‘Spartans at the Hot Gates were magnificent men, warts and all,’ writes Stephen W. Browne:

If you haven’t seen “300” yet, do so – but think of it as a play rather than a movie. A Kabuki or Noh play.

Pfaugh on the caveats! The Spartan 300 and Thespian 700 did indeed save the West and it is perverse to deny it. Nor did the Spartans have a Samurai-style death cult. They were consummate professionals who favored victory over vainglory. And, they generally did not like to campaign too far from home for too long – because they were masters of a nation they had enslaved. Which is part of the reason they perfected themselves as soldiers. (Athens of course had slaves, but from a heterogeneous population, not a united people with a history as a free state.)

The history of every free nation starts with a state that has free classes among the unfree.

This of course, evokes ambiguous feelings. You want to admire them personally, and pay tribute to their courage but…

Tough. Life is full of ambiguities. If you expect men to be all of a piece, they will always disappoint you. The ability to deal with ambiguity is pretty much a definition of “intelligence.” The Spartans at the Hot Gates were magnificent men, warts and all. The story of what they did outlasted their civilization and will certainly outlast ours, and men will be finding new ways to tell their story as long as stories are told.

In this context, I think the popularity of comic book heroes reflects a desire for morally unambiguous (or less ambiguous) heroes, without the baggage of real people. When we socialize our kids with the ideals we wish them to have, it is natural to point first to archetypes of the ideal before dealing with the mixed bag of qualities that our real-life heroes are. And if we didn’t have those archetypes to refer to, how would we learn to deal with people as they are, without succumbing to cynicism and moral relativism?

Steve blogs at Rants and Raves.

‘Spartans at the Hot Gates were magnificent men, warts and all,’ writes Stephen W. Browne:

If you haven’t seen “300” yet, do so – but think of it as a play rather than a movie. A Kabuki or Noh play.

Pfaugh on the caveats! The Spartan 300 and Thespian 700 did indeed save the West and it is perverse to deny it. Nor did the Spartans have a Samurai-style death cult. They were consummate professionals who favored victory over vainglory. And, they generally did not like to campaign too far from home for too long – because they were masters of a nation they had enslaved. Which is part of the reason they perfected themselves as soldiers. (Athens of course had slaves, but from a heterogeneous population, not a united people with a history as a free state.)

The history of every free nation starts with a state that has free classes among the unfree.

This of course, evokes ambiguous feelings. You want to admire them personally, and pay tribute to their courage but…

Tough. Life is full of ambiguities. If you expect men to be all of a piece, they will always disappoint you. The ability to deal with ambiguity is pretty much a definition of “intelligence.” The Spartans at the Hot Gates were magnificent men, warts and all. The story of what they did outlasted their civilization and will certainly outlast ours, and men will be finding new ways to tell their story as long as stories are told.

In this context, I think the popularity of comic book heroes reflects a desire for morally unambiguous (or less ambiguous) heroes, without the baggage of real people. When we socialize our kids with the ideals we wish them to have, it is natural to point first to archetypes of the ideal before dealing with the mixed bag of qualities that our real-life heroes are. And if we didn’t have those archetypes to refer to, how would we learn to deal with people as they are, without succumbing to cynicism and moral relativism?

Steve blogs at Rants and Raves.

Namby-pamby libertarians and Objectivists are forever waxing silly about the comic book creations of Superman or Batman as the quintessential American heroes. How sad and what philosophically childish twaddle. How can any person with a brain take seriously the symbolism that has been squeezed from these characters?

I don’t give a dried camel’s hump for the above nonsense, but the 300 Spartans who, the Battle of Thermopylae, took on over 200,000 Persians intent on invading and enslaving the free Greek city-states —now that’s an entirely different matter. I seldom visit the cinema anymore, but this is a film I intend to see on the big screen. Even if it disappoints —and with a great deal of animation involved, and having already been immortalized as a comic strip, it has the potential to be cartoonish.

The story is nothing short of inspirational and is, quite plainly, the reason for Western Civilization. For if not for those 300 Spartans and 700 Thespian volunteers who placed themselves in the way of the mighty people the historian Herodotus called the “Barbarians,” Western Civilization as we know it would not have come into being.

Whether this film makes this point (as a similar film made in 1962 did) I do not know. If anyone of our readers has seen it, do tell us too whether Herodotus’ appellation for the Persians was used, or whether the screenplay writers reverted to modern-day political correctness.

Ultimately, the 300 and their Thespian brothers-in-arms are not only Greek heroes; they are ours. A nation’s heroes, even mythical, reveal a lot about that nation. Superman and Batman showcase the frivolity of the American psyche.

Update: Debbie Schlussel reviews “300.” “This is a man’s movie,” she writes, which is fine by me. I hate chick flicks. I’ve never seen “Pretty Woman,” or that other film about two all-night drunks or insomniacs engaged in a pity fest, turned love affair. Or something along those soporific lines. The Indian, immigrant-experience film Schlussel raves about above her “300” run-down would make me snooze. I certainly would not inflict it on Sean. The rest of her comments, however, indicate “300” is short on history and long on porn and other grotesqueries, aimed at “the video-gamer slacker dummies,” as she puts it. I was hoping just this time Hollywood would deliver. What a shame. Perhaps we should just all stay home and rent “The 300 Spartans” (1962).

