The Aerie

Neocon Spartacus

Okay, THAT was the Gayest Movie Ever. Now, mind you, there's nothing wrong with a gay movie: gay is not an epithet. However, when the gay movie appears to be both by and for an audience that would purport to hate gays, then yes there's something intrinsically wrong with that group making and watching a gay movie.

The movie in this case is '300,' the latest special-effects extravaganza derived from a Frank Miller graphic novel. This lush blend of imagery and music is fatally flawed by its dialog: a hash of action-movie cliches and White House talking points. Yes, '300' is 'Spartacus' for neocons.

The plot of '300' is based upon the Battle of Thermopylae some two thousand and five hundred years ago, as described in Frank Miller's 1998 graphic novel. While the events portrayed seem to stick pretty rigorously to the accepted view of history - from hurling Xerxes' ambassadors into a pit, to the pithy "then we shall fight in the shade" rejoinder - the movie's dialog and stated motivations reveal an agenda beyond the gory retelling of a gory battle.

The movie begins with obligatory and gratuitous nudity - first the lovely Kelly Craig, as the Oracle of Delphi, imitates an image from Howard Schatz' 'Waterdance'. I was puzzled for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I had never heard that the Oracle at Delphi floated weightless and naked prior to making her pronouncements. More to the point, however, the film goes out of its way to describe the pestilent priests of the Oracle as "sub-human," and "inbred," but then minutes later describes how these disfigured creatures demanded fresh young girls from across Greece for their pleasure. Well, if they're getting it on with fresh young girls, then it doesn't seem like they'd be inbred, would it? Regardless, their disfigurements bespoke not inbreeding, but radiation poisoning.

Following Kelly Craig's naked dance came a love scene between Gerard Butler's King Leonidas and his queen, the inelegantly-named Gorgo, played by Lena Headey. The shot opens with Butler's butt as he stands nude, staring out at the night. After some spousal reassurances the King and Queen get bizay - once again, thoroughly gratuitous but deliberately very heterosexual. And it was a pretty convincing display of kingly heterosexuality... right up until the king insisted on finishing the queen off with her face-down on her bed. I wonder if he told her to talk in a really deep voice, too.

Oh well, I guess they're Greek.

After all the scenes of men wearing only leather panties and cloaks, I'd started to wonder where this movie was going, and when the camera lingered on the naked king's butt I leaned over to my son and whispered, "Could this movie GET any more gay?"

Of course it could.

Following the gratuitous, heterosexuality-affirming sex scenes the plot proceeded. The King wanted to raise an army to oppose the invading Persians, but his dithering, wet-lipped advisors wouldn't hear of it. The priests of the Oracle had been bought off, persuaded to say that because of some badly-mumbled holy day (Wikipedia suggests it was the Olympics, I couldn't make out the word in the film) the king's army could not fight. (Riiight... if a million man army invaded on Christmas Eve, we'd all watch helplessly from the dining room table, immobilized into submission by our holiday dinners.) So the king summons his personal guard of 300 soldiers and "goes for a stroll," in defiance of the dithering council that tries to intercept him out in the wheatfields.

The hopelessly-outnumbered Spartans are joined along the way by volunteer forces from other cities. Much sport is made of the Athenians, who the Spartens refer to as "boy lovers" -- completely ignoring the Spartan practice of pederasty. Again - a gay film is fine if it's a gay film: a homophobic gay film is a not-surprising result of self-loathing neoconservative gays.

The tiny Spartan force immediately mocks their volunteer allies by asking what their jobs are, pointing out that the Spartans are all career soldiers. So, okay, let me get this straight - who's braver: the trained career soldier heading to a hopeless fight, or the unskilled volunteer heading off to a hopeless fight? These volunteers arrive to die for their families and lands, and they are mocked for it.

So this very, very straight collection of muscular men in tiny pants arrives in the narrow canyon, and they build a wall to prevent the Persians from going around their position, using a bunch of hapless Persian scouts as mortar.

While this is going on, a deformed hunchback arrives and begs to help the Spartans in order to redeem his father. King Leonidas refuses, which persuades the hunchback to turn traitor. Now, how hard would it have been to give the hunchback a job? Put him up on the cliff, tell him he's a scout; put him in the back row to hand out spears; put him in front of the phalanx to soak up arrows. I mean, it's a war, how hard would it be to get the guy killed? But no, annoy him, reject him, send him off to tell Xerxes of the secret path around the back of the canyon...

The main Persian force finally arrives, and we are treated to the sight of buff men in leather panties slaughtering vast numbers of guys swathed head to toe in turbans, neatly encapsulating the dreams of the 101'st Fighting Keyboardists in basements all across our nation. Much butchery and carnage ensues, and a lot of shots in which the action variously slows to a halt and then zips forward.

Some have complained that the battle scenes are too bloody and violent, but for me the violence and butchery was so absurd as to not register as "real" violence in any way. Indeed the battle scenes are so fantastical as to make little sense. The Spartan's shields bristle with enemy arrows which, despite being so deeply embedded they need to be sliced off with a sword, nonetheless do not pierce the shields to injure the Spartans. Yet the Persians are easily kebabbed by Spartan spears, even those wearing heavy metal armor. Such one-sided violence smacks of children playing war, with the most outspoken refusing to acknowledge injuries. Hey, we're the Spartan heroes, we don't get hurt till the third reel!

