300 Reason’s From Propaganda Hell

Introduction

April 8, 2007

by Housewife4Palestine

I had one of those days rare opportunities to go to the cinema and seen a most profuse propaganda movie to not disguise a blatant insult towards not just the people of Iran, but point in fact the people of Greece.

While this movie was based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, while I do not know if just insulting history or the countries mentioned was intended by their modernistic interpolation of an immoralist time; I have to admit this was put across at a time when propaganda against people is running rampant towards the world, especially any country that is not in the United States or Israeli favor at the moment.

This movie was extremely violent and filled with immorality and naked sexual innuendo, please forget any attempt at historical fact.

I published in part the following article, because in my opinion they did an exceptional interpitation of the 300 reason’s not to waste your money and that the for mentioned countries should be commended not taken down propaganda’s path of misery.

Finally, this movie fit’s more in toon to the low budget movies of yesteryear, where is the politically incorrect Ronald Reagan with "Bedtime for Bonzo?"

There must be 300 reasons to avoid this violent exercise in military propaganda.

Paul Byrnes, reviewer

April 6, 2007

This adaptation of the story of the 300 Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae, based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, would have Herodotus turning in his grave and Hitler rising from his.

It is violent enough to make you shudder and close enough to fascist art to make your skin crawl. It celebrates all the things the Fuehrer loved - the glorious, operatic spectacle of senseless death, the ruthless weeding out of the weak, the gross caricaturing of the enemy, the indoctrination of the young, even a mountain-climbing ordeal for the hero - and all as it purports to be a movie about freedom.

Welcome to the new double-speak: Sparta as a metaphor for America, courtesy of Warner Bros, in which the politics of eugenics is reborn amid one of the most sickeningly violent and mindless films of the new millennium. Adolf would have been pleased: he may have lost the war, but his ideas live on in mystical, military propaganda like this, aimed at spotty boys in need of heroes. God help us.

Of course, latent fascism isn't new in American military movies. It's just that it's rarely as politically naive as it is in 300. That's me being charitable. It's just possible the filmmakers intended it to be as inflammatory as it is. These are strange times and 300 fits the mood of a part of the West that would like to see the Middle-Eastern barbarians bathed in their own blood. This is their kind of movie, complete with references to "barbarians" and "Asian hordes". Perhaps the Klan has become a new demographic for Hollywood.

Much of the blame goes to Miller, who wrote the original comic and takes a credit as executive producer on the movie. He is a cult figure in the world of American comics. He revitalised Batman in the Dark Knight series, and he wrote and drew Sin City, which was turned into a popular film by Robert Rodriguez. The indisputable graphic power of Miller's comic-book art is reproduced in the film with sepia monumentalism; his politics are another thing entirely.

Much of the historical inaccuracy in the movie flows directly from his book, including the way the movie Spartans don't wear any body armour or even crests on their helmets. We don't know that much about the Spartans but we have a fair idea of what they wore in battle, and it included leg and chest plates for protection. Miller dispenses with these in favour of men in loincloths and red shawls, so we can see their rippling muscles. Read more...

Battle of Thermopylae: Persian Warrior

300 Trailer

Depiction of the real Battle of Thermopylae