300, Fascism, and The Angry Men of Twitter
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2022
- Let's talk about 300, politics and the people who really really like the movie!
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Edited by Mothcub: / mothcub_
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Hey, hope you enjoyed the video! I forgot to mention that I make monthly bonus videos for my patron, so if you like that, then go here! Let's talk about 300 and the people who really really like it! www.patreon.com/bigjoel
Will there still be bonus videos on Nebula or is that a different sort of thing?
Twitter is a cancer.
300 was very historicaly inacurat aswell so ya 300 is a very bad film
“ ‘300’ is not a documentary folks!”
Lol. This was my favourite part. Have you done ‘Jeepers Creepers’ yet? Now THAT is fertile ground…
@Big Joel
Considering how so many of the comments clearly show how people don't understand (or don't want to see) what propaganda is, you should have started by a definition of it. Same for Fascism and Nazism.
One can't agree with someone else that a something is Fascist/Nazi Propaganda if both parties don't agree on what it means.
Funny how in these people's minds, overly fascist movies are actually devoid of subtext, but a one second kiss in a Pixar movie is a conspiracy to destroy western civilization.
This is the real point honestly. It dies go both ways though. Obviously fascism is more dangerous.
@@mycaleb8 fascism is more dangerous than compassion towards marginalized groups? Yes, I agree.
@@ShirDeutch Hence the obviously.
@@mycaleb8 sorry, it was a bit confusing. *More* dangerous implies that both are dangerous to a degree, and I don't think that's the case.
@@ShirDeutch I see your point. More was the wrong word. Both are propaganda, one is dangerous, one isn't.
the “it can’t be nazi propaganda bc it’s set in Ancient Greece” take makes me genuinely terrified for the state of media literacy among some people
All it tells me is that you have room temperature IQ and a victim complex. And probably no friends either.
Tbh I really think it has less to do with media literacy and more to do with fascism literacy. I don't think those people would make the same claim about animal farm just because it was about animals and not set in the USSR. Mainstream culture is very effective at treating fascism as completely void of actual ideological content and reducing it to simply being evil and a historical moment. It's the same reason the alt-right can get away with expressing explicitly fascist ideas by simply claiming and so many people simply believe them when they say they're not nazis or fascists because they don't know what fascism is outside a narrow set of historical iconography
His tweet was a BS ,Just It ,the leftists become worse every day It pass
The fucking name and symbol is a reference to the glorious authoritarian and militaristic Roman past.
@@VonFreklstein rome was a republic for most of its time you utter mongrel.
The fact that so many people on Twitter think that films with historical settings can't be subject to the biases of filmmakers really is telling of how easy it is to manipulate people.
It very much serves the similar false belief that reporting can be free of bias too
@@Eisofice Yeah random people on YT are very much not credible source of information. Moreover even if they cite their sources how many people will actually read those instead just believing the guy they see on the screen
when you were the most advanced country of your era but people think you're the bad guy because of B-grade movie about a pedo state
@@atropa6053I know!
The movie does Persia so dirty
@@atropa6053"Advanced" and "good" aren't the same thing.
I think the suggestion that the movie was “in broad strokes” actually historically accurate puts so much pressure on the term broad strokes that it could form a fucking diamond.
100% right, also such a fun way of putting it.
It's roughly correct in that Greek existed
I mean, think about it.
People used spears, shields, and even stabbed each other.
It's basically a history lessen.
Great point but can we talk about how excellent that word play is??
How do you even use "in broad strokes" and "historically accurate" next to each other without at least having a second thought
The Boys tv series Nazi character said something really smart in second season." They love what I am saying, They just don't like the word Nazi". You can not summarize some people better than this.
To be fair, most of the people criticizing him probably aren't eugenicists who want a state run program for child soldiers and a military dictatorship where individualism is squashed and all property belongs in theory to the state, but I do get what you're saying. It's very true
Hence this push to rebrand and conceal intentions with euphemisms.
Banger comment Onur A
Shame the the S3 finale was awful 😔
This works both ways in the modern west. A lot of run of the mill conservatives are big fans of fascist rhetoric, so long as it is divorced from any words they know are 'bad'. Also, many liberals can get behind a lot of Marxist rhetoric, so long as it is devoid of any scary words. Many of our people are capable of word association, but are not all that strong at critical analysis... cable news realized this years ago and has worked tirelessly to prey on these people's ignorance.
Calling 300 satire is so weird to me. Because no one reads it as satire until the moment someone criticizes it. Look at the UA-cam comments for any scene of 300 (minus the this is Sparta meme.) and you won’t find people praising the witty satire of the film, you won’t see people mocking the hyper masculine characters. Have a casual conversation about the film with someone who’s a fan of it without criticizing it, and the term satire will NEVER come up. People read the films messages straight forwardly until they feel they must defend it. Only for that brief moment is it satire.
Shroedingers satirical film. "Um clearly its satirical and that just went over your head dude, anyway heres how all the satirical characters and plot beats are cool/good"
If they knew anything about Frank Miller (the author of 300) and his politics, they would know that it wasn't satire. He once wanted to make a comic about Batman fighting jihadists.
"Its satire," and "its a joke," have just become gaslighting at this point. Its gone beyond an unwillingness to stand by ones opinion in the face of criticism.
This is the same thing with warhammer fans. Bring up how ridiculously imperialist and fascistic it is to any fan and its suddenly a satire.
@@umjammerlammy9993 to be fair, I've seen quite a few warhammer fans who are completely aware of those aspects and acknowledge them, since (from what I gather) the lore is not exactly promoting those ideologies.
“While cruel Leonidas demanded that you stand, I require only that you kneel” is such a fucking fantastic villain line, and it was delivered so well
funny too because in of itself it could be morally ambiguous (at least by the morals of the movie) and the movie does not go there at all
@@baintreachas What interesting morals change, what would be considered hero back then can be considered villain nowadays. Honestly exploring something like that could be interesting
Assuming frank miller wrote all of it himself and didn't take it from someone else this story has some 100% classic moments. The "Spartans what is your profession?" Scene
HONESTLY i was like “holy shit this dude’s embodying this role”
Why is this reply section so vague?
Me as a Greek learning about our history my whole life assuming that everyone knows that 300 is not historically accurate literally having to pause and doing a silly walk in my room out of frustration hearing the last few tweets
🫂
I’m not even Greek and I had the same reaction lol
@@hypatiakovalevskayasklodow9195 What emoji is that?
@@nicolersands hug
We should normalize doing silly walks when we're frustrated.
Can't remember why, but recently the "SPARTANS, WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION?" scene popped into my head, and suddenly I realized that the whole reasons Spartans could be essentially professional soldiers is because they had all their slaves doing the real work.
Pretty much. The Spartans had their slaves the Helots basically do all the work necessary to keep a society functioning like farming so everyone else can focus fulltime on serving the Spartan war machine.
Estimated to be around 7 slaves per soldier as well who would have all been at the hot gates with the soldiers. But I guess “300 (+2100 against their will)” wasn’t as catchy a title.
And the Spartans were elite soldiers to keep their slaves oppressed. Sparta did not typically march beyond its borders or expand its influence beyond its immediate neighbors because the Spartans lived in constant fear of servile revolt.
The Spartans were soldiers to dominate their slaves, who they kept in a constant state of terror by murdering any that seemed too strong or too popular. It was a society that engendered psychopathy as children were ripped from their families to be physically, mentally and sexually abused to toughen them up.
Sparta was, in short, an evil society and Xeroxes would have been correct in destroying it
@@AfternnTwMrB Ironically, the positive idea of Spartan society largely comes from the Romans, who held them up as an ideal of strong men who didn't encumber themselves with luxury or politics. There was a popular school of "Spartan" philosophy in Rome, whose practitioners would give up fineries and orgies in favor of martial scholarship and simplistic living, although it's debatable how many Roman "Spartans" actually lived this way versus just saying they did to impress the proles. In their actual time, the Spartans were regarded as violent hicks who were insignificant next to the more scientifically advanced states like Athens or Macedonia.
Pretty much every single ancient society had slaves not just Sparta, your point is moot.
That argument that it's satire because baby killing is clearly bad so we're supposed to be against the Spartans is basically saying "it's not pro fascist because it's explicitly fascist, and we know fascism is bad, therefore it must be satire"
That's what I was thinking, thank you for articulating it lol
There we go a big point of that argument cruxes on the assumption that everyone think facism is bad. Take away that assumption gives you a more accurate view of people going into a movie who implicitly or explicility support fascism
+
tossing imperfect babies off a cliff and just making a new one was common back in those times
“Say what you will about Hitler, but . . .”
"is the bible a satire of god" has got to be one of my favorite arguments from you
"GET REAL"
I actually had a former friend publicly complain about Autistic kids on Facebook, and that we should "throw them off a cliff Spartan style". When I replied saying that I'm Autistic, he private messaged me and pleaded with me, saying that he didn't mean it because I'm not "one of those Autistic people". least to say that I stopped associating myself with him.
Years later he actually became mentally disabled after a drug related incident, and is now reliant on disability money, the irony being that he also hated the idea of other people receiving disability checks.
So you're saying we shouldn't throw him off a cliff Spart style?
Wow. I assume by the phrase "not one of those autistic people", he assumed "autistic" means "anti-vaxx propoganda TV spot autism". Absolutely horrible take either way.
That being said, as an autistic person myself, I do feel really bad for him. Brain damage is a really terrifying ordeal that I think few beliefs give cause for one to feel any less compassion.
@@None-Trick_Pony Same.
@@None-Trick_Pony The take away is that you shouldn't be ableist, because anyone can develop a disability.
@@SleepyMatt-zzz I know, and that's why I feel bad for him. If I were an ableist or a pettier/more vindictive person, I would have zero sympathy. But I'm not quite that petty and I'm whatever the opposite of an ableist is. So I do feel bad for him.
"300 can't be Nazi propaganda because it's about the Spartans and they existed before Hitler" is genuinely one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. I'm actually shocked and baffled that people were so confident in that take that they were willing to say it on Twitter for everyone to see
The term "Nazi propaganda" can literally mean propaganda about Nazis.
I don't even disagree with the tweet, and that's how I read it.
Thermian argument
I think there is some value to an element of that discussion which is around the use of Nazi versus Fascist, is Nazism the specific ideology of the third reich and those who still think Hitler was a cool guy or just a byword for fascism more generally? I think you could make a fairly reasonable argument that 300 uses fascist ideas, imagery, and concepts without necessarily being a Nazi movie.
This is somewhat splitting hairs tho.
nazi propaganda and fascist propoganda are two completelt different things
I dunno, I would usually interpret "nazi propaganda" to mean propaganda made by Nazis with the intention of furthering Nazi ideas. Not just having themes that Nazis would like. Being created/distributed to further an institution's political goals is nescessary for it to count as propaganda. Joel's right about the themes, but they don't make it propaganda, a term that describes how it's used and intended, rather than what it is about directly. If he called it Nazi propaganda, and someone points out that it wasn't created by or for Nazis in response, I think they've got a strong point.
I am Greek and normally I don't mind big changes to my country's historical events when portrayed in movies. However, 300 bothered me so much because every change was made to portray Sparta as a reasonable strong society (instead of the war hungry and violent state that it was) while their enemies are portrayed as degenerates.
