Tell the Spartans They Died For Your Sins (What I Learned From "300" - A Review)

[JackRiddler]

Spartans! The math leaves no doubt that as a born Peloponesian from the Mani, I have the blood of your kings running through my veins. If the issue of Leonidas and Queen Gorgo survive to this day, then I am among them. Take that, all you who fancy yourselves royalty.

Spartans, I do not romanticize your state, child-rearing practices, love of war, or the enslavement of your fellow Peloponesians. Still, I admire your love of freedom and I love your history. I long for a faithful depiction of the Greco-Persian wars in classic Hollywood manner: the machinations, the cities, the mustering and march of the Xerxian army, the clever witch of Delphi, the fleets and storms, the armored phalanxes, the betrayals and yes, the blood. Look to the HBO series "Rome" for an idea of how (relative) faithfulness to history can be combined with both soap opera and artistic spectacle.

Now far as spectacle, story-telling, choreography and visual aesthetics go, the current box-office magnet on the most glorious of Spartan exploits is a work of art. For the first time, a computer-generated work persuades and pleases the eye, presenting iconic painterly images through every sepia-toned frame. Snowflakes and waves of tall grass worthy of the 19th century French landscape painters, piles of skulls and ogres from Bosch, brightly-clad Persian ninjas framed in black as they fall into a bottomless well. The ghosts of Goya applaud.

But were the skies of Greece ever this perpetually gloomy? Alas, the movie's departures from truth are more ominous than a mere slur upon the weather. Audiences do not require accurate history from their blockbusters or even from works of conscious film mythology like "300," but in this case the distortions are systematic and skewed to deliver an agenda. This does not involve a allegory specific to the Bush regime and its wars, as some mistakenly believe, although those do necessarily inform our reception of any war film released in 2007. No. The film transports a far older and more widespread idea, about Free Europe versus the evil monolith of Oriental Asia.

Racism lurks just below the surface message of freedom's fight to the death against "tyranny and mysticism." Strange but no surprise, it is Africans who receive the worst treatment. The Persian rulers were not black but relatively light-skinned descendants of the warlike Aryans, who considered themselves superior to the darker-skinned peoples they subjugated. Their empire ran from the gates of India to Asia Minor and the Mediterranean but did not extend beyond Egypt, and thus ruled over a relatively low number of black Africans known as Nubians. Yet the film features many black soldiers and agents of Persia, depicted as malevolent, carnal, unrelenting beasts. These characters are not taken from the fifth century BCE but recruited straight from the Sauronic hordes of Middle Earth. At one point a closeup of an ogrish black man dissolves into complete darkness, showing only the brights of his eyes, a classic trope of filmed racism. Since the Greeks of the time would have had pretty much the same shade of skin as most of the Persians (whose army included a large number of vassal Greeks!) the filmmakers' casting of the respective armies suggests a conscious use of racist equations: dark=bad, light=good.

The film opens with a fairly truthful rendering of a Spartan boy's childhood. At the edge of a cliff, an archaic eugenicist judges the newborn healthy enough not to be thrown to its death. At eight years the boy is taken from his mother and trained in the harsh life of war. A few years later he is put out in the wilderness for his initiation to manhood, to wander and survive alone. He kills a ravenous, attacking wolf, again of a species that seems to have wandered in from Tolkien. The next stage of a Spartan's upbringing is omitted, however. We do not see how the boy is selected by a sponsor from among the adult warriors, a man who will mentor him and be free to use the boy for sex. We do not see how physical love among males was employed as the emotional glue that bound together the Spartan soldiers and made them all the more ferocious in each other's defense. There is no child sex and no hint that anything is homosexual in Frank Miller's Sparta. Tellingly, at one point the King spits out his contempt for Athenians as soft-living philosophers: "Those boy-lovers!" The film thus explicitly claims the direct opposite of the Spartan "boy-loving" reality. Need we wonder why?

Sparta was a group of five villages clinging to a ragged mountain, not the magesterial Athenian city seen from afar in "300." From here its warriors subjugated the Messinian helots, the slaves who exceeded the Spartans by seven to eight times in number, zero of whom make an appearance in the film. The city had two kings in a basic division of powers, but no reference is made to that here. Leonidas stands for heroism, bravery and the good. His domestic antagonists are led by the five Ephors, who in the real history were the periodically elected representatives of the Spartan male citizenry. The film transforms the city's one democratic institution into a lifetime coven of mystic elders, wizards who hand down fatwas from an isolated mountain redoubt. They sport grotesque facial sores and are dead ringers for the Emperor from "Starwars." These pervert quintuplets are accorded tribute from Sparta in the form of the most beautiful young women, who serve them as drugged-up oracles and sex slaves. Along with the other traitors, the Ephors take a payoff from the aforementioned Persian ogre, which is not inconceivable given the known weakness of Spartan officials for the forbidden lures of luxury and gold. Only the one true King and his loyalists withstand the internal creep of softness and corruption. Three hundred of them march forth to defend Greece, disobeying the Ephors' orders to stay home for a religious party. This is a blow for rationality and courage, but in a world where such qualities come from inherited natural character.

Why are these soldiers naked? Perhaps the film's omission of the helots leaves no one to carry all the heavy iron gear and provisions a proper ancient army would lug about. And since when are ancient Greeks so tall, and so devoid of body hair? Granted, classical vases depict upright idealized warriors chucking spears in their smooth-skinned buff, so this much is in keeping with the spirit of Greek art.

The 300 come upon the abandoned, burning remains of a city and discover its butchered population wrapped as a death-sculpture around a single, massive tree, framed by the moon. Have we understood the stakes yet? Then they run into their allies, an army of non-Spartan wimps, potters and blacksmiths a foot shorter than the Laconians, earnestly trying to do their own semi-naked part in the defense of the Shire, and not an Athenian among them. Also missing are the 700 Thespians, who stayed with the Spartans to die in the final stand at Thermopylae, but whose public relations department never captured historical imagination in the same way, perhaps because their one-liners were not as pithy and memorable. Would you pay to see a film called "1000"?

