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Notes
Leupp 2007.
Moaveni 2007.
Byrnes 2007.
Note, however, that “the streets of Tehran were awash with bootlegs” of the film: Nisbet 2008, 142.
Jaafar 2007.
She later revised her first impression: Beard 2007.
Ibid., 141 and 149.
Miller 1999, comprising five individual comics published in 1998, under the titles “Honor,” “Duty,” “Glory,” “Combat,” and “Victory” (Bridges 2007, 416; Fairey 2011, 159 n. 2). Snyder’s reception of Miller’s text is obviously crucial for any study of the film (see, in extenso, Jeffries 2014, and Snyder’s comments in Fera 2007); indeed, the graphic novel has been interpreted as a virtual storyboard for the film: Cyrino 2013, 21, with Murray 2007a; Jeffries 2014, 267 (among others). But Miller’s novel is significantly different in terms of plotting and tone (it is, e.g., perhaps more straightforwardly reactionary; cf. Nisbet 2008, 140 on Miller’s “ultra-conservative revisionism”), and deserves a study of its own (for a good start, see Fairey 2011). In what follows, I will confine my remarks on Miller’s book to instances where its content significantly affects the reading presented here. The pages in Miller’s novel are not numbered; I have supplied these by counting the pages, including the opening chapter panels, but excluding the book’s endpapers.
Quoted in Byrnes 2007 (the full interview is available in Conan 2007). Snyder’s response to European critics who walked out on his film (above) was similarly provocative: “When someone in a movie says, ‘We’re going to fight for freedom,’ that’s now a dirty word. Europeans totally feel that way. If you mention democracy or freedom, you’re an imperialist or a fascist. That’s crazy to me” (quoted in Daly 2007). Lurking behind such remarks may be Miller’s (and Snyder’s) high regard for Classicist Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson strongly supported the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, advised President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, is a member of the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and an outspoken critic of contemporary Islam and its defenders on the American and European left. Miller has called himself a member of Hanson’s “fan club,” and has acknowledged him as his “favorite non-fiction writer in the whole universe” (quoted in Murray 2007b; Burris 2011, 107). Hanson’s Western Way of War is listed by Miller as one of only four “recommended readings” at the end of his graphic novel (the other three are Herodotus’ Histories, Ernle Bradford’s Thermopylae: The Battle for the West [1993], and William Golding’s 1965 essay, “The Hot Gates”). Hanson was also a historical consultant on Snyder’s film, and the author of an introduction to a book on the making of 300 (DiLullo 2007: 5–6), as well as several positive reviews of the film in right-wing publications (see, e.g., Hanson 2007a, b, c, discussed in Burris 2011, 107; Roos 2010, 20–21). For Combe and Boyle 2013, 117, Hanson is the ideological godfather of 300, which they regard as propaganda for the neoconservative agenda promoting the new American militarism and its main beneficiary, American corporatism.
On the “burqa-like garb of some Persian soldiers,” see Mendelsohn 2008, 142–3 (but see too 146 for the “Kabuki-like masks” of the Immortals); cf. Holland 2007, 173: “sinister towel-heads plotting mayhem, general destruction, and the overthrow of the West” (but see too 180 for “the Immortals as the bastard offspring of Darth Vader and an Uruk-hai”).
Byrnes 2007.
Basu et al. 2007.
Ibid. But note that it is unclear whether “all or even most Americans make the connection” between ancient Persia and modern Iran (Leupp 2007). Burris 2011, 104 uses the term “Huntingtonian narratives” to describe “films [that] tap into the same reactionary undercurrents of society that also inform [Samuel Huntington’s] clash of civilizations thesis.”
Leupp 2007. Note, however, that in Leupp’s scheme, the invading aggressor, Xerxes, could just as easily be George W. Bush, and Persia the modern US: Richard Roeper in Ayers and Carr 2007; Stephenson 2007; Williams 2009, 48. Moreover, according to Corliss 2007, “the Spartans might also be the Iraqi insurgents, leaving their homes to repel a foreign invader.”
Leupp 2007.
Roos 2010, 20–21.
Holland 2007, 179.
Lauwers et al. 2012, 90.
Holland 2007, 181.
Ibid., 179. Similarly, Basu et al. 2007: the Spartans are “alien,” but, paradoxically, 300 “intends a literal glorification of Greeks (as representing Europeans and Americans) vis-à-vis Persians (Middle-Easterners and Asians).”
Roos 2010, 19.
Murray 2007b.
For a good summary of the “optimistic”/“pessimistic” debate around this text, see Perkell 1999, 18–22.
