2003ART PRODUCING CULTURE
ACADEMIC RESEARCH ESSAY:
(Lack-a-demic research essay draft)
MAKING SENSE of the 300 CONTROVERSY
(Working title: 300 Men in their Underwear Spouting Rubbish and Why Not Every Homo-Erotic Repressed Conservative Fantasy Deserves to be Made into a Movie)
by Maryam B - Undereducated Undergraduate © 2007 Maryam A. B. All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Deserved. ----------------------------------------
300 is essentially the story of the 300 Spartan soldiers who fought against the one million-strong army of the Persian Empire at the famous Battle of Thermopylae (300 is essentially a stylish montage of 300+ buff, shiny men in their underwear plus a few naked ladies plucked out of a Lancome Hydra-Zen moisturizer ad in an attempt to stupefy audiences into not noticing that there really isn't much of a story because the filmmakers are too busy sourcing for ridiculous amounts of baby oil to slather all over Gerard Butler, leaving no time to work on a decent script) But more than just being yet another simple-minded action movie , it has been accused of being not only an analogy for a current-day conflict – the “War on Terror” but also propaganda for the Neo-Conservative Bush Administration. The Iranian government which has come under heavy criticism by the United States and its allies recently, released a statement saying that the movie is aimed at “humiliating Iranians”, the descendants of the ancient Persians and it is “part of a comprehensive US psychological warfare aimed at Iranian culture”(in Thomas, 26/3/2007). Using the theories of Edward Said, Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard, this paper intends to examine the current political climate and culture we live in and how it may affect our sense-making practices, particularly the way in which we make sense of the 300 before attempting to answer the question of whether the film could be said to be analogy and propaganda for the “War on Terror” (or rather, this paper intends to not let the precious AU$11 & 2 hours of my life I spent on watching the movie be wasted in vain. By using the movie as the subject of my term paper, at least I can tell myself that it was all for academic research purposes and not because like a dolt, I was once again duped by the media hype and publicity fanfare and that I have a pathological weakness for beautifully sculpted men in their underwear with their very big uhm... swords waving Hello!)
The ways in which we make sense of things are not a natural part of reality – it is not biological or fixed but rather changes with time and culture (McKee 2003). In analyzing the 300 and the controversy that followed, one must first take note of the time of its release. Perhaps, in a different time, under a different political climate, the 300 might just be viewed upon as being just another silly movie but the world is currently suffering the effects of September 11 and the political and militaristic disorder that followed. These events have arguably, contributed to and intensified the culture of fear, paranoia and great distrust of the other and this has no doubt influenced the way in which people interpret and make sense of the 300.
In the 300, many would agree that the Persians are portrayed to be “the forces of evil: dark-skinned, depraved and determined to terrorize the West” (Thomas 26/3/2007). The soldiers of the Persian army are made out to be slaves in service of a tyrannical, megalomaniac king and look more like grotesque monsters than human and is said to have “no souls” thus removing the audience from any sense of universal human kinship and sympathy towards them. Of course, the story of 300 is told from the viewpoint of a Spartan soldier about to go into battle against the invading Persians – under these circumstances, one would hardly expect him to say anything to the contrary. The interesting question is, why would the modern-day, non-Spartan makers of the 300 choose to tell the story solely through the viewpoint of a Spartan soldier? (Yah, yah, because it's based on a Frank Miller graphic novel. I'll get to that in a while.)
In opposition to the Persians from the East, the Spartans, as part of the Ancient Greek civilization that makes up the foundation for modern-day Western civilization are portrayed to be “noble” and “possess a fierce love of liberty” (Thomas, 26/3/2007) and the character of Spartan King Leonidas (played by good ol' Gerard Butler) never tires of reminding us just how much the Spartans honor and cherish their freedom (in fact, I think it was the only thing he talked about in the film. Unless you count "GRRRROOAAARRR" which might just be code for "Give me that bottle of baby oil for free, Johnson's-bitch") “We are free men here,” he says to a Persian envoy; “Your men (Persian King Xerxes’ army) fight as slaves, they (Spartans) fight as free men”; “we are fighting for freedom” and “we are fighting against the forces of tyranny and mysticism” he says of their cause and the character of his wife echoes this sentiment by saying that, “Freedom is not free” while trying to convince Sparta’s ruling elite to send more troops into battle. This rhetoric and justification eerily echoes that of the Bush administration on the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq and has also been used to garner support for the possibility of military action against Iran. “Freedom and fear are at war,” US President George W. Bush had said (cited in Poynting, 2004) and his administration has been pushing for a move to increase troop numbers. And just as the Homoioi were reluctant to send more troops, so too is the Democrat-controlled US congress to Bush’s plan for troop increase (CNN 11/4/2007).