All along the army has been shadowed by Gollum. He is beefier in this movie, hunched-over in slope-headed deformity. This is supposed to be Ephialtes, the traitor who actually lived near Thermopylae and showed the Persians the goat-path that allowed them to surround the pass and finally kill the Spartans with a shower of arrows from above. The movie recasts Ephialtes into a Spartan wannabe, who somehow avoided the eugenics program and now approaches Leonidas in the hope that he might be accepted as one of the guys. The king sees that Ephialtes cannot hold his shield any higher than three feet, and rejects him with a note of pity. This is what passes for the film's humanistic understanding of the Other: Ephialtes's weakness and betrayal is a function of bad genetics, and it's not really his fault that he wasn't thrown into the pit of dead babies when he was a newborn. The battle of high ideals that Thermopylae has embodied through the course of Western history is reduced, in this 21st century rendering, to a matter of conflicting essentialisms of character as reflected in physical form. In the clash of civilizations, ugly=bad, handsome=good.

The Spartans spot the enemy hordes and take up their positions in the narrow pass. In a rock-and-roll interlude, they cheer as a propitious storm drowns a part of the Persian fleet. The day of battle dawns. The human waves of Asia charge forth in their foppish gear. Body parts fly in a kung-fu ballet of splatter-spewing metal. The Spartans prevail, untouched. The sky darkens with the famous shower of arrows shot by the Persians – Cowards!, the Spartans call – but they hold their shields close and tight and again emerge without casualties. A second wave of mask-wielding special forces known as Immortals mounts a wall the Spartans have built from the bloody corpses of the prior wave, again to be repelled. The first of the Spartans falls, the gentle son of Leonidas's captain. (He had been set up for the traditional, heart-tugging role at the first roll-call of the troops.)

Now Xerxes' magnificent train rides up on the backs of a few hundred slaves, and he steps down from his throne for a parlay. The emperor presents eight feet of muscle, hairless, carrying more piercings than he has pores. He speaks in a stereo voice about two feet below the lowest human basso, and for all this is still just another vain, puff-powdered girly-man of the Orient who thinks he's God. Readers of Frank Miller will recognize him as a stylish cousin to the gang leader in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns," and it is in proper bat-fashion that the Greek king stalks forward to confront him, alone. Leonidas rejects an offer to be the satrap of a Persian Greece, and denies a final call for his men to surrender their arms: Molon labe! ("Come and get them!") He promises that before he dies, he will draw Xerxes's immortal blood. I wonder if that counts as a spoiler?

From there the road is clear. The damaged Ephialtes is brought to the Emperor's tent and allowed to revel in its Sodom and Gommorah in exchange for the key piece of intelligence. Meanwhile, back in Sparta, Gorgo is forced into sex by the rotten head of the appeasement faction, a night before she brilliantly outmaneuvers him in council and sticks him with the long knife we knew all along would be his lot. His 30 pieces of Persian gold scatter on the bloodstained floor. Traitors!, cry the old men of Sparta, and at once the nation is united. (For any who this year think they see a Bush in Leonidas, by the way, consider that our chickenhawk figurehead is only one military disaster away from being associated next year with the traitor faction, whose love of gold has stripped our forces of their body armor.)

Leonidas releases the Greek wimps to go south and train to fight another day. With them he sends a single Spartan, chosen not because he has lost an eye but because he is the best of their story-tellers. We realize this man, until now unseen, has all along been the film's narrator. He has told the tale in the framing device of a fireside speech to a group of soldiers, on some later as-yet unspecified occasion.

The Spartans are surrounded. Leonidas makes a gesture of mercy for Ephialtes, then bows down before the Emperor's train and lays down his helmet and shield. Will the Persians take this obvious bait? Have they still not understood the inner strength of the men they face? Leonidas rises to hurl a spear that spins in slo-mo as it travels thirty yards, slashes Xerxes's face, and strikes the backboard. The wounded Emperor signals, the arrows rain down a final time, all goes black. The camera rises up and out to reveal a stunning tableau of the dead king, full of arrows but face unmarred, in crucifixial rest, surrounded by the bodies of his comrades, sanctified and beautiful.

Cut to the narrator, who concludes his tale and rises to lead a unit in the combined forces of Greece, one year later, 30,000 men united and ready for the final rout of the demoralized Persian forces at Plataea. With a roar, the free men charge into history, leaving this student of the Persian wars with a last question: Where are the Athenians? Don't I remember from Herodotus that this whole war started as the Persian response to an Athenian campaign to free the Greek vassal states of Asia Minor? I also seem to recall that Athenians led the way in each of the most important victories – at Marathon near-singlehandedly, at Salamis scuttling the Persian navy and forcing the withdrawal of Xerxes from Greece, and indeed at Plataea as equals to the Spartans against the Persian rump.

To which the acolytes of Frank Miller may well respond: "Those boy-lovers? Please. A footnote." America needs Spartans.

[KoKo]

1. Thanks for the synopsis....I think I'll pass that one up.

It sounds pretty bizarre. Are you saying it's a movie about homosexuality that covers it up under the guise of "men warriors" of Sparta?" Yet, rather than being a movie about Ancient Greece it's kind of mixed up with Star Wars Imagery?

I'm already crazy enough...this sounds like a movie that would give nightmares. But, maybe it's interesting...I didn't really get an opinion from you. :shrug:

On second thought...your synopsis was your opinion.

I think I'll still pass it up...

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. My opinion, if you want a good comic book movie, this will do.

Don't expect history. Expect fantasy, very loosely based on the historic battle, given to us through the art of Frank Miller. It's an animated graphic novel and can be enjoyed as such. The art is stunning, the dialogue is, well, stilted might say it. I laughed aloud at a couple of the cliches (Wasn't "return with your shield or on it" a Roman saying from 300 years later?).

If you want a truer look at the historical battle read Steven Pressman's "Gates of Fire".

[ComerPerro]

5. could be entertaining then

[sproutster]

8. Return with your sheild or on it... From Sparta, also,

"Only sparta women give birth to men."

[KoKo]

12. They were showing scenes on one of the Morning Show and equating

it to Iran. Saying Iranians are outraged but bootleg DVD's will be available there, even though the Iranian Govt. has banned it. Report was from a Brit in Iran supposedly a "correspondent." I guess they were trying to whip up some interest to get folks out to see it....

