Lifestyle
“His roar is long and loud….”
By which the movie producers mean, “He died a badly planned death in an inevitable battle and his warriors were equally grateful that he sent them into a hopeless fight to die similarly gruesome deaths.” Aren’t those warriors swell?
So I’ve just finished watching 300. I knew it was likely to be thin on plot, but I was still interested because the special effects and the cartoon-style visuals looked more than promising. Until Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas uttered, with his dying breath, a phrase no Spartan would ever say out loud: “My queen! My wife! My love!” Because Spartans had only a few great loves, and women were certainly not among them.
Yeah, that’s right. In a movie full of obvious racism, insulting jingoism and an over-abundance of leather tighty-whiteys, I was offended by blatantly historically inaccurate depictions of gender relations.
In the immortal words of Larry Gonnick, Jr., author of Cartoon History of the Universe, the Spartans had very specific predilections: “Our only pleasures are a job well done, a glorious death, and humping little boys!” The Spartans at Thermopylae would certainly not have taken up their swords in defense of freedom (of their own slaves), liberty (from their own considerable property rights) and their loving wives (who weren’t considered people at the time).
Good thing I’d gotten to the more complicated part of the Icarus Shawl, ’cause if I had been knitting something simple, the universe would have imploded from the sheer mind-numbingness of an ill-conceived movie coupled with a mindless stitch pattern.
Unfortunately, my installation of Photoshop Elements 4 (legal and licensed, thank you very much) just imploded when I tried to test out a new feature in Photoshop Elements 6 and ultimately decided not to partiipate in the final upgrade. WTF? I have no image editor and can therefore not post updated WIP images of Icarus in all his glory, not to mention images of my beautiful, tasty and newly bottled lime-cello and grapefruit-cello. Soon, my pretties. Soon.
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2 comments for ““His roar is long and loud….””
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I can’t believe you made it the whole movie. I watched about 5 minutes and my brain exploded with the insane testosterone overload. It’s like a huge excuse for blood. I couldn’t take it - and I’ve been known to sit through some pretty horrible movies. In other news, I’m like 1/3 of the way done seaming Babette (!)… That’s really not related to your post at all. I think I was going to make a statement about me knitting today even though I wasn’t at the Pourhouse. My brain hurts.
Usually, I’m OK with testosterone overloads, provided the violence is depicted in more historically accurate ways and there’s some kind of plot served by the blood and gore. There’s a brief depiction of phalanx fighting at the very beginning of the very first battle scene that’s pretty cool, but then it all breaks down and turns into one big Wrestle-Mania Hulk-Fest with very little brain or strategy. Even the biggest fan of gratuitous violence won’t be able to sit through 2 hours of brainlessness.