So, was there racist subtext or not?

[Nivek]

I think you got lost at the alphabet. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!

ooo.. witty...

 

[highguard]

By which, subtext, I mean that the film can be interpreted as racist by people looking for it. This is different from accusing Frank Miller and his compatriot of being racists.

Frank, we know, loves to play with archetypes and ideas. Sin City is his taking the Noir world and then slamming down a bunch of amphetamines in writing it. The result being that everything is Noir to the 11.

300 is pretty similar to this. It takes the original Epic myth/history about the Battle and then amps up the hatred, dehumanization, power, and glory of all the characters involved until it resembles effectively Epic Fantasy Noir.

Let's face it, the Ancient Greeks were a huge bunch of racists and the various interpretations of the legends over the years aren't exactly the most favorable things in the world. It's like Gunga Din, ironically, since that was actually a PROGRESSIVE in its time because it was about how it was just that ONNEEEEE group of radical Indian nationalists that were complete ***holes as opposed to the entire race.

For me, I think that Frank's adaptation could easily be construed as offensive because of a lot of the choices here. That doesn't actually mean that anything should have been changed oddly enough. It actually reminds me of Starship Troopers in a way. Verhoven's adaptation throws in the occasional reminder "You know, these people are stark raving nuts right?"

For me, Frank Millar's novels are always best because the writer is fully aware that his heroes are a bunch of nutbars. Ronin's hero is

Spoiler

a ******ed computer nerd that rebuilds his body

that goes on a killing spree of decidedly dubious morality.

In the case of the Spartans, they're a hyper macho bunch of people that are just as off their rocker as the Persians (but mildly more sympathetic). I mean, let's face it, when dealing with baby killers who abandon their children to fight wolves....audience sympathy may be gained but they're not playing with a full deck.

Part of the fun of 300 is the fact that we get to view pure machismo on display, warts and all. While there's plenty of people who want to go back to an age of 'when men were men' and 'women were women' we actually get a society so far removed from our values that its just pure theatre.

There's plenty to admire about the Spartans but its wrong to think that Frank isn't displaying the excessive attitudes of hate, body worship, bloodthirst, sexism, homophobia, and more for the audience.

But mostly its about the ninja death ;-)

Let me start off by saying that I am black and I am down with that, recently I noticed that I seem to be aging slowly compared to my white friends and I think my suntan protection color must have something to do with that so hurray for me.

On the racism subtext in the movie, hey that is still going on today and was surely going on back then. The world is full of flaws and people have to find something to hate one another about. We all have something we are working on regardless of whether we are white, black or yellow. What is important is that we recognize the problems and we are working on them.

The king was obviously not one who spent a lot of time in books thinking of the right way to hold a fork, lol he would probably be a conservative today, lol (I'm a moderate).

The movie did show the queen in a rather strong role, willing to do just anything to save her husband so Miller did break at least one stereotype.

Our society has to be mature, we have to be able to disagree and agree to disagree civily. Thank God we no longer have to sit in the back of the bus because someone said it was not right.

In this world people are free to make their choices. We can disagree with those choices but that is life.

None of us are a God unto ourselves neither was Xerxes (he seemed really stunned at the sight of his blood... hmm).

I believe that we must be free to voice our thoughts on all these things, good or bad. Not all choices are good or even moral but the freedom of choice and the freedom to express our selves are highly desirable in a civilized society.

The alternative would be well dictatorship.

As Doctor Doom used to say, my people are all happy, it's the LAW.

Now we would not want that.

So then having said all that what is my take. The movie was a tour deforce of a culture that pretty much was what it was.

It was a brutal time with all these different ideas and feelings and emotions and views and behaviours. Ideas of morality, freedom of speech, love for family, hatred of races, the love of money, of courage and valor, of treason and stupidity, of pain and loss.

Sounds like the world allright, the world that was and the world that is.

 

[jdre_124]

Theres entire war going on in youtube about the racism in 300. You should check it out. Mainly is this youtube user named persianguyagian complaining about 300 "demonizing" and "demoralizing" persians and that the Persians where depicted being weak and short and him also saying that Americans are going to take this movie as historical fact. yeah i dont think this but he does. heres the link to the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWLk3hfy1Hk
heres the other part http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQG18NYOk-c
there pretty long so get some popcorn.

 

[Nivek]

So many stupid arguements...

 

[Infinity9999x]

Of course Snyder won't admit the racial and political undertones.

Directors never do.

What racial and political undertones? I only ask this because I honestly can't see any. The only undertone I noticed was the ambiguous nature of Xerxes sexuality (Which Synder intentinally added and states why he did in an article).

Like I said above, this movie was so far from actual history, and so fantisized, that it was closer to a LOTR then a Troy, which despite being quite historically unaccurate itself at least had real people in it. Synder made the Persians into monstrous beings, not because he hates Persians, but for one simple reason:

Because it looked cool, and he wanted to make money. Many of the villans in 300 resembled orc like LOTR ripoff characters, why? Because LOTR is one of the most successful trilogies since Star Wars and the producers of 300 wanted to make money. At the moment people like LOTR type villians and heros, so the company gave the Persains a fantasy makeover.

I really think you're looking too far into this, this movie was not supposed to reflect real history in any way aside from having 300 people called "Spartans" (I put that in quotations because the Spartans in the movie were obviously much, much different from their real life counterparts) hold off a large army of "Persians" (again they were only called Persains, not meant in any way to be simmilar to any real life Persain).

This was a video game like action movie. Even if a director did want political undertones in it, they would be stupid, because 99.9% of the audience only cares about the guys with swords killing people, and the nude shots.

 

[ILikeYourCoat]

Theres entire war going on in youtube about the racism in 300. You should check it out. Mainly is this youtube user named persianguyagian complaining about 300 "demonizing" and "demoralizing" persians and that the Persians where depicted being weak and short and him also saying that Americans are going to take this movie as historical fact. yeah i dont think this but he does. heres the link to the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWLk3hfy1Hk
heres the other part http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQG18NYOk-c
there pretty long so get some popcorn.

I love how persianguyagain says the movie is racist. It might be seen as racist against blacks, since the 3 main bad guys are black. But today's Persians are clearly not black. Nor are they white. What new race are they? Maybe he should make a new one called "Tan" so he can be yet another professional victim.

 

[Star]

Can someone actually define to me what would make a person persian in todays times? The second time I saw this movie someone behind me kept going 'no, that guy isnt persian, i would know, i AM persian' etc etc

and i looked around and the guy was ... brown? I dont really know, it was dark.

Any takers? I'm just curious!

 

[Midnyte_Sun]

To be Persian, you have to be either a rug or a cat. Both of which are very hairy. The Rugs made from sheep hair, and the cat is just a giant static conductor.

There is no such thing as Persia anymore, the Persian empire was destroyed by the Greeks and Arabs. It stretched from East to West from Greece to Pakistan/India and North and South from Caucausus and Southern Russia to the Indian Ocean. So take your pick on skin color, creed, or ethnicity.

 

[demitri_vampiro]

it's not just that but the fact that many of the Persians we did see had horribly disfigured faces and resembled some monstrous creatures instead of humans..against the good-looking Spartan army..that is pretty racist

regardless, i still enjoyed the movie

displaying persians as monsters has nothing to do with racism. they were the enemy and people always tend to give monstroeus features to enemies. we see them through spartan eyes (the movie is told by a spartan soldier)
nowdays people look for racism everywhere even if that is not the case