Posted on March 15, 2006
If you are one of the three people in the country who have yet to see “300,” you best get yourself down to the theater, if only for the spectacle. Regardless of whether the movie is good or not, “300” is — tragically — of great significance.
Hollywood is a money-driven town, and by that measure, “300” has dominated. As Nikki Finke of LA Weekly reported, “300” blew records out of the water with last weekend’s opening. The Warner Bros. film about the Battle of Thermopylae became the biggest March opening ever, more than $70 million, surging past 2002’s “Ice Age” at $46.3 million. As if that wasn’t achievement enough for a cheap (visual spectacles notwithstanding, it only took 60 days and didn’t cost much) movie with a celebrity-less cast, it also became the third-biggest grossing R-rated movie opening in Hollywood history, behind “Matrix Reloaded” and “The Passion of the Christ.” No matter what happened between the Spartans and the Persians in that narrow mountain pass, the Greeks kicked butt and took no prisoners at the box office.
Clearly, this movie resonated strongly in our culture, drawing in men and women, young and old. But the resonated cultural ideals in the movie are of troubling concern. Beneath the surface of the pathetically simple freedom-in-the-face-of-tyranny plot line — ironic in and of itself because of Spartan society’s overdependence upon slavery — “300” told us another story, a story about masculinity. Amidst the glistening, sandblasted smooth chests and rippling muscles, the subplot of what-it-means-to-be-a-man is subtle but unavoidable.
King Leonidas, in his abandonment of the rule of law in the defense of his nation (a Hellenistic Jack Bauer of sorts), is pure and unbridled masculinity at his best. He is outdoorsy, well built and scruffy. He is determined; he is the decider. He is strong and stoic even with his beautiful wife, with whom he “demonstrates” the full measure of his manhood in an otherwise utterly unnecessary and over-eroticized scene.
Leonidas’ enemies, on the other hand, are a veritable gallery of freaks. The political Ephors are misogynistic leper-pigs; Ephialtes the traitor is a hunchbacked troll; the Persian army is an assortment of masked human-sized bipeds and chained human-like monsters, slaves and animals. But, lest the idealization of the Leonidas school of masculinity be missed, director Zack Snyder goes one step farther: whether it be the evil King Xerxes or the pathetic Athenians, the film turns to a castigation of homosexuality to drive the point home.
The eight-foot-tall Xerxes, for example, wears nothing but a gilded Speedo and more gold jewelry than Mr. T, much of which is pierced into his cut body. And his remarkably androgynous (some would even say effeminate) face makes his divergent sexuality even more clear. His proxemics (sitting on the sedan chair, his walk, resting his hands on the shoulders of other men) and his dialogue (“Leonidas would have you stand — all I ask is that you kneel”), seal the deal. As Ephraim Lytle, associate professor of Hellenistic history at the University of Toronto, argued in the Toronto Star, “Xerxes … is not disfigured. No need — it is strongly implied that he is homosexual which, in the moral universe of ‘300,’ qualifies him for special freakhood.”
Historically, this is absurd. Ester (of the biblical book of Ester) was chosen to replace Vashti as one of Xerxes’ wives; it was her beauty and resultant favor with the Xerxes that she was able to report the plot against the Jews by Haman (boo!) her uncle Mordecai discovered. The Jewish feast of Purim is celebrated because of Ester’s success with King Xerxes. Whatever problems King Xerxes had during his reign, he clearly did not have difficulty with attraction to the fairer sex.
But the homosexual portrayal of Xerxes, one of the historical heroes of the Iraq-Iran region he once ruled, was not missed by modern-day Persians. Javad Shamqadri, an art advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused “300” of being “part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture,” according to a local report.
The absent Athenians, dismissed by the Spartans as “boy-lovers,” are equally disparaged for their deviant sexuality. This is notably ironic for, as Lytle explains, “pederasty was an obligatory part of a Spartan’s education. This was a frequent target of Athenian comedy, wherein the verb ‘to Spartanize’ meant ‘to bugger.’ In ‘300,’ Greek pederasty is, naturally, Athenian.”
Though based not on historical account but on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, the distortions made in “300” to position true, ideal masculinity against a demonized homosexual alternative serve to further demonize the homosexuals around us. If audiences accept the butch masculine concept of Leonidas, they will also accept the evil homosexual concept of Xerxes or the ineffectual homosexual concept of the Athenians — all concepts that resonate disturbingly deep in our society. If $70 million is any indication, the damage of “300” may have already been done.
Brian Goodman is a senior communications major.
