300 - Updated
Haven't seen the movie yet - probably won't go to it in the theater. But there's a great deal of buzz about it, so I thought I'd add to the buzz.
Apparently, comic book great Frank Miller created this homage to the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans held off a Persian army of up to 2,000,000 (according to Herodotus) by defending a narrow pass. The resulting delay allowed the rest of the Greeks to get their act together and assemble a fleet to fight a naval battle, which they won. Without a fleet to supply them, the huge Persian army of Xerxes had to withdraw from Greece.
There are two huge problems with this:
Problem One:
In Miller's nouveau-neocon view, the 300 are the Americans and the Persians are, well, the Persians - Iranians - and terrorists who want to get us. They are very bad people, dark skinned and all that. The Spartans hands are tied by the effete democracy-loving Athenians and a lack of support back in Sparta. In this view, we need to attack Iran very soon if not yesterday.
Not having seen the picture, I don't want to go too far into its reported content. Let me address the one conclusion that is inescapable from the reporting and advertising of the film: Spartans are cool.
Needless to say, the idea of 300 tough guys holding off two million is pretty mind-blowing. They must have been tough indeed. They only lost because they were betrayed, and even at that the last few Spartans had to be killed by thrown spears - nobody could get close to them and live.
But that military prowess came at a price. It's a price that could be paid in 480 BCE, but it is a distinctly unAmerican levy.
That is, Sparta was a totalitarian militaristic state. Actually, to say the Sparta was militaristic is to say that a hydrogen bomb makes a popping sound. They were the most militaristic state in history. Everything in the city-state was geared toward waging and winning wars. The entire government and family structure was made to produce babies who would grow up to be warriors. A non-warrior looking baby (this is true) would be left on a hillside to die of exposure.
The whole thing may sound way cool in a comic book sense, but it's not something that modern people ever could or should contemplate.
Okay, but Miller's not getting at the infanticide, right? That's not part of the story. The story is that the wussy Athenians wouldn't stand up, and left the tough guys to fight for them.
Which would be neat if it were true. Of course, it was the Athenian fleet that eventually won the war. Spartan King Leonidas likely knew his 300 - and the Spartan 300 were joined by 700 Thespians, so it was actually the 1,000 - were a delaying force, and could not hold the pass. He chose only men who had grown sons to take over their households. Before he left for the battle, his wife asked what she should do. King Leonidas answered: "marry a good man and have lots of sons."
Not a a guy who thought he was coming back.
If it's like anything in American history, it's like the Alamo. A hopeless fight lost after a noble effort that helped to ultimately win the war. What it is distinctly not like is anything the hopelessly inept Bush administration has done or will do in the Middle East.
Other than lose.
So, for starters, let's not form a state that does nothing but fight eternally and do nothing else, okay? Even if it makes cool movies and comics and empowers adolescent superman fantasies among Frank Miller's fans.
If the story of Thermopylae can be twisted to support the Junta's chickenhawks, they might as well have the Spartans win and then fly to the moon. If you twist history to that extent, you're writing fiction and might as well take full advantage.
Reason Two:
Here's the biggest reason not to admire the Spartans, other than the war and the infanticide and authoritarianism: they were called the Helots.
The entire Spartan system was built on the backs of the Helots. The Helots were serf/slaves who were bound to the land they worked. They provided all the goods and services that kept the Spartans fighting. They were regularly killed and abused. They were ritually humiliated to take their dignity, and would be executed if they got too fat.
The Spartans would declare war on them regularly and kill thousands with no repercussion. There were between 10 and 100 times more Helots than Spartans at any given time.
Which raises the question: is this what the Junta wants? In all my struggles to discover the true basic motive of modern conservatism, I've never felt this close to it. Is their ideal society a warrior clan with a colossal slave underclass doing all the work?
That's still not it, because the Bush class are not warriors. Certainly the neocon chickenhawks have nothing in common with actual warriors. Sparta doesn't work for them because citizenship would demand that they get off their huge Cheney-like behinds and fight.
Probably medieval Japan is closer to their liking, with a warrior class - samurai - to do their fighting (and dying), a peasant class with no rights at all, and a noble class to ride on top of it all.
