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300
Directed by Zack Snyder. Based on the novel by Frank Miller.
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Zack Snyder's high-toned yet idiotic sword-and-sandal trifle 300 is notable on two counts. There are the cool computer-generated images (CGI) that make the movie look like a cross between Frank Miller's graphic novel (on which it is based) and a video game. Unfortunately, the CGI are fun for about 20 minutes before they begin to look like TV commercials for, well, video games.

The second vaguely interesting aspect of 300 is that it sparked a small but spirited debate about its political intentions. Some argued that the film-- which details with graphic violence the famous battle in which 300 Spartans held off the enormous Persian armies of Xerxes at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE-- was an attack on the Bush administration's Iraq policy, since it portrayed the overt foolishness of fighting a losing war. Others argued that the film was a paean to Bush, since the Spartan army is shown to be the apotheosis of bravery, honor, and manliness.

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oth claims are almost beside the point-- 300 is the sort of shallow pop culture that's essentially uninterested in current events, which is not to say that it's not political. At heart, 300's adulation of statist authority and violence makes it a fine example of fascist filmmaking. Leni Riefenstahl would have loved 300, if only because Zack Snyder consciously imitates all of the cinematic tricks from her Nazi propaganda epics Triumph of the Will and Olympia.

There really isn't much to say about 300's authoritarian politics-- they are obvious and unsubtle, and not even viscerally exciting-- but the film's all-pervading homoeroticism-- and homo-hysteria-- is interesting. Many gay bloggers have accused 300 of being homophobic. Indeed, Snyder drives his film by the visual voltage of strong, manly Spartans fighting an army of effeminate, orientalized Persian freaks. It can't be an accident that Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is portrayed as a mutant Ru Paul-esque queen with full makeup and enough piercings and face jewelry to make jealous a bridge-and-tunnel New Jersey kid who has made CBGB his new home. 300 evinces not so much overt homophobia as a hysterical desire to separate Spartan men from their Persian counterparts.

This might all be interesting, in some postmodern way, if 300 showed any creative spark. But, alas, as Gore Vidal said about the New York premiere of the San Francisco drag troupe The Cockettes, "Not having any talent isn't enough." The screenplay here is dismal. As penned by Snyder and Kurt Johnstad, it's a ramshackle copy of any 1960s junky Italian-made, sword-and-sandal mini-epics without some of their intentional wit. The dialogue in 300 is wooden and feels as computer-generated as the imagery-- they might as well have called it Pulp Diction. Whatever talent these performers have, all of them-- Gerard Butler as the brave King Leonidas, Lena Headey as his wife Queen Gorgo, Dominic West as the traitorous Theron (who looks distractingly like the caveman in the Geico insurance commercials), David Wenham as Dilios-- are lost in the deluge of a bad script overwhelmed by flashy images.

Pretty as a model

300 is obviously cognizant of its debt to the ancient-world films of the late '50s and early '60s-- some of which (e.g., 1962's The 300 Spartans) had the same plot or similar themes (1965's The Spartan Gladiators). Like these predecessors, 300 is viscerally and flagrantly homoerotic. The draw of these movies is well-built guys with bare chests and scanty peplums (the short skit most of these film heroes wore, giving the name to the genre), guys who are flexing their muscles and furrowing their brows as they think of their next line. Many of the peplum-wearing performers (it's false advertising to call some of them "actors") were often professional bodybuilders and also appeared in gay muscle magazines such as Physique Pictorial. (Readers of a certain age might recall some of their names: Steve Reeves, Gordon Scott, Ed Fury, Kirk Morris, Reg Park, Mickey Hargitay, Mark Forest, Alan Steel, Dan Vadis, Brad Harris, Reg Park, Peter Lupus, Rock Stevens, Michael Lane.) None of those earlier films openly embraced their homoeroticism, which is understandable given the time. But in the years since those films were made, the world has changed. How refreshing if 300 had made a nod to the fact that Spartan males engaged in complicated same-sex relationships. But what we get here are straight frat-boy buddies who make fun of the Athenians for being "boy-lovers." Snyder and Kurt Johnstad don't have enough imagination to make any of this compelling or to take any chances.

The other problem here-- and a major departure from the genre-- is that the peplum films of the 1960s often showed an anti-authoritarian impulse. They were about individuals fighting against corrupt state power. Sure, 300 is about Greeks fighting a Persian invasion. But Snyder is too enthralled by the brutality of the Spartan state to say anything intelligent about heroics. Like Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, Snyder's 300 is a celebration of political force that is as dismaying as it is unsavory.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com