https://www.mambaonline.com/2007/03/29/300/ South Africa's leading LGBTQ news and community platform Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.mambaonline.com/2007/03/29/300/#comment-5710 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.mambaonline.com/2007/03/29/300/#comment-5710 I don’t agree. I saw this on the weekend. My thoughts: It looks astonishing. There’s no doubt that the look of the film is amazing, but it doesn’t have much to offer other than that. We’ve seen this a million times before. “Moving” speeches by a testosterone-drunk hero to his loyal soldiers about defending honour and country at all costs – followed by much hacking and chopping of hordes of faceless enemies. I was bored after 30 minutes. The subtext is problematic: stoic and heroic members of western civilisation protecting children and wives against the monstrous and overwhelming threat from the middle east. George Bush would surely approve. While one can argue that entertainment cannot be expected to be an accurate representation of history, what the filmmakers choose to leave out ? or alter ? often says a great deal about their viewpoint. Entertainment is never “just entertainment”. Note also the homophobic undertones in the film – the evil villain is a decadent near-drag-queen, and the Spartans make sure to mention that they are not “boy-lovers”. Yeah. maybe too many years of film theory studies… So sue me.

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