Opinion: Life ran very high in those days!
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First it lost Sonni Efron. Then it infuriated the Iranians. Now last week’s box office hit 300 (which I still think is called Zoo when I look at the poster) has brought a strongly worded letter from reader John H. Handy, who takes issue with Efron’s thumbs-down:
I must have sat in a different theater then Sonni Efron, and perhaps read different history as well. I recall Xerxes not being well regarded for his benevolence and I doubt (Ms?) Efron spilt much ink in complaining about much more gruesome fare such as Saw 1 - 3 or other slasher flicks. The problem with ‘300’ is not the oft cited gore, but the sacrifice. Ticket buying Americans instinctively understood the message - certain things are worth fighting for, such as freedom. 300 Spartans stood firm and all died but they bought time for others to come to their senses. In the marketplace of ideas, this film soared because the American public understands sacrifice for a worthy cause. Unlike your reviewer, our general public always respects those who fight and sometimes die for freedom, ours and others. As with the film’s not very subtle message, pundits, critics and the press have universally misread the 2006 election. Americans have never shied away from sacrifice, but they will not abide ingratitude. Do Americans want to abandon Iraq because of our sacrifice? No - we are ready to quit the fight because of their ingratitude. Just as we will never again defend France, why we quit Lebanon and Somalia, and why we may soon cut Iraq adrift. That is the message of the election.
Leaving aside whether Sparta could be called free as Americans understand the term (and in fact leaving aside the countless historical examples of people who fought just as hard or harder against freedom), I’ve been puzzling like Columbo over just what the 300 version of the UCMJ entails. Call me a deep-denial projection case, but since Handy writes to us from a .mil address and the issue has been back in the news lately, I can’t help noting that there’s something a bit don’t ask don’t tell in the advertising iconography of this movie. I won’t see 300 because 1) I refuse to watch any more shakycam pictures and 2) any director who’d desecrate the sainted memory of Dawn of the Dead with a fast-moving, angle-cheating remake deserves never to have another one of his movies seen. But clearly Zack Snyder isn’t the first man to go gaga for Spartan hunks wearing the emperor’s new clothes, as this detail from Jacques-Louis David makes clear.
A critic at AintItCoolNews, who true to that site’s form goes to considerable lengths to establish his bona fides as a one-handed heterosexual, hints at the naked truth. While he enthusiastically praises 300 as the movie that ‘will probably be the King of 2007 unless someone makes a movie where a pair of sentient boobs fights a werewolf,’ reviewer Neil Cumpston points to one ‘Not so good thing’:
DUDE NUDITY (“DUDE-ITY”)
These are Greek times, when there were a lot of naked women around. And there are some naked women in this film, but almost every naked woman scene has a muscular dude giving the screen an ass picnic. Dude-ity is something directors put in their movies so people will think they’re serious, I guess, and not just throwing in naked hotties. Any directors reading this – IT’S OKAY TO JUST THROW IN NAKED HOTTIES. Can’t someone make a movie about naked Amazons and call it PAUSE BUTTON?
I love that pitch, Neil! But it’s more than just a desire to be considered ‘serious’ that’s driving all that dude-ity. High-minded (and totally unconvincing) claims about the serious virtues being represented in popular movies are fine and dandy, but people go to the movies to enjoy looking at images; if a movie’s a hit, that’s because it’s showing the images people want to see. So stand up, 300 fans, and say it loud and proud: I like looking at dude-ity and I don’t care who knows it!