300, Fascism, and The Angry Men of Twitter

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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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

"is the bible a satire of god" has got to be one of my favorite arguments from you

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

Calling 300 satire is so weird to me. Because no one reads it as satire until the moment someone criticizes it. Look at the YouTube 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.

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.

“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

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.

"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.

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"

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.

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.

Oh my god, I just noticed that Leonidas Death is a crucifction. Someone please show Snyder any other symbolism

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.

The film subtext on Sparta being the cradle of European civilization blatantly ignores that the real cradle are the Boy Lovers in Athens