Storytellersunplugged

Let us consider for a moment 300. Technically, I suppose, it should have been called 301 – if you add the Spartan king Leonidas to his 300-man bodyguard, you get the prime number. It lacks, however, a certain symmetry, and besides, one of them did wander off at the end, so if you’re counting corpses, it works – more or less.

That, however, doesn’t matter. What does matter is that 300 is what they call a phenomenon. It sold umpty-zillion tickets, made more money than any R-rated film in forever and a day, made classical history cool again and singlehandedly raised the level of discourse about comic book movies from the mire where Ghost Rider had left it.

It also brought out the axe-grinding maniac in pretty much every reviewer, and not a few of its viewers. Go beyond the “OMIGOD THEY WUZ CHOPPIN OFF HEDZ!” reactions of the teenagers who bought tickets to something else and then snuck in, and you’ll find the movie being read in specific ways by all sorts of individuals with all sorts of agendas – many of them diametrically opposed.

Consider…

300 is rabidly homophobic.

Xerxes, the bad guy, struts around in a gold bikini bottom he borrowed from Frank N. Furter’s pet Rocky. He is portrayed as effeminate. When we find him at home, it is in the middle of a tent filled with writhing, sexually uninhibited women of all kinds, yet he’s interested only in the strategy of the situation. By his side is the most masculine of figures, the goat-man, who has been reduced to melancholy impotence as he sits, providing musical accompaniment to others’ sexuality. Athenians are derided as “boy-lovers”. And yet…

300 is aggressively homophilic.

The chatter between Spartans as they fling dead bodies around can only be described as flirtatious, with cracks about showing their arses to the Thespians. The 300 men Leonidas takes with him have all fathered sons, and, having done their heterosexual duty to the city-state, are free to march off to the purely masculine, purely physical company of their fellow men. The Spartan villain, Theron, is rampantly heterosexual, taking forced intercourse in exchange for political favor. And one might even find symbolism in all the piercing, thrusting, stabbing spears that the Spartans are so fond of using. And yet…

300 scorns those who are different.

Xerxes’ army is populated by freaks. They are monsters, file-toothed, pockmarked, scarred and deliberately deformed. The traitor who sells out the knowledge of the hidden goat-path that dooms the Spartans is a hunchback of their own blood, one who by their law should have been exposed at birth. The diseased, ancient Ephors, supposedly guardians of the city’s tradition, are bought off by the Persians. They, too, are traitors, their twisted souls mirrored in their twisted bodies. And yet…

300 shows the perils of scorning the different.

Iphialtes, the hunchback whose treachery changes the tide of the battle, first offers, nay begs for the chance to serve with the Spartans. He has matched their march, mile for mile, proven himself as tough and strong as they. By spurning his love and admiration – freely given to a society that would have killed him – they doom themselves. By ignoring what he can do, they open the door to their destruction. Abandon those who are not perfect at your peril, or so the movie says. And yet…

300 is racist.

Anyone who is not Spartan, pure-blooded and pure-shaped Spartan, is lesser or evil. Xerxes’ emissaries are black, his soldiers are Asian and African and Persian and God knows what else. He employs the monsters of Africa against the plucky band of Spartans, and all are inferior, barbarous, cowardly. They hide behind numbers, they hide behind masks, they hide behind sorcery and arrows and treachery and anything else they can think of, while the true Spartan men are unashamed of their faces, their bodies, their pure god-derived blood. And yet…

300 is not racist.

I could go on. 300 has been viewed through the polarizing lenses of politics, of history, of gender, of pretty much anything you can name. There are cases to be made for pretty much any reading of the film, a plethora of possible interpretations.

Which, I suppose, is what I really find fascinating about it. As far as the film itself went, I thought it was an entertaining enough spectacle, Starship Troopers minus the pants and with a little added Highlander. I thought it was gorgeously shot, spent too much time in “bullet time”, could have used a bit less speechifying and attention to ancient Spartan dentistry, and more of a dramatic arc. The sex scene was risible in IMAX and more tolerable in a regular theater, the imagery of a tree spiked with corpses was still powerful, and the sight of Spartans getting their phalanx shwerve on was mighty impressive. I enjoyed it but didn’t love it; I’ll buy the soundtrack but not the DVD.

And I walked out of the theater into the maelstrom of swirling opinions, positions, and arguments about the deeper meaning of the two hour-long gorefest I’d just sat through.

The points above are precisely that: points that can be made by sifting through the raw material of the movie. I don’t particularly buy into or disavow any of them. I’m more fascinated by the fact that they’re there, that from the luminous orgy of Lacedaimonian butchery I’d just witnessed so many strongly held opinions had sprung.

But that’s what this stuff is supposed to do, right? Art, or something like it? Inspire discussion, inspire interpretation, inspire debate and passion and all that? Even if it comes from an adapted comic book, even if it’s rife with blood and guts and CGI, even if it’s got a higher body count than your average Remo Williams novel.

Do I think 300 is art? Naah. The scene with the charging 50-foot-long war rhinoceros is enough to see to that. But does it do what art is supposed to do? The evidence suggests yes, emphatically so.

Which, ultimately, presents the rest of us with a challenge. If 300, a bucket of blood stirred with spears and spiced with bluescreen, can generate so much passion and debate, shouldn’t we be aiming at least as high? Then again, maybe it’s the other way around – if such power and passion can be found among the severed heads and latex prosthetics and arrow-pierced tableaux, then maybe more of it will be found there by those more willing to look.

Then again, maybe it’s just dumb fun.

And yet?

Maybe it isn’t. You could say that about a lot of things, after all. A lot of things.