Comments on: Day 28/29: 300

By: parodycenter

parodycenter — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:17:20 +0000

tendencies that can seemingly only be fixed by a return to archaic narratives of stability and order.

yes that’s what i meant when i said they start a retro-futuristic movement, but don;’t complete it. instead of finding a potentiality for the future in the past, they get stuck on the past. and then it ends up reactionary. if perhaps you’re following shaviro’s discussions on eastern european film, which mention a number of yugoslav films, i think it will interest you that these old films, lesser known in the west, did not commit the same error (i am talking for example about special treatment by goran paskaljevic) & were subversive despite the fact that their communist conditions of production posed similar ideological challenges as today’s global capitalism

masculinity under attack” in connection to “national identity and security under attack”

this interests me especially. when the empire goes out bombing places like iraq, their propaganda often consists of queer attacks on (patriarchally defined) masculinity – take for example the ALIENS-like tortures by Lieutant Lindy/Sigourney Weaver. While in 300 patriarchal masculinity is associated with homoerotic Sparta, and pitted against queerness. It seems that both queerness and patriarchy are being carried by the same heteronormative structure!!!

This is very insidious.

By: cerebraljetsam

cerebraljetsam — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 16:23:31 +0000

Thanks a lot for this post. You raise interesting questions and I definitely see your point. I would suggest that we need to differentiate between two categories of films here that have two different projects. What I tend to spot in postapocalyptic films is that they are arranged as not just reflections on, but rejections of the present–mostly we have some kind of narrative that criticizes the present for the chaotic tendencies we have introduced into it, tendencies that can seemingly only be fixed by a return to archaic narratives of stability and order. The other group of films, of which I would say _300_ is an example, falls into the kind of nostalgia work you describe that makes the analysis of ideological forces increasingly difficult. One of the ways in which this happens in _300_, for example, is by utilizing the affect produced out of the inreasing disappearance of traditional identity categories–i.e. the narrative of “masculinity under attack” in connection to “national identity and security under attack” is for me centrally involved in the problematic ideological coding you describe.
cheers, M.

By: parodycenter

parodycenter — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 02:17:43 +0000

In a recent post about apocalyptic films you made a very good point about their resorting to the nostalgic mode in order to admire and/or critisize past utopias instead of offering any analysis or utopia or anti-utopia for the present. I would elaborate on that and say that their retro-futuristic operation isn’t performed consequentially so as to find a potentiality in the past for our future. (THE LIVES OF OTHERS is especially off-putting this way; it analyzes the socialist surveillance state in Germany with proper insight and precision, only to end up concluding that our present capitalist global state is perfect, i.e. George Soros’s open society) An even better point was their resorting to humanism, which I pointed out myself in several of my own reviews.

I am therefore wondering whether this new aesthetic – like Snyder’s 300 – precisely by this ”hollowing out” of ideological content in favor of a nostalgic fetishization of the surface (the green palette in Children of Men, or the hyperrealistic splendor of 300)… is not a new method of propaganda which suspends the possibility of examining ideology. A related thread on Antigram (antigram.blogspot.com) might be of interest to you.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

Greetings from Dejan

By: anaj

anaj — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:41:57 +0000

Of course I meant: HAVING watched the trailers now…

By: anaj

anaj — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:41:05 +0000

Yesterday the trailer for 300 was featured on the youtube homepage – cannot find that version anymore, but the voice over was recorded with a pathetic, American accent – something like “300 men… and a fight for freedom” – those probably weren’t the words, but they conjure up the idea…

Haven’t watched the trailers now, I don’t think that I am going to watch it. The effects look stunning, but I cannot bear the narrative. “Spartans! Tonight we die in hell!” Appears to me like an inverted version of Independence Day “Americans! We will not go quietly into the night! Tonight we celebrate our independence day!”

While the NIN sound track improves the adult rated trailer a lot, it also emphasizes a certain technofascist aesthetic (à la Front 242) that make me feel rather sick, while I can at the same time see why it’s fascinating. Riefenstahl for the CGI generation. Not my cup of tea (I think that I should protect myself against some aesthetics, and this is one of them).

And, lastly, I wish there was an end to this endless series of “righteous fight for freedom” romantizations that the film industry has been cranking out ever since its inception. I no that hope is futile… but strikes me ever the more to see how film narratives are so overtly infected by this discourse, at the very same time that this discourse is being actualized almost farcically in the political arena. Doesn’t everybody see this unbearable parallelism? Apparently not:-)

By: cerebraljetsam

cerebraljetsam — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 15:59:48 +0000

I actually did not see _World Trade Center_. I meant to, though. I am very interested in how the falling of the towers functions aesthetically as a symbol in relation to globalization.
And about _300_: yes, there was a whole lotta stuff in there that drew rhetorical parallells between the battle of Thermopylae and the war on terror. Most dangerously, of course, is the parallel that might end up suggesting that the war in Iraq was not only justified, but necessary in order to protect the homeland.

By: anaj

anaj — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:20:37 +0000

Ouch! Did they have lines such as “Freedom is not free” in the novel! Puke!

Have you seen World Trade Center? There is this annoying former marine turned Christian turned marine who is also serving as one big Freedom for America, One man can change it all phrase dropper throughout the movie. Thank God it forgot most of this lines.

I am going to sit down now and have a tête à tête with SRK in Asoka:-)