Cartledge 2002, 95. Cf. also Pelling 1997, 54–5, who notes that in Herodotus, Spartan burial practices share affinities with those of the barbarians, the stories of the Spartans Leotychidas, Demaratus, and Cleomenes “have something of the orient about them,” and even their Peloponnesian neighbors believed the Spartans to be as Other as the Scythians in some ways. Such phenomena were by-products of “the Spartan mirage,” a term coined by Ollier 1933 to describe the othering ancient accounts (by Spartans and non-Spartans alike) of the unique history and institutions of Sparta.
The “college kid” reaction was predominant when I screened 300 for a class I taught on the Ancient World in Film at the Australian National University in 2013. My colleague Peter Londey informs me that the Australian artist George Gittoes reported to him that the “Fuck yeah! Freedom” reaction predominated in his conversations with American troops serving in Iraq between 2008 and 2010. They refused to hear any criticism of 300, and regularly listed it as their favorite contemporary film (Apocalypse Now being their favorite film from the past). For a similar reaction, from a typical mid-western American cinema audience, see the anecdote reported in Burris 2011, 111.
The work of Thomas 1989 is especially important on this, and cf. especially the variant traditions in Herodotus’ narrative on the fates of Ephialtes (Hdt. 7.213–14), and of Aristodemus and Pantites (7.229–31). In the context of 300, see Cyrino 2013, 27: Thermopylae “was swiftly mythologized in its own time. Snyder’s film is simply one more stratum in the process of reception that is hundreds [thousands?] of years in the making.”
Lauwers et al. 2012, 92.
Quoted in Lauwers et al. 2012, 90 n. 16.
Ibid. Cf. Miller’s comments (quoted in Murray 2007b): “if you were a Spartan at the time, [the elephant at Thermopylae] would be 70 feet tall because nobody from the Greek side had ever seen an elephant. So I think taking liberties and thinking more and more abstract really falls into historical tradition.”
Cf. Paul 2013, 78: “The Persians are represented in the way that they are because they have become so in Dilios’ telling [emphasis added].”
A conclusion reached, independently, by Nisbet 2008, 140: Snyder’s Dilios “offer[s] a get-out for 300’s homo-, xeno- and liberal-phobia.”
Hdt. 7.213.
Miller 1999, 38.
As Combe and Boyle 2013, 89 observe, the change also absolves Leonidas from any responsibility for Ephialtes’ later betrayal of the Greeks. As with all of Snyder’s innovations discussed in this article, whether or not we wish to credit him with the status of an auteur, his vision dominated the production of the film; his interventions and innovations will therefore be significant (Jeffries 2014, 278 n. 4).
Holland 2007, 179.
Holland 2007, 180. Cf. Roos 2010, 12 (quoted below, n. 54); Burris 2011, 109 (“physical imperfections are seen merely as the outward manifestations of rotten souls”); Combe and Boyle 2013, 84 (“physically [and thereby, morally] repugnant”), 90 (“[bodily] exteriors unfailingly reveal the corruptibility of the moral faculties,” such that perfect body = morally good, deformity = morally bad).
See, e.g., his description of the ephors, discussed below, x, and his comments as Leonidas takes leave of his family: “There’s no room for softness, not in Sparta. No place for weakness. Only the hard and strong may call themselves Spartans. Only the hard. Only the strong.”
Stephenson 2007.
Fairey 2011, 166 (on the graphic novel): “Miller makes him a sad, deformed monster who only wishes to be accepted by his society”; cf. Combe and Boyle 2013, 89: “Ephialtes has internalized his oppressor by identifying with the Spartans.” His request to Xerxes—for a uniform—shows his very Spartan need to belong to a group: Miller 1999, 62.
It is perhaps worth noting here that in the sequel to 300, Noam Murro’s 300: Rise of an Empire, which focuses on the Athenian role in the Persian Wars, Ephialtes re-emerges in Athens, where he is confronted by the Athenian leader Themistocles, expresses regret for his betrayal of Leonidas, and warns the Athenian commander that Xerxes is planning to attack and torch Athens. He also seeks death at Themistocles’ hands as just punishment for his earlier treachery, but Themistocles refuses, and instead asks him to return to Xerxes to warn him that the Athenians are mustering for battle near Salamis, thus precipitating the battle on ground of Themistocles’ own choosing (in Herodotus’ account, Themistocles uses Sicinnus to lure the Persian fleet into the straits of Salamis: Hdt. 8.75). Themistocles’ use of Ephialtes in this key role in bringing on the Battle of Salamis stands in stark contrast to Leonidas’ paltry offer to allow him to clear the battlefield of the dead, tend the wounded, and bring water to the soldiers. The rehabilitation of Ephialtes in the sequel to 300 offers strong support for the reading of his character adopted here.
