We are not fucked. FIGHT. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT fiiiiiiiight. Fucking FIGHT! LIKE NEVER BEFORE, FIIIIGHT!!!
Ironic image choice aside, I agree.
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Ironic, how so? I was thinking iconic.
300 is a coded alt-right/white supremacist propaganda film. “This is Sparta!” = “Murica!”
The film explicitly demonizes disability, “genetic inferiority”, sexual freedom, diversity in religion, any kind of gender ambiguity, and the big bad is a Brown person from a distant country.
It never sat right with me when I saw it in the theater years ago, and it took a long time for me to realize why.
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Right? It always shocks me how many people didn’t get that. It seemed obvious to me?
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As parodied in Robot Chicken:
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Except it is also based loosely on some historically accurate points of Spartan culture and life.
Judging Spartans based on our standards of today doesn’t make any sense. I take more issue around the portrayal of the Persians which was wholly inaccurate and wrong in every possible way except calling them Persians. But I chalk that up to it being a comic book movie.
I don’t look to Frank Miller or something like 300 for a reality check on the human condition or to find my moral compass anymore than I would with Avengers or Shaun of the Dead.
Probably way off topic at this point.
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I expect people understood that.
They did not have eugenics in Sparta, tho. And that’s pretty much what Frank Miller was advocating there, not a history lesson. I’m not an ancient historian, but he didn’t even really get that remotely right, either, from what I understand.
Frank Miller has been kind of a right wing, libertarian dick, too.
[ETA] actually, this guy argues that they did practice a kind of eugenics…
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Yes, the movie is full of distortions and inaccuracies. My reference was less so to the movie and moreso to the battle of Thermopylae as a symbol of the underdog’s fight. However if we’re going to dig into a fuller critique, Sparta as a society was far from being above reproach. One of the most extreme, eugenics-oriented stratified societies ever to exist. Apart from all those glaring flaws with the call-out to 300/Sparta…
RAWR!
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People can’t have opinions about things. That would be madness.
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I’m fairly sure people aren’t judging Sparta by today’s standards but rather the movie.
Just like the fact Jesus probably wasn’t into torture porn in any way exonerates Mel Gibson.
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Right? The film very much leans into the idea that ethnic purity is what makes Sparta so morally correct, while it’s the diversity of Persia that makes them so repulsive. 
I’m fairly certain the film makers had little interest in accurately portraying Sparta and Persia, but were more interested in some commentary on modern Iran.
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It’s Zack Snyder, he’s a terrible director. I have yet to see a Zack Snyder film that wasn’t a sort of hollow, unpleasant mess.
Edit: Case in point, he’s directing “The Fountainhead” next. Anyone who voluntarily dips into Ayn Rand territory has some issues.
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aww, c’mon! Sucker Punch was a cinematic triumph, a masterpiece!
said no one
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oi, shite! from Alan Moore (Watchmen) to Ayn Rand? jeebus. dude’s incorrigible. srsly, f that!
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Right, but that’s not even really the point I’m trying to make. He could be a great director and still be promoting ethnic purity as a core western value. Him being bad at his job is beside the point really. I mean, most people who study film all agree that Leni Reinfestalh was a good director. She was still making racist propaganda when she directed Triumph of the Will.
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brilliant. and thank you for keeping us in perspective of the topic.
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Sorry, I caused some confusion there. I was carelessly conflating “he’s a racist” with being a bad director. I mean, Snyder checks both boxes, but still. Your distinction is important.
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But @Mark_Sniadecki is spot on that he sucks as a director!
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It’s almost as if no one read the comic/graphic novel that was the source material.
It’s not meant to be accurate. And not one person making it was trying to make commentary on modern day socio political standards.
But sure. Judge away. If that’s your hill, by all means die on it.