Considering that Iran has been a focus in the past few months...kind of seems it might be part of the propaganda to whip up Iranian hatred here...but not seeing it I wouldn't know. The scenes depicted in the a.m. show confirmed that I will pass it up. Dark and gruesome and being pumped as anti-Iranian.

I guess I've had enough propaganda to last a lifetime...but will be good to hear more reports from DU'ers who do see it. Especially the DU'ers who are worried that Bush is hell bent on a bombing campaign against Iran...sooner rather than later.

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. I could see why the Iranians were peeved

but that has all to do with their sense of history

That said, they have fallen into teh same logic trap that many round these parts have

The comic book was written in 1998

It is a frame by frame translation to the screen

Unless the Oracle at Delphi has moved to Mr. Miller's Studio, nope, this was not about any modern conditions, regardless of what the Right, the Left or the Government of Iran might say.

Yep I saw it, and it was anjoyable

[HappyWeasel]

2. I am going with KoKo on this one.

Yeah, this movies does sound of fucked up....literally. It sort of sounds like an acid trip about the Catholic Church.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Well I am going to watch it

given the controversy and all

And will have an eye for... the Frank Miller graphic novel.

;-)

And probably a bit of history to boot

[Bluedogvoter]

6. I watched it and enjoyed it.

Its entertaining and thats all I expect from my movie going experience.

Others may feel their movie going experience should overlap with their political profile, but I could care less. I watch them for pure entertainment and nothing else.

[sproutster]

7. Ahhh know your history

Historians have not concluded that there was mentor sex. It appears from what is left that there may not have been.

The men were married rather young, and there were no homoerotic artworks such as there was with the greeks, etc, where this was common practice. Sparta is also responsible for the first hetrosexual love poem.

Just sayin' :D

BTW love 300 - pissed no women in the 300 - loved they kept the "Only sparta women give birth to men."

[scrinmaster]

9. Why?

Were there any women in the 300?

[sproutster]

10. Because there were women troops...

Was hoping there would be a face in the crowd. :)

Spartan women were the most free in that place and time -- Of course it was due to slavery and they were basically homeland defenders. BUT... There were women troops. And yes, I realize they were not mentioned in this battle, but I just hoped there would be a teeny call out. They certainly wouldn't have been active military.

[JackRiddler]

13. Thank you - Spartan women were free and strong, relative to rest of Greece

Spartan women served as the society's managerial class, given that the men were off at the army at least until 31 years of age, and of course would often end up mustered for war at older ages as well. The women were left to lead the households and estates and civilian society was matricentral (with elder men also hanging on but the shorter lifespans of the time put a bit of a limit on their influence). Women owned property and could speak freely in politics, though they did not vote or hold office. This figures in "300" through Queen Gorgo, who is given a strong role and makes a couple of the famous statements ("Only Spartan women give birth to real men," "Come back with your shield, or on it") and delivers the decisive political speech in council (as well as the dagger to the traitor's gut). No other women have a spoken line in the film, and these general matters are not touched upon.

Other citizen women in Greece were trapped as quasi-slaves to the household (the Kitchen is Your Reich, my dear) and in Athens guarded insanely to make sure there wouldn't be any bastard children. It's a chicken and egg question as to why the Spartan women were so relatively powerful. (Did they have feminist ideas? Was cuckolding less of a concern in a garrison state that required maintenance of the birth rate?) Suffice to say this was an essential part of the system: the entire Spartan people were in a state of perpetual alert to maintain the subjugation of the helots. The women received military training as a home guard, and likely would have all died fighting in a final stand, had the Persians made it into Laconia. This fighting tradition goes all the way into the modern period of the Mani (the middle peninsula of the three fingers, south of Sparta in Messinia/Laconia, where my family comes from).

The region was never fully occupied by the Turks, and the women had a reputation as fighting furies who engaged in and won several battles, when enemy forces would arrive while the men were away, most famously in 1780 in repelling a Turkish incursion, still the subject of an annual celebration in Kalamata today. At the same time, the culture was until the modern period as patriarchal and conservative as it gets. Still, even in the 20th c. the men would all go off on the ships and the women would stay behind and run village life...

AS FOR THE PEDERASTY QUESTION:

Thank you for bringing it up, it was the occasion of some research for me last night. You're right, the old conclusions about this are even now being debated by historians. No doubt that mentoring was practiced, but it's no longer consensus that the institution also sanctioned pederasty. Some argue that this was propaganda by the Spartans' enemies, but most of the surviving sources do in fact make the claim that eros was the glue of the Spartan army, and they had more of a reputation for it among the Greeks than any other state. The archaeological evidence (lack of Spartan sources or artistic depictions) is indicative of little, as Sparta true to its name left very little behind in the way of frivolities like writing, sculpture or paintings! So you also won't find very much Spartan pottery depicting its men fighting wars, but you can bet they did. There is no doubt that homoeroticism was very widely practiced throughout Greece, mainly as a matter between unequals, i.e. an imbalanced power relationship with children or slaves, while homosexuality among adult male equals was rarer and often frowned upon. The known Spartan institutions - all able men in the army, encouraged not to marry until they're done serving at 31 - would lead us to wonder, ahem, just where all that drive would be going!

So we have:
1) Individual mentoring of initiate Spartan boys by adult warrior men - absolutely.
2) Pederasty within mentoring - according to majority of outside sources, Xenophon and Aristotle dissenting, with almost no Spartan sources to speak of either way.
3) Homosexual relationships among adults - clearly rarer throughout Greece, but tolerated compared to any other society at the time, and not subject to a concept of sin.
4) Homoeroticism and homosociality as the glue of the Spartan army - need we ask? That's obvious even in "300."

Thanks!

[NashVegas]

17. Greek Comedians Joked About the Spartans and Their Boys

Much like US comedians joke about the South and marrying very closely within families, and extremely young brides.

Most of the South doesn't, but Jerry Lee Lewis did.