Here, we will begin to note that the dichotomy between the freedom-loving, democratic, humanistic, civilized, rational West and evil, totalitarian, terroristic, barbaric, mystical East clearly evident in the 300 relates greatly to Edward Said’s work on Orientalism and the cultural stereotyping and vilification of the other (the non-Western world) that has occurred from it (Said 1985). Said wrote that the idea of “the Orient has helped define the West as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience”. While Said is unable to pinpoint the exact origin or point of departure of the Orientalist project, he has noted that its history goes back a long way in time and is a result of a long-standing relationship of power, domination and of “varying degrees of a complex hegemony” between the East and West (1985: 5). In this light, it can be said that the dehumanization and extreme-vilification of the Persians in the 300 did not merely arise from the events of September 11 but rather a testament to the stronghold and lasting power this particular discourse has had over our culture by which it has affected the way we perceive and make sense of our current situation. Said then also notes that film and television has reinforced the stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed; particularly by how the “Middle East” and its people are viewed – “oversexed degenerates, capable of cleverly devious intrigues but essentially, sadistic, treacherous and low” (1985: 287) Said uses a Rudolph Valentino movie from the 1920s (ibid.) as an example and we see this image still being reproduced over eighty years on in the 300 - King Leonidas is shown as having a loving physical and emotional relationship with his wife, while Xerxes’ chamber, consistent with the stereotype of the Oriental as an “oversexed degenerate” resembles a seedy, underground S&M parlour that is host to orgies and other acts which might constitute as “sexual deviance” in conservative circles (on second thought, it actually looks like Pussycat Dolls music video. Oooh, don't cha wish your great King was a freak like me, don't cha wish your Great King was raw like me, ooh don't cha?). The Spartans preferred to fight with their sword and sheer physical strength and this is portrayed as the ultimate in valour and manliness while the Persians relied heavily on archers - in another war film, one that probably does not concern a struggle between East and West, the use of archers might instead be viewed as a sign of tactical genius or a technologically advanced society – but in 300, it is portrayed as devious and cowardly.
Now let us examine one of the final images of the 300 using a semiotic approach– King Leonidas dies bravely at the Battle of Thermopylae and his bloodied body is shown at the center of the camera frame, arms spread out to his side so that his body forms a T-shape and the camera is angled in such a way that Leonidas’ body seems vertically hung across an invisible crucifix rather than lying horizontally on the ground. Barthes and Saussure agree that sign systems are based on a signifier, the thing doing the work of representation and the signified, the thing/concept represented (in Smith, 2001). The signifier here is a lifeless body with arms spread out. If one lived in isolation and is wholly unaware of Christianity then this image might just be that of a lifeless body but for most of us, this image seems to share an uncanny resemblance to religious art depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, hence the concept represented here (or the signified) is that of Christianity. The fact that the Spartans were not Christians and Battle of Thermopylae took place 481 years Before Christ (de Souza, 2003) makes the inclusion of this image in the film a seemingly baffling choice indeed (also, wasn't Sparta a warrior society? I doubt the King of a warrior society would be, like Jesus, telling his people to "turn the other cheek". Yah, turning the other cheek works great in battle because you always want your opponent to behead you on your best side, no?) but Barthes explains that in the semiotic analysis of culture, sign systems build upon themselves and have many layers (in Smith 2001). Hence, the signified image of Jesus Christ’ crucifixion now becomes the signifier for the Orientalist discourse of the other; that “we know them only through disorder and opposition: non-white, non-Western, non-civilized and non-Christian” (Isakhan 2005). The “War on Terror” arguably, comes off as having religious undertones – we have “Islamic extremists” fiery denunciations of “the Christian Infidels of the West” and while US President George W. Bush has said that the war on terror is not a war against Muslims, he has gone on to use choice words such as “crusade” in describing the war – a word which means nothing more than a campaign, a movement, a struggle but to many, it signifies a historical clash between Christianity and Islam – the Holy Crusades. Hence, the image of King Leonidas’ body toward the end of the 300 might go on to signify to some that the film is less an account of the Battle of Thermopylae but is further proof that it is an analogy of the current ‘War on Terror’. In Mythologies, Barthes suggests the need to combine the abstract study of semiotics with a more sociological approach that will allow us to “connect a mythical schema to a general history, to explain how it corresponds to the interests of a definite society” (cited in Smith, 2001). He suggests that myth works to justify or naturalize the existing social order (in Smith, 2001). Barthes defines an existing social order as always bourgeois (in Smith, 2001) but could we perhaps say that the myth discussed here work towards justifying or naturalizing an existing social order of Western dominance and the superiority of its values? After all, Orientalism is “the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient (or the East) by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it – a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient” (Said 1985; 1-3) Critics have lambasted the 300 for being historically inaccurate (CNN 27/3/2007) (among other things) but in all fairness, 300 has never made any claim to being a truthful historical replication of the Battle of Thermopylae; instead it is an adaptation of a graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley that is a willed hallucination of ancient history. But then this would be consistent of Said’s argument that Orientalism is not an inert fact of nature but “a kind of willed human work” (1985: 15). The historical inaccuracies within the 300 can also be said to be further proof that the film is an analogy for the “War on Terror” (although others might argue that Miller’s graphic novel was written long before the events of September 11). But what matters is that it can be easily seen as such and thus the following part of the analysis will be conducted based on this assumption.