BTW greek fascists LOVE this movie.
That's how Laconians viewed anyone but themselves. What's your point? Again, the film is being told from the perspective of a Spartan soldier, to other Spartans.
Greek fascists exist because the ottomans and Italians tried to invade and rape their country
@@Fyrdman Shouldn't there be, like, a questioning about his point of view in the movie, then ? Or should we just accept it at face value, because he's a guy from a long time ago ?
Like, movies are there to also to be intelligent. Straight-up embracing this vision is weird, because then there's no problem with neo-nazi movies cause "it's just how they saw themselves".
I blame Frank Miller. I don’t think he likes Middle-eastern people all that much.
@@KickinRadTopHat i sure hope it isnt satire
you could almost argue the movie is defending the murder of cripple babies because the only cripple that is shown as an adult betrays them. Begging the question of if they would have won if they had been better eugenicists.
I believe the hunchback character explains that his father saved him somehow. Stole him away before he could be killed, and it could beg the question if that is meant to be interpreted as the father being weak willed or a failure.
Do some reading on Spartan history and culture
@@AxeBearingVoyagerSpartan history is irrelevant here. We're talking about a work of fiction.
@@eosapienrancher4045 fiction strongly based on historical legend... don't be dense; you know what I mean.
But what is the *relevance* of that relationship to history in regards to the comment you're replying to?
Saying it can't be about Nazis because it is about ancient Greece only makes sense if it was also written and filmed in ancient Greece.
As if we don't have neonazis in the government lmao. Greece was conquered by the nazis, because nazi collaborators were supported by metaxas and EAM didn't do as well as it should have.
I find the thought of people unironically responding "but there's no Hitler in it !" absolutely nightmarish. You can't be that dumb, tell me they're trolls.
In my experience, it's extremely common - to the point of being cliché - that racists, bigots, homophobes, and the like _vehemently_ deny to be those things. Because in their minds, they're just telling the truth. Their threshold of what being a racist etc. means is basically going outside and randomly killing the "undesirables" - everything below that is just being reasonable. True to the motto "I don't hate them, I just want them to keep to themselves and don't have any power or influence whatsoever".
So if they like something those pesky liberal soy-boy cucks consider Nazi propaganda, they need to find a reason why it can't be that, because even _they_ know that the Nazis were kinda bad people. The "there's no Hitler in it" part is just a snarky way to express the idea that it doesn't have literal Nazi imagery in it, but it all boils down to the same idiotic premise: it can't be X because didn't directly refer to X. As if stories didn't have themes and messages that aren't explicitly stated all the freakin' time. It's like reading Animal Farm and going "What do you mean? There was no Stalin in it, so it can't be about Stalinism!"
Animal farm isn't about stalinism, it's set on a farm!
Umm, no.
@@DowncastParadox they actually DONT have a threshold for what racism is. as you said, its about the stigma 'racism' has in our society, which pierces through even their mental blocks. they have it in their head that 'being racist -> being a bad person'. they internally dont want to believe themselves to be bad people, so 'racism' is shuffled around accordingly, just like u said. the people that actually HAVE gone out and committed hate crimes dont consider themselves racist either.
@@rorycannon7295 I absolutely agree, and I have to admit, you put it better than I did. Reading my earlier post again, I realize now that calling it a "threshold" was a bit misleading. I should've put it more in terms of a moving target that's always one step away from them or something along those lines.
Words with specific meanings - like "racist" - being only perceived as yet another cussword to throw at your opposition seems to be a widespread phenomenon in today's political discourse. I recently watched a video on Ben Shapiro's use of the term "fascism" and it's rather jarring. It basically boils down to "whenever my political opponent says or does something I don't like, it's fascism".
Like, come on, _Ben_ , you're a jew who writes about politics - you of all people should know better!
My classics professor in college once spent a whole half hour talking about how much he hates this movie and what it did to modern perceptions of Sparta. I remember particularly that he was flummoxed by having the Spartans derisively call Athenians “boy-lovers” as if homosexual relationships didn’t exist in Sparta, when there’s plenty of ancient attestation that they did.
I love the movie. I've loved reading the history and mythological legends of Sparta- have since I found Thermopylae in one of those Kid's history books with a long timeline of events. When I watched 300- in Iraq, with a theater full of soldiers, many of which would go out on patrol or mission immediately after the movie- I actually had one of those audible half exclamation part chuckle, one of those embarrassingly loud "Ha!"- when they got to that line, because man, did those Spartans love boy sexing.
As much as I like this comment having 69 likes I gotta give you one more 👍 Sorry, that's the price of being a good comment.
The "philosophers" comment in the movie was also meant to make fun of the sensitive guy trope.
Ed: And be an anti-intellectualism comment.
Actually there's some merit to Sparta using that insult. Not saying Sparta didn't had an extensive culture of sleeping with boys but they did consider the Athenians to be more into that. Though they would probably lean more into adult Athenian men loving other adult men then boys. Though they would just as much make fun of Athenians for marrying little girls. Both societies were complex and quite detached from our modern sensibilities and taboos.
@@mormacil not really.
It was added by the writer's to make the Spartans more 'empathetic' to the stereotypical straight male movie goer. The Spartans fucked boys for pleasure and to pass on the warrior traits. They were raped and brutalized young because that's how they did things. A Spartan warrior would often keep a long term male lover in the role similar to that of Squires, until that man was full fledged and old enough to take his own.
It was an attempt to hide their homosexual tendencies for the modern viewer. It was an attempt to hide facts to make rhetoric- because if the movie were identical, except featured accurate portrayal of males in Spartan society, it would have failed. 300 gay porn for guys who pretend they are straight.
Of note: Zach Snyder was recently hired to direct an adaption of the fountainhead because he’s ‘a big fan of Ayn Rand.’
Oh, that explains a lot.
Apparently, he abandoned it in 2020 because because he thinks people would think it's "hard-core right wing propaganda," as if that isn't exactly what it is lmao
Every Snyder movie has right wing politics. If not it has unhealthy objectification of women
Nazis famously support black actors in their movies
Leftist here. I have an abiding love for Ayn Rand that I can't ever quite let go of. That's it that's all I have to say.
Just want to add: as someone who studied the history of fascism for 3 years, this is arguably the best primer I've seen on what fascism *is* whether or not you care about 300. Fascism imo is best understood as an attempt to understand and control society through a mythic framework, and this is an absolutely BRILLIANT explanation of how the more familiar aspects of fascism can follow from that: authoritarianism from the cult of the hero, racism from national destiny, eugenics from superstition.
And as a side note, this is why I think english lit and film studies are worth studying and teaching - this sort of cultural reference point is so helpful when explaining more nebulous concepts.
True, that's one part of the equation. I personally teach the triadic model in that "Fascism is an attempt to restore the mythic past for the nation, which has since been diluted of greatness through the fall of the natural order and hierarchy." Natural order of course refers to hierarchy on the basis of sex, race, and other relevant zero-sum dimensions of conflict.
How is eugenics from superstition though? Genetics is real and it does not only concern superficial attributes. The reason eugenics is frowned upon is based on morality, not on science. "Eugenics" is way to vague to be debunked. What exactly is eugenics? The idea that attributes are genetic?
@@GeorgeKinsill This is not very convincing to someone who's needs are denied or actively countered by the current status quo. And I mean, many important areas of life actually are zero-sum. You aren't going to get anywhere meaningful by denying reality.
@@varaconn6708 , that's a strawman argument by assuming belief in genetics naturally leads to a belief in eugenics. The problem with eugenics is that it believes that the primary reason for world problems (poverty, crime, etc.) is due to genetics as opposed to environmental or other factors that can be controlled or influenced outside of the individual level. Likewise, it assumes away the concept of epigenetics and Bayesian logic (i.e. odds ratio of competing theories or data generating processes). For example, whereas eugenics would say "sterilize criminals to reduce crime," a non-eugenics approach would instead prioritize reducing poverty and the presence of lead in society to do so. Further, the concept of eugenics itself arose to justify the American School of Anthropology/Sociology as a means to justify the race hierarchy, which itself arose from the need of the British Empire to justify what amounted to crimes against humanity in North America and Africa. Smedley and Smedley do a great job from a historiographical and sociological perspective in tracing the origins and logical fallacies in Eugenics, and is a good read. While their book is not free, here is an article that in part gets at their larger body of work: psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-00117-003
@@GeorgeKinsill My point is that it is a nuanced subject. Of course attributes vary in how much they are affected by genetics. Eugenics is not only the reduction of crime it's also about health.
Oh my god, I just noticed that Leonidas Death is a crucifction. Someone please show Snyder any other symbolism
Oh, yeah, the whole "Every protag is Christ" thing has gone on for a while with him, huh?
@@TheDanishGuyReviews you know he thought he was clever as fuck when he did that with Superman, despite that being such a massively overplayed theme in Superman story.
@@bigdadybojangls9219 Yup. Not a big DC fan, but I know Supes would be first in line to tell Snyder how wrong his interpretation is. "I take being called human as a compliment, Hawkgirl." ~ Superman, Justice League: TAS.
the funny thing is that a spartan could not be further from the ethos of christianity. he puts the symbolism in there even when it makes zero thematic sense
Crucifixtion predates christ, and the crucifixion of leonidas actually comes from a historical source. herodotus wrote that leonidas was crucified because it would have been considered sacrilegious to the greeks.
One thing about the whole "killing babies if they're weak" scene: we never see any character, nor the tone of the movie itself, praise or condemn that practice. It was simply stated that this is how it works, as if it was a force of nature. This scene, along with the rest of Leonidas' growing up montage is there to communicate one thing and one thing only: every adult Spartan is leagues above regular humans - an Ubermensch, created both by eugenics and by harsh trials. It's arguably the most fascist thing in this very fascist movie that I like a lot.
In a sense the movie kinda does praise the practice...Ephialtes admits that his Spartan parents couldn't bear to toss him. He ends up being shown as a disgusting traitor. It's the only reason I can see for why they even include the baby tossing scene, where the narrator starts off immediately explaining that Sparta goes the extra mile to reject weakness and impurity. Sort of a "Ah ah see what happens when you don't follow brutalistic notions of eugenics?"
It was not a "force of nature," it was humans making a choice to kill babies and assault women.
@@genkmiz that, and the fact that they basically portray the Spartans as the only thing that can stop the mean evil Persians. It says “if we didn’t three point shot those babies into the reject pit, then evil would have won!”
The tone of the movie absolutely praises that practice. The Spartans are treated as an idealized society, the other Greeks and the Persians are repeatedly treated as jokes or as literal mutants in comparison. The movie is constantly criticizing these other societies for being weak or opulent, but doesn't have a word to say against baby murder. Besides, if the movie has any coherent theme, its that the Spartans are so great because they are willing to make sacrifices for victory and the baby murder fits right in with that
wait I thought we liked baby murder leftbros
The film subtext on Sparta being the cradle of European civilization blatantly ignores that the real cradle are the Boy Lovers in Athens
There is no cradle of european civilization. There are only some trans-alpine Europeans adopting (appropriating) a foreign ancient civilization, taking it out of its historical, geographical and cultural context, isolating it, just to glorify themselves.