[CTyankee]

19. Jack, I'm a big fan of the Peloponnesian War so I was glad to see your

post. I was wondering if you had read "Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter" by Thomas Cahill. Also, "A War Like No Other" by Victor Davis Hansen, which concentrates on the military tactics used in the war. Fascinating stuff (burning the olive groves, use of horses in combat, etc).

This is fascinating. In my undergraduate Humanities work and later in grad school for a Liberal Studies Master's degree, I read some of Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War", esp. the funeral oration on the war dead by Pericles. We were very admiring of the Athenians, having the first Democracy and all. Of course, their brutal treatment of the Melians and subsequent utter defeat in Siracusa leading to the end of the Athen's empire and their democracy (altho they did later retrieve some of their democratic form of government) put a damper on our admiration for them. But even so, their golden age of playrights and philosophers were admired greatly, while Sparta's reputation suffered because it was a stultifying, controlling state.

I'm glad you posted this. Now I know who is a real scholar in Greek history on DU! Nice to have you here. Thanks for your wonderful insights!

[JackRiddler]

21. Thanks... and sadly nope and nope...

I've read Herodotus and Thucydides (who is god) and Plato and Plutarch and Aristotle and the playwrights in translation, and a few secondary histories, unfortunately not the two you mention. Feel free to tell more about why you like them!

And I've been to many of the sites and museums and of course have been imbibing all this stuff since mama's milk. The Comic Book History of the Universe, no joke, is most fantastic in the early chapters on the ancients.

I could use a summer holed up with the history books. Yeaa-ah!

[CTyankee]

29. Well, "Sailing the Wine Dark Sea" (a quote from Homer's Illiad)

by Thomas Cahill is my favorite book in his series "Hinges of History." Others include "The Gifts of the Jews" and "How the Irish Saved Civilization" both great books. "Sailing the Wine Dark Sea" came out 2 to 3 years ago. What a great book! I loved it. He had different chapters entitled "How to Think" and "How to Love" which was the part on homosexuality in Athens that is very interesting. He is also great on the art of the "golden age" of Greece (5th Century). I liked it so much I literally read it twice! You will love it!

Victor Davis Hansen is another case entirely. He is a philosopher/military historian and writes for "The National Review". I did not know that when I picked up his "A War LIke No Other" at my local library to read. It is actually not a right wing tirade. It is very interesting. As I said in my previous post, he goes into the military tactics employed in the Peloponnesian War and delves into why the Athenians lost.

I don't think the right wing in this country appreciates the comparison of our misadventure in Iraq with the Athenians launching their attack on Sicily (to bring democracy to them!). Cahill makes a sidelong reference to it in "Sailing" which I found very interesting. It must have been a fascinating subject of conversation with classicists in the 19th century in Europe during all of their misadventures in colonialism!

At any rate, these are fabulous books. I think you will absolutely love them and have a great time reading them. Please keep in touch and let me know what you think! Or if you have any other questions...(altho you are much more the Greek expert than I am!)...

[JackRiddler]

31. Thanks again!

I look forward to trying on Cahill and I'm also a sucker for the military strategy stuff. I may know my ancients, if not as well as your average 19th C. English public school boy who could actually read Latin and Greek, but if you look further down, I do seem to mix up whole centuries in the post-classical eras.

I think often on the Sicilian adventure as the obvious ancient parallel to the Bush Iraq war. Now that would make a great movie. What was really nuts was that Syracuse was about as democratic as Athens. An entreaty to alliance might have made more sense.

[CTyankee]

32. Yep, Siracusa had a democracy! Which made it all the more obvious that

Athens had deceived its populace about the real reason for invading Sicily and taking Siracusa (sound familiar?).

I don't know if you have read Donald Kagan's "The Peloponnesian War" which was a culmination of his works on that war over the years as a scholar at Yale. Kagan is pretty right wing so his message is not a liberal one, but worth a read.

On a personal note, in 2005 I actually stood on the spot in Siracusa where the Athenians were defeated. It was an awesome experience. I have no idea if the sea wall I was on was the exact spot but it was a great experience for me (no, I am not doing a George C. Scott Patton thing!). If you ever get a chance to go to Sicily, do go to Siracusa. I loved it there! And actually, Sicily has a number of interesting Greek areas, one of them Segesta where the populace tricked the Athenians to thinking they were rich, as evidenced by their Doric temple to Diana, so that they could be part of the Athenian League in the Peloponnesian War. It worked, the Athenians sailed away and all worked stopped on the temple so the columns were never fluted because they lacked the money to do it. It actually stands today (some 2,500 years later!) unfinished but magnificent.

[UTUSN]

33. Don't get me started on Victor Davis HANSON.

A week or two before the illegal Iraq attack, CHEENEE paraded HANSON in front of the press corps as his "guru" with a high profile lunch. The reporting at the time described his role for the Mal-administration PNACers as being providing examples from history on use of military force in itself and preemption in order to keep "vitality" for the nation, avoid stagnation, and spread its own model abroad.

Here's HANSON giving marching orders for the Iraq attack:

********QUOTE*******

Full HANSON archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp

Nat'l Cathedral: (History or Hysteria?) http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson032803.asp
.... In disgust at the hysteria, I took a drive to Washington to the National Cathedral on Sunday. Big mistake. All except one of the entrances were closed due to security concerns. I walked in under the wonderful sculptures of Frederick Hart, an authentic American genius who almost single-handedly restored classical realism to American sculpture. A small statue of a kneeling Lincoln, who sent thousands into battle to eradicate slavery, was in the corner. A plaque of quotations from Churchill, about the need for sacrifice in war, was on the wall. So I was feeling somewhat good again — until I heard the pious sermon on “shock and awe.” In pompous tones the minister was deprecating the war effort, calling down calumnies upon the administration, and alleging the immoral nature of our nation at war.

