In Which I Get My Ancient Greek Rant On
Jan. 17th, 2007 02:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sadlikeknivesAs I'm sure some of you know, I am all about some ancient Greek history. Especially the battle of Thermopylae, for some reason. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I, um, cried at the monument at Thermopylae. I couldn't explain why. I just did. So I should be thrilled about 300, the upcoming movie based on the comic book about the battle of Thermopylae, as imagined by Frank Miller. And I'm sure that, as a movie, it will be quite stunning. I'm equally sure it will have little to nothing to do with the battle of Thermopylae. For one thing, there are those two degrees of remove to contend with, and for another, well, 'as imagined by Frank Miller.' I seriously doubt I would be as concerned if this project were Gates of Fire based on the excellent novel by Steven Pressfield (recommended to me by a Classics professor, who said it had the best and most honestly brutal descriptions of how the Spartans trained and did battle she'd ever seen anywhere).
And lest anyone forget, this is how Frank Miller 'imagined' Batman.
Anyway, until now it's all been bitching into the wind, because I hadn't actually read 300, only seen some scans at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
scans_daily, and perhaps those scans were nonrepresentational. Maybe it was good!
I was wrong.
1. Leonidas did not get to be king of Sparta by killing a wolf or any nonsense like that. He was a member of one of the two royal houses of Sparta. They had two kings, so that one could go to war while the other stayed and commanded at home. The Spartans did force their boys to live off the land for a while, however, in order to build up toughness and teach them how to survive if they were cut off from Sparta later on, say, in a mission. A big part of this training was stealing--boys were punished not for stealing, but for being caught stealing.
2. Ephialtes, from any freaking historical records we have, was not the horrifically deformed son of a Spartan couple who fled the city rather than killing him as was traditional. He did not sell out the army because he was told he couldn't join up, despite the fact that even though they had to flee the city because of him, his parents raised him to revere Sparta. He was just some shepherd after the reward money, and a footnote to the entire story.
3. The Spartans did not fight naked or in little genital pouches. Cuirass, greaves, leather skirt. If I remember the (well-researched) figures from Pressfield correctly, it was about thirty pounds of armor all told, though that may be including the shield.
4. Miller's Spartans make homophobic comments and talk about how they are the only free men the world has ever known. To anyone who knows anything about Spartan society, this is laughable. (By contrast, Gates of Fire, which I recommended over 300, does not address the homosexuality at all, but does not dance around the helots--in fact, a helot is the narrator, and other helots are important characters).
5. The ephors. No, no, no. No, motherfuckers. No. The ephors were not leftover inbred priests who hung out on a mountaintop and raped young nubile oracles from before the time of Lykurgos' law, they were an institution created by Lykurgos. There were five, elected anually (and the Spartans didn't elect idiots or corrupt men!), sworn to uphold the rule of the kings'. The ephors didn't take a giant Persian bribe. They're the ones who came up with the orders that allowed Leonidas to circumvent the religious festival going on at the time, because that's what they did! They were the brains behind the operation!
6. And on that note, Leonidas didn't take his personal bodyguard for 'a long walk.' I don't know if Leonidas even had a personal bodyguard, because a Spartan king could damned well take care of himself. The men chosen for the Thermopylae mission were hand-picked, the best of the best, and most importantly, they all had living sons to carry on their bloodline, because they all knew they were toast. They never expected to win. They just expected to hold the line long enough for the Athenians to get their act together and, hopefully, the Carneia in Sparta to end so the rest of their army could get their asses in gear.
7. Since when is Xerxes, king of Persia, a giant African completely dripping with gold piercings? Why is he bald? What happened to the ornate Persian hairstyles and headdresses? And since when did he hold personal negotiations (and I use the term loosely) with Leonidas? Can someone show me the historical evidence for that?
8. Leonidas' wife bears a suspicious resemblance to Gail from Sin City. And something about her...bothers me. At first, she says something like, "I insist you take your personal bodyguard with you on your 'walk'. All three hundred of them." (and I've already addressed the personal bodyguard thing), which makes it sound like she's either in on his plan or is smart enough to figure out what he's about herself. And then she turns around and is like, "Wait, you're going to Thermopylae? What?" Lady, I thought you knew that! Gah!
And the most disgusting thing about all this is that Frank Miller claims to have researched for this.
So, basically, I'll see this movie, because I'm weak and it's Thermopylae and Gerard Butler's in it. But I'm going to have to pretend it's some bizarre AU where up is down and black is white, or I'll be throwing things at the screen the whole damned time.
And seriously. Xerxes just looks stupid.
And lest anyone forget, this is how Frank Miller 'imagined' Batman.
Anyway, until now it's all been bitching into the wind, because I hadn't actually read 300, only seen some scans at
scans_daily, and perhaps those scans were nonrepresentational. Maybe it was good!I was wrong.
1. Leonidas did not get to be king of Sparta by killing a wolf or any nonsense like that. He was a member of one of the two royal houses of Sparta. They had two kings, so that one could go to war while the other stayed and commanded at home. The Spartans did force their boys to live off the land for a while, however, in order to build up toughness and teach them how to survive if they were cut off from Sparta later on, say, in a mission. A big part of this training was stealing--boys were punished not for stealing, but for being caught stealing.