Just because it happened in what in their time was conceived of as a separate continent.
@@yllejordwell now that’s just ignorant. The Greeks heavily influenced the romans whose descendants are the second or third largest linguistic group in the world. There’s absolutely no way those people and the people they influenced can trace no line back to Ancient Greece.
@@FPSIreland2 "heavily influenced the Romans"
What happened is that the Romans came as conquerors and plundered as they pleased, carrying back whatever they fancied, art, books, enslaved people. Those were fashionable status symbols.
There are people in the UK as we speak who think they are more entitled to the Parthenon Marbles than we are.
Trace an influence is one thing, treating an image of an ancient civilization, distorted to suit their needs, as their own is quite another, isn't it.
You have a connection to Ireland? You should understand this kind of stuff then, shouldn't you?
I love how in 300 Leonidas says "Well, if those boy-lovers in Athens turned you down then so will we," when actually homosexual acts were de rigueur among the Spartans. But Hollywood can't have a macho action movie about men who bugger each other.
Spartans accussing anyone of "boy love" makes me snort every time I see that scene pop up. And using Athens instead of Thebes for pederasty? Please, at least use something more distinctly Athenian if you want to throw mud at that city state specifically.
You know it's about having sex with actual kids right?
Fun fact: I was born quite sickly and were it not for modern medicine it's quite likely I would have died or survived with severe health complications. So from the moment where the movie said people like me were killed from birth in Spartan society, so only the strong would survive, I was like 'oh, so these are the bad guys' and then watched the rest of the movie insist they were the heroes. It was not a fun experience.
Yeah tragically infant abandonment was just a fact of life in the Greek and Roman world and it makes their indignation at the human sacrifice practiced by their neighbors incredibly hollow
@@smrtfasizmu7242 just pretend that they were just abortions. Its their fault for depending on people. Fuck around and find out 🤪
Yep, being a sickly baby or one of too many daughters for your parents' liking and they'll leave you out in the woods
@@dominicg1020 Your statement makes it sound as though you support eugenics. Curious.
Could it POSSIBLY be that a successful society did some bad things? You don't even have to stop thinking they were cool and great, just... killing babies wasn't the thing that made them cool, ya know?
@@tjh3894 I never said that it wasn’t a bad thing, merely that they prospered from it. Personally I think 300 as a movie is mid af, I just wish there were more genuine film depictions of the Persian invasion and Ancient Greece that isn’t hollywoodized to Hell and back. Why do you have to assume shit man, didn’t your father ever have the “assume” talk with you? “Don’t assume cause it makes an ass out of u and me”.
It's staggering the amount of people who think writers and artists and directors all live completely removed from society and cannot possibly have any political biases, conscious or unconscious, that influence the work they produce. Movies and books are all created by humans, they aren't these pure, untouched relics found in nature. This is like media analysis 101, it boggles my mind that so many people refuse to accept it.
They don't think that about artists, they think that about themselves. If something has politics they agree with in it, then it's apolitical. If it has politics they don't agree with, it's political, and "politics should be kept out of movies." It's a symptom of people adopting their political views as base assumptions about reality.
@@bobjones2959 No most of them just interpret movies with politics they disagree with, as having politics they agree with (as long as it's woven into the story, and not too obvious). Wasn't there multiple movie reviews by Ben Shapiro of movies with a strongly left-wing narrative, that he loved because "it wasn't woke pandering"?
@@bobjones2959 I do agree with that point, but I’m more so talking about the people who only take books and movies on their face and don’t consider the fact that there are real people with real personalities behind their production
@@KarlSnarks Not sure about BS: but right wingers not seeing the Vietnman war in OT Star Wars is really common.
@@collin6691 That... Is a very weird and out there comment?
Gotta love how the best argument the average Twitter user can muster to explain why their opinion is right is just to call other people stupid
If you press "1" on your keyboard, it will bring you directly to a part of the video where Big Joel says "1".
this ought to be the top comment. it's very satisfying, thank you
Studying history, I once attended a lecture about the Achaemenid Empire (the Persian dynasty during this time) and the professor used this movie as the single best example of a modern piece of orientalism. He directly compared it to statements made by nazi historian/indologist Walther Wüst, who claimed that the Achaemenid Empire collapsed because it, originally being of “Aryan” origin, embraced multiculturalism/race-mixing and degeneracy (and not, ya know, because Alexander destroyed it)
worrying
Fun Fact: 300 is actually incredibly historically accurate...
...to how the Spartans would have said it all happened.
I.e. literally demonizing the Persians, removing the other notable Greek combatants from the legend, painting the traitor not as a king but an invalid, and running into battle (near) naked.
It's facist because, well, the Spartans were pretty fascist, and any movie that tries to tell a story through their perspective will carry that inherent worldview.
The only aspect that didn't make it through the Americanization was how much bro-on-bro olive-oiled action was going on, but that's pretty standard for any post-Rome restoration of Greek legends/history
true
The whole story is told from spartan pov. yeah maybe they were a little bigotted towards Persians.
@@lmcfigs4874 Yeah, but why then portray the most biased side narrating the story as the protagonists of your movie?
It seems that for Twitter, if I make an eugenicist, homophobic and anti-semitic movie using Dinosaurs, it's automatically wrong to call it Nazi stuff because Dinosaurs weren't nazis.
Oh god, would hate to see what the next Land Before Time sequel is about.
get real worries
@@helremHow about meatride an ideology that isn’t the most mid of all time.
Don’t associate dinosaurs with fascists, dinosaurs are anti-fascist symbols in my eyes.
you know it could be an allegory to a million things other than nazis ?
but then again huh what do i expect from people that call anything they hate "fascist"
It always astonished me how many people take 300 for a serious historical movie
Because a lot of people are apparently confused about this, it's okay to understand everything in this video and still think it's a good film.
It's also "ok" to be a nazi fascist, because morality is subjective
The most devastating blow to the "It's an obvious satire" argument is everyone else mad at you for suggesting it has fascist themes at all.
plus with the argument 'obviously it's virulently fascist/homphobic/etc, you're not supposed to agree with or like the spartans, that's the point you idiot' it's like....why do you even like the film then? I would consider a film whose narrative is trying to get me to cheer for characters it's apparently also telling me I should (as it does itself) condemn those characters' morals and actions to be a really unpleasant watch for pretty much anyone, and certainly not one worthy of a frothing defence should someone criticise it....but maybe that's just me?
If it's meant to be satire then it's fails to carry the point about the ones it's satirizing home. Sure, it is clearly over the top and quite possibly intentionally tongue-in-cheek but at no point in the movie other than that one scene at the beginning, really demonstrate that these over-the-top characters are Secretly wrong in any meaningful way.
@@elgatonegro1703 History Needs Listeners so excuse me but i will 'spam-around' in this commentsection that "Some More News" has various, various videos on History and R-cism.
Maybe "satire" can be in a comedic way?
@@loturzelrestaurant wait, why did you censor the word racism
The satire argument is so funny to me because in this context 300 is a satire only because of people's ability to recognize that fascism in itself is a bad thing. By that logic any real, actual fascist propaganda can be a satire if watched by someone who is against this ideology.
Yeah, big ol' "actually pointing OUT the racism makes you a racist! Only a racist would know it's racism!" vibes
@@cam4636god that line of argument is one of my pet peeves....
I agree with you but that having been said, satire is pretty routinely mistaken for sincerity. Starship Troopers for example is an extremely obvious satire of fascism, but was widely taken at face value on it's release. I think the only strict line between satire and non-satire might be authorial intent.
Lol I wrote that having only watched the very beginning of the video
@@BubbaHoggit I agree with the second bit about authorial intent, and as far as I can possibly see there is no explicit satire from either the Miller graphic novel, or from Snyder’s adaptation of said novel.
*THE NAZIS LITERALLY* modeled themselves on the Spartans - I would have thought that was a pretty conclusive argument...
The bad politics in 300 is probably not so much as on Zack Snyder as Frank Miller, the creator of the original comics who was actively involved with the production of the movie. Guy was always pretty weird. Like take Holy Terror, which is basically just post 911 torture porn (but it was published 10 years later!) where he makes sure the protagonist _explicitly_ advocates for torturing.
I can agree with this. Maybe it's insulting but i don't think Snyder is that good at reading the deeper political messaging of different works. I mean he sure seemed to miss the messaging of watchman
"This film can't obviously have fascist or nazi subtones because it takes place in Ancient Greece" has got to be one of the most braindead takes I've read, wow. Twitter never ceases to amaze me.
Actually what is a braindead take is seeing fascism in literally everything.
If that describes you, you may have a terminal case of Communism. I'm afraid there's no cure.
The First Order also has nothing to do with Fascism because it's in a different galaxy, I heard.
it's not a Twitter thing, people in the Anglo world generally have a very poor conception of fascism as something other than the specific political movements of 1930s Germany
@@Graknorke I could literally deconstruct anything into anything I want. I could declare that 300 is actually a Communist film, where a misguided people obsessed with being equals follow the will of a charismatic dictator and how everyone will die for the greater good (TM). I could say that the Persians represent fascism coming to destroy the sociality harmony the Spartans in the movie value but through unity and cooperation they are beaten in the end. Also the traitor is a capitalist that's service is bought, betraying the 300 comrades.
That's why this is ultimately complete BS. You can see anything anyway you want if you change the tint of your glasses.
@@BlazingOwnager
you could say those things but they're not particularly supported by the text and also don't make coherent sense on their own terms, so it wouldn't be a very good argument
The comment about how "this predated the Nazis by thousands of years lol" is so funny to me because I had the exact same thing in an English Literature exam. We had to write about Tennyson's "Ulysses" and I made reference to how it represented Victorian ideals of western moral virtue, exploration and imperialism - all very pertinent context for a poem published in 1842. The examiner had drawn a question mark on my paper and annotated it with "Ulysses was Greek". I ended up getting an E in that exam and ultimately couldn't get into university because of it. Great to have such enlightened minds on the exam board.
This makes me so angry lol. I’m sorry that happened to you
@@ModernEphemera It's all good, I managed to get a decent job after I left school and I earn the same or more than most of my graduate friends, plus I'm debt free. Honestly it was kind of a blessing in disguise
craziest part is ulysses is latin 😵💫 odysseus was greek
I'm so sorry. I've never heard anything so sad and hilarious at the same time 😂
@@TG-kc9ue glad to hear that! Bit what an epic and ridiculous way to not get in xD it makes an excellent story, ha ha!
I don't know where the majority of society lost the ability to be critical of things we like. There are things that I adore that I can pick on - an animated series that, bless their hearts, couldn't figure out how to draw horses or people running. A show that justifies the actions of a character that I find inexcusable. The fun of stories is thinking about them and critiquing them, not just endlessly consuming and clapping inanely. Sometimes something you love might not age well - you can acknowledge that it didn't and still appreciate it for what it was. I mean, I know why people act this way - it's easier than having complicated opinions - but it still makes me sad for what they're missing out on.
People are not critical thinkers in general.
I was like 14 when I saw that movie in theater and even back then I thought it had pretty obvious fascist overtones.
@@IrelandAbuThere is no consistent, all-encompassing definition of facism.
