To the surprise of many critics, and many readers of a particular newspaper, the movie 300 surged ahead to take in more than $70 million in its opening weekend (and more than $150 million worldwide at the date of this article). A live-action adaptation of a graphic art interpretation of the Spartan’s stand at Thermopylae—how’s that for an illustration of how all art is both derivative and creative—the movie had been expected by the industry to be a “niche film.” And it was panned by most critics as “a throwaway epic“: “excessive” and “simplistic.” A. O. Scott of the New York Times sneers that it’s “about as violent as Apocalypto and twice as stupid.” My absolute favorite negative review, however, has to be Kyle Smith from the New York Post—who violates Godwin’s Rule to say:
Keeping in mind Slate’s Mickey Kaus’ Hitler Rule—never compare anything to Hitler—it isn’t a stretch to imagine Adolf’s boys at a 300 screening, heil-fiving each other throughout and then lining up to see it again.
(Note for Mr Smith: it’s a Rule for a reason—Nazi references just never sound credible. Also, “heil-five” doesn’t sound clever, just juvenile.)
Even some of the critics who liked the movie sound somewhat dismissive, viewing it as pure escapism, fun but vapid as it were. But at least these critics understand, and appreciate, the movie for its celebration of manly virtues and the excitement of battle. Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times perhaps sums up this view:
It is excessively, cheerfully violent — and it is gorgeous to behold. It looks like the world’s most sophisticated and expensive video game, and I mean that in a good way.
Neal Stephenson, a popular science fiction writer, tries to explain this odd divergence of critical opinion and popular cash. He writes:
The critics, however, were mostly hostile, and frequently venomous. Many reviews made the same points:
- “300” is not sufficiently ironic. It takes its themes (duty, loyalty, sacrifice, the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds) too seriously to, well, be taken seriously.
- “300” is campy — meaning that many things about it can be read as sexual double entendres — yet the filmmakers don’t show sufficient awareness of this.
- All of the good guys are white people and many of the bad guys are brown. (How this could have been avoided in a film about Spartans versus Persians is never explained; [snip])
But such criticisms aren’t really worth arguing with, because they are not serious in the first place — and that is their whole point. Many critics dislike “300” so intensely that they refused to do it the honor of criticizing it as if it were a real movie. Critics at a festival in Berlin walked out, and accused its director of being on the Bush payroll.
True as far as it goes, but he lets the critics off far too easily. For many of our intelligensia—and most art/film critics are card-carrying members of that group—what used to be called “the manly virtues” are neither manly nor virtuous. Rather, they’re seen as archaic and dangerous remnants of a benighted and primitive state of being. They are holdovers from the Dark Ages of war, superstition, barbarism, and religion (the last usually considered worse than the rest put together, unless it’s the friendly sort of religion which doesn’t really believe anything but good manners—Unitarianism or recent Episcopalianism). Historians may have debunked the notion that the “Dark Ages” were uniquely superstitious and violent, but our intellectual elite still lives happily in the 19th century on this point. (For freethinking rationalists they’re surprisingly slow to modify their views to fit current research.)
In reality, of course, these intellectuals reject manly virtues not out of moral superiority, but out of cowardice. They have made a virtue of cowardice and elevated the most craven individuals into great moral heroes. Consider how antiwar groups have lauded those who join the U.S. Military and then refuse to serve in war. As if these people somehow didn’t realize that soldiers exist pretty much entirely to either kill people or enable others to do so. I can respect the conscientious objector who refuses to be drafted due to moral commitment, but who could possibly respect someone who treats the Army as Career Builder.com and then refuses to pay the bill when it comes due?
Of course, the cowards who comprise the “peace movement” aren’t real pacifists. Real pacifists understand that pacifism means that people die. They realize that evil people don’t suddenly become less vicious simply because they’re confronted with peaceful non-cooperation. They understand that they, and their families, may well pay a terrible price for their stand of conscience. I may disagree with these people, but I can understand them, and respect them. In their own way, they show the same sort of courage as the 300 Spartans. They, too, are willing to die to the last man rather than compromise themselves.
