A movie about defending the West
(Note: Several VFR readers saw “300” during its opening weekend and make interesting comments about it below.)
Ken Hechtman, a Canadian leftist, writes:
Have you seen “300” yet? If you haven’t, you should. It’s not every day Hollywood makes a $60 million movie for one guy and that one guy is you.
It’s the best “Defence of the West” movie ever made or ever will be, but the director uses homo-erotic subtext to make you cringe whenever the bad guys are on-screen.
LA replies:
Is that the movie about the Spartans at Thermopylae? I just heard of it for the first time this past weekend. I saw a review that panned it as a lot of abs and jingoism. I guess that’s me.
- end of initial entry -
Update: Here is a very positive review of the movie by James Berardinelli, whom I have found to be an intelligent and non-ideological reviewer. Here is a very negative review by Stephanie Zacharek, but she writes at Salon.
Spencer Warren writes:
The clip I saw looked moronic, with some very corny lines. And extremely violent and crude.
Van Wijk writes:
The movie 300 is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller (who gave us Sin City), which is in turn a grotesque distortion of the Battle of Thermopylae. In my view, when a filmmaker or writer doesn’t even make an attempt at historical accuracy, he sullies the memory of the real men who fought the battles. Just as with “JFK” and “The Crucible,” millions of people are going to see this film and believe it to be bona fide history.
Basically, the movie is about a bunch of hairless, sculpted and primped metros who fight off the Eastern hordes not in a phalanx but in Braveheart-style free-for-alls. It’s a fairy tale.
LA:
“…a bunch of hairless, sculpted and primped metros…”
Well, again, it is interesting to know what Ken Hechtman thinks is a movie made expressly for me. :-)
Jake J. writes:
My wife and I saw “300” last night. Was it a perfect movie? Nope, it was based on a comic book for goodness’ sake! But it was a fairly entertaining film that wasn’t afraid to feature unabashed good and bad guys and was willing to state in an unambiguous way that it was important to stand up for your country and that some values are superior to others.
The movie states explicitly that the success of the Spartan army is due to the “phalanx,” and though they certainly do show plenty of melee type fighting the point is made and reinforced that to succeed they must fight as a unit. And this point is reinforced both verbally and visually as when every battle begins their shields are interlocked and they stand shoulder to shoulder.
If you’re a hardcore history buff I’m sure there will be plenty to offend in the film, but as far as the messages of the film go? I thought they were pretty good: Duty, Honor and a willingness to sacrifice oneself for one’s ideals.
I don’t think traditionalists can afford to sniff at films that make an honest attempt to portray traditional values especially considering the truly awful dreck that Hollywood pumps out. I would call this movie a solid B, maybe a B+ in that department and in this day and age I’d say that’s not too shabby.
Ken Hechtman writes:
Here’s something else.
If you want to meet the cast of “300,” you have to go to Asia to do it because that’s where they live now. They don’t live in Europe anymore and haven’t for some time.
I met them in Asia six years ago [when Mr. Hechtman went to Afghanistan as a journalist and was arrested by the Taliban as a U.S. spy], and what you see in the movie is exactly what they’re like.
There was the commando who kept scaling cliffs after losing a leg because God had given him a spare.
There were the kids who fought in the shade for 35 days because we darkened the sky with cruise missiles and cluster bombs and daisy cutters.
There were the 2-3000 Arabs and Chechens who died at their posts so the Taliban formations could withdraw from the Afghan cities in good order.
Deal with it, We’re Xerxes: too rich, too big, too powerful for our own good. They’re Leonidas: too small, too primitive, but the words “retreat” and “surrender” don’t exist in their vocabulary.
Geoffrey in Connecticut writes:
Concerning “300,” I think your correspondents have twisted the context somewhat. Although “300” is not historically accurate it does follow the story by Herodotus quite closely—see VD Hanson’s article.
But that’s not the point. This is the point:
A group of strong, intelligent, monogamous, healthy, free, white, Western men sacrifice themselves for their and their people’s freedom and honor and for Western Civilization. They do this against an enemy of enslaved, perverted, sick, ugly dark men from the East who worship a cruel living god and would kill them and enslave their women and children for all eternity.
