I enjoy listening to the 300 soundtrack sometimes, as it's highly evocative music that helps to inspire the imagination (or, in Ben's case, the desire to run).
Usually when listening to it, I start daydreaming about stories, but today I started thinking about 300 itself and its many, many flaws.
Certainly it's racist. It's also gotten an edge of homophobia to it, which is really ridiculous when you consider how it's also quite homoerotic (a paradox seldom understand by the guys you see blasting their abs down the gym .... or would see, if one's exercise regime didn't consist of occassional low-impact walks and sporadic use of the Nintendo Wii at Simone's sister's place).
No, the thing I was thinking about was something that I don't recall ever having read in any of the reviews.
It justifies the Spartan's practice of killing newborn babies.
As is well-known, it was Spartan custom to leave babies found to be weak or "defective" on the slopes of a nearby mountain to die. This was dramaticised in the film with a brief scene showing a baby about to be thrown off a cliffside into a crevasse of infant skeletons below.
In the movie, before the 300 titular Spartans begin their defence against Xerxes' invading armies, a Spartan outcast comes to King Leonidas to volunteer his services. His name is Ephialtes, and the deformities he suffered from at birth meant he should have been cast off the mountain, but his parents smuggled him away and raised him in secret.
As Ephialtes is unable to raise his spear properly due to his handicap, Leonidas turns him away (to his credit, Leonidas does this politely and respectfully). In a rage, Ephialtes goes straight to Xerxes and offers to show him a secret path that would enable the Persian army to defeat the Spartans.
Now, Ephialtes is a genuine historical figure, legitimately believed to have betrayed the Spartans and told Xerxes of the secret mountain path. But here's the thing. He wasn't deformed. That was entirely an invention on the part of Frank Miller, the writer/artist of the graphic novel 300.
So the basic argument becomes that, had Ephialtes' parents done their "duty" and left their baby son to die, Leonidas and his men wouldn't have been undone by the betrayal of an outcast "freak".
This makes the scene where Leonidas turns Ephialtes away even more tragic - the King has more sympathy for this poor man than the story itself does (it also seems to suggest that Leonidas creates his own downfall by showing pity on Ephialtes, rather than killing him).
It's an irksome thing to think of, and it's just another in the laundry list of things that leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth in regards to 300.
All this from a random track that popped up on my iRiver. I bet I wouldn't get this if I had more Kylie on there.
2 comments:
I get what your trying to say... BUT!
You could also say that it's kinda a thing for comic books to artistically exaggerate the defining characteristics of .. well, a character. NO?
So if the character betrays the goodies, they will be physically portrayed as deformed or ugly or whatever.
Oh god, did I just comment on comic books??
BUT IT WAS A MOVIE TOO!!!
Not all comics are that two-dimensional, however. You need look only as far as the X-Men to find a character whose intelligence, sense of humour and deep affection for his friends is sharply contrasted by his appearance and codename. Dr Hank McCoy, aka The Beast.
I'd say it's more a hallmark of pulp fiction in general to define characters by their appearance, but there's something to be said for subverting cliches rather than simply upholding them ...especially when it comes at the cost of justifying the practice of genetic cleansing.
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