Not so the weak-hearted leftists who make up the antiwar movment and the intelligensia. They are the fair-weather pacifists whose pacifism is just another name for cowardice. They say they oppose war because of the killing, but you’ll notice they can’t be bothered to actually do anything about killing. They’ll protest that the United States isn’t doing enough to stop some atrocity and then protest whatever U. S. intervention occurs. They’ll call for regime change for a brutal regime (but never very vigorously), then oppose any change involving force. (Thus giving vicious thugs an all-powerful veto over any actual change.)
They say they are concerned, but their actions teach a different lesson: they are afraid. Amusingly, many of them claim that it is their opponents who thrive on fear, but this is psychological projection. (And it isn’t even really accurate. Support for the war in Afghanistan, and Iraq, wasn’t built up on fear so much as anger and grim determination. If we had really feared Saddam as an imminent danger, we wouldn’t have bothered with the conventional weapons.) The thought of evil bastards who can’t be reasoned with, can’t be appeased, can’t be effectively dealt with in any way except violence, capitulation, or isolation terrifies them. They desperately wish that such people would just go away. The most foolish then perform the intellectual equivalent of closing their eyes and hoping the monster isn’t there anymore. The only slightly less foolish preach a mantra of withdrawal and isolation.
But, as the Spartans realized, when the enemy is willing to track you down to your home, there is no isolation—and withdrawal means surrender. At that point you need to do whatever it takes to defend your home, or lie down and wait for the final thrust of the spear in the gut or the “merciful” boot of the conquerer on your throat. For those with courage, and honor, who love home and would die to defend it, neither of those are options. For our cowardly intellectuals and honorless chattering class, those are the only “civilized” options.
Which is why there aren’t epics about the civilized, sophisticated Spartan citizens who tried to block the rash and militaristic actions of their king. Because the Spartans, whose virtues did not include tolerating cowardice masquerading as sophistication, knew the proper counterargument involves steel, not words.
March 21, 2007 at 7:10 am
You target liberals and label them cowards, and while that may be true, it is a systemic problem, with conservatives and liberals forming two sides of the same coin, with neither side truly exemplifying most people’s personal beliefs and/or values.
The problem I encounter with the analogy of the 300 Spartans vs Persia, is that you have somehow managed to confuse the roles. If you want to make the 300 metaphor fit, we need to see the situation for what it really is. America = The Persians. We represent the combined economical and empirical might of the Western world (though this seems to be in decline according to most political analysts). We have all the gadgets and weaponry, and as far as Iraq is concerned, our mighty 140,000+ army is completely bogged down by a few thousand guerrilla insurgents, and has been for years now. The insurgents = The Spartans.
Regardless of what our reasons are for being there, or remaining there, that is the reality of the two roles which is currently being played out.
March 21, 2007 at 8:24 am
The problem I encounter with the analogy of the 300 Spartans vs Persia, is that you have somehow managed to confuse the roles. If you want to make the 300 metaphor fit, we need to see the situation for what it really is. America = The Persians
This fundamentally misunderstands the Spartans, and why there were 300 of them at Thermopylae. The Persians were the world power but the Spartans were, bar none, the land power of Greece. They were tactically and technologically far superior to the Persians. Whatever the truth of religious duties and festivals, 300 was the traditional number sent on dangerous missions. And the 300 at the battle were the Spartan “special forces”.
The Spartan army was 10,000+ (every male between 21 and 60), and if that had been at the Hot Gates, I suspect that the Persians would never have gotten through. So the proper analogy is something like Mogadishu: a tiny force of elite soldiers defeated by a mass force only a the cost of truly ridiculous casualties.
We represent the combined economical and empirical [sic] might of the Western world (though this seems to be in decline according to most political analysts).
Yes, but like the Spartans, we choose not to extend that full force. We chose not to obliterate whole populations, eradicate cities, herd people into camps. Standard Western warfare has included all of these tactics, which we reject as unworthy of us. In doing so, we accept the limitations. Like the Spartans, we chose to limit ourselves at least partly for non-military reasons.