🧢🧢🧢🧢
"Why does every person who disagrees with me about this have to do so in the most sneering, patronizing way possible?" THIS right here is why Twitter is just the worst social media platform. Everyone has to be the most nonchalant, the most supercilious. It's not enough to have your opinion, you must also seethe with contempt for everyone else you talk to. This attitude is everywhere and it's exhausting, it's like the worst part of being in high school.
Yea, you've nailed it imo. It's like a prerequisite on Twitter that you must be contemptuous of any scrutiny or dissenting opinions. It's not enough to disagree or hold a different view- the other party must suffer and be humiliated in the process. _How dare someone disagree with me! I have the correct answer to everything all the time without exception._ Only a Sith deals in absolutes... don't remember where I heard that; must be Bonhoeffer.
I find it a prevalent mode of communicating on all social media, not exclusive to Twitter. The only exception being heavily moderated close-knit communities.
Tiktok comments are this but 100x worse. And that’s the platform MOST young people are on. Teenagers are meaner and more vicious than ever because of this culture of insulting.
wooah, isn't nonchalant calm??
@@shronkler1994 it’s like… not bothered. To insult someone nonchalantly is to do so without giving off the sense that you’re angry or emotionally involved in the situation.
The disabled spartan was only alive because his family fled so that he wouldn’t be thrown off a cliff so the film implicitly says that eugenics is good because if he had been thrown off that cliff he would have never been able to tell Xerxes about the secret path
Funny how people wanting you dead doesn't endear them and their cause to you.
It doesn't really 'implicitly says' something about morality just because things don't go according to karma. Sometimes story tellers just want the settings or plot to be like that, so that its interesting to consumers.
This is exactly the way I understood it when I first watched the movie.
@@kugelblitzingularity304 there is always a message within these decisions. If there wasn't, the movie would have zero message and that's just not the case. How the story is structured creates the message of a film
Eugenics is socially acceptable when women do it.
It really shows me where my mind and understanding of masculinity has developed since first watching this film when it comes to the scene with Ephialtes. Previously I saw it through his perspective, that Leonidas was patronizing him, giving him lower and base tasks to complete. Now I watch and it’s not that at all, he’s giving him an honorable way to serve and fulfill a crucial function. Idk it’s wild, says a lot about a person depending on how they interpret this scene.
Ephialtes wants to redeem his parents by seeking glory or a glorious death in battle. Leonidas denies that to him and for practically no reason as the Spartans in the movie fight out of formation constantly anyway. The movie further compounds this by removing almost the entierty of Ephialtes subplot from the graphic novel. There upon getting rejected Ephialtes tries to commit suicide by flinging himself off the cliff in utter despair. It fails and he concludes that the Greek gods intend to mock and humiliate him further and that's why he joins the Persians. By removing all that Ephialtes is painted as nothing but a petty traitor and all tragedy is removed in favor of stressing the importance of eugenics.
Thinking on it, it's very weird and fascistic when Leonidas tells Ephialtes that he cant join. He goes up to his king and declares he's willing and ready to join his countrymen the battlefield, and Leonidas, knowing he and everyone with him are doomed to die says "No. You don't get to die the hero's death. You're place in society means you don't get to join us in martyrdom"
Your lack of knowledge of ancient spartas defensive strategies shows. I am greek and thankfully i was taught about it. Basically you can't have any weak link in your formation since the shield of each soldier also protects part of the soldier in the left so if someone isn't capable of holding their shield strongly enough or isn't as capable as the others the entire formation could be compromised.
@@divoulos5758 Except of course the Spartans in the movie almost immediately break their formation and fight individually, so this objection falls completely flat.
He doesn't really straight up tell him no though he gives him alternative ways he can help in the battle, Ephialtes couldn't lift his shield and any death he would've had wouldn't have been heroic it would've been sad as a man who couldn't even defend himself
The thing people forget about “problematic faves”, is they can still be your faves. That’s fine. In fact a fave being problematic might contribute to your love of it, because there is all the more to talk about. It’s less about condemnation and more about thinking critically about entertainment, which lucky for me is simply additional entertainment!
Honestly, having a problematic fave is good because it shows you can identify the problematic aspects of something, but still acknowledge the positive aspects as well, something you might forget if you immediately dislike all things problematic.
Take for instance, "Birth of a nation." The film is straight up KKK propoganda. Unlike a film like 300 that can trick people without realizing it, it's very obvious the messaging when viewing it. However, the film is actually quiet innovative in its film techniques that essentially ever single film after it has started doing.
However, if someone told me online it was one of their favorite films due to their innovation, I'd be a bit suspicious.
It’s also a very natural human thing to be curious or interested in dark ‘taboo and Evan dangerous subjects it’s why we like horror movies and valiant video games and songs about murder and it makes scenes why some one would like a film even if it has fascist themes because those themes are interesting to someone who doesn’t believe in them because there so taboo and shocking
My favorite is A Clockwork Orange and its problematic status is a huge reason why it's my favorite.
Really well said, being able to discern the messages and themes of the media you engage with shouldn't take away from your ability to enjoy or not enjoy something. It's what allows you to think critically about the interpretation of art and stories, instead of mindlessly consuming entertainment at face value for a quick rush.
exactly. i feel the same about the dark knight trilogy- shameless right-wing propaganda, but features some pretty intelligent and interesting critiques of american foreign policy, and is genuinely entertaining and engaging.
I always found it weird that the character of Leonidas would comment on Athenian "boy lovers", considering Spartan society specifically mandated affectionate and likely sexual relationships between older Spartan warriors and younger Spartans during the "agoge" (the Spartan training program that turned them into fascist warriors from the age of 7 to like 25). It's almost as if the guy who wrote the script didn't....know much about the actual historical society of Sparta?
Exactly
You might have triggered any 'alpha' 'based' men that read this comment 🤣
It was a bit more complicated than that, but my Spartan ancestors were very tight-lipped about a lot of things unlike Dillios in the film who spoke as if he was reciting a drama play.
@kshamwhizzle I mean I Just imagine this was useful because it formed deep emotional bonds that made people fight harder.
@kshamwhizzle I'm not sure of any specific policies or cultural habits, but Greek culture in general had a ton of sexualization and assaulting of young boys. Sexuality was more based off of power than gender, and Sparta was no exception to this
Sparta stans are hilarious because most of them would have probably been killed as children or enslaved by the Spartans- but in their minds they are the Spartiate warrior ubermench and not the abandoned baby or oppressed helot
Same applies to neo-nazis who look like they've suffered through 7 generations of inbreeding and yet try and gaslight themselves into thinking they're the "master race"
For us Greeks this movie has become the best source material for greek abridged versions and parodies, and it has become a staple that way. I didn't even remember how this movie plays before watching this video.
Spartans in this movie: Glorious saviors. The last bastion. Great warriors defending elysium.
Spartans IRL: Warmongers with an addiction to slave labor.
Who were also pedophiles
Lmfao seriously. All records pertaining to them from the Achaean League & Co. are basically slight variations on "man, these Spartan dudes are fucking assholes -- remember when they were chill like 30 minutes ago?"
Sparta is Super Earth but replace democracy with more sparta
The same thing can be described in many different ways.
Some people don't want to know what they themselves believe. Plus, in reality Spartans were the ones refusing to fight during religious holidays while 'boy lover' Athenians went to face Persians without Spartans at first. And Greek unity with Athenian navy and Spartan land force at last defeated Persians, not 300 boys in a single battle.
Greek here, and I can confirm, war for Spartans was a big no no during religious celebrations.
Sparta was an unreliable ally, and no less warmongering a city-state than the others.
And not too long later, Sparta sided with the Persians! Also spartan society was 90% slaves. While other Greek city states had slaves they wrote specifically about how bad the Spartan Helots had it.
And it wasn't 300. It was 300 Spartans, 1300 Lesbians, and more Athenians at the Gates of Thermopylae
@@PlaylistWatching1234 Not only that, but they later sided with the Persians in the Corinthian War and allowed them to retake the Ionian cities whose revolt started Greco-Persian wars in return for supporting their dominance over the rest of the Greek city states. Sparta wasn't interested Greek freedom, they were interested in Spartan freedom, and not even for most of the population.
Gotta admit my immediate reaction was also, "wow are u kidding, its a comic book movie about ancient spartans calling it nazi propaganda is an absurd claim" and to an extent yes, it shouldn't be taken too seriously IMO its just a silly action movie. But after watching your video if we ARE going to take it even a little seriously, then yeah I think your argument makes the point quite well.
Never going to watch 300 the same way again lol. And yeah as people have noted, it has almost nothing to do with actual history. And clearly the original comic book author was implanting their ideals on the story with the way they chose to change spartan society (making them not gay, not a brutal slave state that even shocked other slave states, making the persians a slave state when they were one of the only societies of the time to in fact outlaw slavery)
I also think that "its just a dumb movie bruh," mindset numbs all of us to real propaganda that enters our life every day with every form of media. To some degree, all media is propaganda in some way, and by ignoring that reality we make ourselves way more susceptible to it
@@damonhawkes2057I don’t think anyone came into this movie expecting historical accuracy
15:48 another point against this argument not being valid is that when Leonidas calls the Athenians "boylovers" he's not just calling them gay. He's calling them pedophiles. "Boy" in this context is being used literally, not just as a cute synonym for men. That's my interpretation of the line, at least.
It’s actually amusing to me so many people think that the least subtle film to ever exist is somehow actually a really subtle satire
As far as your point about the movie's portrayal of baby murder, I'd actually take it a step further. I would argue that the movie is suggesting that baby murder is good, actually. Now, I'm not saying that Zach Snyder or anyone involved in the film is a direct advocate of baby murder. But I do feel like the text displays it as an unchallenged good.
For one thing, the film is very invested in the idea of the Spartan military as one of the most elite fighting forces the world has ever known. The majority of the run-time is dedicated to showing us how their superior training and strength allows them to overcome everything the Persian army can bring to bear. While it isn't dwelled on after the introduction, the movie does directly connect the military might of Sparta to their willingness to weed out any imperfections from their population at birth. Everything that the movie wants us to like about the Spartans is connected to the fact that they are willing to murder babies.
Additionally, there's the case of Ephialtes. The film tells us that Ephialtes was only able to grow to adulthood because his family hid him and fled Sparta. He exists only because his parents broke the law and defied the traditions that grant Sparta it's strength. So, when Ephialtes later betrays the Spartans and causes their defeat, there is at least the implication that Sparta would have been better off if Ephialtes had not been allowed to survive past birth.
All this to say that I absolutely agree with you that the movie is not using baby murder as a way of critiquing the Spartans. If anything, the movie actually comes across as very PRO baby murder.
It's super eugenics-y, right? I haven't seen the movie in a looooong time but I was thinking the exact same thing. The movie's stance always seemed to me to be something like, "Wow, the Spartans were so hardcore they threw defective babies off a cliff and forced young children to survive out in the wild. That's harsh! But look how badass they are because of it!"
just a suggestion but, maybe edit your comment to 'weed out any "imperfections" from birth' or just change it to 'perceived imperfections' because that's all eugenics is, peoples opinions on what "good genetics" are, and it helps emphasize your point imo, anyway just a thought 👍
They were pro choice
@@augustopinochet1670 just a lil' post partum abortion, nbd
@@augustopinochet1670 But not in the good bodily autonomy type way, but rather in the bad forced sterilization type way.