Still, you can see how the homoerotic fantasy of 300 would appeal to the neocon dreamers and self-deluded wankers.
When Xerxes demanded that the Spartans surrender their swords and shields. Leonidas replied: "come get them."
The modern neocon verion of that would be:
"Surrender your swords and shields."
Neocon Chickenhawks: "go get them from somebody else while we hide in our mom's basement - you PUSSY!"
Update
I meant to cover this earlier, but one of the truly unAmerican aspects to the Spartan culture is its implication that you must have dedicated elite forces in order to win wars. America's history proves that this is absolutely false. American has always fought its wars with citizen soldiers - the very notion that this movie mocks by its lauding of Spartans and denigration of Athenians (who were also citizen soldiers). From the Revolution to the Civil War to the Spanish American War to WWI to WWII, Korea and Vietnam, America fights with Americans.
It was the fishermen and farmers of the colonies that beat the greatest military power on earth in 1776. It was the boys from Maine and Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and all the other Norther states who preserved the Union - and the farm boys from old Bammy and the Carolina's who sought so effectively to dissolve it.
When you fight the United States, you fight all of us. The draft in Vietnam saw to that. One of the reasons that the armed forces are now a broken organization is that they are not a united force dedicated to the protection of our ideals. The Junta neocons have turned them into a private force of occupation. And so they cannot succeed.
LBJ, when he escalated the Vietnam War, knew that he could not fight on a massive scale without either shattering the army - not a good idea, especially at the height of the Cold War - or keeping a draft.
But the neocons believe, rightly, that a draft would cause another revolt among the young, and won't go there. They want the College Republicans to be able to hold their meetings in public. So they destroy our armed forces on the quixotic crusade.
In WWII we proved that no force on earth can match a united and properly motivated United States. The motive was an existential threat to our way of life, and to the freedom of the rest of the world from Hitler and Hirohito's fascism and murder.
We didn't train up a bunch of Spartans and send them on their way like Hessian mercenaries. We sent men like Dick Winters and his band of brothers.
To suggest otherwise is to entirely miss the point of the United States of America.
Apparently, comic book great Frank Miller created this homage to the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans held off a Persian army of up to 2,000,000 (according to Herodotus) by defending a narrow pass. The resulting delay allowed the rest of the Greeks to get their act together and assemble a fleet to fight a naval battle, which they won. Without a fleet to supply them, the huge Persian army of Xerxes had to withdraw from Greece.
There are two huge problems with this:
Problem One:
In Miller's nouveau-neocon view, the 300 are the Americans and the Persians are, well, the Persians - Iranians - and terrorists who want to get us. They are very bad people, dark skinned and all that. The Spartans hands are tied by the effete democracy-loving Athenians and a lack of support back in Sparta. In this view, we need to attack Iran very soon if not yesterday.
Not having seen the picture, I don't want to go too far into its reported content. Let me address the one conclusion that is inescapable from the reporting and advertising of the film: Spartans are cool.
Needless to say, the idea of 300 tough guys holding off two million is pretty mind-blowing. They must have been tough indeed. They only lost because they were betrayed, and even at that the last few Spartans had to be killed by thrown spears - nobody could get close to them and live.
But that military prowess came at a price. It's a price that could be paid in 480 BCE, but it is a distinctly unAmerican levy.
That is, Sparta was a totalitarian militaristic state. Actually, to say the Sparta was militaristic is to say that a hydrogen bomb makes a popping sound. They were the most militaristic state in history. Everything in the city-state was geared toward waging and winning wars. The entire government and family structure was made to produce babies who would grow up to be warriors. A non-warrior looking baby (this is true) would be left on a hillside to die of exposure.
The whole thing may sound way cool in a comic book sense, but it's not something that modern people ever could or should contemplate.
Okay, but Miller's not getting at the infanticide, right? That's not part of the story. The story is that the wussy Athenians wouldn't stand up, and left the tough guys to fight for them.
