And then DC decided they didn’t want their character associated with virulent bigotry, so Miller had to replace Batman with a generic protagonist in his next book in the series:
It’s a landmark work that changed an industry and gave a fresh view of an old character, but … yeah. At one point Miller has The Joker kill off people he doesn’t like for one reason or another, in the style of Ayn Rand’s infamous train tunnel. He also chose some real celebrities, including (for reasons I didn’t and will never understand) Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
As I recall Miller’s story took a dim view of liberal, bleeding-heart psychiatrists & therapists who advocated a “treatment” approach toward the criminally insane instead of a “beat them to a bloody pulp and lock them away in a tiny room for the rest of their lives” approach.
Let’s not forget the ethnic nationalism of 300, where the “impure” are rejected and put out of the community of Sparta, but embraced by the queer Persians…
She’s Jewish, in addition to embracing sex positivity (which I assume white supremacists probably believed was corrupting of white youth…).
Yeah, I was forgetting about Green Arrow, because they’ve been somewhat inconsistent about that focus, over the years. Which is weird considering the whole premise of the character is, “What if ‘Robin Hood’ were a superhero?”
Yeah the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series of the 70s had a whole series of GA trying to bring GL back down to Earth (literally) and highlighted a lot of the social injustice topics. I actually have a handful of the original which have appreciated in value.
You could say that about any past civilization. None of them would have been approved of with a modern eye. That isn’t to say there aren’t interesting or admirable parts about them.
But the story of the Battle of Thermopylae is less about the Spartan’s way of life, and more about the warriors holding back a much larger force, although ultimately all dying in the end. Of course that story has also been highly romanticized. The whole concept of the Spartan is highly romanticized. My favorite dick movie is to bring up all the pederasty to the people with stickers on their trucks, etc.
In Frank’s work, it’s also racialized, to the point where it can be read as advocacy for racial purity. It’s unfortunately, given how much people depend on pop culture for their history.
You know, with everyone posting images of appropriate comics here, I might as well make sure that the comic I mentioned before, Batman Zombie, is represented:
It’s also hetero-normatised (okay, I don’t know if that’s a word) with the Spartans a proxy for pure aryan white hetero masculinity, the Persians queer brown people, and the Athenians effeminate. The funny part is of course that the Athenians viewed the Spartans as kind of effeminate due to the way women ran a large part of the body politic (men being engaged in war). Also the Spartans were, by our standards, most likely super gay. They had trouble breeding their aristocratic class. The boys spent their adolescence training with other naked boys in camp and, as their battle speciality was the Hoplite Phalanx which is important in the movie (the left arm is the one you train hardest as it holds the shield that protects your brother) they did lots of naked dancing together to become as one in the phalanx.
Also the Sacred Band of Thebes kind of nixes the notion that Greeks saw being a warrior as highly hetero…
Aaaannnnd, I don’t know that there is any particular reason to think that Persians would be any more brown than Athenians and Spartans of the time.
If not for Athenian politician Themistocles, there would be no written account of the battle. “300” takes liberally from his accounts and even some of the famous obviously fictional propaganda additions.
Spartans weren’t big on arts and historical accounts. It is ironic that in the years after his death, the very people he idolized in print would conquer the Athenians. Through eschewing the heavy infantry hoplites and using an effective navy.
