CULTURE-US: Battling Evil with Abs of Steel

By Eli Clifton Reprint | | Print |

Eli Clifton

WASHINGTON, Mar 21 2007 (IPS) - 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 U.S. soldiers in the rugged terrain of the Tora Bora Mountains in 2001 in order to fight again another day.

So then, why are assorted neo-conservatives and other war hawks hailing the movie, which is based on a popular 1998 graphic novel by Frank Miller, with such enthusiasm?

Is it just because the Spartans are white, beautifully – if preternaturally – sculpted 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 civilisation and its future hung in the balance against Oriental tyranny?

“[C]ontemporary Greeks saw Thermopylae as a critical moral and culture lesson,” wrote Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian, Iraq war booster, and favourite dinner guest of 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 which doesn’t appear in the graphic novel 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.”

”[O]ur 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 ten 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’s 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 door step.”

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 civilisation.

“A Persian victory would have snuffed out the Greek concept of freedom under the law, imposing a highly centralised 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 civilisation eventually built on Greek foundations,” he wrote.

Walsh concludes that despite the numerous historical inaccuracies in the films portrayal of both Spartans and Persians, it is an occasion “…for considering the meaning of values such as sacrifice, liberty, honour and valour.”

Many other reviewers have argued that the dehumanising treatment of the Persians is a dangerous addition to the public discourse when relations between the U.S. 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 which should be exemplified.

The film takes this one step further. In imagery reminiscent of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s “The Triumph of the Will”, Spartan men, invariably white as opposed to the darker skinned Persians, are shown as finally chiseled reflections of the perfect masculine image.

Ironically, although 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 U.S. To the neo-conservatives, “300” represents a triumph of the will.