Such a strange man at such a strange time, I thought. His entire congregation, by its own admission, is in danger from foreign terrorists (why else bar the gates?). His church is itself a monument to the utility of force for moral purposes. His own existence as a free-speaking, freely worshiping man of God is possible only thanks to the United States military — whose present mission he was openly deriding at the country’s national shrine. ....
*************UNQUOTE********

And here's an example of how NIETZSCHE was distorted by the Nazis, with HANSON-the-thinker giving his views on Mexican immigration, "Mexifornia", (not "racist" despite whether we agree or disagree), as his words are taken over by unintellectual, unthinking wingnut racists for their own purposes:

**********QUOTE********

Mexifornia: http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_2_do_we_want.html
Thousands arrive illegally from Mexico into California each year—and the state is now home to fully 40 percent of America’s immigrants, legal and illegal. They come in such numbers because a tacit alliance of Right and Left has created an open-borders policy, aimed at keeping wage labor cheap and social problems ever fresh, so that the ministrations of Chicano studies professors, La Raza activists, and all the other self-appointed defenders of group causes will never be unneeded. ....

And while the Democrats think the illegals will eventually turn into liberal voters, the actual Hispanic vote so far remains just a small fraction of the eligible Mexican-American pool: of the 14,173 residents of the central California town of Hanford who identified themselves as Latino (34 percent of the town’s population), for example, only 770 are registered to vote.

My sleepy hometown of Selma, California, is in the dead center of all this. ....It is a schizophrenic existence, living at illegal immigration’s intersection. Each week I pick up trash, dirty diapers, even sofas and old beds dumped in our orchard by illegal aliens—only to call a Mexican-American sheriff who empathizes when I show him the evidence of Spanish names and addresses on bills and letters scattered among the trash. ....

Yet I also walk through vineyards at 7 AM in the fog and see whole families from Mexico, hard at work in the cold—while the native-born unemployed of all races will not—and cannot—prune a single vine. By natural selection, we are getting some of the most intelligent and industrious people in the world, people who have the courage to cross the border, the tenacity to stay—and, if not assimilated, the potential to cost the state far, far more than they can contribute. ....

Our elites do not understand just how rare consensual government is in the history of civilization, and therefore they wrongly think that they can instill confidence by praising the other, less successful, cultures that aliens are escaping from rather than explaining the dynamism and morality of the civilization that they have voted for with their feet. ....

*****UNQUOTE****

NIEZSCHE is one of a group who are often portrayed as strange, impenetrable, and on some weird and original tangent all their own, when the secret that binds ALL of these seeming mavericks ---NIETZSCHE, STRAUSS, PAGLIA, and Victor Davis HANSON (CHEENEE's guru)--- is the CLASSICS Department, the pre-Christian values they are INDIVIDUALLY steeped in ---and wanted to live by TODAY.

It's not that NIETZSCHE "influenced" the ones after him, it's that EACH of these WENT BACK individually to the Ancients. They want to live by the "strong" pre-Christian values of STRENGH, physical force/domination, PRIDE ("gloating") as opposed to the "weak" values of humility, mercy, turning the other cheek.

And it's NOT that NIEZCHE was a proto-Nazi. Richard WAGNER *was* one and NIETZSCHE broke with him. After he went into his mental helplessness his unintellectual sister took control of his body and dressed him as a prophet, literally, with people visiting to pay obeissance, which would have REPELLED him, and herself courted the proto-Nazis according to her own small understanding of him, or just for her self-interest.

Here's a whimsical, but prescient, capturing of what goes on with the Classics types:

******QUOTE*****

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Music: Stephen Sondheim Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim Book: Larry Gelbart + Burt Shevelove Film: 1966

"Bring Me My Bride" (I, Miles Gloriosus)
http://libretto.musicals.ru/text.php?textid=5&language=1

....Let haste be made,
I cannot be delayed!
There are lands to conquer,
Cities to loot
And people to degrade!

SOLDIERS
Look at those arms!
Look at that chest!
Look at them!

MILES
Not to mention the rest!
Even I am impressed. ....

SOLDIERS
Look at that foot!
Look at that heel!
Mark the magnificent muscles of steel!

MILES
I am my ideal! ....

MILES
COURTESANS
I, Miles Gloriosus,
I, Paragon of virtues,
Him, Miles Gloriosus
Him, Paragon of virtues,

SOLDIERS
A man among men!
With sword and with pen!

MILES
I, in war the most admired,
In wit the most inspired,
In love the most desired,
In dress the best displayed,
I am a parade! ....

*****UNQUOTE****

[davepc]

34. What does Iraq war cheeleading have to do with Greek military tactics circa 500 BCE?

Just because someone is a bushbot doesn't automatically mean their opinion on the subject of classical western civilization military tactics are null and void.

[UTUSN]

35. I didn't say that, now did I.

1. One of the themes in the various movie reviews of the political type has been whether this movie is supposed to be commenting on our current situation. (I'm with those who say it's not, that it's a comic book thing.) The poster I was replying to, himself, brought up HANSON's wingnuttiness, and I was adding my take on him (& NIETZSCHE, STRAUS, PAGLIA).

2. I didn't say anything about his knowledge of classical military tactics being null and void. I was filling in some current events tidbits about how he put his knowledge at the service of the Shrub regime. Just as NIETZSCHE's sister, after his mental collapse, let the proto-Nazis pervert his work for their misuse, which he would have been REPULSED by.

3. If somebody is helping Shrub, I'm ferreting them out and keeping that in mind when I consider them. I am capable of reading somebody I disagree with on other things and mining their other knowledge. As an example, I long wanted to read a history of the Jews and picked out one by Paul JOHNSON without knowing that he is a wingnut. Even when I found out, part way through, his wingnuttiness didn't affect his subject matter for me except for his few sentences about FDR and other Liberals, which irritated me and stuck out like a short order cook's hair in the eggs.

4. The quotations and my comments did not denigrate his scholarly work, and despite his coinage of the word "Mexifornia" having been appropriated by racists, I specifically said I don't think he is a racist.


Here's another example of my being able to separate somebody's wrongness for me from their good work: HITCHENS on Paul JOHNSON, hilarious::

*********QUOTE********

http://www.salon.com/media/1998/05/28media.html

The Rise and Fall of Paul "Spanker" Johnson

THE RIGHT-WING HISTORIAN'S LONGTIME MISTRESS DEALS HIM THE UNKINDEST WHACK OF ALL.

