Night of the Marching Six-packs. (Alternatively, what happens in Persia, stays in Persia.)
Watched 300 on the 12th. Yes, it's pretty, yes it's badass, yes it's exhilarating, yes to all the adjectives and superlatives but you know what? It was an out-of-body experience, poorly remembered by my ante-300* self. Hence the subject line of this post :)
The most visceral leftover, I suppose, was that I stood straighter for the rest of the day.
Let me add my voice though to the questioning chorus that asks: Why oh why are all the bad guys disfigured/pierced/covered in bling? Why are the ones who aren't suffering from variegated genetic and phenotypic conditions all black, Arab and Asian? Let me also add my voice to the non-existent answering chorus: It's the contrast, stupid(s).
Mmm, disfigured lesbians ... I'd hit it. Bigtime.
Moving on from the prurient, my thoughts grow more distant, more sophisticated and further away from what may or may not have been the original intent of the film. I see a lot of crap on the intarweb about how this is representative of the Iraq War - just like everything else.
It's funny; I learned the word "apophenia" when I first started Pattern Recognition a coupla years ago.
The only meta I saw in it was a conflict between hyperspecialization and indiscrinate diversity. Xerxes forces are quantity and variety and density; giants, kitchen sinks, elephants, proto-ninjas* of silver mask and corrupted flesh, an endless panoply of delights for the eye and damnations for the soul; Leonidas' are a uniform array of red cloaks and marching six-packs.
On one side is natural selection taken to its hypertrophied extreme, the other the starting point from which all selection begins, that point where all options exist. But what about the bearded white dudes, you ask. Let's see: Outnumbered? Attacked in their own land? Utilizing morale-destroying violence and superior knowledge of the terrain? An ultimately suicidal attack?
Hmm.
*i'm following derekcfpegritz's lead on the overuse of the exquisitely ironic "post" prefix in attempting to weed it out of my vocabulary
**"proto" on the other hand, I have no problem with. Wannafightaboutit?
The most visceral leftover, I suppose, was that I stood straighter for the rest of the day.
Let me add my voice though to the questioning chorus that asks: Why oh why are all the bad guys disfigured/pierced/covered in bling? Why are the ones who aren't suffering from variegated genetic and phenotypic conditions all black, Arab and Asian? Let me also add my voice to the non-existent answering chorus: It's the contrast, stupid(s).
Mmm, disfigured lesbians ... I'd hit it. Bigtime.
Moving on from the prurient, my thoughts grow more distant, more sophisticated and further away from what may or may not have been the original intent of the film. I see a lot of crap on the intarweb about how this is representative of the Iraq War - just like everything else.
It's funny; I learned the word "apophenia" when I first started Pattern Recognition a coupla years ago.
The only meta I saw in it was a conflict between hyperspecialization and indiscrinate diversity. Xerxes forces are quantity and variety and density; giants, kitchen sinks, elephants, proto-ninjas* of silver mask and corrupted flesh, an endless panoply of delights for the eye and damnations for the soul; Leonidas' are a uniform array of red cloaks and marching six-packs.
On one side is natural selection taken to its hypertrophied extreme, the other the starting point from which all selection begins, that point where all options exist. But what about the bearded white dudes, you ask. Let's see: Outnumbered? Attacked in their own land? Utilizing morale-destroying violence and superior knowledge of the terrain? An ultimately suicidal attack?
Hmm.
*i'm following derekcfpegritz's lead on the overuse of the exquisitely ironic "post" prefix in attempting to weed it out of my vocabulary
**"proto" on the other hand, I have no problem with. Wannafightaboutit?