Ironically, given the negative receptions of the film by the Iranian leadership and some western critics (see above), the Sparta of 300 resembles nothing so much as modern Iran, where the religious authorities, the ayatollahs, have overriding political authority over even the elected government.
The parallel with Rohipnol, the so-called “date-rape drug,” is striking—and perhaps intentional. Leonidas, however, calls the oracle “a drunken adolescent girl.”
Called a “soul fuck” by Day 2007.
Cf. Roos 2010, 12: “the viewer/reader [is] supposed to identify with [the Spartan warriors] as normal and reasonable, as represented through their heteronormative sexuality, epitomized by the relationship between Leonidas and Gorgo, which is based on love, affection, respect, and even equality, in addition to desire. Those who oppose the Spartan warriors, the ephors and the Persians, as well as the traitors Ephialtes and Theron, are described as the opposite: sexually deviant, superstitious, tyrannical, even monstrous.”
In his exhortation before the Battle of Plataea: “this day we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny, and usher in a future, brighter than anything we can imagine” (Roos 2010, 12).
Leonidas’ cleverness is demonstrated earlier by the “out” he gives himself from the usual diplomatic protocols during the exchange with the Persian ambassadors. “Before you speak, Persian,” the king says, “know that in Sparta everyone, even a king’s messenger, is held accountable for the words of his voice.” This statement does not appear in Miller’s text—another example of Snyder’s attempt to “soften,” or at least excuse, Leonidas’ behavior (see above).
Cyrino 2013, 26.
Ibid., 24.
Cyrino 2013, 32 (quoting, MacEwan 2006, 213). The most significant generic parallel here is Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), where, according to Courcoux, 2009, the natural, “telluric” hero must challenge, using extreme violence, a corrupt, feminized society, thus regaining his status as son, father, and husband, and transforming himself from an “outlaw hero” (natural man) into an “official hero” (civilized man), but losing his life in Christ-like sacrifice in the process. See also Neale 1983, 9–11 on narcissistic images of masculinity in mainstream film, particularly westerns, where the anachronistic, violent outsider/hero’s narcissistic authority is in tension with the prevailing social authority, typified by home, family, law, order, and civilization. Liberal critics would regard Leonidas as a “Retributive Man” (or “action man”) figure, whose reassertion of traditional masculinity is a reactionary response to the “New Man” (or “sensitive man”) figure, corrupted by feminism and by being in touch with his feelings; Rambo is the classic example of “Retributive Man” (Tasker 1993, 94–5, 117, 120–121, 165).
Cyrino 2013, 31.
Stephenson 2007.
Recall also Dilios’ comment, quoted earlier (above, n. 47), that there is no room for weakness or softness in Spartan society. His remarks occur in the context of Leonidas taking his leave of queen Gorgo to go to Thermopylae: the king cannot say “goodbye, my love” for fear of appearing “soft.” Note, too, that Leonidas’ mother’s reaction to her son being taken away by the authorities may function as an implicit critique of Spartan society, and is a potent visual symbol of the pessimistic reading adopted here.
Cf. Roos 2010: 12 (quoted above, n. 54).
Miller’s Xerxes is darker than Snyder’s, and has “typical” West African facial features (thick lips, a wide, flat nose); see, e.g., Miller 1999, 51, with Fairey 2011, 159 n.2, 167–8. On the other hand, some of Miller’s Spartans also appear distinctly African, both in terms of skin tone and facial features; see, e.g., Miller 36–7, for depictions of Stelios and the Captain.
Quoted in Daly 2007.
Ibid.
Snyder says his film is neither homophobic nor homoerotic; “I don’t have a problem with people interpreting it the way they’d like to” (quoted in Daly 2007). For Williams 2009, 46, 300 constructs “a rather schizophrenic representation of sexuality. The film’s lack of displacement means that male (homo) sexuality is mapped onto the same [Spartan] body that attempts to disavow it, resulting in a perverse iconography that is both homoerotic and homophobic.” Note, however, that Williams’ interpretation is based on a serious error: Leonidas mocks the Athenians as boy-lovers, not the Persians, as Williams says. His source for this, Ayers and Carr 2007, was describing an Athenian screening of the Greek version of 300, in which the censors apparently made the Persians, rather than the Athenians, the “boy-lovers” of Leonidas’ statement. For more on sexuality in 300, see Burris 2011, 111. On the homoerotics of male bodies in film generally, see, in addition to Williams, Neale 1983; Tasker 1993.
Hdt. 1.135.