We have all the gadgets and weaponry, and as far as Iraq is concerned, our mighty 140,000+ army is completely bogged down by a few thousand guerrilla insurgents, and has been for years now. The insurgents = The Spartans.
No, the insurgents = terrorist bastards. Consider what would happen in the United States proper if several thousand right-wing militia types went to ground and started blowing crap up. How long would it take to eradicate them? Now suppose that the Nation of Islam, anarchists, and Marxists were all willing to help them out for their own purposes.
Insurgencies are nasty, and troops never just eradicate the insurgents by military force. They buy time for other forces (economic, political, etc.) to do that. A successful counter-insurgency campaign looks much like an unsuccessful one for years. We threw away the last campaign (Vietnam) just as progress was occurring, so people think of Vietnam (and anything that looks like it) as a failure. But in 1972, the VC was a broken shell and we were fighting North Vietnamese troops directly. From a counter-insurgency perspective, that is progress.
March 22, 2007 at 7:13 pm
There seems to be a nigh-irresistible desire to use the Battle of Thermopylae as a metaphor for the current situation in Iraq. As with most metaphors, I really question the validity of using the Spartans as a metaphor for the modern situation.
Heck, there were lots and lots of Greek-speakers in Xerxes’ army. I would never say “history can teach us nothing” but the situation during the Persian Wars between 500 BC and 480 BC really were rather different and parallels between now and then are necessarily thin. From the Persians’ perspective, the entire expedition could well have been viewed as a qualified success—the borders of the empire were stabilized quite nicely for a century and a half, after all. 🙂 Alexander’s invasion knocked over the Achaemenid dynasty, but the Selucids lost their Hellenistic aspects and the Persian culture reasserted itself. Viewed from the long temporal distance these events look nigh-contemporaneous, but this is an illusion: they were no more so than the US Civil War and today.
The number of ways in which the situations differ is staggering and aspects of both sides to the fight fit both combatants:
-The US with its giant supply train, vainglorious leader, and all too frequently timid careerist commanders unwilling to displease the boss Persians , but frequently amazing high-quality troops Spartans .
-The whole “Oriental vs. Western” theme is a construction from a much later time.
-The uncomfortable fact that the Persian Wars made for the foundation of a unified culture (Hellenistic) out of what had been a congeries of tribes. This doesn’t seem to be happening in Iraq (but who knows?).
I could go on, but what’s the point? People are going to quote out of the past what they want to read to back whatever they’re looking for now.
March 22, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Comment #2. I think AOC is setting up a straw man. Congrats on knocking the stuffing out of it.
My taste in entertainment runs to the decidedly “manly”: my favorite TV show is The Unit, my favorite actors are Clint Eastwood, Humphrey Bogart and Gregory Peck, I am an unrepentant prog rock listener, etc. However, I’ve not been real thrilled by the current crop of CGI spectacles, for the most part. On first viewing they are often fun, but simply don’t hold up to a repeated viewing because they’re all about the spectacle and lack the sort of depth that makes for a great movie. I contrast this to movies like 12 O’Clock High, The Seven Samurai, A Fistful of Dollars, The Godfather, Star Wars: A New Hope, Indiana Jones, Das Boot or The Usual Suspects. These movies had action aplenty but always enough depth to make them worth watching again. I’m confident they’ll be watched decades from now, but 300 will likely be forgotten. In short, I think we’ve come to mistake the most recent incarnation of “A Samuel L. Bronkowitz Production” for quality art.
I’m sure that AOC has nailed some critics fairly, but is painting with roller, not a brush. For instance, Stephen Hunter (Wash. Post movie critic) didn’t care for the movie (he’s pretty harsh on all movies), but he’s the author of several books of “manly” persuasion, including Point of Impact, is a US Army veteran, blah blah blah.
April 9, 2007 at 6:40 am
Good site!!!