The politics of Frank Miller

[fpb]

Well, well, well. It seems that my rooted detestation of Frank Miller and all his criminal works roused more interest among my friends than any other controversial idea I could toss at them. Well, then, on your own heads be it.

I have a deep, personal, vindictive hatred for Frank Miller, the cartoonist who originated 300

Comments

[bufo_viridis]

Slightly off-topic, but I always thought that it was unfair that the equally important and coupled with Thermopylae battle off Artemision Cape is so forgotten. They even don't make bad movies about it, as it seems.

[fpb]

I think there are a number of reasons. IIRC, most or all of the Greek fleet was engaged at Artemision: that is, there was not the element of the heroic stand of the Few against the Many that thrills people about the stories of the Alamo and the like. Then, the reverse of Artemision was fairly swiftly corrected by the decisive triumph at Salamis - which is indeed as well remember as the Thermopylae, or as Marathon; whereas the disaster at the Thermopylae led to the destruction of Athens, and the presence of a massive Persian army north of the Isthmus which was not dealt with until Plataia. And finally, there was, as you and I know, a whole tendency in Greek (Athenian) culture, to exalt Sparta and Spartan ways - Xenophon, Aristophanes, to a lesser extent Plato, and even, much later, the otherwise kindly and civilized Plutarch! And in this context, the story of a resistance of the Few against the Many would have an instinctive resonance, since in Greek thought the Few and the Many are a political concept with overtones of intense

[bufo_viridis]

Oh yes, definitely, especially "the last stand" element had an appeal to later generations. Still, it should be more often recalled, because without Artemision Thermopylae simply wouldn't happen (why search for mountain tracks if one can make a direct amphibious landing just behind the isthmus? :) and the character of the battles was so similar (defence of the narrow point).
Ah well, shows the difference between history and story.

[baduin]

300 is a curious film. It is very irritating for anyone who knows history, but on the other hand very beautiful. If you dislike violence, you won't like it, certainly.

Persians in the film have little in common with real Persia. (Why are Greeks white and Persians black? It should be the other way round - Greeks thought Persians were unmanly because they were pale like women). But if you have read Gene Wolfe's Wizard-Knight (a very good book) you have here a very good rendition of Osterlings.

[fpb]

This is not an answer to anything I wrote. It is not about whether or not I "dislike violence", and that is a meaningless question anyway. I certainly loathe the glamourization of violence. But the answer to that is in my response to privatemaladict, which I quote: "I once had to review, in succession, an episode of Frank Miller's Sin City and one of the great Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, the greatest comic series ever made. As that episode of Nausicaa was set in a battle, there was plenty of gore, more than in Miller's; but guess which of the two was the more objectionable and disgusting to my eyes?" And even more than the glamourization of violence, I do, with all my soul, hate Fascism.

[johncwright]

Even to mention Miyazaki and Miller in the same sentence is to bring painfully to mind Miller's shortcomings. Compare the subtle moral nuances of Nausicaa with the bloody-mindedness breathing from every page, for example, of Ronin.

[fpb]

And I don't know whether you have seen the comic book, but it is far better even than the movie. It is, in my view, quite simply the greatest comic series ever done. However, what is really tragic is from what a height Miller has fallen. Still today, those early Daredevils and other items for Marvel and DC simply blaze with power and potential. When I think that the same man who drew DD from 158 on is the man who has been responsible for Ronin or Elektra: Assassin, I feel sick. It is worse than a mere collapse in talent, such as Chris Claremont suffered; it is a brutal, calculated, criminal misapplication of talent that still visibly exists. And I regard it as treason.

Brilliant

[johncwright]

Well said, as always.

[solitary_summer]

[here browsing through my interests list]

I saw 300 a couple of days ago (a ripped off copy a friend gave me, I should perhaps add; I hadn't planned on seeing it, I'd read enough to know that I wasn't going to pay money for it) and felt dirty afterwards. I don't throw terms like fascist around randomly, but it seemed very, very appropriate for the message and aesthetic of this movie. I've been wondering a little whether I hadn't been over-reacting, though, so it's good to hear from someone better versed in history than I am that I'm not alone in thinking so, and that there's precedent for this kind of ideology in Miller's work, which I'm not familiar with at all.

[fpb]

I read your entry on the matter. It was good, and I do not think you need worry about your understanding of history. The funny thing is that Miller did not need to lie to bring in the same story elements, for they can be found in Herodotus' tale - only, they are at the level of whole cities, rather than inside the cities as such. The Oracle of Delphi, which did play an aggressively pro-Persian role, would have been better cast as a representative of a lotos-eating, treacherous intellectual class, than the Ephors. And a lot of Greeks, including Thebes and Argos, did go over to the Persians; in the case of Thebes and Argos, this was clearly due to their hope that the Persians would help them settle matters with their enemies, Athens and Sparta, respectively, and thus was even more despicable. The point however is that Miller's subversive view of society demands to be applied to individual societies, and therefore the man had to alter the whole nature of Spartan society to fit his own concerns in