From an aesthetic aspect, the 300’s visual pacing and flourishes “seem intended to mimic the sensation of reading a graphic novel” (Seymour 9/3/2007) although one may also say that it has the look (and the substance or lack of) of a very stylish video game (what I'd really like to see is a movie that resembles old-skool Pac Man) rather than a historical epic which tends to use real landscapes, on-set locations, elements of photo realism to give the viewers a sense of this actually happened. 300 was filmed in a virtual studio in Montreal and the film’s backdrop was later filled in with what is obviously, highly-stylized computer generated images hence, “when the audience cheers one particularly aesthetic decapitation it's because it's not quite the same thing as watching an Iraqi execution video” (Charity, 9/3/2007). Because of this, fans of the 300 might argue that because it is quite obviously just a fictional movie which provides us with a sense of escapism, it should be spared from ideological criticism and be rubbed in the mud of politics and the “War on Terror” – Newsday reviewer Gene Seymour wrote that the 300 is “just too darned silly to withstand any ideological theorizing” (9/3/2007). (ah, but Mr. Seymour is probably too darned silly and lazy to do any ideological theorizing. I don't blame him, who can think when you have Gerard Butler's big sword waving in front of your pocket letter opener? But alas, in uni they teach you that no text is innocent and the dumber the text, the more fun it is to analyze and then they go ahead and rob you of a life and all sense of humour so that you will have nothing else to do/think about but the wider socio-political implications of Britney without panties instead of merely going "ooohh....waxed Va-jay-jay") Here is where we bring in Baudrillard’s theory on Simulacra and Simulation in which he wrote that the second and third phase of the simulated image is “it masks and perverts a basic reality” and “it masks the absence of a basic reality” (1988). Baudrillard uses Disneyland as an example - it is presented as an imaginary world but all of the American values are exalted here in miniature and comic-strip form – he concludes that it is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest of America, which has become a simulation in itself is real (1988). The same concept/principle might be applied to a film such as 300. There is no doubt that in recent times, journalism and journalists have been facing the worst press that they have ever had with “journalists rating with used car salesmen in surveys of public perception of honesty” (Burns 2000: 23) and news reports on the “War on Terror” met with a great amount of skepticism from the public with Fox News in particular being accused of being propaganda mouthpiece for the Bush administration (BBC News: 27/1/2005 & BBC News: 26/8/2003) Could we then consider the possibility that the presentation of war, violence and the other in movies such as 300 as silly, entirely imaginary and comic book-like is in order to make us believe that the portrayal of war, violence and the Oriental other we see on the news is real?
If this is the case, then it’s easy to see how a film like 300 could work in gaining favour for the Bush administration’s military and political endeavours in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their strong stance against Iran. But a conspiracy theory that 300 is propaganda for the Bush administration and that they somehow have had a direct hand in the making of this film needs to be further questioned. This paper has already discussed the 300 as an example of an Orientalist text and in attempting to answer this question, Said’s words might once again come in useful – “Orientalism is a discourse that is by no means in direct corresponding relationship with political power in the raw but rather is produced in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political but also power intellectual, power cultural and power moral” (1985: 12). Frank Miller’s graphic novel, on which the film is based on, was first published in 1998 – two years before George W. Bush became President of the United States and thus we could say that the notions put forth in the 300 was influenced by a dynamic exchange of decentralized power, an exchange that precedes and exceeds the time of Bush’s presidency.
To conclude, let us consider the effect that the 300 could have on society? It might be ingenuous to assign the media so much power as to say that if the media broadcasts a certain message, then that is what everyone will start to think (McKee 2003). “The media texts; like the sense making practices of individuals, have to work within the practices (or culture) that already exist” (McKee 2003: 46). But the media is indeed, “central in reproducing dominant cultural frames” and assists greatly in “generating a kind of ‘common sense’ of the world which naturalizes that reality and the relations of power which structure it” (Couldry 2000 cited in Poynting 2004: 14). And because “how we make sense of other people is important to how we treat them”, the reproduction of the Orientalist cultural framework in the 300 and the furor and debate that followed shows that in times such as the one we live in, a bloody movie with ‘soulless Persian monsters’ will only add fuel to a culture already fraught with fear, paranoia and great distrust of the other (and a shortage of baby oil and body hair wax for the rest of the world)
(Also, by sticking this incredibly snore-worthy paper up on my blog, I hope to give a clear example as to what it is I really study in Uni for the benefit of every friend, relative and random stranger that asks me repeatedly, with one raised eyebrow nonetheless, "What the hell is Communication & Media Studies exactly? Do you like, learn to communicate with people and watch a lot of TV? It's just a whole lot of rubbish isn't it? What can you do when you graduate?" Well, I can't perform brain surgery, that's for sure although I might be tempted to attempt one on you, one of these days...... right before I start my shift at McDonald's)
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