Ring any bells?
Xerxes is presented as a bizarre transsexual figure surrounded by voluptuaries, in stark contrast to the Spartans. All the ugliness, sensuality and perversion is on the side of the dark men, all that is pure and noble is on the side of the white men.
It even has a “Temptation of Christ” moment when Xerxes promises Leonidas he will be king of all Greece if only he bows down before Xerxes.
It also has the best depictions of bronze age battle ever. Both in the phalanx AND in individual combat (despite what your ill-informed correspondent declared). In fact, tactics are a major part of the movie.
Best of all the camera work is not flashy and shaky (which I know you hate), rather it shows long scenes of battle in slow motion holding on one single character so you can see exactly how the Spartans fought.
It is a very impressive and pro-Western Civ. movie, well worth seeing (go to the IMAX showing).
Tom S., whom we haven’t heard from in a while, replies to Ken Hechtman:
Yes, the Taliban don’t know the meaning of the word “surrender”—that’s why the U.S. and Northern Alliance captured so many POWs that they had to be transported in cattle cars.
For Mr. Hechtman to compare the brutal Taliban with the Spartans at Thermoplyae is absurd. It was men like the Taliban that the Spartans fought against, to preserve freedom and civilization. It’s obvious that Mr. Hechtman has romanticised the Taliban out of all recognition, although why a liberal would do so escapes me, given their attitudes towards women, gays, freedom of speech, and religion. While it’s good to know that leftists can still appreciate the warrior virtues, so long as they are not displayed by Westerners in general or Americans in particular, I might suggest that there are others who display such virtues closer to home, who might be more deserving of the comparison to the Spartan three hundred, and that if Mr. Hechtman finds the Taliban so admirable, he might at least forward his mash notes to them via a website other than VFR.
The Taliban as the heroes of Thermopylae? You have GOT to be kidding…
Paul K. writes:
I would agree that “300” rates a B at best. It certainly wasn’t boring, and the visual effects and fight choreography were often stunning, but the presentation was so over-the-top it made this profoundly inspiring story feel ridiculous at times. It was Thermopylae as interpreted by the San Francisco Opera. It would be great to see a realistic, well-directed movie based on the masterful novel “Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield. That would be truly worthwhile.
At a press event, a reporter asked the director, Zack Snyder, if President Bush was Leonidas or Xerxes. Snyder said he hadn’t thought about that, and he probably hadn’t, as the story has few parallels to current events. However, I can well imagine that Bush would identify with the Leonidas character, who speaks constantly of freedom and obviously spends a great deal of time working out. However, Leonidas is fighting to defend his nation’s borders and its distinct culture against a multicultural invasion, a motive quite inscrutable to our president.
Also, I have to object to Ken Hechtman’s assertion that we no longer have warriors like this in Western society. Our military has plenty of them. It’s our politic leadership which has betrayed us.
Mark J. writes:
Regarding the discussion of whether the Spartans in the movie more closely represent America and the West, or the jihadist insurgents in Iraq, consider the major themes of the movie:
* The Greeks are defending against Persion invasion. America and the West are the heirs of the Greek tradition and are being threatened by a Muslim invasion. The Persians, as in Leonidas’ day, are the enemy.
* Spartans train their male children in a martial tradition. Red-state America supplies a disproportionate percentage of our military men and still has this tradition of military service. Jihadists, on the other hand, train their children to be suicide bombers and terrorists but are not known for their military prowess. Call this a toss-up.
* Leonidas says they are fighting to stay free men and bow to no one. This is a well-established American creed. On the other hand, jihadists are definitely not fighting for freedom, but to force submission (Islam) on the world, just as Xerxes intended to do.
* The Spartans are proficient fighters, easily mowing down rank after rank of the Persian army. The American military is the most potent on earth in direct combat—take the Gulf War, for example, where our forces annihilated the Iraqi forces, barely losing any men in the process. The Arab armies, on the other hand, are known for their ineptitude. Five of them attacking at once couldn’t defeat Israel, for example.