2. Ephialtes, from any freaking historical records we have, was not the horrifically deformed son of a Spartan couple who fled the city rather than killing him as was traditional. He did not sell out the army because he was told he couldn't join up, despite the fact that even though they had to flee the city because of him, his parents raised him to revere Sparta. He was just some shepherd after the reward money, and a footnote to the entire story.
3. The Spartans did not fight naked or in little genital pouches. Cuirass, greaves, leather skirt. If I remember the (well-researched) figures from Pressfield correctly, it was about thirty pounds of armor all told, though that may be including the shield.
4. Miller's Spartans make homophobic comments and talk about how they are the only free men the world has ever known. To anyone who knows anything about Spartan society, this is laughable. (By contrast, Gates of Fire, which I recommended over 300, does not address the homosexuality at all, but does not dance around the helots--in fact, a helot is the narrator, and other helots are important characters).
5. The ephors. No, no, no. No, motherfuckers. No. The ephors were not leftover inbred priests who hung out on a mountaintop and raped young nubile oracles from before the time of Lykurgos' law, they were an institution created by Lykurgos. There were five, elected anually (and the Spartans didn't elect idiots or corrupt men!), sworn to uphold the rule of the kings'. The ephors didn't take a giant Persian bribe. They're the ones who came up with the orders that allowed Leonidas to circumvent the religious festival going on at the time, because that's what they did! They were the brains behind the operation!
6. And on that note, Leonidas didn't take his personal bodyguard for 'a long walk.' I don't know if Leonidas even had a personal bodyguard, because a Spartan king could damned well take care of himself. The men chosen for the Thermopylae mission were hand-picked, the best of the best, and most importantly, they all had living sons to carry on their bloodline, because they all knew they were toast. They never expected to win. They just expected to hold the line long enough for the Athenians to get their act together and, hopefully, the Carneia in Sparta to end so the rest of their army could get their asses in gear.
7. Since when is Xerxes, king of Persia, a giant African completely dripping with gold piercings? Why is he bald? What happened to the ornate Persian hairstyles and headdresses? And since when did he hold personal negotiations (and I use the term loosely) with Leonidas? Can someone show me the historical evidence for that?
8. Leonidas' wife bears a suspicious resemblance to Gail from Sin City. And something about her...bothers me. At first, she says something like, "I insist you take your personal bodyguard with you on your 'walk'. All three hundred of them." (and I've already addressed the personal bodyguard thing), which makes it sound like she's either in on his plan or is smart enough to figure out what he's about herself. And then she turns around and is like, "Wait, you're going to Thermopylae? What?" Lady, I thought you knew that! Gah!
And the most disgusting thing about all this is that Frank Miller claims to have researched for this.
So, basically, I'll see this movie, because I'm weak and it's Thermopylae and Gerard Butler's in it. But I'm going to have to pretend it's some bizarre AU where up is down and black is white, or I'll be throwing things at the screen the whole damned time.
And seriously. Xerxes just looks stupid.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 03:35 pm (UTC)Pressfield's problems are largely caused by his writing style. For one thing, the homosexuality is completely skipped over in all his books set in this time period. I was actually okay with that in this book, because he gives a lot of screen time to the Spartan women, who were extremely unusual for the time (had a lot of personal freedoms, exercised, could own property, had a say in choosing their husbands...the list goes on) and a large part of forming Spartan society. It's later, in his book on Alexander the Great, that it becomes glaringly obvious and annoying. Another thing is, he writes from a first-person perspective and the narrator is always telling the story to someone else, so he had to have a survivor of Thermopylae, when the whole point of Thermopylae is supposed to be that they died to a man. He tries to get around that by having his survivor be a helot-squire rather than a hoplite, who dies of his wounds after telling his story, but I'm not sure how effective that was.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 05:20 pm (UTC)There is one scene in Gates of Fire I'm not sure about, but then I haven't read the contemporary reports of Thermopylae. Basically, in an act of desperation and bravado, some of the Spartans lead a sneak raid on Xerxes' tent at night and get pretty darn close. But this scene is up against, you know, battle rhinos. Xerxes didn't even control the savanna, just Egypt.
And it doesn't just have historical accuracy going for it. That book made me cry at least three times. 300 just made me go, "WTF?" But, yes, it's going to be a visually stunning movie and a glorious use of CGI.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-18 01:04 am (UTC)Okay, I know that at this point, spoofing that line to mock Miller is about as clever as a pie to the face. But this is the goddamn pie to the face.
Anyway, I'm going to see 300 for the fighting. I expect no accuracy. That makes it much like the extremely awesome episode of Samurai Jack where Jack met up with Spartans in the future who were caught in an endless struggle with robot bulls, and then Jack and the Leonidas stand in ended up fighting a robot octopus that was controlling the bulls, only I expect 300 to be significantly less awesome than that.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-19 05:07 am (UTC)Oh, and if you're going to see a movie for him, check out Dear Frankie, if you haven't seen it yet. The mother of a deaf boy hires him to pretend to be the kid's father for a day. It's Scottish, so the accents are pretty thick, but it's so very much worth your time. One of the things I'd most like to see happen with 300 is that he becomes a huge star and everyone checks out his old movies, 'cause everyone should see Dear Frankie.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 10:52 pm (UTC)