The Deniers Strike/Update: Historical deniers are everywhere with their brand of deceit. I’m no historian, but I certainly don’t intend to give a platform to the pseudo-historians who’ve tried to post comments propounding their idiosyncratic version of the Battle of Thermopylae, positing, first, that the Spartans were just “jerks,” whose strange faith mandated that they stay and fight until the end. Of course, this slight is a non sequitur. Someone can posses a balmy belief system and still exhibit courage and heroism. Moreover, if the Spartans’ faith obligated them to all die if victory was unobtainable, why did Leonidas dismiss the army and retain a select few to stay and fight?

The other misleading statement —or rather outright lie —was that the Spartan’s “stopped nobody and saved no Western civilization whatsoever. They lost, the Persians forwarded, and that was pretty much that.”

The Greeks won thanks to the brilliant strategy Leonidas and his seafaring Athenian colleagues devised. According to Wikipedia:

The fierce resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable time to prepare for a decisive naval battle that would come to determine the outcome of the war. The subsequent Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis left much of the Persian navy destroyed and Xerxes was forced to retreat back to Asia, leaving his army in Greece under Mardonius, who was to meet the Greeks in battle one last time. The Spartans assembled at full strength and led a pan-Greek army that defeated the Persians decisively at the Battle of Plataea, ending the Greco-Persian War and with it Persian expansion into Europe.

I have a special detestation for the assaults on truth by assorted historical deniers (scroll down to follow other entries on the topic. My Junk Science Archive is useful too, and in particular this and this). This is not the forum for them.

Update # 3: Not that I didn’t know it, but comments on the blog confirm that honorable men aspire to be heroic. Part of the tragedy of modern, metrosexual manhood is the breakdown of more traditional gender roles —a dissolution championed by feminism, its assorted permutations, and the state. Good men have been denied —and denuded of —their need to be defenders.

Namby-pamby libertarians and Objectivists are forever waxing silly about the comic book creations of Superman or Batman as the quintessential American heroes. How sad and what philosophically childish twaddle. How can any person with a brain take seriously the symbolism that has been squeezed from these characters?

I don’t give a dried camel’s hump for the above nonsense, but the 300 Spartans who, the Battle of Thermopylae, took on over 200,000 Persians intent on invading and enslaving the free Greek city-states —now that’s an entirely different matter. I seldom visit the cinema anymore, but this is a film I intend to see on the big screen. Even if it disappoints —and with a great deal of animation involved, and having already been immortalized as a comic strip, it has the potential to be cartoonish.

The story is nothing short of inspirational and is, quite plainly, the reason for Western Civilization. For if not for those 300 Spartans and 700 Thespian volunteers who placed themselves in the way of the mighty people the historian Herodotus called the “Barbarians,” Western Civilization as we know it would not have come into being.

Whether this film makes this point (as a similar film made in 1962 did) I do not know. If anyone of our readers has seen it, do tell us too whether Herodotus’ appellation for the Persians was used, or whether the screenplay writers reverted to modern-day political correctness.

Ultimately, the 300 and their Thespian brothers-in-arms are not only Greek heroes; they are ours. A nation’s heroes, even mythical, reveal a lot about that nation. Superman and Batman showcase the frivolity of the American psyche.

Update: Debbie Schlussel reviews “300.” “This is a man’s movie,” she writes, which is fine by me. I hate chick flicks. I’ve never seen “Pretty Woman,” or that other film about two all-night drunks or insomniacs engaged in a pity fest, turned love affair. Or something along those soporific lines. The Indian, immigrant-experience film Schlussel raves about above her “300” run-down would make me snooze. I certainly would not inflict it on Sean. The rest of her comments, however, indicate “300” is short on history and long on porn and other grotesqueries, aimed at “the video-gamer slacker dummies,” as she puts it. I was hoping just this time Hollywood would deliver. What a shame. Perhaps we should just all stay home and rent “The 300 Spartans” (1962).

The Deniers Strike/Update: Historical deniers are everywhere with their brand of deceit. I’m no historian, but I certainly don’t intend to give a platform to the pseudo-historians who’ve tried to post comments propounding their idiosyncratic version of the Battle of Thermopylae, positing, first, that the Spartans were just “jerks,” whose strange faith mandated that they stay and fight until the end. Of course, this slight is a non sequitur. Someone can posses a balmy belief system and still exhibit courage and heroism. Moreover, if the Spartans’ faith obligated them to all die if victory was unobtainable, why did Leonidas dismiss the army and retain a select few to stay and fight?

The other misleading statement —or rather outright lie —was that the Spartan’s “stopped nobody and saved no Western civilization whatsoever. They lost, the Persians forwarded, and that was pretty much that.”

The Greeks won thanks to the brilliant strategy Leonidas and his seafaring Athenian colleagues devised. According to Wikipedia:

The fierce resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable time to prepare for a decisive naval battle that would come to determine the outcome of the war. The subsequent Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis left much of the Persian navy destroyed and Xerxes was forced to retreat back to Asia, leaving his army in Greece under Mardonius, who was to meet the Greeks in battle one last time. The Spartans assembled at full strength and led a pan-Greek army that defeated the Persians decisively at the Battle of Plataea, ending the Greco-Persian War and with it Persian expansion into Europe.

I have a special detestation for the assaults on truth by assorted historical deniers (scroll down to follow other entries on the topic. My Junk Science Archive is useful too, and in particular this and this). This is not the forum for them.

Update # 3: Not that I didn’t know it, but comments on the blog confirm that honorable men aspire to be heroic. Part of the tragedy of modern, metrosexual manhood is the breakdown of more traditional gender roles —a dissolution championed by feminism, its assorted permutations, and the state. Good men have been denied —and denuded of —their need to be defenders.