Leonidas @ MindSay

Today I feel that I am King Leonidas for I am commanding the 500. And we shall defend our country from the forces that wish to destroy us. We shall fight until the last one has died in the service of God and country. Though we shall not win this battle we will win the war...


And so shall I begin Blog entry number five-hundred...

I have learned a great deal over the course of all these entries, so much information has been inputted that I feel as though I may overload my circuitry. So much has changed and so much has been discovered over these two and a half years that it took me to reach this point. Everything has changed being that change is the only constant in this universe...

It has taken me two desktops, two PDAs, one palmtop, and one laptop to compile all this information and this does not include everything that was written old-school style though those were few and far between...

In this timeframe, I was fired and laid-off. I lost three relatives including both of my grandmothers. I have been across this commonwealth numerous times. I have been to a number of states including Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia. A great deal has changed in the world that I perceive...

And I have made numerous observations from this outpost on the Information SuperHighway. The greatest of these is that no matter how much I write or upon what subject, I average five hits per day on this Blog and half of those are just tag searches so I average two or three readers per day. The next greatest of these is that some folks will vanish from the face of the earth without telling anyone. It is extremely aggravating to someone such as my self to have a number fixed in one's brain like 36 and find that there are only 35 Blogs in the list of those who I have listed in the list of Blogs that are in my profile. Another observation that I have found is that the number of Top Blogs that actually have anything substantial to say on any given day is quite small - it usually turns out that those at the top are there because of how many people they know, not what they know...

And I am sitting here trying to think of something profound to include in entry number five-hundred and all that I can think of is the fact that I am King Leonidas and I shall make my last stand here. We shall not retreat. We shall fight until last man has fallen. I feel that I have become the last Spartan, and soon I will fall at the hands of my enemies. And all the glory I was will only be remember in the legends that will be created by those that will remain...

Into the Valley of Death rode the 500...


And so shall I conclude the five-hundredth entry in this Grand Experiment...

This is the Word of the AntiCrust...

Praise be ye who Read the Word for ye are Blessed amongst humans...

Although I’m not much of a movie goer, my kids took me to see 300 this past weekend. I’m sorry to say that I was not pleasantly surprised.

 

Hollywood has never produced many movies of either artistic or literary merit. And over the past several years, the formula-writing has gotten so bad that one can almost always predict not only the outcome but even the next scene. And it’s somewhat dumbfounding how Hollywood’s screen writers can’t find tension, suspense, and excitement in story lines that have stood the test of time without injecting absurd extraneous scenes into them. In the case of 300, the screen writers have taken a story of heroic self-sacrifice that has withstood 2500 years of time and turned it into a freakshow.

 

The prologue begins with a voice over claiming that the Spartans were the last hope for preserving Greece, reason, and justice. Well, they failed.

 

Armies are forever being sent to war for lofty ideals and in spite of winning or losing, the ideals perish. The Great War was The War to End All Wars. Somehow or other, winning it didn’t accomplish that. And the Second World War was the War to Make the World Safe for Democracy. My, my, my! Look at just how safe democracy is today. But that young men are sent off to war to die for great lies is not news, so on to the movie.

 

I knew the afternoon was going to be a bummer when the young Leonidas is attacked by a lone wolf. Wolfs are pack animals. Then comes the racism: the first two Persians Leonidas gets to speak to are black. Strange how all the blacks in the movie are on the Persian side, and everyone on the Greek side is lily white. Then there is the Persian armored corps—a rhinoceros and two elephants. I waited with baited breadth for the lions, tigers, and great apes, but alas, the great king, Xerxes,  could only manage to muster one rhino and two elephants which were no match, of course, for the Spartan 300. Then there are the freaks, Ephialtes, the Greek traitor who leads the Persian army around the pass at Thermopylae, and the hideous Persian giant who wields a massive battle axe. The progeny of Ephialtes, I have no doubt, are all now American businessmen or politicians. The Persian giant, on the other hand,  who tosses Spartans right and left, easily could have been felled by a well placed Spartan spear, but alas, in that scene not a single Spartan has a spear at hand even though it was the principal Spartan weapon. But miraculously, in the next scene, every one of the 300 has a spear. Then there is the aftermath of the Persian cavalry charge during which the Spartans dispatch both riders and horses at will. Although the battlefield is littered with Persian bodies, not a single horse cadaver is anywhere to be seen. Then there are the bloodless torsos. During the many battles, splatterings of blood are seen flying here and there, but when someone is beheaded, the heart pumps no blood from the severed aortas. So even the vaunted 300 were, in reality, also freaks, since their heads were attached to bloodless torsos. Then there is the allusions to lesbianism within the Persian harem but no mention of the notorious Spartan male affection for young boys. But the most egregious absurdity comes at the end. Leonidas, the Spartan King trained from childhood as a warrior, hurls his spear at a nearby Xerxes and misses.

 

So much for the Hollywood nonsense. What lesson does this movie teach. Does it extol the bravery and self-sacrifice of the 300? Think about it. The 300 march off to defend Greece and fail. They die in vain. Why? Because of the superior Persians? No. Because of the freaks and Persian armor? No. Then why? Because Spartans are also traitors and their Greek allies are cowards. What an uplifting lesson to teach. Solders of the world take note. In spite of your bravery and willing self-sacrifice, you die for naught; you will be undone by traitors, cowards, and politicians.

 

Some claim that 300 is a neo-con attempt to pump up support for our draft dodging president’s and vice president’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Be brave and strong, stay the course, emulate Spartan virtue, the victory will be ours! Sure it will, just as it was for the Spartans. In reality, the movie’s last scene in which a Spartan army of 10,000 has been assembled to march forth and avenge the deaths of the 300 is a complete lie. There never was any such Spartan 10,000 that saved Greece. The Spartans never did defeat the Persians. That task was left to a Macedonian—Alexander the Great.

 

And are the Spartans a people to be emulated? Well, the National Socialists of Germany in the 1920s and 30s thought so, and look what got them.

 

Zack Snyder, the filmmaker, must surely have been a student of Leni Riefenstahl’s and the screen-writers, admirers of Joseph Gobels. But the propaganda in 300 would even make him blush. And what of the laudatory reviewers? Bill Walsh of The Weekly Standard and David Kahane of The National Review and their ilk are merely Hollywood whores.  Better still, since these people admire the Spartans so much, perhaps Snyder, Walsh, Kahane, their ilk, and the screen writers, are all also pederasts.

©2007, John Kozy, Jr.