THE MERITS OF '300'

by ADA Jazzy D

     Many have opined on the merits of the recent Frank Miller fueled block-buster “300.”  Many critics have pointed out its historical inaccuracies, bellicose themes, and political parallels.  Some wish to draw comparisons between political current events and this movie.  An effort which seems a bridge too far when one considers the faithfulness to the books which first hit stands in 1998, well before “current events.” 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran has spoken out against '300' because of it's portral of Persians.

     But there is something there.

     First, “this is [not] Sparta,” it is not even the legend of Sparta, this is a comic book meets Hollywood myth—a King Arthur story.  It has many facets to it, like the “Millerian” take on the masculine and the feminine, explored in this CBR article.  300 is not political, but it is philosophical.  Political thought has ideas which similar to some motifs and themes appearing in 300.  I’m not going to re-tell the movie, but there may be spoilers.
 
     So, here comes the nutshell version.  At the end of the cold war, two ideas started to come forward.  Samuel Huntington wrote about a “clash of civilizations,” a term thrown around glibly by commentators today.  Francis Fukuyama advanced a Hegelian theory about “the end of history and the last man.”  “Clash” is like Battlestar Gallactica:  different civilizations, their only choices are fight, survive, or die.  “The end of history” is like Star Trek, eventually liberty and justice will win over everybody. 
“Clash” says the West is the West and our ideas, like equality or democracy, are not appealing to other civilizations.  Further, Huntington argues that the West is fading in the face of other, less apologetic, civilizations.  It is easy to sees 300 in this light as a rallying cry for Western Civilization to stand and fight and be proud, and all that.  Heck, the movie literally—and dubiously—credits the 300 with safeguarding the future of the West. 

     It’s not an idea without some appeal for Westerners.  It just so happens that the war was against the Persians, the empire of the near east, a region and perhaps a threat well known in the West today.  Of course, like all myths, exaggeration is a given. 
The Spartans are manly men, spurning comfort for honor and duty.  They ironically dump on the Athenians as “boy lovers.”  Their women are independent and strong willed.  They fight for an “age of freedom.”

     The Persians are decadent, prurient, and ornate.  Their costumes are over the top, vain-glorious affairs; their speeches are pompous.  They are a society of submission, with Xerxes, the God-King, at the top.  They fight for his glory.
But the themes and motifs go beyond some “the west is the best” myth that teaches audiences to stand in fight in the clash of civilizations. 

     Fukuyama’s “end of history” theory states that liberal, free-market, democracies will eventually spread over the earth.  Why?  Well, it is complex: 
1) the scientific method won’t be lost and it prevents us from going back to and age of kingdoms and tribes and such. 
2)  Everyone has a thymos, spiritedness or human dignity—a part of their being that demands personal sovereignty.  Democracy is the best way to satisfy this need.

     Fukuyama also argues the world was historically divided into masters and slaves.  Masters were those that refuse to be slaves and would die in battle rather than surrender personal sovereignty.  Sound familiar?  In fact, Fukuyama suggests the measure of a democracy’s strength may be whether its citizens are willing to die to defend it.  
If the movie had ended with Leonidas’s death it might have just touched on the master/slave theory and remained mostly in line with Huntington’s “Clash,” whether intentional or not.  But Hollywood happy endings required a final battle in which good beats evil; freedom over “tyranny and mysticism.”

     See, Huntington’s “Clash” is not good or evil, just the way things are.  But Fukuyama’s view is that Democracy satisfies the soul, ergo it is good.  And challenges to Democracy must be at least bad, if not evil.  That’s where the line about “tyranny and mysticism” comes in. 

     Tyranny is bad, even evil, but if it was just a fight against tyranny the movie would be a different movie—think “the Alamo.”  But what’s all that mysticism stuff about?  Well, mysticism is used in this context as sort of a stand in for an irrational, fanatical, and twisted devotion.  It is a cult mentality, and it is evil, even eevvviiiilllll.  As the harem scene hammers home it is a cult of submission.  Surely, parallels between the fanatical immortals of Xerxes and radical Islam can be made.  But the same is true of the most infamous enemy of Democracy:  the Nazis.

     Mysticism and the occult are deep parts of National Socialism; check out D. Skylar’s “The Nazis and the Occult” for more detail.  Hitler was their God; their “pure” blood was as religiously pure as it was genetically.  Their plans were based on prophecy and astrology and visions.

     It is probably no accident that the mysticism of the Oracle is scorned by Leonidas, nor that the freaky looking elders of the temple are both sexual deviants and traitors.  Mysticism is evil and corrupt in this story.  This occult taint to the Persians and Xerxes paints them as semi-demonic; much the Nazis are often depicted.

     The pivotal scene is the harem scene, in which the twisted hunch-back Ephialtes submits to Xerxes and seals the Spartans’ fates.  The scene has a satyr (likely a subtle reference to bestiality and the goat-demon archetype), transsexuals, slave girls, contortionists, an armless concubine and more.  The seduction of Ephialtes has a point:  perversion.  At this point Xerxes becomes a Faustian Satan: “cruel Leonidas demanded that you stand. I only require that you kneel.”  This cult of submission to the god-king is an evil, perverted society.

     Xerxes is not a god.  He is a perversion of the idea.  A truth revealed with Leonidas’s last act.  Thus, 300 is a story about heroes, and good versus evil. 

     300 has ties to larger discussions and comes at a time in which questions about appeasement and western decline and warmongering are legion.  It is not a political movie.  It is a movie with ideals.  Those ideals, like freedom, strength, and duty, are always in play, but perhaps have never been so debatable as today.  300 rallies these ideals for one last stand.