Coming back to this after hearing an interesting point from Historian Tom Holland (not the actor!) who spoke about 300 on his podcast. In essence, he says while it absolutely is Fascist propaganda, it also absolutely is the way Spartans viewed themselves and their place in the world: "might makes right and we are good because we are powerful and strong. It is our place to fight the weak, the degenerate and the monstrous." It's telling a story of Sparta through the eyes of Spartans. Gave me a new respect for the film, honestly.
Except, of course, the line about Athenians being 'boy-lovers' though. That line is an absolute fail no matter what way you slice it.
On the way out if the theater when I first saw it, I overheard someone say that the wife speaking to the senate was an obvious endorsement for Hilary Clinton
The "I don't see Hitler in there" tier of arguments always make me lose faith in people. Current political parties, or fictional groups like the Spartans in 300, can't be fascists because they aren't *literally* the same group of people from 1930's Germany and Italy.
I once had an argument with someone about how my country's currently way-too-popular fascist party is actually fascist (and not just "patriotic"), and they were pretty much literaly like that. I asked them what defeinition of fascism they were using. Their answer: "You know. The real one."
They would not elaborate which definition was "the real one" or what it contained.
@@krank23 Of course they didn't, explaining your definitions and arguments might leave an opening for someone to prove you wrong. Can't have that.
I assume they were happy to label any socdem or green party as communists, despite the party not literally having Stalin and Mao on board though? That's usually the flip side of these people too.
@@8xottox8 pot calling kettle black much? You just took comments about nazi-ism and equated them with fascism.
@@spelcheak Huh? I don't think that's how this saying works, plus, yeah, the Nazis were fascists, full stop.
When people hear fascism they think of brown shirts and Jack boots and never think fascism takes many forms and what people call fascism nowadays didn't come about in the late 19th and 20th century and has realistically been around for about as long as we've been settling in cities. Rome is my favorite example to bring up when talking about pre 20th century fascism.
"It's not gay to stomp out the degenerates together". Mr. Joel, you're on another level of delivering hilarious lines with absolutely no trace of amusement.
"We can't expect god to do all the work"
@@samuel-rw3xt I've always found it funny how heretical that quote is.
@@nihilego3634 it's amazing when you see a quote like that used in that type of context
"they are gay
and burned"
I literally had to pause the video to laugh, absolutely lost it
@@samuel-rw3xt Joshua Graham :D
Spartans in 300: "Athenian boy lovers."
Spartans in actual history: "Orgy?" "Yes."
So I know you're a movie guy but when you started talking about LOTR it made me think of this book duo I just finished by Jacqueline Carey called The Sundering. It's essentially a LOTR like story told from Sauron's perspective. In the first book they frame the heroes (Gandalf-like character, elves, and Aragorn-like character) as pretty fascist. Then in the second book she writes both sides more subjectively rather than leaning one way or the other but eventually decides that having two sides fighting to keep a sort of balance in the world is important. It's an amazingly insightful series that really turns on the reader's head a bunch of standard fantasy troupes.
There is a particular thread she pulls relating to the orc-like characters. Carey really makes them humanized and gives them some very admirable qualities despite lacking significant intelligence. One of the most redeeming aspects of the Sauron-like character is his accepting of all creatures and appreciating them for what virtues they embody even if they are not outright "fair" and "quick-witted." Awesome read if you ever want a little mine bender.
A key component of fascism is an intense fetishism of a mythic and glorious past. Mussolini's fascist party sought the reconstruction of the Roman Empire. The argument that using ancient myths or stories rooted ancient cultures or traditions to propagandize fascist ideology is some type of fallacy is so mindblowingly ignorant. Great video Big Joel. Thought provoking and as always very entertaining.
exactly !!
Especially the fetishisation of a glorious and violent death, a "heroic™" death. Tonight, we dine in Valhalla and all that bs. Honour, valour, not coming quietly, fighting to the end, martyrdom ... anything to not be "weak, cowardly, servile" ... those are all building blocks of fascist pageantry.
Also the Klan with “The Birth of a Nation” using the ol’ “tradition” excuse
Twitter is weird. I recently posted something with a mistake in it and the guy replied as condescending and insulting as possible while immediately sorting me as the kind of person with all the ideals he hates. I said, "Oops, crap you're right man. I'm sorry thanks for letting me know and I'll fix that."
He then replied with an apology and acted as though in his many years on Twitter he'd never seen someone do that before and was kind of blown away.
I realized that I had been wrong assuming all of these people are awful and that instead the system itself (either intentionally or not) was priming us all to accept the group think, patrol and argue with one another to drive engagement while promoting 'dunking' culture.
I quit after that. That's just not healthy for anyone involved.
Yeah I stopped using twitter back in august and one of my reasons was that I noticed this about myself. Normally I was fine but occasionally I’d just give the most gratingly snarky comments on things. I got away from it and I’ve noticed a big upswing in my mental health since. I occasionally pop in to look at the chaos unfolding right now since the Muskining but otherwise I’m still clean.
yeah i have always preferred to use tumblr or masto
Its weird how common that is online. Like we don't view each other as people, but opinions spread by ill intentioned accounts. The tone shift is wild sometimes. Correct a few assumptions on their end and replies go from accusatory to apologetic quick
I always just use Twitter for looking at artists
Oof I felt this. Had a guy on a thread full on stop debating with me because I used the word 'ya'll'. It's amazing the things people use to disregard others.
Making the dumbest points known to man, then finishing it up with calling someone else stupid. God, I love twitter.
27:03 _"and that's because, what it's really saying is that movies can't and don't have subtext. They can't mean things or be about things that aren't literally what we see."_
The kind of people who think that a film which was made in 2006 CE, can't possibly convey Nazi ideals because it takes place in 480 BCE, are the kind of people who can't take from a movie anything other than literally what they see. These people aren't exactly thinkers. They're the kind of people who think the movie Fight Club is just about a bunch of dudes who start a club and fight.
I remember in college a classmate said she’d love to be a Spartan because of how hot the guys were. Our teacher chuckled and said “I don’t think they’d be into you” and this girl sat in silence for a minute and her reaction went from confusion to disgust to being absolutely heartbroken. That’s my favorite memory about the film 300.
Also, she would be a second class citizen forced to breed soldiers for a military fascist regime.
Eh, women in Sparta had more rights than anywhere else in ancient Greece - which is definitely not saying much - but they could be educated, inherit the property of their husbands (who, given how Sparta was pretty much always at war, technically always at war officially with the 50-70% of the population that was Helots but beyond that, tended to die a lot), and given the household work would be done by slaves they tended to have a lot of free time on their hands.
The only thing, aside from the omnipresent Spartan slavery that The 300 never seems to acknowledge exists, spoiling this as a monument to women's rights in the ancient world is the proximity of Persia to the story here where women could not only be educated and inherit but also own/run businesses, initiate divorce...
@@RedFloyd469 Sparta was actually infamous among the Greek cities for how "spoiled" and powerful their women were. In Sparta women were able to inherit property and money from their deceased husbands and consequently were often the wealthiest citizens. At a time where in other Greek cities women weren't allowed to be seen in public the Spartan diarches occasionally needed to appeal to wealthy spartan widows to fund the government for them
@akh that's very true, but it's simply not the case that spartan women were brood-mares forced to perpetuate a fascist regime like the comment I responded to was stating
@@rna151
I want a Cyrus the Great movie. Ever seen Legend of Tomyris? It's a Kazakhstan film
Calling 300 a “satirical” film is just straight up stupid, but also intentional lying from the part of people with names like “trans offender”. Nothing in the film is self aware, making a point about the futility or flaws of Sparta’s culture and actions, or Leonidas’ character and leadership. It GLORIFIES this made up interpretation of the Spartans. As Joel said: Leonidas is seen as a martyr and hero, not someone you shouldn’t emulate or someone deserving of mockery of criticism. It actively makes it clear Leonidas is in the right. The fact that the Spartans make fun of Athenians for being “boy lovers” when actual Spartans literally had a practice involving adult men forcing themselves on young boys should tell these people that nothing about 300 is satire: it romanticizes Spartans and makes a mythical version for the audience to cheer on as they fight on and sacrifice themselves for their nation.
100% agree. Not only was this film screened for US soldiers before they invaded Iraq but Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad (the screenwriter) held a private screening for Victor Davis Hanson, a National Review journalist who was a major supporter of the invasion of Iraq.
This isn't Starship Troops. 300 is a facist movie adaptation of a facist comic, and Snyder understood the implications of what he was creating at the time he created it.
I don't think it's satire. I think it's edgy. I think it's somewhat homophobic but I don't think it's ablest or sexist. It's definitely made for teenage boys(which is fine)
@@panskii3632 You don't think 300 is ableist? O_o Interesting interpretation.
@@wickedAberration I think the Hunchback is shown as sympathetic. He's treated with respect by the Spartans but he can't fight. It's my option. Why do you think it is ablest?
@@panskii3632 The way it frames everyone who isn't able bodied in the film. ie, the gay women who are burned. the burn is shown as scary and other.
Maybe those other people could see that not everyone with an opinion on the internet wants to fight. Joel opened up and conversed with these people in spite of their insults. The internet should do a lot more of this. Humanity can do better, humanity could do this.
Hey, I just realized something! After reading a bunch of comments about “media literacy,” I figured it out! All these fools that tried to dismiss you in the most asshole way they could, are missing something.
By saying such drivel as, this movie is about blank or was in a time about blank years ago, fail to think about one thing.
The artists who made 300 weren’t born in Ancient Sparta, they were born in modern day. Those people wanting to disprove your arguments need to rely on ignorance, that the authors that made the medium didn’t have their own politics, motives and messages they want to portray. That they’re somehow disconnected from the art they create.
You hit the nail on the head. Genuinely good job on you making that connection.
i think a big part of it comes from capitalism, and specifically the idea of art being treated as ultimately just another commodity, something that only exists to be sold to as many people as possible for as much as possible, and if that's the ultimate purpose, how can subtext exist? it would just get in the way
I remember watching this film and was like "damn the people who accept the disabled and queer are the bad guys here?"
Like the hero's come from a society that tortures kids and kills baby's, like damn
Yeah the Spartans actually did the eugenics and pedo thing like other Greeks but could samurai movies be seen as pro imperial Japan because they either uphold the emperor or the samurai class
@@magicman3163 yes they can sure, it just depends on the film. Also again 300 isn’t at all a historical film it’s filled with fantasy, basically none of it is historically accurate.
@@Dell-ol6hb yeah it’s retold by the spartan guy at the end that’s why he’s the narrator the part of Leonidas illegally doing a war is kinda true
@@magicman3163 *it's retold by a comic book writer in 1998 adapted in a movie in 2006 both from a country that was at war with middle-eastern countries before, during and after the release of both medias
@@magicman3163 The vast majority of samurai movies are set during periods when the emperor had no power. Many of them are very critical of the samurai - Hara Kiri, for example.
