Go see "300"
I saw the movie "300" last week. I go to movies about as often as I buy a new car-once every few years whether I need it or not. I know nothing of Hollywood, I couldn't tell Johnny Depp from Johnny Appleseed. But I wanted to see this for the historical aspects, being a student of Ancient Greece. I didn't plan on playing Roger Ebert, but a letter to the editor in our local paper yesterday trashed the movie as gratuitously violent and inflammatory to Middle Easterners. (Well, what isn't?!) Anyways, this was my reply...
I suppose my review of this movie couldn't be much more antithetical to this one. Although I agree the violence was graphic and gratuitous, I would argue that the real Thermopylae was not a cakewalk either. One bit of violence was left out of the movie, that being at the real Thermopylae the victorious Xerxes had the head of King Leonidis cut off and impaled on the end of a pike as a warning to all free Greeks. War today has become so impersonal with long range weapons and video game controls we easily forget that in it's most basic form it is still mano-a-mano, tests of courage, strength and will.
The unstated message of the film is what resonated with me- the moral superiority of an army from free, autonomous city-states fighting for thier freedom and homeland against a conscripted army of imperial subjects driven forward by the lash- free men preferring to die on their feet rather than live on thier knees.
How bizzare that the present day Iranian government is protesting the movie as "Zionist propaganda" and claiming we are waging "psychological warfare"? After all, the present day Muslim government believes history began in 632 AD with the rise of Muhammad. The Persians of 2500 years ago should be seen as infidels- just as non-Muslims are today. So why the outrage? Are we supposed to belive that this movie is some kind of "warfare", but the actual kidnapping of British soldiers and threatening to "wipe off the map" the country of Israel are not? I suppose if one tries hard enough, the perpetual victim status of dysfunctional Middle Eastern governments can continue indefinately, with help from the compassionate left in this country and abroad.
I saw the movie "300" last week. I go to movies about as often as I buy a new car-once every few years whether I need it or not. I know nothing of Hollywood, I couldn't tell Johnny Depp from Johnny Appleseed. But I wanted to see this for the historical aspects, being a student of Ancient Greece. I didn't plan on playing Roger Ebert, but a letter to the editor in our local paper yesterday trashed the movie as gratuitously violent and inflammatory to Middle Easterners. (Well, what isn't?!) Anyways, this was my reply...
I suppose my review of this movie couldn't be much more antithetical to this one. Although I agree the violence was graphic and gratuitous, I would argue that the real Thermopylae was not a cakewalk either. One bit of violence was left out of the movie, that being at the real Thermopylae the victorious Xerxes had the head of King Leonidis cut off and impaled on the end of a pike as a warning to all free Greeks. War today has become so impersonal with long range weapons and video game controls we easily forget that in it's most basic form it is still mano-a-mano, tests of courage, strength and will.
The unstated message of the film is what resonated with me- the moral superiority of an army from free, autonomous city-states fighting for thier freedom and homeland against a conscripted army of imperial subjects driven forward by the lash- free men preferring to die on their feet rather than live on thier knees.
How bizzare that the present day Iranian government is protesting the movie as "Zionist propaganda" and claiming we are waging "psychological warfare"? After all, the present day Muslim government believes history began in 632 AD with the rise of Muhammad. The Persians of 2500 years ago should be seen as infidels- just as non-Muslims are today. So why the outrage? Are we supposed to belive that this movie is some kind of "warfare", but the actual kidnapping of British soldiers and threatening to "wipe off the map" the country of Israel are not? I suppose if one tries hard enough, the perpetual victim status of dysfunctional Middle Eastern governments can continue indefinately, with help from the compassionate left in this country and abroad.
posted by Pagondas | 12:38 PM
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