Which would be neat if it were true. Of course, it was the Athenian fleet that eventually won the war. Spartan King Leonidas likely knew his 300 - and the Spartan 300 were joined by 700 Thespians, so it was actually the 1,000 - were a delaying force, and could not hold the pass. He chose only men who had grown sons to take over their households. Before he left for the battle, his wife asked what she should do. King Leonidas answered: "marry a good man and have lots of sons."
Not a a guy who thought he was coming back.
If it's like anything in American history, it's like the Alamo. A hopeless fight lost after a noble effort that helped to ultimately win the war. What it is distinctly not like is anything the hopelessly inept Bush administration has done or will do in the Middle East.
Other than lose.
So, for starters, let's not form a state that does nothing but fight eternally and do nothing else, okay? Even if it makes cool movies and comics and empowers adolescent superman fantasies among Frank Miller's fans.
If the story of Thermopylae can be twisted to support the Junta's chickenhawks, they might as well have the Spartans win and then fly to the moon. If you twist history to that extent, you're writing fiction and might as well take full advantage.
Reason Two:
Here's the biggest reason not to admire the Spartans, other than the war and the infanticide and authoritarianism: they were called the Helots.
The entire Spartan system was built on the backs of the Helots. The Helots were serf/slaves who were bound to the land they worked. They provided all the goods and services that kept the Spartans fighting. They were regularly killed and abused. They were ritually humiliated to take their dignity, and would be executed if they got too fat.
The Spartans would declare war on them regularly and kill thousands with no repercussion. There were between 10 and 100 times more Helots than Spartans at any given time.
Which raises the question: is this what the Junta wants? In all my struggles to discover the true basic motive of modern conservatism, I've never felt this close to it. Is their ideal society a warrior clan with a colossal slave underclass doing all the work?
That's still not it, because the Bush class are not warriors. Certainly the neocon chickenhawks have nothing in common with actual warriors. Sparta doesn't work for them because citizenship would demand that they get off their huge Cheney-like behinds and fight.
Probably medieval Japan is closer to their liking, with a warrior class - samurai - to do their fighting (and dying), a peasant class with no rights at all, and a noble class to ride on top of it all.
Still, you can see how the homoerotic fantasy of 300 would appeal to the neocon dreamers and self-deluded wankers.
When Xerxes demanded that the Spartans surrender their swords and shields. Leonidas replied: "come get them."
The modern neocon verion of that would be:
"Surrender your swords and shields."
Neocon Chickenhawks: "go get them from somebody else while we hide in our mom's basement - you PUSSY!"
Update
I meant to cover this earlier, but one of the truly unAmerican aspects to the Spartan culture is its implication that you must have dedicated elite forces in order to win wars. America's history proves that this is absolutely false. American has always fought its wars with citizen soldiers - the very notion that this movie mocks by its lauding of Spartans and denigration of Athenians (who were also citizen soldiers). From the Revolution to the Civil War to the Spanish American War to WWI to WWII, Korea and Vietnam, America fights with Americans.
It was the fishermen and farmers of the colonies that beat the greatest military power on earth in 1776. It was the boys from Maine and Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and all the other Norther states who preserved the Union - and the farm boys from old Bammy and the Carolina's who sought so effectively to dissolve it.
When you fight the United States, you fight all of us. The draft in Vietnam saw to that. One of the reasons that the armed forces are now a broken organization is that they are not a united force dedicated to the protection of our ideals. The Junta neocons have turned them into a private force of occupation. And so they cannot succeed.
LBJ, when he escalated the Vietnam War, knew that he could not fight on a massive scale without either shattering the army - not a good idea, especially at the height of the Cold War - or keeping a draft.
But the neocons believe, rightly, that a draft would cause another revolt among the young, and won't go there. They want the College Republicans to be able to hold their meetings in public. So they destroy our armed forces on the quixotic crusade.
In WWII we proved that no force on earth can match a united and properly motivated United States. The motive was an existential threat to our way of life, and to the freedom of the rest of the world from Hitler and Hirohito's fascism and murder.
We didn't train up a bunch of Spartans and send them on their way like Hessian mercenaries. We sent men like Dick Winters and his band of brothers.
To suggest otherwise is to entirely miss the point of the United States of America.
posted by fiduciary at 11:10 AM
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