How to demonstrate your historical ignorance in one quick movie review.
Check out Dana Stevens's hilariously arrogant review of 300 over at Slate.
To sum up, she didn't like it. It's "race-baiting fantasy." "Nationalist myth." She complains:
The comic fanboys who make up 300's primary audience demographic aren't likely to get hung up on the movie's historical content, much less any parallels with present-day politics. But what's maddening about 300 (besides the paralyzing monotony of watching chiseled white guys make shish kebabs from swarthy Persians for 116 indistinguishable minutes) is that no one involved-not Miller, not Snyder, not one of the army of screenwriters, art directors, and tech wizards who mounted this empty, gorgeous spectacle-seems to have noticed that we're in the middle of an actual war. With actual Persians (or at least denizens of that vast swath of land once occupied by the Persian empire).
Did you get all that? See, that's some funny shit right there. Okay, technically, Iraq's a geographical region that was once "occupied by the Persian empire," but that's about it. They're not "actual Persians." The dominion in question was of Achaemenids, culturally and ethnically entirely distinct from Arabs, who the Persians would go on to fight against for something like 200 years after the fall of the Achaemenid dynasty.
Shame on Miller for not noticing that we're in the middle of an actual war. Shame on him for not including the anti-war sentiment that it is his responsibility, as a popularizer of historic events that occured several hundred years before the birth of Christ, to include, so that we may force ancient events into the framework of our modern-day context. Nevermind that to attribute any anti-war sentiments either to Xerxes, or Leonidas, or to the Spartans themselves would be just a load of ahistoric bullshit.
Dana doesn't like war, so Dana doesn't like the Spartans, and so Dana doesn't like this movie. I'm noticing that all the negative reviews of this movie that I've seen fail to indicate any familiarity with the actual history on the part of the reviewer. Yeahyeahyeah, I know the movie isn't a historic portrayal. The Persians did not bring rhinos and elephants to fight the battle, the Immortals were not actually orcs, and Xerxes himself wasn't 9 feet tall, nor did he confront Leonidas on the battlefield. All that is obviously just artistic license, commentary on how tales grow with the telling. But as VDH points out:
Yet, despite the need to adhere to the conventions of Frank Miller’s graphics and plot - every bit as formalized as the protocols of classical Athenian drama or Japanese Kabuki theater - the main story from our ancient Greek historians is still there: Leonidas, against domestic opposition, insists on sending an immediate advance party northward on a suicide mission to rouse the Greeks and allow them time to unite a defense. Once at Thermopylae, he adopts the defenses to the narrow pass between high cliffs and the sea far below. The Greeks fight both en masse in the phalanx and at times range beyond as solo warriors. They are finally betrayed by Ephialtes, forcing Leonidas to dismiss his allies - and leaving his own 300 to the fate of dying under a sea of arrows.
But most importantly, 300 preserves the spirit of the Thermopylae story. The Spartans, quoting lines known from Herodotus and themes from the lyric poets, profess unswerving loyalty to a free Greece. They will never kow-tow to the Persians, preferring to die on their feet than live on their knees.
If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus - who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others.
But then again, reading Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus is probably a bit much to expect from a movie critic.
To sum up, she didn't like it. It's "race-baiting fantasy." "Nationalist myth." She complains:
The comic fanboys who make up 300's primary audience demographic aren't likely to get hung up on the movie's historical content, much less any parallels with present-day politics. But what's maddening about 300 (besides the paralyzing monotony of watching chiseled white guys make shish kebabs from swarthy Persians for 116 indistinguishable minutes) is that no one involved-not Miller, not Snyder, not one of the army of screenwriters, art directors, and tech wizards who mounted this empty, gorgeous spectacle-seems to have noticed that we're in the middle of an actual war. With actual Persians (or at least denizens of that vast swath of land once occupied by the Persian empire).
Did you get all that? See, that's some funny shit right there. Okay, technically, Iraq's a geographical region that was once "occupied by the Persian empire," but that's about it. They're not "actual Persians." The dominion in question was of Achaemenids, culturally and ethnically entirely distinct from Arabs, who the Persians would go on to fight against for something like 200 years after the fall of the Achaemenid dynasty.
Shame on Miller for not noticing that we're in the middle of an actual war. Shame on him for not including the anti-war sentiment that it is his responsibility, as a popularizer of historic events that occured several hundred years before the birth of Christ, to include, so that we may force ancient events into the framework of our modern-day context. Nevermind that to attribute any anti-war sentiments either to Xerxes, or Leonidas, or to the Spartans themselves would be just a load of ahistoric bullshit.
Dana doesn't like war, so Dana doesn't like the Spartans, and so Dana doesn't like this movie. I'm noticing that all the negative reviews of this movie that I've seen fail to indicate any familiarity with the actual history on the part of the reviewer. Yeahyeahyeah, I know the movie isn't a historic portrayal. The Persians did not bring rhinos and elephants to fight the battle, the Immortals were not actually orcs, and Xerxes himself wasn't 9 feet tall, nor did he confront Leonidas on the battlefield. All that is obviously just artistic license, commentary on how tales grow with the telling. But as VDH points out:
Yet, despite the need to adhere to the conventions of Frank Miller’s graphics and plot - every bit as formalized as the protocols of classical Athenian drama or Japanese Kabuki theater - the main story from our ancient Greek historians is still there: Leonidas, against domestic opposition, insists on sending an immediate advance party northward on a suicide mission to rouse the Greeks and allow them time to unite a defense. Once at Thermopylae, he adopts the defenses to the narrow pass between high cliffs and the sea far below. The Greeks fight both en masse in the phalanx and at times range beyond as solo warriors. They are finally betrayed by Ephialtes, forcing Leonidas to dismiss his allies - and leaving his own 300 to the fate of dying under a sea of arrows.
But most importantly, 300 preserves the spirit of the Thermopylae story. The Spartans, quoting lines known from Herodotus and themes from the lyric poets, profess unswerving loyalty to a free Greece. They will never kow-tow to the Persians, preferring to die on their feet than live on their knees.
If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus - who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others.
But then again, reading Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus is probably a bit much to expect from a movie critic.