* The Spartans, although facing overwhelming Persian force, hold out longer than expected. This is the only aspect of the movie that could be said to suggest that America is Xerxes, the greater force unexpectedly stymied by the jihadist insurgents. But note that the jihadists prefer not to fight man-to-man, but instead murder civilians to try to use our basic sense of decency as a weapon against us. There is no sense that the Iraqi terrorists are noble men of principle fighting for the freedom of their people. They are amoral barbarians that use the murder of women and children to try to win a battle that they know they could never win face-to-face, and to force the Iraqi population to submit to their brand of fundamentalism, an outcome that they could not accomplish at the ballot box.
I think it’s clear that the movie’s themes are clearly pro-Western.
I enjoyed it because it is the first movie I can recall in a long time where the masculine, martial virtues are unabashedly celebrated without caveat.
Van Wijk writes:
Geoffrey wrote: “Concerning ‘300,’ I think your correspondents have twisted the context somewhat. Although ‘300’ is not historically accurate it does follow the story by Herodotus quite closely—see VD Hanson’s article.”
From Hanson’s article: “There are four key things to remember about the film: it is not intended to be Herodotus Book 7.209-236, but rather is an adaptation from Frank Miller’s graphic novel, which itself is an adaptation from secondary work on Thermopylai.”
Geoffrey continues: “It also has the best depictions of bronze age battle ever. Both in the phalanx AND in individual combat (despite what your ill-informed correspondent declared). In fact, tactics are a major part of the movie.”
Firstly, 480 B.C. falls within the Iron Age. Secondly, there WAS no individual combat when fighting in the phalanx; in fact leaving formation could be punishable by death. So Geoffrey admires what would have been considered a gross breach of discipline. He seems to be quite confused about the subject.
Vincent C. writes:
When I read the first of several reviews of 300 in The Washington Post, all of which ranged from critical to don’t waste your money, I reasoned that the producers of the movie had used Steven Pressfield’s fascinating novel, Gates of Fire, as the basis of their epic. Not so. And that’s a shame, for the Spartan defense of their land and their people, and, indirectly, their Western heritage is implicit in Pressfield’s spell-binding rendering of one of the most famous and important battles in history. It is one of the very few novels I read through the night to finish; I could not put it down.
May I suggest to those who have seen the movie and enjoyed its underlying themes of courage, patriotism and defense of Western ideas, read Pressfield’s novel. It will not disappoint you; you have my word on that.
Alec H. writes:
It may not be highbrow stuff, but I’m really looking forward to it. The scene in the trailer, where Leonidas kicks the emissary – and his invitation to dhimmitude – down the well, is worth the price of the ticket.
Plus, if the Times hates it, it might actually be pretty good. Here’s their follow up piece, in which they contemplate $70 million worth of “stupid” in a single weekend.
Tom S. writes:
Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Hechtman has a perfect right to his opinion, and to comment on VFR. I just thought that it was typical of the Leftist outlook, that, in the years since 9/11, we have had countless examples of heroism by Westerners—firemen rushing to near-certain death in the Towers, Marines throwing themselves on live grenades to save their comrades in Iraq, Scott Beamer and his cohorts on Flight 93, the list goes on and on; and yet when a Leftist reaches for an example of valor that he sees fit to compare with the noble three hundred at Thermopylae, the first example that comes to his mind is …the Taliban. Amazing, especially since the Taliban surrendered in droves after the fall of Kabul. Certainly, some members of the Taliban fought bravely—so did many members of the Waffen SS and Khmer Rouge, and for a comparable cause. Does Mr. Hechtman celebrate them as well?
LA replies:
I think Mr. Hechtman would not object if I said that patriotism toward the West is not an attitude that comes naturally to him.
Ken Hechtman replies:
The freedom and civilization the Spartans defended included slavery and infanticide. That doesn’t make their valor in defending it any less. It certainly doesn’t mean anyone today who celebrates their valor for what it was also approves of slavery and infanticide.
We need myths and heroes. That’s how we know who we’re supposed to be and what we’re supposed to live up to. Most people don’t get moral guidance in difficult situations by reading through philosophical texts or reasoning it out from first principles. They ask themselves “What would Jesus/Mohammed/Howard Roark/Che Guevara/whoever do?” And just like that, they know what’s expected of them.
