I want my money back!

Tonight we went to see the movie ” 300
“, and what we found instead was a
polemic in support of Bush’s policies, both domestic (the Patriot Act)
and foreign (war campaigns on any country in the Middle East not named
Israel).

In the movie, the Persian king Xerxes sends an emissary to the Spartan
king, Leonides, instructing him to submit to the rule of Xerxes.
Leonides responds by violating the age-old rule and having the messenger
killed.

What ensues is the historically based tale of Leonides and 300 Spartan
warriors momentarily holding off thousands of hordes of Persian soldiers
in the narrow mountain pass leading to Sparta before finally succombing
to the exotic, demonic, decadent, freakish and effeminate Persian hordes.

The cheerleading for the Patriot Act and war powers of the president
starts early, with the king facing the prospect of war during the holy
festival of Carneius; by Spartan law, it is forbidden to wage war in
this month. In Frank Miller’s take on Shakespearean dialogue, the king
wonders “how the very laws I have sworn to protect now keep me from
protecting them”. The point is driven home when the queen is asked what
she would tell the council while her husband wages war in violation of
the law. “I’d tell them that the very freedom that they live by must
come at the cost of blood.”

When the queen voices her intentions to the treacherous and conniving
councilmember Theron, he reminds her that the king’s war is illegal, and
tells her that the council will never approve the troop mobilization,
declaring, “I own that council!” His duplicitous argument that the war
is illegal proves to be a mere cover for the fact that he’d been paid
off by Xerxes. How quaint and coincidental that a high-ranking Pentagon
member recently questioned where various high profile law firms are
obtaining their funding to defend the accused who sit in Guantanamo Bay.
Nancy Pelosi would do well to check for the imprint of Xerxes on her
gold coins.

But the movie addresses more than just the Patriot Act or war powers. It
also goes out of its way to depict a battle that would allow Samuel
Huntington to die a happy man. The Greeks all appear as western
Europeans, whereas the Persians are represented by Africans, Arabs,
Indians and even Chinese.

Like Braveheart, the movie presents a number of ancient and unschooled
soldiers delivering stirring speeches about “our freedom”, “our
democracy” and even, centuries before the birth of the nation-state,
references to “our country”. These characterizations are juxtaposed to
the despotic slavery of the Persian Empire. The Spartans may have simply
forgotten that the Greek empire used extensive slave labor, and that
voting was limited to males of the patrician class. And since they were
after all austere soldiers, they may well not have known that some
historians identify the very Persian Persepolis as the world’s first
democracy.

But throughout this pro-democracy blood orgy, there can be little doubt
that the makers of 300 saved their most scathing words for the broadside
against the modern middle east. One of the last lines in the movie
features an exhortation to save our lands from “the tyranny and
mysticism” of the attackers.

But like the bigots who killed Sikhs after 9/11 and the politicians who
pandered to them by advocating and passing the Patriot Act before anyone
had read it, the movie doesn’t do subtlety, or at least, does not do it
well.

The movie’s initial sequence describes the Spartan process of inspecting
newborns for physical imperfections, which if found, resulted in the
heaving of the newborn off of a cliff. Since these same Spartans are the
white and conservative good guys, it’s anyone’s best guess as to who
protests for the rights of these killed newborns.

Nor does the irony end there. The movie’s goal seems simple enough:
dehumanize and denigrate the peoples, civilizations and political
systems of the Middle East. How ironic that the chosen literary vehicle
for this was a suicide mission of a few stout believers. Perhaps the
Spartans, much like Fox News, bring more credibility to the people they
cast as enemies.

/A. Arain is a Chicago professional and freelance writer./