.... So it was decidedly invigorating to learn, in the dog days of mid-May, that he had been exposed by his mistress of 11 years, the writer Gloria Stewart, as a spankee:

"Paul loved to be spanked and it was a big part of our relationship. I had to tell him he was a very naughty boy." ....

Stewart unmasked Spanker Johnson to the tabloids because she could not bear to read another word of his "family values" tripe in the press. As recently as March, interviewed by Jacob Weisberg for the New York Times Magazine, he had claimed to be an advisor to the late Princess Diana. "Don't commit adultery," he said, was his "chief advice" to the divine one. When various Tory MPs were found in a trouser-free condition not long ago, Johnson predicted the ruin of the state and said that adultery, especially when committed by those who opposed it in public, should be severely punished.

But here's the bizarre thing. Johnson is not just a cult figure wherever two or three spankers are gathered together. He is an adored object of the American Right. Norman Podhoretz loved "Intellectuals." Nixon used to send out Johnson volumes for Christmas. Oliver North was once overcome with admiration at seeing William Casey read a whole Johnson on a plane flight. Dan Quayle kept a copy of Johnson's awful "Modern Times" by him, and employed it as a prop against those who accused him of being no great reader. (When pressed for an exegesis of its content, he announced contentedly that it was "a very good historical book about history.")... ....

*********UNQUOTE*******

[CTyankee]

40. It goes the the question of "might makes right" which was the subject of

one of the Platonic dialogues that Plato recorded Socrates having with one of his questioners (I am blanking on his name here!). This was essentially the same argument of the Athenian Assembly in its punishment of the island of Melos, killing all of its men and selling its women and children into slavery, because they did not want to ally themselves one way or the other in the Peloponnesian War (Donald Kagan would disagree on this point I am sure) It has been argued by liberals that this argument underlies our Iraq war cheerleading, as you put it, because it justifies our going in to "spread democracy," exactly what the Athenians said they were doing by invading Sicily. And it was just as devious then as now. Athens was a democracy (albeit seriously flawed) and also an empire. Both were lost when Athens was defeated in Siracusa and its navy (always its strength over the Spartans who had a superior land army) was sunk, an ignominious end to a great period of civilization (well, maybe not so great for its slaves and women!) So I have seen liberals argue (as I do) that there is some historical parallel in the two instances.

First read about what Athens did to Melos in the section called "The Melian Dialogue" in Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War" and then read the section on "might makes right" in Plato's Dialogues. That is the chronological order of these writings. Obviously, Socrates and Plato were struggling with the dismal outcome of such a philosophy in their own times.

[Xithras]

20. Sparta generally had no artwork at all.

Societally, they placed little value in it. Painters, carvers, or artisans of any sort were looked upon as cowards and weaklings. The Spartans generally considered the Athenians to be soft and weak, and looked upon their love of art as an example of that softness. Spartan society was focused around fighting and agriculture, and that's where their energies were directed. The helot slaves worked the farms and fields, and kept the villages functional, while the Spartans fought and f***ed. It was a rare thing for even the helots to be permitted to create artwork.

This is why there are no great Spartan statues in the museums, no great Spartan temples to go visit, and no great Spartan cities to wander around in. This, more than heterosexuality, is probably why there aren't any Spartan homoerotic artworks.

Also, remember that while they married young, they didn't live with their wives. If I remember correctly, Spartan men lived in barracks until they were 30. They may have been married, but the men didn't get to see their wives all that often. There are also numerous historical accounts indicating that lesbianism (more accurately, bisexual lesbianism) was common among Spartan women, and that it was acceptable for Spartan women to take male lovers while their husbands were away. The Spartans lived a very communal lifestyle, and Spartan men were expected to raise children born of these lovers as their own, because it was good for the community )obviously, sleeping with helots was never acceptable, because it would have introduced non-Spartan blood into the citizenry).

[jollyreaper2112]

43. Gates of Fire had an interesting take on that

A conversation before the 300 depart on the courage of men vs. the courage of women. The courage of men is fierce and bright, oil flashing in fire. Life is sacrificed in the passion of battle and any consequences are for consideration in the next life. The courage of women is of different, sterner stuff. They must stand back and watch their husbands, fathers, and sons march to battle, those who may return wounded, dead, or not at all. They must live with the pain and the cost long after the fire of battle is extinguished, when there is no heady intoxication of excitement and glory to dull away the pain. The courage of women is to stand up to the consequences and endure. The Spartan relating this confided that his wife was the stronger of the two and he was not sure he could bear up if their positions were reversed.

[Blue_Tires]

11. well said

ttt

[JackRiddler]

14. thanks hey self-kick etc.

[ShortnFiery]

15. Defending your turf against all odds is commendable ...

but I have no lust for watching all the bravado and warmongering.

That's what gets us all caught up in "the battle."

Sooner rather than later we, as The HUMAN Race, be forced to learn how to get along with our neighbors or go the way of The Dinosaur.

F**k all the pseudo glory of gory waring when it's one minute to extinction as a species. :nuke:

[JackRiddler]

16. Well said...

But I do have an abiding historical interest in this particular legend.

[Leopolds Ghost]

38. If Thermopylae and the Spartans is so noble, why not make a similar movie about Tora Bora?

Told in the manner depicted here, it would be equally repulsive.

Buff, half-naked homophobic Islamic terrorists, defending a narrow place against overwhelming odds, while refusing to apologize for their genocidal terrorist society on the grounds that they are merely "protecting their homeland"?

[PerfectSage]

53. Wow that's a good one Leopold's Ghost

You've got damn good :sarcasm: game. lol

I'd give that movie :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Xithras]

18. No mention of the two kings? That makes no sense!

According to Herodotus, Leonidas went to see the Oracle before venturing to Thermopylae, and the Oracle declared that "For Sparta to survive, one king must die". Most historians cite that as the actual reason Leonidas stayed in the pass, when his defeat was already assured. Like most Spartans, he was a highly superstitious man, and actually believed that Sparta would fall if he lived. He gave his life because he felt it was needed to protect his people.

And no mention of the Thespians? No mention of Demophilus declaring that it would be his honor to die alongside the Spartans?

