Essay time!
The man is pretty fucking smart.
So this got posted in the Other Rage Thread, and I thought it deserved a reply. It's definitely an interesting essay, but I have a problem or two with some of the methods it uses to make its points, and some of the conclusions it comes to. Because I'm kind of tired, I'll probably be a bit brief and not reference things like I really should, but I think that there are two main issues I take with it, and they're related.
The first is that the analysis seems naive in some ways. For instance, it rightly points out some very interesting parallels between the antagonists of 300 and the reality of the United States in the present day, and inconsistencies in the idolization of the Spartans as the ideal citizen. But it seems to carry this (valid) argument too far, and assert that for the purposes of the narrative, the United States is entirely equivalent to the fictional Persia, and the invaded Middle East entirely equivalent to the fictional Sparta. For example, while I agree that the sacrifice of the Spartans is driven by the same beliefs as that of a modern suicide bomber (and said bomber almost certainly sees himself as making a noble gesture to protect those he loves), I think that's wholly irrelevant to why one is idolized and the other demonized; I don't see an inconsistency here. The sacrifice here drastically raises the magnitude of the response, because it's demonstrating a much greater devotion to a goal, but it's the goal itself that determines whether that reaction is positive or negative. Here, the difference between fending off an invasion through the death of soldiers, and fending off an invasion through the death of civilians, is clear.
Secondly, there's a very definite air of hypocrisy about an essay that accuses the culture of misappropriating historical fact and presenting it in a tremendously inaccurate light to support its own ideology, which then goes on to project onto historical figures the values of modern political figures. I don't think you can legitimately claim that Xerxes was the equivalent of George W. Bush in the same breath that you deny the sense in comparing an idealized Leonidas to a similarly idealized Christ. You can certainly judge the morality of historical figures by modern standards (if you're prepared to accept that virtually every person predating the last few decades was morally reprehensible), but what you cannot do is act as if the same moral or political concepts existed then as do now. Comparing the historical significance of George W. Bush to Xerxes is the equivalent of comparing the sharpness of arrows to bullets. They're products of completely different systems and have unrelated standards for success; the major similarity is superficial, and while there
are valid comparisons that could be made, I don't believe this is one of them.
EDIT: Oh, and so that this is less one-sided, I should mention that there are some damn good insights in this thing, and I am completely on board until the paragraph that starts "The questions of why now and why this..." Even after that there are quite a few "Yeah, this." moments. Dude is, I am pretty sure, smarter'n me. Do note that I'm referring to the entire article, not just the excerpt linked in the quote (there is a link to the full essay at the beginning of the excerpt, if you've not checked it yet). The excerpt actually picks up right after the paragraph where I start having problems, though, so it's probably fine if that's all you want to talk about.
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Topic: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread (Read 877036 times)