I'm really into Korean webtoons. There's this one webtoon called Get Schooled (or true education in the fan translation). It's about a Korea where the left has banned hitting children in schools and so everything has gone to shit. The schools are ruled by wild packs of 14 year old teens and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Enter our hero: the minister of education. An old strong dude who tells it as he sees it who then hires a dude, who answers only to the minister of education, whose job is just to go around schools beating up problematic children with a steel baton (some times setting them on fire) until they become good. And sometimes owning the left.
The sheer insanity of the story send me into a bit of a rabbit hole. Turns out South Korea only banned corporal punishment on 2020. And the right over there didn't like that because they are really into hitting children. This webtoon is a direct response to that situation.
I try to tell people that they are just reading fascist propaganda pro child abuse and basically the only response I get EVERY TIME is that "it's not actually propaganda because hitting children is actually fine and good and you should keep politics out of webtoons that are just for fun".
"It's not propaganda if I agree with the propaganda."
Big brain moment right there.
@@DeadHandtheSurvivor That's how a lot of the right works really.
Oh wow. I'm also into webtoons and I remember reading the first couple of episodes of this one before abandoning it even through part of me believed there had to be a twist coming eventually. Seems like I made the right call. I really don't like glorifying child abuse... And the whole portraying beating up bullies as the solution to bullying and general simplistic law&order, "punitive justice good" mentality bothers me, unfortunately I've seen that in quite a lot of webtoons.
Ironically, another series I'm reminds of, sorta, is Kamen America. Granted, it's nowhere near as extreme as this, but it's still essentially conservative propaganda wrapped up in a cute girl superhero package that essentially gets the same defence from its fanbase: "It's not propaganda because I agree with it"
@@luf.7648 It kind of gets wild I hate read like 60 or so chapters. My favorite arcs are when it turns out that a girl bully is that way because a previous teacher was abusive towards her so the FL follows her across the city beating her up and ending in the girl falling off of a building. Which fixes her.
And the time MC and FL went to a kindergarten where the teacher wanted to teach them that men and women can have the same jobs and girls don't NEED to get married or wear pink. And so MC and FL own her with facts and logic and so the teacher apologizes for BRAINWASHING the kids.
I think I saw that tweet back when I was on Twitter! Woah, this is crazy - now I’m here seeing you talk about it.
After watching the movie the first time, with my friends, I told them "This is straight up islamophobic military propaganda" because it was 2007, 6 years after 9/11 and in the middle of the Afghan and Iraq war... But my friends told me "It's just a dumb action movie, you're overthinking it"... Turns out it's full on nazi propaganda? I guess I was underthinking it. 🙃
I mean you did kind of deserve to get clowned on because the movie is set in literal antiquity. How the fuck were Persian Muslims then?
@@MaksFaks-kl1zjbecause the association of images of the “mystical barbaric degenerate” people from the orient is the same.
@@anacarolinamenezes8912 Again, nothing to do with Islam at all, and besides, portraying the other side as the complete enemy or barbarian is not unique to west only. And I am pretty damn sure people in the Middle East are more than happy to chant Death to America and other slogans that are quite obviously well deserved in all regards.
@@MaksFaks-kl1zjthe video literally talks about this argument jackass
Bro who cares it's an action movie about 300 vs 1,000,000 or whatever
The Spartans were, in many ways, a precursor fascist society. What's interesting now I'm reflecting on this analysis of 300, is how 300 removes the aspects that make the Spartans *less* like Nazis. Notably homosexual relationships pre marriage were normal and expected, plus their military dictator-kings didn't represent a challenge to the status quo.
The analysis of what *isn't* in the text also makes this film feel more like Nazi propaganda.
Agreed. Pretty much everyone in classical society viewed Laconian society with a mix of admiration and horror. I can't really think of any other pre modern civilization that went to such extremes to maintain the status quo. They came up with a solution to control the Helotes and the Peloponnese more generally and it transformed them into an objectively horribly society for everyone involved.
@@xunqianbaidu6917 how was there not any of that when they were a warmonger society that depended on war slaves to exist and saw non spartans as beneath them in every way? Granted its a different flavor then the modern notions of it, but they did call it a precursor. Although by your points alone even Rome was fascist, you're ignoring the mythos of the super men, which is probably what actually makes ppl see sparta as fascist.
Also why are you specifyng scientific racism? That was just a particular flavor of justifying preconceived notions after the fact, the important part is the race essentialization, not the "science" behind it.
@@emylily8266 To be blunt; every society at the time was a warmonger society. What made Sparta different was in the extreme it went, not in how they acted in foreign policy.
More than that; Sparta actually had more women's rights than most societies of the era and was actually less-warmongery; though the latter was because the Spartans were terrified of ever leaving home for the justifiable fear that their horribly mistreated slaves would revolt and take over the city while they're gone.
There was also this group of guys idk what they're called who were elected from the people whose main job was to see whether the king and the leadership actually act in behalf of people. There is also the fact that Spartans never had inheritance or private property of any kind,everything is bequeathed to them by the state.
Most of spartan dickriding in our culture comes from the notes of Plutarch, the roman historian who lived as close to Spartans are as we close to Columbus.
Spartans also had a peasants class named helots whom they used to wage war against annually because they used to rebel against them constantly. It was not just permitted, but preferred for spartan women to cheat on their husbands if it brings them superior offspring.
@@stephenjenkins7971 Spartans don't have women's rights though. Spartans had a society that put all it's focus on eugenics so women could have sex with any man given it results in superior offspring.
It is interesting how Aristotle criticized Spartans for allowing women agency . Shows how much of a sexist pos he was
You cannot simply understand how much this movie is connected with wannabe warriors in greece. In modern Greece this movie has done so much damage by creating an image of these fierce greeks outnumbered by eastern invaders. Amidst a refugee crisis you could see that a lot of right wing party supporters (xrisi avgi) often used imagery connected with that dumb militaristic "west vs east" homophobic depiction of greek history. Usually when a "proud" greek refers to the persian wars, he imagines them as a good vs evil scenario, in which white=good and anything else=bad. Subconciously, the comparison between persians and turks is not rare and this is where the real bullshit begins.
'Usually when a "proud" greek refers to the persian wars, he imagines them as a good vs evil scenario, in which white=good and anything else=bad. Subconciously, the comparison between persians and turks is not rare and this is where the real bullshit begins.'
You're surprised that greeks have a low opinion of the ethnic group that burned Constantinople to the ground? Dude, do you not have a basic understanding of Ottoman history? Ever heard of the Jannisaries?
@@8jijjoo126 Greeks attacked killed and enslaved Greeks so Greeks should hate all Greeks? Same logic. Constantinople wasn't burned to the ground you dramatize the conquest more than needed. Historic wars don't justify hatred to groups of people
people actually suprised a film with goblins and supernatural events isn't historically accurate lmao go touch some grass
@@8jijjoo126 Burned Constantinople to the ground? What the heck do you think they were doing when they turned it into their new capital? Wouldn't they have burned down the Hagia Sophia too?
The Ottomans were well aware of the cultural significance of the city, of which they effectively inherited after their conquest. Let's not pretend like they were mad brutes that destroyed all they touched, give their civilization some credit
@@tanura5830 Not only that, but the majority of Anatolian Turks are descended from Islamized Anatolian Greeks. Despite what Turkish and Greek nationalists claim, Anatolian Turkish culture isn't really all that descended from Central Asian nomadic Turco-Mongol culture, but from a complex coming together of Greek, Armenian, Persian and Arab influences.
Why do people see a perceived bad take on something they like, and choose to respond? I get irritated when I see bad takes, yes, but I don’t want to lean into that. Blocking someone and moving on is satisfying.
The thing is that directors absolutely have used historical films/settings to justify modern day politics. Think like the Crucible which may have taken place in the 1692 Salem Witch Trials but was really about 1950’s McCarthyism. Or the Soviet film Alexander Nevsky that while set in 1242 and about the fight of the Novgorod Rus vs. the Tuetonic knights, was preparing the Soviet people for war with the Germans that eventually came in 1941.
300 was released during the beginnings of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars of the late 2000’s. Trying to drum up fear of the near east and it’s dark, swarthy people. Characterizing them as exotic and strange and playing into old tropes of Orientalism.
Man, it's actually a huge bummer that Frank Miller wrote a scene where his big strong masculine protagonist has an honest, gentle, respectful conversation with a disabled person, but then uses that as a vehicle to villanize the disabled as resentful, disloyal monsters ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If they intended to show Leonidas made a mistake that lead to his own downfall, I feel like they could have played that scene where he's a lot more dismissive. If they wanted to portray Leonidas as being cruel to Ephialtes, I think they would have gone all-in; this is not a movie that would half-ass anything.
Compare that to the scene where he straight up dismisses the farmers for not being real soldiers. So it's not like it would feel out of character for Leonidas to just say, "No. You're not good enough to be a soldier." That he takes the time to explain himself and offer alternatives feels pretty respectful, compared to a lot of the other things he does in the movie.
And it's not like Xerxes finds a way to include Ephialtes during "the fight itself." He works as a guide, but that's the extent of it, right? We don't see Ephialtes fighting on the battlefield, which is what Ephialtes said he wanted. If the Persian army enabled him to contribute during "the fight itself" that would really show that Leonidas was close-minded to deny him that.
@@rhill571 I always interpreted that scene as Leonidas immediately recognising the bravery and determination in the man. So he defaults to showing him respect as to Leonidas that fighting spirit is what he sees as a Spartan ideal.
Though I do agree with everything else. That arc was at best clumsily handled. They didn’t really fully commit to either “side” so the whole thing comes across as admittedly a bit weak.
Though I suppose one could argue that that merely shows how much Ephialtes only really craves praise and validation. That he saw the exchange as humiliating, despite of how gentle Leonidas was, could be argued as a realistic human response. Granted him basically immediately betraying the Spartans is a bit of a whiplash and paints Ephialtes as very wishy washy and for lack of a better term, without a spine.
Frank Miller? Producing fascist media? color me shocked
@@t.s9021 Always amuses me be he claims himself a libertarian and I am always like "Bro...."
I always viewed that element of the movie as a failure on Leonidas's part. I was very young when the movie came out and back then I thought that Leonidas should have taken the disabled guy in. He made a good point about the importance of stability and strenght in a phalanx, but the dude did demonstrate his ability to fight. Leonidas (and essentially the Spartan society) by not being able to compromise and tightly holding onto their militaristy code doomed himself.
I was a fully formed adult when this came out, and I had liked the comic when it came out. When I walked out of the movie the first thing I said to my wife was "I guess I didn't hear how pro-fascist that dialogue was until I heard it out loud."
It might be better to watch this muted and provide the dialogue yourself. Sort of like a Mystery Science Theater 300. 😉
Yeah… Frank Miller’s pretty much in love with fascism and Islamaphobia
people are actually offended by 300 lol
@@tristanlanphere7736 Ahh, I get it. Troll in the comments defending a 15 year old movie whose greatest achievement was a thousand "THIS IS...SPARTA" memes
@@cam4636 just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean i’m a troll and a movies age has nothing to do with anything. People are claiming this movies racist, I’m arguing otherwise.
The movie does comment on the Spartan’s exposing infants…through Ephialtes.
