in mystery is a trope as old as the hills.
The muscles rippling on sweaty soldiers marching off to their sacred duties to orchestral fanfare and the sentimental, vaguely ethnic wail that started in Gladiator and continued through to Troy, Black Hawk Down, and now even the opening sequences of Battlestar Galactica, didn't strike me as "fascist" any more than The Rock did. "
Here's a follow up response to criticism
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2 comments:
Have you been to see the movie? We haven't yet and I want to go to see it on Imax. But I fear my womanly disdain for violence may sicken me too much. If you have seen it, is it really, terribly violent?
-- Janet
well I haven't seen it, but it sounds like the kind of thing that you don't want to see on Imax if you're worried about it. Let me know if you think it celebrates the fascist aesthetic, or if its all harmless fun.
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