The Message of ‘300′ « Foehammer’s Anvil

Cynthia Fuchs of PopMatters Film Review jots this tripe about the movie ‘300′:

All this gayness is premised on a love for beautiful sameness: Leonidas rejects a wannabe soldier who�s a hunchback and so cannot raise his shield to match the height of the others (though the king does observe of his swordplay, �You have a fine thrust”). The devotion to sameness means that a disappointing subplot involving Gorgo, the only woman who speaks dialogue in the film, is set off awkwardly: she doesn�t fit aesthetically the rest of the tableau.

That is, she doesn�t have much to do except wait for word of Leonidas, though her waiting is fraught, as she endeavors to make her own deal with Theron, in order to send supporting troops to the site of the 300�s battle. Her battle is framed as sexual assault, making her the sign of her husband�s heterosexuality (because you might need reassurance) as well as the reason he�s doing all this homoerotic acting out: her body is his, and its loss to a churlish knave like Theron is tragic, a matter of property, honor, and even, in abstract terms, freedom.

All this only makes the much-remarked current affairs subtext creepier. Whether you read Leonidas or Xerxes as the stand-in for George Bush, whether you align him with the male victim or the perversely femme bully, the rampant display of bodies and blood and brutality is, at the end, tedious, frustrating, and more of the same.

Only in a politically and socially torn Western nation as the United States can we come to expect such absolute soft-brained interpretation of a message that is otherwise clear to a heterosexual male like myself. Slap me in irons for all my male bravado, someone! This is no slap in the face, what I’m about to write here, to the women of the West, no. It is a shout at the ones that I was raised around, that, thank God, inhabit my clan, that I’m lucky to know what true women of strength and character and intelligence would take from a movie like ‘300′ and it most certainly is not what Cynthia Fuchs, with all her penis-envy at the end of her “review”, has tried to mislead her readers into “seeing”.

I’m not going to ruin the movie for my readers, but when you hear of “current affairs subtext”, rest assured that there is no doubt in my mind that there indeed is such a message to ‘300′. But the message is one that should instill a metal into all people of Western heritage, and all people that value freedom and know that “freedom is not free”. ‘300′ is not about men running around having “homoerotic” fantasies, thanks anyway Ms. Fuchs. It is about Western strength and Western passion. It is about the roots of everything that has given momentum to what ultimately lead to real freedom and open philosophy and medicine and reason and education. It is about all that and more. Yes, there is a message and I got it.

Islam vs. the West is the message; or anti-Dhimmitude. Don’t be so ridiculously shallow as to attempt to reduce the tone to one encompassing only Iraq and Afghanistan. You will see many that will — too many that think it “barbaric” to raise a weapon in anger, unbecoming to strive against those that would destroy us, oh, oh too “male” to actually stand and fight our would-be oppressors. These very same limp-wristed snivelers would run to the back of the line at the first gunshot in order to save themselves, and they’ll always be the first to sneer at anyone that dons a uniform, even if that uniform is only a codpiece and a shield.

So, go see ‘300′ and revel in the message that’s being sent. It is for men and women that live free. And I hope that the message you take home from the movie instills you with more understanding of why it is right and necessary to face down evil, fight for what is right in this world, and above all, remember where it is you come from, and where you want your own clan to go.

And after you’ve seen the movie, laugh at Cynthia Fuchs, because she’ll never understand the message you take away from ‘300′ and thankfully, none of us will have to rely on her or others like her to do the fighting for us. And laugh even louder because we’ll protect people like her despite themselves and never expect an iota of thanks in return. And that is because we are a great civilization that does not need to be patted on the head in order to remember that greatness. We actually prefer to heft a sword and fight for it when the words fail and all the good intentions in the world do nothing but carve a pathway to the battle.

For Sparta!