He wasn’t unalived as an infant and so he betrays the Spartans specifically because he isn’t as good as them.
This isn’t satire. This is a pro eugenics argument. Had E been “discarded” rather than saved Leonidas wouldn’t have been killed.
It’s even more obvious in the comic as
Just wanted to say that Frank Miller, the guy who made the original graphic novel, would later come to make a literal, and I mean it, this is not an exaggeration, not a hyperbole, literal islamophobe propaganda book.
Once had an argument with someone who thought Starship Troopers wasn't about fascism. Turned out he just agreed with fascism.
Which blows my mind. Neil Patrick Harris shows up in a damn SS uniform at the end
Why is this an argument at all. Is it wrong to write something "about fascism"?
When I was active duty military, my unit had to go to the base theater to go watch 300. It was mandatory and afterwards the leadership reminded us that the US Marines are modern day Spartans.
Sometimes military in the US sounds like a strange cult.
I mean I did heard that USMC is a bit gay....
@@triloization Not really, cults are full of true believers, and in my experience most service people/veterans have a pretty grounded view of the military and American foreign policy. The US public definitely has a cult of worship around the military, though.
@@ModernEphemera it's funny that you say that, because in my experience as well the most boot-licking "God bless the troops" types are the one that never served. I know several people in the military. They very seldom say good things about it.
@@ModernEphemera I remember watching an NBC News segment interviewing Marine Corps veterans on their thoughts about the documentary Combat Obscura, which showed real 2011 footage of US Marines in Afghanistan, wandering around aimlessly, killing civilians due to cultural and language barrier misunderstandings and incompetence, buying and smoking weed from the locals, and generally having no clue. One of them accused the photographer/director of having an agenda, and the next person to speak said, "That was completely my experience." There's definitely a mix of views, but I feel like there's a significant, unfortunate right-leaning element of enlistees with various degrees of toxicity, if not danger. It's not a coincidence that rape is a giant, common problem, whether it's overseas, or anywhere near a domestic military base.
Guys with ancient greek statue pfps will say this movie about ancient greek warriors wasn't fascist propaganda because no Hitler but then tweet the most fascist shit on their timeline on the regular.
you big goofball, I always find myself coming back to this one. It makes me laugh so much. Love from argentina, you are great at this, keep doing it.
It wasn't addressed, but the original comic is definitely fascistic. The creator Frank Miller is infamous for his political beliefs particularly towards Muslims after 9/11 and that is certainly colored in the book. In addition, Snyder is very much a fan of Ayn Rand and radical selfishness. That is why Superman is so mopey and uncertain in his movies. 300 is a propaganda piece about a bunch of buff dudes who beat back these crazy weird foreigners. The homoeroticism isn't supposed to be hypocrisy, its part of fascism. Fascists worship strong powerful men who act on their own will. Frederick the Great, a Prussian leader whose empire Hitler was born in, literally fetishized tall buff men. Not necessarily because he was gay, he may have been. But because he thought these bois could fight well and look hot doing it! Why do people think Hitler wanted the olympics? To show how physcially superior his people were.
Thank you for bringing that up! I was thinking that the whole time when the argument was made that the Spartans of 300 were supposed to be gay. They're not. They're gay in the same manner a locker room full of heterosexual teen boys feels both gay and homophobic at the same time...
The weird obsession of Hitler and the NSDAP with the muscular male form was a big big thing in propaganda. Posters, statues, movies, pictures, sports, everything! And just like in 300 it's not supposed to be sexual, sensual at most, but as you said to show their "fine specimen of people who were the strongest, healthiest and most beautiful and therefore superior".
(Also yes, Frederick the great was most definitely a gay man.)
Adolf Hitler was Austrian, so wasn't born in Prussia at all.
Fellas... Is it gay to think buff men are beautiful?
Frederick the great died like a century before hitler was born, and his “greatness” came from his patronage of arts science and philosophy, not just from his military prowess. Also he 100% was gay, he was noted to have been in a relationship with court page Karl Christoph von Keith, and he tried to escape the court with his lover Hans Hermann von Katte, only to be caught and forced to watch Katte be beheaded.
Wait, do you mean Frederick II? The one who was publicly outed by Voltaire?
A perfect case study in analysing the depth at which Joel descends into the wormhole that is internet behaviour by the density and undomesticated state of his facial hair
direct correlation
top-tier comment
He’s getting stronger
i was going to comment that he looks unhinged to match some of the tweets he replied to, but i like this much better
Every one of those comments was a Shoe on head alt account
Its really funny too that the movie has spartans call out 'boy lovers' when their culture, or atleast cultures they are based off of, litterally had young men who had to perform sexual acts with their adult male mentors
Big Joel's take is so obvious when you actually pay attention to the movie through the lens of the critique that anyone who disagrees is just lying to themselves.
I think a majority of people didn't want to admit a movie they liked was tied to Nazi propaganda, which is understandable.
But it was quite interesting to see some of the people responding negatively to the Tweet with names like "Trans Offender" and a profile pic of a guy wanting to kill himself in front of a Trans flag, then vehemently bash that a movie they really like actually isn't about painting people who accept homosexuality and imperfect people in their ranks in a bad light.
One thing I’ve noticed is that people who are obviously bigoted really, really don’t like it when it’s even insinuated that they’re bigoted.
I was surprised when the Leonidas referred to Athenians as "boy lovers". In historical fact, homosexual connections were at least as common in Sparta than Athens. Maybe more so. Of course, Athens did have philosophers as well as boy lovers. Sparta had no philosophers, but was rather an intellectual backwater.
Homosexual connections, namely between a man and a boy whos mentor in terms of being a true Spartan the man was were not only common but the were an integral part of the Spartan education system.
Homosexual connections were literally encouraged in Spartan armies. I had to pause after hearing that
@@TheRealAmadeusMozart yup! For Spartans it was around the age of 23-25 that, so long as they proved themselves, they were allowed to marry a woman and have children. Spartan men were so *not* used to sleeping with women that they would often cut the bride to bes hair off and make her wear more masculine clothing to better acclimate the husband into sleeping with her.
@@fawnieee THIS!! Americanized ancient greek depictions are so painful to watch
@@fawnieee 😂😂😂😂 So Spartans didn't like women and were all gay ??? How stupid people need to be to belive that ??
This comment section makes me mad. Guys watch the whole video. A lot of the stuff you complain about is adressed in the video or isn't even brought up.
We don’t care lmao breadsoy got cleared
@@Obs23456 Lol, this just shows that you guys are willfully Ignorant, you're choosing not to know more.
To me the funniest thing about people portraying 300 as a satire is that there’s no way that Snyder would even possess the knowledge of symbolism and storytelling to even pull it off. Even just the notion of the story being told by a half blind narrator could have been a key aspect to the story- of how it is being told by someone with blind faith- but no, he just happens to be half blind.
Lord of the Rings DOES have a certain anti-modern subtext. Actually, Tolkien himself was very clear about his attitudes toward the modern world, and the books show this even more clearly than the movies through Saruman's impact on the Shire. The "other" isn't really the orcs, its the machines (which also create the orcs, in some way). Also, I think the fact that Tolkien himself said he did not want to write an allegory really shows that most of these themes are more a reflection of his beliefs rather than the deliberate message that 300 ends on.
I’m ok with that, Lord of the Rings in the end is about the old struggling with a changing world that is leaving them behind
happens to us all eventually
I feel like Tolkien earned that sort of anti-modern subtext with the absolute horrors of industrialized warfare he saw in World War I. The "modernity," he was presented with was infinitely more cruel than the modernity of today, and viewing the time before said industrialization with the rose tinted glasses of childhood wonder and nostalgia would make that sort of underlying belief COMPLETELY understandable in my opinion.
Seems like the anti-modern edge is mostly luddite in nature.
I've thought a LOT about the Lord of the Rings as an ethicist fantasy novel geek. There are several MAJOR ways it idealizes and naturalizes authoritarian and reactionary themes, starting with its love of emphasizing "high noble beautiful" elves and the Men who have elvish ancestors and how only they are fit to rule. There's a particularly eye-rolling passage towards the end of _Return_ where the hobbits all talk about being 'little people' who aren't supposed to know or care about the big issues of war and politics and magic/knowledge, and how lucky they feel to have peeked into the affairs of the BIG people who matter, whose thoughts and decisions determine everything about hobbits' lives, but who are supposedly 'beyond' the simple, silly, cute little people who are too insignificant and rustic ever to understand the affairs of the Great. There's a sampler quoted in a Victorian novel by Elizabeth Gaskell it always reminds me of: God bless the Squire and his relations, and keep up in our proper stations....
@@judithbradford9130 I think that's a genuinely well-thought out take, and has a lot of credence to it. Personally, I'd make the claim that Tolkien showed some of the most respect to the Hobbits, displaying a type of classical Romanticism about the 'common folk' and their place in the world. It's been a while since I read the books, so I can't recall exact passages, but the most obvious example is that the Ring could only be destroyed by the efforts of Hobbits-anyone else would have been too tempted by its power, and would have either succumbed to Sauron's will, or taken his place as a tyrant.
sophie at curio had a really good essay on the objectivist and fascist themes of 300 and one point that stuck with me was an anecdote she told from an ex-military friend whose unit was shown 300 to hype them up for combat. sometimes it really is that simple
And French and German fascist groups use its logo as their own hate symbol. (Generation Identitaire / Identitäre Bewegung)
As a matter of fact, Austria and Germany declared the logo a hate symbol so that Identitarians can‘t sell it on t-shirts no more.
I remember watching this is a kid, and having my dad in the theater who is a history teacher and remarking "yeah wow, this is meant as propaganda". I personally have gone back and forth about the purpose of this film, its message(s), and my own enjoyment of it. I think it's a slippery slope for any filmmaker or graphic novel author (Frank Miller in this case) to tack on modern political tropes, ideals, and vocabulary to people that lived more than two thousand years ago. The idea of "freedom" to Spartans for anyone who wasn't a "pure Spartan" was fucking laughable in real life. They enslaved their neighbors, the Helots, and actively moved to prohibit the spread of Democracy throughout the rest of Greece as they thought it would corrupt their politics and their Spartan way of life. Basically, any time you see Leonidas, his Wife the Queen, or anyone else from Sparta talk about defending their "freedom", they are only talking about themselves and not the other Greek city states nor the 90% of their population who were socially beneath them (slaves, working class people, etc.)
All in all, 300 (both the graphic novel and the movie) get history so incredibly wrong that at this point it's not really worth taking the time to make an exhaustive list. No, the Persians were not totalitarian despots who made slaves fight for them, they were actually seen by most of their subjects are liberators from oppressors back during the time of Cyrus the Great, freeing them from the tyranny of the Median Empire. No, the Ancient Greeks including the Spartans never thought of themselves as a single nation, that only came about during the nationalistic movements of the 19th century and their fight against the Ottoman Empire. And of course, no the Spartans and the other Greeks did not go to battle in Banana Hammocks, and only a shield and helmet for protection...THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HEAVY INFANTRY THEY WORE A METRIC SHIT TON OF ARMOR.
At this point, I see 300 as an entertaining, silly, radically ahistorical movie, that should not be taken seriously AT ALL by anyone who wants to learn about history. Thank you Big Joel for talking about this, and keeping a considerate and caring tone throughout your talk.