How we create myths and heroes out of real-life characters is by romanticising their flaws out of focus. Not out of existence, just into the background so we can bring the virtues to the front.
There’s an element of the Thermopylae story missing from stories of American military virtue. The individual American hero is still part of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen and he knows it. It’s been a long time since we were on the wrong side of hopeless odds. The Afghans were there twice in a generation.
For what it’s worth, I found them just as admirable 25 years ago and said so even though they were on our side against the Red Army. You can imagine that when Reagan was proclaiming Afghanistan Day and calling Hekmatyar and Rabbani “the equivalent of the Founding Fathers,” I didn’t make a lot of friends on the left with this one.
Adam C. writes:
Captain America is dead. It perhaps a sign of the times that we live in that Marvel Comics saw fit to kill off World War II’s blonde-haired champion of American patriotic pride and fighting spirit. According to Wikipedia, Cap was killed by a crime syndicate, but he even died in a way any Marxist humanities professors would applaud: “oppos[ing] mandatory federal registration of all super-powered beings and lead[ing] the Anti-Registration faction and resistance movement.”
I suppose this killing is of a piece with the historical movies and novels churned out these days (the Axis of Time alternative-history trilogy, the recent Clint Eastwood movies). These works join Chomsky and Howard Zinn in revisiting WWII not with Captain America’s pride but with shame for our side’s “racism,” “sexism,” “imperialism,” government manipulation of the common man, etc.
Geoffrey in CT replies:
Van Wijk objects to some of my points, he claims:
1. Hanson says it IS NOT the Herodotus story. Yet Hanson says in the same article: “Many of the most famous lines in the film come directly either from Herodotus or Plutarch’s Moralia, and they capture well, in the historical sense, the collective Spartan martial ethic, honor, glory, and ancestor reverence.” And in another article “…the script, dialogue, cinematography, and acting all recall scenes of the battle right from Herodotus’s account.”
2. This was the Iron Age not the Bronze Age. You got me there, but what’s 500 years between friends?
3. There WAS no individual combat when fighting in the phalanx; in fact leaving formation could be punishable by death. Well yes, the phalanx was the phalanx and fighting individually is fighting individually. But it seems, according to our old buddy Herodotus, the Spartans also used a feint to draw the enemy in then turned and attacked. But the death penalty for breaking ranks is moot since they all died anyway.
Bottom line, just go see the movie; don’t nit pick my enthusiastic comments. It is really spectacular and is a truly heroic movie in a style that is no longer made by the debauched and perverse Hollywood culture.
Van Wijk writes:
I bet you’re missing the comment board right about now. I’d appreciate one last retort. I’ll let him have the last word afterword, if he would like.
Hanson wrote: “Many of the most famous lines in the film come directly either from Herodotus or Plutarch’s Moralia, and they capture well, in the historical sense, the collective Spartan martial ethic, honor, glory, and ancestor reverence.”
There’s a difference between quoting an historian in the movie and that movie following his history “quite closely,” as you put it. And as you yourself said, Hanson said that it is not Herodotus’ story. So which is it? All you’ve shown is that Hanson might also be quite confused.
Geoffrey said: “But it seems, according to our old buddy Herodotus, the Spartans also used a feint to draw the enemy in then turned and attacked. But the death penalty for breaking ranks is moot since they all died anyway.”
So a feint indicates individual combat? Did the Greeks break ranks during the feint? Did they reform after the feint, or fight Braveheart style? I would very much like to know. Your other comment about the penalty for breaking ranks is simply childish. I understand you’re enthusiastic, but at this particular website you must be able to back up what you say with facts. Your argument is as undisciplined as the fantasy Spartans.
LA comments:
I didn’t like Van Wijk’s description of another commenter’s point as childish and was going to delete or change it. But then I remembered that I had said the same recently to a commenter, in a discussion about Giuliani, so I felt I didn’t have the right to delete Van Wijk’s statement.
By the way, after I apologized to the person whose position I had described as childishness (I’m not sure at the moment if the apology was public or not), instead of being mollified he got even angrier at me and said I was insulting him. Some people are set on being aggrieved at you no matter what you do, and you have to exclude them. America’s still extant majority needs to do the same.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 12, 2007 02:34 PM | Send