After a couple of waves of guys in turbans only serves to build the Spartan wall even higher a number of special acts are brought out. Xerxes' lieutenants and majordomos are paraded forth on weighty palanquns to issue threats, cable-necked giants drool on the king, and rhinoscerouses and elephants arrive to make us wish Legolas were here to brighten the mood.

There was even a squadron of Flying Ninja Monkeys called "The Immortals," who posed a brief and hollow threat to the Spartans due to their cunning marketing trick of taking a name that suggested they could not be killed. A couple of well-placed spears later, and monkey kebabs littered the battlefield, leaving behind only the question of what 14th-century Samurai were doing in King Xerxes' ancient Persian army.

Finally Xerxes himself gets exasperated enough to put in an appearance.

"It just got gayer," my son whispered. I could only shake my head.

Nine feet tall, pierced and covered by gold chains and collars, with long claw-like fingernails painted crimson, King Xerxes made the most flamboyant entrance since Dr. Frank N. Furter welcomed Brad and Janet in from the rain.

And, as the villain, he had to monologue. Unfortunately, King Leonidas wasn't sensible enough to do what any REAL hero learns to do on day 1 of Hero School - kill the villain while he's monologuing. No, Xerxes showed up and made the usual "I admire your courage so much I might let you live" speech. Which was all well and good, except that towards the end, well, his inisistence that King Leonidas needed to merely "kneel before him" started to take on a distinctly, well, do I have to say it again?

At this point it was too much, and I just started to laugh, which earned me the glare of my neighbors. This wasn't a new experience for me: during the movie Independence Day I started to laugh uncontrollably during Bill Pullman's over-the-top Presidential motivational speech from the back of the pickup truck. This was the same - so over-the-top ridiculous that I couldn't believe that anyone intended it as a serious scene.

Of course Leonidas turns down Xerxes offer, and doesn't kill him either. Xerxes then plies the Hunchback with the Hollywood package: wealth, sex, and girl-on-girl action. Predictably for such a gay movie the only same-sex action takes place during these scenes of absolute debauchery, including two women who neck furiously, until one turns to reveal a visage twisted and scarred, possibly by the same source of radiation that afflicted the Oracular priests. Because of course if two people of the same sex are kissing each other, they must be sick and deformed, right?

So at that point we had the full set o neoconservative talking points on the table, to wit:

We (the noble, non-gay, buff-bodied Greeks) must fight the enemy over there (Thermopylae/Iraq) to prevent the turban-wearing invaders from Persia (modern Iran of course) from fighting us here (Sparta/America). The people who stand in our way are either doddering wet-lipped liberals, or traitorous queen-groping lechers, or both. And it is the weak, the deformed, the hedonistic Hollywood-types, and those damned out-and-proud gays who will work to undermine our noble war.

It's like they stole the plot from underneath the copies of 'Blue Boy' on Karl Rove's bedside table.

The word "Freedom" was thrown around a helluvalot too, which was ironic inasmuch as the only free men on the Greek side were the king and the hunchback, as any reading of Spartan history will reveal. Still the use of the word "free" in that context does echo our "freedom" here in the United States, which is pretty much the freedom to work quietly at our jobs until we die or are fired six months short of our retirement.

In the end King Leonidas clumps his men, Pilobolus-style, into the shape of a Volkswagen, and uses this as a distraction to, well, I'm not sure what he does here. Finally crouching on the ground, Leonidas signals one of his men to jump out and kill, not Xerxes (which might have made some sense), but some guy standing in front of King Leonidas.

This futile murder accomplished, the Spartans are cut down with swords and arrows. In a final valiant effort, Leonidas uses his spear to give Xerxes a messy facial.

The Greek survivors straggle home to tell the Queen that she prostituted herself for nothing, and then a year later ten thousand Greeks gather to find that, following his cheek-slashing by King Leonidas, Xerxes has simply left his army encamped while the Greeks reinforced. Possibly Xerxes' army spent the year scrabbling in the dirt, under orders to find the missing facial piercings dislodged by Leonidas' spear. The Greeks rush forward, presumably to a victory: unlike us, having had 'victory' defined prior to engaging in battle; but like us, woefully short of adequate body armor.

So it was a great, grand, and stupid film, which would have been much better had the cliche, trite, and unoriginal dialog been left out. As series of images, it's supberb. As a movie, it ranks right up there with "Showgirls" and "Basic Instinct 2." As a political propaganda piece I'm sure it is very exciting, but I'm afraid it's dangerously impractical. After all, in '300,' when the ruler sees a threat, he's the first to take up his weapon and head off to die for his country. I didn't see anything in the film to suggest that King Leonidas dodged out of the fine-wine unit of the Sparta National Guard...

Posted by Albatross at March 10, 2007 3:05 PM | TrackBack