Even Herodotus makes the Persians more sympathetic.
I have a caveat the armor is not that heavy it does the job but is no eay in heck the 70lbs you hear it touted as. Full suits of medieval plate armor only weigh 45-55lbs and there is much less coverage and less metal used in hoplite armor to be anywhere close to that heavy. I bugs me also that they wear no armor, I am in complete agreement on that one. (Yes I know you were just emphasizeing the fact that they wore armor)
300 and other Zack Snyder movies are Marvel movies for people who are too joyless, and are cynical to the point that they can't have schlock that doesn't re-affirm their ideology and want to feel superior to people that are also watching largely average movies.
That and too humorless to the point of calling literally any type of comedy or relief in tension that isn't an edgy joke "soy banter".
@@Speedojesus How could you possibly know this? This is such a brain dead comment.
@@Speedojesus generalizations like this aren't really helpful. Plenty of people enjoyed this movie including the same types of people who enjoy Marvel movies. It was a huge hit: it put Zack Snyder on the map as a blockbuster director, for all the style and iconic lines in his version of the story.
It's actually baffling to me, from a historical perspective, that anyone is even debating that 300 is at least fascist-adjacent. After all, the movie sanitizes and glorifies a society that practiced: 1- A brutal eugenics project. 2- Systematic child abuse in service of maintaining an eternal war machine. 3- Slavery on a scale that was beyond anything in the same historical period, beyond any period in history even. The helots of Sparta were a massive slave underclass that was constantly terrorized and mistreated while also forced to do anything that was not fighting (because Spartans were also the least productive people in all of history and depended *entirely* on slave labor). Any kind of honest look at Sparta would cast them as monstrous villains, not as brave bastions against tyranny.
also, the "real 300" story was absolutely pathetic. the most hilarious thing about it is that the 300 versus upwards to 10 thousand persians wasn't very much exaggerated. the fact is that the 300 spartans fought against 10 thousand persians and won... because they were fighting alongside some other thousands of greek soldiers. and it gets even more pathetic when you get to know that the 300 went there with their actual king (where he died) because that was the SECOND time the persians tried to invade, and on the first one, they were repelled by the other city-states while the spartans just sat and watched because it was a ceremonial holiday and the elders considered that it would bring bad omens to fight during it. what the persians did was just try to invade again on the same holiday, knowing that the spartans would refuse to join the fight. knowing how pathetic they looked on the last time, leonidas decided to go there with his personal guard, because he couldn't mobilize the army against the elders. and there he fought and died with his guard, amongst the other city-states armies. when you think about it, sparta was kind of an example of cowardice, not bravery lol
@@gustavogoesgomes1863 Not to mention the hilarious historical implications I've heard; the story of their 'great stand' at Thermopylae was basically the one big thing for their people for decades following, with their whole culture straining to live up to the legend of their own competence. It's notable that as a consequence, spartan art basically dwindled down to comparatively nothing as a consequence.
'monstrous villains' are a feature of pantomime and fairy tales, not anything 'honest' and certainly not of history. Also the Spartan practice eugenics is based on one source (Plutarch, writing in Roman times who never saw ancient Sparta) who was biased against Sparta. If it were real, it's pretty crazy NONE of the contemporary sources (even ones who wrote a lot about Spartan society like Herodotus, Plato, the list goes on) never saw fit to mention it. In other words, it's almost certainly anti-spartan propaganda. Though it's moot as regards the politics of 300 as it takes the propaganda meant to demonise Sparta and presents it as an acceptable part of their society
@@helvete_ingres4717 we can say that a brutal slave state that created little besides mass violence is monstrous by any reasonable standard. There is no need to pretend to be neutral about that or refrain to pass judgment. The very reason why a lot of our sources on Sparta are external to it is because the Spartans themselves only rarely produced any art or literature of their own.
While it is true that Plutarch lived long after Sparta, calling him anti-Sparta sounds like a stretch considering he helped foster the myth of spartan equality. In fact, it would also be strange for him to have to lie about Spartan eugenics (especially as propaganda) considering Athens and Rome also appear to have practiced it.
Many of the earlier sources we do have tended to be free aristocrats with relatively little concern for the Spartan lower classes and made judgments based on the concerns of upper-class Spartans (Xenophon was even friends with a Spartan king). The facts these people provide are damning even if their own judgments of those facts are biased in favor of the Spartan ruling class, not against it.
@@kaguyahouraisan3372 you sneak your ideology into your statement with the phrase 'reasonable standard' - 'reason' of course denoting your own historically-determined outlook. I don't accept the role of historian involves moral judgement as a primary thing. Not least b/c it defeats the point of understanding the past - it will invariably become an exercise in simply pointing out how people in the past thought differently to ourselves, ad nauseum.
If you mean 'equality' as in gender equality - that's not a myth, Sparta had the most gender-egalitarian society in the ancient world by far, really they were the only people practicing it at all in that girls and women received an education and were also trained for combat.
Nothing you say really addresses the absurdity on taking the claim of a singular and non-contemporary source as factual (and Plutarch showed a strong pro-Athenian and therefore anti-Spartan bias when writing about periods like the Peloponnesian war). For the claim to be true, that would mean NO contemporary source even MENTIONS it..despite many, many sources on Spartan society - do you really think Plato wouldn't have so much as mentioned that, or are you just not aware of these sources? You don't seem to be. Ypu just point out platitudes that people who wrote in ancient times were privileged (which is such a stupidly obvious thing to point out in a society where the vast majority were illiterate) - yet you don't seem to grasp the absurdity of a foundational work like Platos' Republic, being a philosophical inquiry into the construction of an ideal society taking a STRATIFIED approach (that is, looking at every level of the social hierarchy) and that uses Sparta as a rel-life example to compare and contrast with both Platos contemporary Athens and his ideal 'Republic' somehow FAILING to mention that Sparta (or any people) ensure the quality of their citizens by killing those deemed unworthy at birth. NOthing you said addresses this absurdity
You also repeat another myth - that eugenics (ie, killing the disabled at birth) was widespread in ancient Greece; it wasn't - this has been debunked. Also your commonly-made assertion that Sparta had null or negligible cultural/creative output to speak of basically amounts to saying they weren't Athens which was the cultural centre of ancient Greece, that's no more true of Sparta than it is for say, Corinth (in fact I can name a Spartan poet like Alcman but none from Corinth).
Didn't the Spartans even actually have allies from the Sacred Band of Thebes at Thermopylae? Or am I mixing them up with the Thespians? I get those two confused. (People love to forget that the 300 spartans were not the only ones there.)
Either way, the movie (probably the comic too, but I haven't read it) is going out of its way to NOT show the Spartans possessing any homosexuality or homoeroticism. It is, in fact, rewriting history to straight-wash them. As you said, in this movie, the male body is not meant for pleasure or love, it is only a weapon, an object of utility to the state or "Western Civlization". Arguing that it's trying to make some kind of "homophobe is really a closet-case hypocrite" argument is so absolutely buckwild groundless.
The Sacred Band of Thebes was created in the start of the 4th Century BC after the end of the Peloponnesian War. The battle of Thermopylae, the one in this movie, happened in either August or September of 480 BC.
But, yes Thebes was there too. In fact at least 400 of their men stand there, but surrender to the Achaemenid (persian) side when defeat was obvious.
And of course the Thespians too. In fact that 700 thespians were the entire army of the city, stay there and die a long the 300 spartans, 300 helots (spartan's slaves) and at least another 3000 greeks, while the other nearly 4000 escape.
The movie is based in a comic that is made by one men with a wet dream in how he believed was the ancients spartans.
Saying that the movie is set before Hitler and therefore can’t be fascist propaganda is the same as saying that since the rise of Mussolini came before the rise of Hitler, therefore Mussolini couldn’t be fascist
Fun Fact: Less than a century after the Battle of Thermopylae, Sparta won the Peloponnesian War partially thanks to funding from the Achaemenid Empire. Later, still less than a century later, Sparta was appointed the enforcer of the King's Peace(a treaty concluding the Corinthian War on terms favorable to Sparta and the Persians), making Sparta the effective guard-dog for Persian interests in the Greek city state system. Really stickin' it to those nasty eastern hordes with their despotic leader, aren't we, men of Sparta?
reminds me of a community post (or shitpost) from a UA-camr, MasterofRoflness that meme about Persian being highly advanced empire at the medieval times yet some people only remember and praised the Spartan for their "depiction" in 300 as badass army that battled the Persians.
I know it’s hilarious XD
History is convenient when you don’t actually know it.
@@IR-Fan xerxes did nothing wrong
Another Funfact: Modern historians are casting increasing doubt on the whole myth of sparta as an invincible war machine. Most of our interpretation is based on very few sources, perhaps as if a future historian would describe Nazis based on their own propaganda movies (kind of like all those cheap documentaries running NS propaganda footage in the background, so that the viewer gets the impression the nazis have a lot of tanks and mechanized stuff, while in reality they had very little and were for example supplies with way, way fewer trucks then the Soviets).
So it could very well be that the Spartans were just a society with lots of rich slaveholders (the Helot thing) in a time where only rich citizens could afford the expensive armour. Which would of course lead to the Spartans being just better equipped then their enemies, but not an army of superhumans. And Spartans diplomats were evidently very skillfull in wielding their aura of invincibility, while fighting very few actual battles.
@@SergeantAradir Yup, when it comes right down to it the Spartans were good hoplites simply because that was all they did. Once the city of Thebes got wealthy enough to create its own corps of professional hoplites who did nothing else but train for war they immediately defeated Sparta in open battle.
Another thing to keep in mind about Greek hoplites and the phalanx formations they used: they kinda sucked! The big advantage of the formation is that it's dead simple. You need people with good physical strength and endurance to hold up a big shield, and you need those people to know how to stand in a line and never turn and run. Other than that throw in some practice in moving in formation and in swapping up the front line and you have yourself an army. And while I'm underselling the difficulty of all this a bit, by the standards of a real military it's child's play. The Greeks were able to fight this way for hundreds of years simply because there were no horses around and because it was a poor backwater that took hundreds of years longer to recover from the Bronze Age Collapse than everyone to the east.
"But didn't the Greeks defeat the mighty Persian Empire?" Yup, but the first time was largely a fluke with Athens surprising the Persian landing and destroying them while vulnerable and with Persia's logistics getting screwed up because of that and simply underestimating the job. When Persia came back the second time (as depicted in the docudrama 300) the Persian land forces annihilated all opposition and razed the land. Athens burned! But in the intervening years Athens had branched out into building a navy, and that is what actually defeated Persia. The grand noble sacrifice at Thermopylae made for good propaganda and maybe, maaaaaaybe bought some cities a little more time to evacuate, but materially it accomplished jack squat. Because hoplites ain't shit against a real military.
After all that Persia ended up controlling Greek politics, which was simply easier than sending armies all the way out to those boonies. It was Macedon under Phillip then Alexander that figured out how to combine a much better version of the phalanx than the Greeks used along with cavalry that produced a truly great military. Before that point the Greeks were overrated boys playing with toys. Sorry Frank Miller and Zach Snyder, you're worshiping losers.