More commentary on the movie 300

I mentioned the movie below. Surfing the web over the weekend, I found some more interesting comments. I started with A Don's Life (no, it is not a blog from a mafioso but an English history professor).

Nido writes about the fascist and racist themes in the movie without criticizing the book. He does link to this Guardian Unlimited book review from 2005, for Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West. Then there is The Whitepath.com and gives a Turk's view on the movie. Whitpath mentions but does not link to Victor Davis Hanson. A Don's Life does and here is the link.

My comments on the commentary? First, I think everyone overestimates the film's ability to propagandize - the audience in Muncie was just not going to sign up for a Spartan training camp. Second, a lot of the blame heaped on the film's makers that might be better heaped on Frank Miller's graphic novel really belongs heaped on another fellow; Herodotus. See, he wrote down the story that came to us.

The bare bones story of the 300 is this: the Spartans were a badass bunch who really were good for nothing else but killing, the Spartans went north, met with their allies, Spartans and allies are stuck at the pass because the Spartans and their allies could not agree on what to do, Spartans and allies get outflanked, the Spartans and the Thespians fought a rearguard action so that the other troops would not be slaughtered and could fight another day, and then Spartans and Thespians get killed. The story has the same appeal as David and Goliath. The little guys held off the big guys. Spartan law did not allow a retreat, so these are guys who just walked into a meatgrinder and stayed there. Good, bad or indifferent, the Spartans held on long enough for the Athenians to defeat the Persians at Salamis and start European civilization. Luckily for us Westerners, Athens had more to with that civilization than Sparta.