tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12380553.post8577795416944233262..comments2024-03-27T10:27:59.266-04:00Comments on John Kenneth Muir's Reflections on Cult Movies and Classic TV: CULT MOVIE REVIEW: 300 (2007)John Kenneth Muirhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15629979615332893780noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12380553.post-58096347198433734852009-01-23T12:09:00.000-05:002009-01-23T12:09:00.000-05:00Hey Kevin,Love your comment, and your thoughts on ...Hey Kevin,<BR/><BR/>Love your comment, and your thoughts on the film. <BR/><BR/>I got a brief review of 300 from you on Netflix a while back so I remember how you felt about it. :)<BR/><BR/>However, ask yourself this question: doesn't the filter of Dilios' vision (and he has only one eye, making this myopia even more plain, I think...) soften some of the overt war-mongering.<BR/><BR/>Can a soldier, about to lead his men into battle, be anything jingoistic, nationalistic and xenophobic?<BR/><BR/>For me, the filter of Dilios "recounting" the entire story as (one-eyed) narrator goes a long way to explaining some of the excesses of visualization, narrative and tone.<BR/><BR/>best<BR/>JKMJohn Kenneth Muirhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15629979615332893780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12380553.post-8834339308893696912009-01-23T11:47:00.000-05:002009-01-23T11:47:00.000-05:00John --Ah, 300. I am intrigued by your interpreta...John --<BR/><BR/>Ah, 300. <BR/><BR/>I am intrigued by your interpretations here, but I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. While I would like to believe that the film provides some sort of space for an audience to allegorically side with the Athenians and Persians, I really don't see it.<BR/><BR/>A useful comparison might be made with another film that supposedly promotes a fascist aesthetic, STARSHIP TROOPERS. ST has persuasively been seen as satirizing absolutist film art, mainly by way of its pseudo-commercials, sometimes kitschy art design, and musical selection. Though it has been about a year since I've seen it, I don't feel that 300 dose any of these things. The only aspects that have been read ironically are the various lines that Gerald Butler roars, which have been sutured into internet mash-up videos and animated discussion forum icons.<BR/><BR/>I would stand by the fact that the film goes out of its way--in characteristically hyperbolic and garish fashion--to forge a line of audience identification between the Spartan "protagonists" and the (presumed) American audience. I can confirm this via the fact that I had several students in my intro to film studies class last semester write on this film. Their (convincing, but sometimes a bit scary) interpretations of the film took it for its easy pleasures and convenient parallels to an America who yearns for heroism, "conventional" warfare (that is, a war in which your enemy is visible and in front of you...in short, a pre-Vietnam enemy), and an end to moral ambiguity. This last point is key. One parallel drawn was over the Israel/Palestine situation. For an American, it is hard to know which "side" to be on. While the US official policy has sided with Israel, religious Muslims and liberal/atheist leftists often side with Palestine, while liberal (and conservative) Jews and those supposedly in support of Israeli business and economic interests (thought to be "conservatives," but that is neither a clear-cut nor a given) support Israel. 300 eliminates the moral incertitude, not only in how it constructs its characters+narrative, but also in terms of how it aesthetically--absolutely, like some kind of moral gotterdammurung--frames its heroes.<BR/><BR/>So I'm no fan of the film, but it could be viewed as the Bush era film par excellence. I won't reserve this for THE DARK KNIGHT, as I think you have on this blog, because I feel that it contains too much messy moral ambiguity to fit the Bush-era worldview. While THE DARK KNIGHT forges the strongest audience identification with the JOKER (the likeable, virtuosic agent of chaos) and not hero BATMAN (a gravelly, morose, frankly boring superhero this time around), 300 cuts out the moral incertitude around its characters, heightens the proceedings in various technical ways (as you mention), and lets the shit hit the fan. Shock and awe indeed.<BR/><BR/>So I'm no friend to the film, especially given the fact that--to be fair, unlike in your analysis above--it has been taken at face. But, I would like to part with some words by director Alex Cox, who I think rightly shows how it is a film that will (rightly, in both senses of the word) be connected to the era.<BR/><BR/>AC: "The only American film I saw last year was 300. [Laughs] I was at a freind's house and he wanted to show it to me. You know, I thought it was fucking great. I'll tell you why: Because it is a straightforward pro-war American film. It's getting the Americans ready for a war against Iran - and there are NO BONES about it. I thought that was a very honest form of filmmaking. And it has no movie stars - a horrible, obnoxious Hollywood violent action film with no movie stars. So it broke the domination of the Tom Cruises and all those dullards."<BR/><BR/>- Alex Cox, Stop Smiling Magazine #36Kevinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14027317042801637354noreply@blogger.com