What's disappointing about this is that the Battle of Thermopylae really didn't need to be dramatized or fictionalized. It's one of the most dramatic, selfless battles in the history of humanity and warfare, and the truth is story enough. I don't know why they had to ruin it by leaving out some of the more dramatic aspects of the story.

One small correction in your review though. The majority of the soldiers in the Persian army weren't Persian, but were soldiers comandeered from the surrounding vassal states. The stories about how Xerxes made the larger non-Persian contingent of his army ride a half-day behind him to demonstrate their "inferiority" are well known. That said, ALL civilizations in that part of the world embraced slavery at that time, from Athens to the Indus, and most nations had sizeable contingents of slaves in their armies (some motivated with a "fight or die" threat, and others under the promise of freedom after so many years of good service). Many of the slaves owned by these vassal states originated in East Africa. So yes, there would have been a large number of black African slaves in Xerxes army at Thermopylae.

[Orrin_73]

22. This tale is a myth, there is no conforming that it ever happened

If the greeks were that powerful, why were they crushed and overrun by the Turks on all battles concerning greeks and Turks!

[JackRiddler]

23. um... relevance?

I guess the tsoliates of 1922 could have used some time-travelling Spartan reinforcements?

:eyeroll:

[Orrin_73]

24. maybe they could

then again they were facing the Turks in 1922 and not persians. Turks have a long history of warfare, the greek army in 1071 and 1922 were no match against the Turks.

[JackRiddler]

25. 1071 was the Fourth Crusade sacking Constantinople, not the Turks...

And actually I don't take sides in battles before my lifetime. Otherwise I see no need for this particular subthread. Go in peace.

[Orrin_73]

26. In 1071 the battle of Manzikert took place

where the Turks conquered anatolia from the byzantine empire.
The FIRST crusade started in 1096!!!! Constantinople was sacked in 1204 by the fourth crusade!!!

[genie_weenie]

27. What do the Turks have to do with 300?

2487 years ago, the Turks did not inhabite Anatolia. The tribe didn't even exist at that time and eventually when the Turkish people began to be recognized they would come out of the Gobi and near the yellow river...

[Orrin_73]

28. Turks never lived in Gobi

At the time of the battle of Manzikert the Turks ruled most of the middle east and all of central asia and western china.

[genie_weenie]

50. The Turks most definitely originated

in the Asiatic Steppes. By the time Alp Arslan defeated the Byzantines they had nearly completed their migration away from a nomadic horsepeoples lifestyle to settling down and establishing control over the Middle East and beyond.

[Leopolds Ghost]

37. Anyone who believes that the majority of modern Turkish residents are Turks, is naive.

Like the Spaniards in Mexico, the tiny warlord-aristocracy of Turkish conquistadores forced everyone to adopt Turkish names, language and customs, under pain of death. Hell, the Spaniards did the same thing to the huge number of Moors and Jews IN SPAIN, many of whom converted BACK 500 years later -- or at least abandoned Catholicism that was forcibly imposed on their ancestors by the barbarian Castilians and Visigoths -- after Franco died.

Similarly, it is provable that Turks and Greeks are essentially one people, just as scientists recently determined that 95% of Britons are NOT Anglo-Saxon or even Celtic, but are in fact oppressed proto-Celts.

Chalk one up for people who believe in the myth of ethnic cleansing but aren't ready to contemplate the genocide that entails, when and if it actually happens (as with the Armenians).

Meanwhile, again, most "Turks" and Greeks have common dark-skinned Mediterranean ancestors, with a fair amount of Indo-European as well. The Persians are almost entirely Indo-European, they are whiter than Italians.

[JackRiddler]

30. oops. teach me to do four-second posts off the cuff...

You score a point. Please feel free to start a thread on the Turks. I'm sure it will be interesting.

[Leopolds Ghost]

36. Lord of the Rings was nowhere near as racist/jingoistic as this movie.

Certainly the books were not!

Tolkien went out of his way to sympathize with the dark-skinned
peoples who were enslaved by Sauron (and also enslaved and hunted
like animals by the white-skinned but corrupt and imperialistic
"good guys", a plot point that was conveniently omitted from the movies.)

The movies were twisted a bit by various New Zealanders with racial
hangups who chose to omit the dark-skinned people who fought on the
good side, described Sauron's men as "wicked", etc.

As for Thermopylae, it is typical of European racists that they view
the defeat of Xerxes as anything more than a temporary setback for
the forces arrayed against Athenian style democracy (including the
Spartans and Alexander's Macedonian barbarians, who unlike the
Greeks were white-skinned and light-haired and destroyed Athenian
style democracy forever -- with no help from those "evil Orientals".)

Persians are WHITER THAN GREEKS. Don't people realize that?

[JackRiddler]

39. Of course I realize that...

and the racist use of skin color as metaphor for beastliness was an explicit theme in the movie, as I note at the beginning of the review. Although plenty of the bad guys were also white, they were given grotesque physical attributes, and the black characters received caricatures out of the usual racist handbook. Looks corresponded to one's level of evil.

Have you seen the Rings movies? They make very obvious use of the racist equations. I'm not sure Tolkien was that far from it, either.

Athenian democracy was destroyed by none so well as the Athenians themselves. They undid themselves through their own hubris and imperial grasping before other states took them over. The presumption in the case of the Persian invasion is that its success would have wiped Athens and its texts and ideas out of history altogether, which is possible. Whereas Macedonia spread the ideas (at the point of a sword), or perhaps only the idea of the ideas. The texts, at any rate. Later, Athens was adopted as the founding myth of the West, with many iterations through the centuries. Was this really the case?

Without Athens, would humankind have not crossed the same thresholds, had something like the Enlightenment and its challenge to absolutism, modern republics, industrial revolutions, a concept of universal rights and rule of law? I certainly think so, and intellectuals would have picked different ancient analogues to idealize as their forerunners. (Feel free to reverse that and say they wouldn't be blaming the Greeks but someone else for the disastrous mess of modern civilization.) The countries may have ended up with different names, but the big themes of human history would continued and today's point of global crisis, awakening or disaster would have also been reached, albeit through a different path.

That doesn't make history less worth knowing.

