25.04.2007
Propaganda and ideology
The most remarkable thing about the sword and sandals epic 300 is that there have been no pickets organised outside the local Odeon and no fatwahs issued against director Zack Snyder and executive producer Frank Miller, says Jeremy Butler
According to a press release made by the Iranian government's mission to the UN, "this movie is bound to incite righteous rage by millions of people" (March 22). The day before the Iranian president's cultural adviser, Javad Shangari, denounced the film as "part of a comprehensive US psychological warfare aimed against Iranian culture". Predictably an indignant chorus of left-liberals and Trotskyists have rallied against this perceived attack on Iran. The Socialist Workers Party's Matt Corn describes 300 as being "a rank cesspool of racism, sexism, homophobia and 'freedom-loving' pro-war propaganda" (Socialist Worker March 30).
Gosh! What a dreadful, hate-mongering film it must be. Well, no, actually: I really enjoyed it. And, of course, in their eagerness to decry all that offends their liberal sensibilities, Matt Corn and his co-thinkers forget that Marxists should scratch beneath the surface of cultural products like 300 and ask what this film tells us about the ideologies that inspire it. It is insufficient to dismiss it as a crude propaganda exercise made by Hollywood in cahoots with Washington. 300 is pro-death propaganda, yes - but it is also an exploration of propaganda as an art form. It is a call to arms in the 'war on terror', yes - but it is also a criticism of the way in which that war is being waged.
Adapted from Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's 1999 comic book of the same name, 300 is a fantastic re-imagining of the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, where the eponymous 300 Spartans led by king Leonidas fought to the death against a million-strong Persian army assembled by emperor Xerxes, determined to add the Greeks to his vast empire. Against computer-generated backgrounds (adding to the sense of unreality), and accompanied by thudding rock music, Spartan beefcakes balletically carve their way in slow motion through a succession of ever more freakish enemies.
These enemies are faceless for the most part, dressed and armed in an anachronistic composite of Asian cultures. Xerxes himself is an eight-foot-tall, decadent, shaven-headed, black, androgynous tyrant festooned in body-piercing, accompanied by topless slave women caressing each other. Also arraigned against our noble heroes are treacherous Spartans: monstrous priests, a self-serving politician and a crippled exile. Their Greek allies, being citizen soldiers and hence not the dedicated killers that the Spartans are, are cowards for choosing to retreat rather than face certain death. The death of a free Spartan is shown as being a tragic loss: the death of thousands of dark-skinned savages is celebrated. Interspersed with the action Leonidas and his comrades shout slogans at each other that revel in death, eulogising that it is desirable to nobly die in battle in defence of freedom, family and homeland against tyranny.
It is easy to see why liberals and the Iranian government have got their knickers in a twist over 300, but it is worth restating: this is not crude neocon propaganda. There has been a marked tendency in war films in the last 40 years to go to great lengths to show the horror and futility of war: 300 is in part a reaction to that, painting war as noble and beautiful. The heroes are pure of heart and mighty in battle. The enemy are dehumanised by being portrayed as the 'other': twisted, pierced, scarred, sexually ambiguous, ugly, dark in skin and soul, thereby seeking to make their deaths not only palatable, but desirable.
This is not unique to modern propaganda: Snyder and Miller consciously owe a debt not only to the ancient Greek historians of the Greco-Persian wars, but others of that profession before and since who wrote history as they wanted it to be: exaggerating the numbers and inhumanity of the enemy, and the skill, stoicism and laconic wit of 'our boys'. Frank Miller is evidently well-read and self-aware, and the historical distortions of 300 are so obviously exaggerated that it seems, at least in part, Miller is playing with propaganda as an art form, writing such blatant half-lies that it loudly proclaims, 'This is fantasy' - and, as a corollary, issues a tacit warning to beware of anything that purports to be impartial, factual history.
Yet at the same time 300 is almost painfully earnest and nostalgic in its praise of an uncomplicated warrior culture that celebrates strength and violence, and suggests that order can only come through exercise of the same: truly might makes right. This is a theme that occurs elsewhere in Miller's work, notably Batman: the dark knight returns (1986) and the Sin city stories (1991-99). Miller is one of that peculiar breed of patriotic libertarians that the US produces: he loves his nation, but distrusts the state. His characters are violent psychopaths, products of alienation and a corrupt society, but who nonetheless live by a personal code of honour. In this he is part of that tradition within US culture that sees the defining myth of their country as being that of the tough, individualistic frontiersman creating order out of chaos, depending on his own strength rather than that of any government: a myth, but a powerful and enduring one.
300 glorifies death in defence of an ill-defined notion of freedom, and hence can be seen as reflecting an ideology that is in part in accordance with the US government's 'war on terror', against an enemy that is seen as inimical to its beloved individuality and freedom (Miller's next project, due out later this year, is Holy terror, Batman!, where the hero battles against Al Qa'eda). But, while that ideology is hostile to what Miller described as the "6th century barbarism that [the enemy] represent" (interview, National Public Radio, January 24), and to those it sees as weak and decadent appeasers of that "barbarism", it is also wary of organised political authority, and dismissive of those who hide behind it. Certainly, as with the depiction of the corrupt politicians and priests in 300, this ideology is fiercely opposed to those who value wealth and power over others more than 'honour' and 'freedom'.
Some have argued that the neocon project was a conscious attempt to unify the US people against a new common enemy. 300 reflects ideas and feelings within US culture that embrace the overt themes of the 'war on terror', but may yet turn hostile to the real motivations behind it, the urge of those with power to retain it.