Lauwers et al. 2012, 85–6; Tomasso 2013; Combe and Boyle 2013, 93–102; cf. Burris 2011, 110. Combe and Boyle also note that both the graphic novel and the film deny Gorgo even an independent identity, for she is never named (98). Yvonne Tasker would argue that this female version of the “hero-as-outsider” cannot be considered empowered because she is “symbolically male” (Tasker 1993, 135, 139, 147 [emphasis in original]). Rikke Schubart would categorize Gorgo as “in-between”—neither fully male/active, nor fully female/passive, but partaking of both stereotypically feminine traits (empathy, sexiness, beauty) and stereotypically masculine traits (violence, aggression, stamina) (Schubart 2007, 2). In terms of Schubart’s “archetypes,” Gorgo is a “rape-avenger” (27–9) in 300, and a “good Amazon” (36) at the end of 300: Rise of an Empire (on which, see below, n. 93).
In Miller’s book, she appeared on only one page: Miller 1999, 22.
Roughly similar lines are spoken by Leonidas in Miller’s graphic novel (Miller 1999, 13).
For the former interpretation, see Tomasso 2013, 118; Combe and Boyle 2013, 99, but this conflicts with the Herodotean tradition of the clever Gorgo, which Tomasso suggests Snyder elsewhere follows fairly closely. Better to see the scene as evidence for Gorgo’s influence over Leonidas, as Lauwers et al. 2012, 86.
This, too, is reminiscent of Herodotus’ barbarian queens (e.g. Artemisia), “the inverted masculine wom[e]n,” who are equal “partners of kings”; the latter “are witless by contrast” (Gray 1995, 195, 200–201).
Thereby “manipulating [Leonidas] into discarding the obligations of Spartan citizenship and kingship” (Combe and Boyle 2013, 100).
See, e.g., Hdt. 7.135: the Spartans Sperthias, son of Aneristus, and Bulis, son of Nicolaus, asked by the Persian Hydarnes why they reject Xerxes’ friendship, respond that Hydarnes knows nothing of freedom, only slavery, and that if he tasted freedom, he would fight for it not just with spears but with axes.
Hdt. 7.104.
The Herodotean Spartans authorized Leonidas and his 300 to be sent to Thermopylae during the Carneia: Hdt. 7.206; and punished and humiliated those who returned: Hdt. 7.231–32. In the world of the film (and graphic novel), Spartan law is reduced to “No retreat. No surrender.” Muddying the waters further, Miller 1999, 64, has Leonidas contrast “the rule of law” with the “whim of men,” defined as “the old way, the old, sad, stupid way,” the representatives of which, according to Dilios (above), are, ironically, the ephors. 300 can only allude to Demaratus’ mot: towards the end of the film (and the graphic novel: Miller 1999, 79), Dilios utters a version of Simonides’ famous memorial epitaph, “stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here, obeying their orders” (Hdt. 7.228), replacing, perhaps significantly, “their orders” (tois keinōn rhēmasi) with “by Spartan law.”
Taken from Plut. Mor. 241.F4, where the saying is attributed to Spartan mothers rather than Gorgo.
As Mendelsohn 2008, 145 characterizes it.
As Tomasso 2013, 119 points out, despite the scene being coded as a rape through Theron’s rough handling of Gorgo, and Gorgo’s stony expression while being violated, what we see is actually a “sexual bargain.” Cf. Lauwers et al. 2012, 87: “it does not seem to be conceived as a forced rape at all.” Interestingly, Gorgo’s steely stoicism while being raped is similar to the Herodotean stereotype of the vengeful barbarian queen, whose chief qualities are “intelligence and self-control” (Gray 1995, 194).
Lauwers et al. 2012, 88.
Tomasso 2013, 120–121.
Williams 2009, 45.
Note that in the sequel to 300, 300: Rise of an Empire, Gorgo reappears in a prominent role—and one that conforms precisely to the pessimistic reading of her character adopted here. Because the Spartan queen at first selfishly refuses to reinforce the Athenians at the Battle of Salamis, the Greek side hovers on the edge of destruction (mostly at the hands of another strong female lead—Artemisia, Queen of Halicarnassus [brilliantly realized by actress Eva Green in full vampiric mode]), until Gorgo arrives at the last minute at the head of the Spartan fleet. Her heroic reappearance is undercut by her earlier intransigence, which in the meantime has resulted in copious amounts of unnecessary death and destruction, and almost leads to the utter defeat of the Greeks.
Murray 2007a.
Stephenson 2007.
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Burton, P. Eugenics, Infant Exposure, and the Enemy Within: A Pessimistic Reading of Zack Snyder’s 300 . Int class trad 24, 308–330 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-016-0391-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-016-0391-9