[CTyankee]

41. I might agree with your last point, but I am not that knowledgeable (back to the books!)

However, I think Cahill would disagree. His book is, after all, subtitled "Why the Greeks Matter." It is funny, tho, that the Western countries that have held Athens' "golden age' up as the defining moment, a sine qua non, for Western civilization certainly didn't ACT like they understood the underlying meaning of Athens' defeat in their own pursuit of empire and colonialsm!

Yale historian Paul Kennedy wrote a book (prior to the Gulf War) called "The Rise of the Great Powers," which examines empires from about the 1500s onward. I haven't read it; it is pretty long. Might be another one for our long reading list. And fellow Yalie prof, Donald Kagan, gives us the right wing version of what we can learn from the Peloponnesian War!

[JackRiddler]

44. Kennedy is well-worth reading

As far as attempts at 500 year histories of global powers go, it moves conservatively and yet coheres. Very well written. But if you really want the big big big picture try Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel. Of all the grand determinists geographers almost always win, in my opinion, and at the same time turn out to be the most humanist.

[CTyankee]

47. Yes, I read that a few years ago when it first came out in paperback.

I thought it was excellent as determinists go, really a great read and quite convincing.

Also worth another look is "The March of Folly" by Barbara Tuchman, a historical look at, well, the march of folly, ending up with an analysis of the Vietnam War (it's an old book!).

I'm glad you want to check out Victor Davis Hanson's "A War Like No Other." I'd like to hear your feedback.

Sounds like you waded through "The Rise of the Great Powers." I really want to read it. I actually thought Kennedy might be dead by now but awhile back the poor guy was charged with DUI here in New Haven, not booze but "medication" while in his pajamas, checking out a neighbor's house while the neighbor was away. I felt very sorry for him; he was so apologetic and miserable about it. Sad...

[nadinbrzezinski]

46. You do realize

that the Persians came in all colors... shades and all since the Empire was THAT large

You also realize that the Greeks were mostly white, or worst case a tad darker but not much more

For folks who complaint about the lack of history in tbs (and boy there is plenty) when they do stick to history people also complaint

Damn it all, it would be nice if people just stop inserting their damn politics into all movies'

Oh hold it, Happy Feet had that liberal, lefty enviro message, per Sean Hannity...

For the record I enjoyed both movies

[JackRiddler]

48. Didn't see happy feet but "Over the Hedge" was an eco-manifesto.

And pretty funny, too.

[nadinbrzezinski]

51. It was funny

and you can find these things if you look for them

But I wish we could go back to a time when you could just enjoy a movie

From some of the reviews... I swear this was Mrs. Riefhensthals grand opus of the 1936 Olympics (and that was propaganda, as clear as day by the way)

[jollyreaper2112]

42. 300 is crap

For an excellent rendition of the story, read Gates of Fire. It's one hell of a novel.

http://www.amazon.com/Gates-Fire-Novel-Battle-Thermopylae/dp/055338368X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-1594336-7444136?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174050255&sr=1-1

The first several pages are available online to read.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/055338368X/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-1594336-7444136#reader-link

I believe you will agree with me right from the start that this is a book completely unlike 300. This one is infused with history and gives a better sense of what it was like back in the day.

[NoPasaran]

45. Thanks for a very well-wriiten and thorough review

[JackRiddler]

49. thank you - I have really enjoyed this thread...

[ellisonz]

54. Race police where are you?

"Racism lurks just below the surface message of freedom's fight to the death against "tyranny and mysticism." Strange but no surprise, it is Africans who receive the worst treatment. The Persian rulers were not black but relatively light-skinned descendants of the warlike Aryans, who considered themselves superior to the darker-skinned peoples they subjugated. Their empire ran from the gates of India to Asia Minor and the Mediterranean but did not extend beyond Egypt, and thus ruled over a relatively low number of black Africans known as Nubians. Yet the film features many black soldiers and agents of Persia, depicted as malevolent, carnal, unrelenting beasts. These characters are not taken from the fifth century BCE but recruited straight from the Sauronic hordes of Middle Earth. At one point a closeup of an ogrish black man dissolves into complete darkness, showing only the brights of his eyes, a classic trope of filmed racism. Since the Greeks of the time would have had pretty much the same shade of skin as most of the Persians (whose army included a large number of vassal Greeks!) the filmmakers' casting of the respective armies suggests a conscious use of racist equations: dark=bad, light=good."

Spot on.

:applause:

[JackRiddler]

55. Thanks

[JackRiddler]

56. A final, shameless kick n/t

[baldguy]

57. If "300" is a parable for our time, who plays Leonidas?

I can see the Persians being Iran and the Greeks being America, East vs West. Freedom vs slavery. I can even set aside the absurdity of putting Iran in the role of the unstoppable Persian Empire. The 300 Spartans sacrifice themselves for ALL of Greece - including those whom they see as less than manly - because they are Greek. Leonidas even praises them for their bravery, if not their skill.

What I can't see is Bush being the Warrior-King Leonidas. The Spartan King was brave, intelligent, cunning and above all loyal to his soldiers. Bush is none of these. His role is really Ephialtes - an ultimately sad and pitiful creature who does nothing for his people but betray them and allow them to be destroyed.

[nadinbrzezinski]

58. It is not

[JackRiddler]

62. Yup.

Heh, not to quote myself or anything, but to quote myself:

"For any who this year think they see a Bush in Leonidas, by the way, consider that our chickenhawk figurehead is only one military disaster away from being associated next year with the traitor faction, whose love of gold has stripped our forces of their body armor."

[baldguy]

63. The message is: "We Need Spartans"

There's no epic movie saying "We Need Athenians". We're supposed to BE Athenians. We may need Spartans, be we also need to keep them in their place.

[Phillycat]

59. That movie was freaking awesome, though. :D

And the guys were super hot! :bounce:

[Balbus]

60. Great movie. I recommend it.

Of course, I didn't go see it for the politics, nor take anyting political out of it - only a fucking idiot would do that.

[ecstatic]

61. Persians = Current US; Spartans = Any small country we've bullied

That's what I took from it anyway...

I just hate the fact that men feel the need to send entire nations to war due to personal disagreements.