300

I remember back when this movie came out about a year ago, there was a lot of talk (in what Rush Limbaugh would call the "libuhrul mediur" ) about whether this movie was an intentional piece of propaganda released to drum up support for a U.S. war against Iran. I didn't get to see this movie until recently (HBO just started showing it this weekend), but I always thought the Iran connection was more coincidence than anything else. I mean, there are certainly some interesting parallels, but ultimately the crux of that argument relies on the audience actually knowing that Persia is now modern-day Iran, and as this is never mentioned in the movie, I think that most of the mouth-breathing right-wingers that would actually swallow this as propaganda are too dim to actually know that. Also, it's based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller that was written back in 1998. The timing of the movie adaptation and Hollywood release certainly raises questions, but I think it was really more coincidence than anything else (the main impetus of making this movie was more likely the success of Miller's Sin City a few years ago).

However, the movie is definitely propaganda. It's not propaganda for any particular war though - just general pro-militarization, pro-nationalism, pro-war, pro-killing, pro-soldier propaganda. It's basically an Army recruitment video.

So the story is loosely based on actual historical events - the Persian invasion of Greece, and how 300 Spartan soldiers actually held off hundreds of thousands of Persians in a narrow mountain pass before being betrayed by some jerk who told the Persians about a secret goat pass they could use to flank the Spartan position. Miller basically took this premise (much of the work done for him already by the 1960s movie "The 300 Spartans") and "pulpified" it, making the Spartans a ruthless tribe of uber-warriors, and the Persians some dark magical army with monsters and shit. I don't know if he intentionally designed it as war propaganda - he was probably just running with an idea that he found interesting and thought would sell well, and working under the influence of his own inherent Western cultural biases - but that's certainly the direction that the filmmakers went with.

King Leonidas is the main character, and basically what George W. Bush probably fantasizes about being - a "strong man" leader who takes it upon himself to break the rules and customs of his nation and lead them to war because "their freedom is threatened". Unlike George's nebulous theories about Jihadists blowing up America with shoe nukes or whatever, Leonidas is actually visited by a Persian envoy who tells him that he must bow to them or be invaded and slaughtered. The corrupt officials of his court warn against it (after consulting some topless dancing jailbait), but he decides to go ahead anyway with his 300 best men, to try to demoralize the much larger Persian army by holding the mountain pass against them.

The Spartans are all ridiculously awesome warriors, but they are also depicted as kind of being ruthless jerks. They kill any babies born with birth defects, for example, they send young kids out into the woods during winter to fend for themselves as a test, and they fantasize about "dying a beautiful death", which is apparently the highest honor you can achieve in their society. There's some historical basis for this in the Spartan "agoge" training program, which was mandatory for youths to pass to become citizens, but it wasn't nearly as over-the-top as portrayed in the film.

The thing is, none of this is questioned by the film. The Spartans are portrayed as the heroes, and everything they do is backed up by stirring orchestral music, heroic poses and glamorous shots. This is a film of absolutes, completely without nuance - the Spartans are the "good guys", despite their questionable cultural practices, and the Persians are the stereotypical, dark-skinned, evil and amoral invading villains. The whole film is "war porn" - the point is to simply get a vicarious thrill watching the Spartans kill the Persians in various lurid, graphic and stylish ways.

Most of the praise for the movie centers around the visuals, which confused me, as I found it drab and ugly. It uses a washed-out, dim color scheme with almost entirely blue-screen backgrounds that look like some sort of apocalyptic wasteland. I assume that they were trying to emulate the style of the comic book, meaning most of the shots are in the manner of comic panels where it's usually a close-up on one character or another. Thus, you don't get many wide-angle shots of the backgrounds, and really have little sense of where the film is taking place. I mean, you know the Spartans are fighting near a cliff by the ocean, because some people get thrown off it at one point, but the vast majority of the movie is close-ups of sweaty abs and blades being run through flesh. There just isn't much of a sense of place or setting - the film is wholly concerned with it's stylized violence and not much else.

As far as the recruitment propaganda goes, the Spartans answer every proclamation by Leonidas with a "Hooh" cry that sounds suspiciously like the U.S. Army "hooah". There's constant quotes like "The price of freedom is blood" and things of that nature. It portrays war as a glorious spectacle, and pushes the idea that there is no greater thing that you can do than kill and die for your country (plus you'll be the ultimate badass and everyone will look up to you). Honestly, replace the Spartans in this movie with Nazis and you're not that far off from "The Triumph of the Will". While I disagree with the Iran war connection, I pretty much wholly agree with critics that have called this film "facist art" - even if it doesn't promote a particular existant nation or regime, it still hits all the main points any fascist propaganda piece would. It's the kind of thing that's intended to manipulate young people and the uneducated.

Political issues aside, I really thought that this is the kind of movie that could only be considered enjoyable in a thoroughly shallow culture like the one we have at present. The only joy to be had here is in mentally masturbating yourself to slow-motion images of decapitations and eviscerations, which most people beyond the age of adolescence *should* have grown past, but give the rampant popularity of the film in the U.S.A we apparently have a population largely in arrested development. Hell, even a well-raised adolescent should know better than to be entertained by this tripe, but again, this is Hollywood-centric culture we are talking about here. There's nothing else to this one to appreciate - very little plot, no real character development to speak of, and nothing to take from it to consider and discuss later other than the level to which society has degenerated to enable something like this to become such a popular part of the collective social consciousness.