Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts

Saturday, March 17, 2007

The 300 Movie Review

Movie Review "The 300":

The movie "The 300" Spartans is a movie based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, the deviant behind the Sin City series. I say deviant, because, although Miller is truly gifted, his work is essentially the output of a highly cynical and nihilistic mind.

Interestingly, Miller's movie version of "The 300" perfectly intersects with the world-view of the Bush-loyal wing of the Republican party and their neocon (for instance Felipe Calderon of Mexico, and John Howard of Australia) allies across the world.

In "The 300" we learn of a king (Leonidas, aka G W Bush) who has identified that Sparta (aka USA) must go to war with Persia (aka Persia/Iran) in order to preserve the liberty of the freemen of Sparta (aka largest slave-holding city of Greece at the time). He knows this because the big black man who came to ask him to surrender to Persia insulted his very white wife (I guess, he didn't say anything to her that a typical Republican traditionalist would not have, but he was black after all).

Unfortunately, the corrupt Senate (elected officials versus hereditary king) won't send the army to fight. So the king must go on his own, with his loyal posse of 300 soldiers, not nearly enough to fight off the 1 million Persians! Gosh darned pesky elected officials!

Leonidas' wife (pictured) waves him off in a field of golden grain (slaves not show, of course) as he and his 300 go to face Al-Qaeda, er that is, the Persians.

Leo is able to kick butt and kill may an Arab in gruesome form. Xerxes, the king of the Persians, turns out to be an eight foot tall drag queen, who offers Leo to come (literally and figuratively?) to his side by kneeling before him. Leo is no fag though, and he rebuffs Xerk.

Xerk sends wave after wave of blacks, gays, retards and Arabs to attack Leo. But Leo and his men are too white and too hetro to be overcome.

Unfortunately, there is one deformed retard from Sparta (who escaped the logical tradition of killing deformed babies in Sparta, because his weak and damed mother loved him too much, the nerve!) who betrays Leo.

This retard leads the Persian immortals (also deformed, hardly even human, but what do you expect, they are Persian Al-Qaeda fags after all!) to surround Leo.

Leo is trapped but does not surrender, not to a bunch of fags! No, he and his men would rather die than suffer that fate, and they do. Fortunately, Leo dies with his arms outstretched and as the camera pans out we, the audience, cannot but help wondering whether he reminds us of a certain savior who died on the cross.

Fortunately, queen hetro was able to finally convince the Senate to surge the military into action and thus stop the Persians from taking over the homeland. In her speech she declares that "freedom isn't really free at all, it requires the sacrifice of blood." Interestingly, this exact sentiment is echoed thousands of years later in the aptly titled poem "No, Freedom Isn't Free" by Kelly Strong, and of course countless new millennium country songs.

So the drill down is basically that this movie is complete propaganda, perhaps even funded by the US Army. There is no objectivity at all and there is zero historical accuracy. Read any history of the Battle of Thermopylae and it is clear that the authors of this terrible film had one single objective - to promote their own sick and corrupt version of the "War on Terror."

What are other bloggers saying?
  • The 300 is so blatantly an allegory for the right-wing fantasy called "The War on Terror", [...] the movie is really an attempt at Republican propoganda. - Daily Kos

  • "Freedom isn't free"..and yes Frank Miller is a bigot. - All Day, Every Day

  • Athens has ceased to be the ideal for western culture... John Angliss

  • Gorgeous Slaughter - Lenin's Tomb
Rather not see blatant fascist propaganda in the movies? Sign the petition at 300, An Unethical Movie Picture.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

IRAs Enable the "Ownership Society"

The American Spectator has a "compelling" article on how American free market capitalism actually reduces racism. Some highlights below:
[...]
We saw the marginalizing effects of socialism with the favoritism shown to Great Russians in the Soviet Union. We see it again today in France, Europe's grandest exponent of continental socialism, its cities in flames because of the lack of economic opportunity exacerbated by race discrimination that is in turn enabled by its stratified and heavily regulated economy. Ireland, Europe's most market oriented economy, has no such issues.
[...]
The American Spectator: Capitalism, Socialism and Race
It is interesting that the only IRA the American Spectator (AS) seems to be aware of is the one that involves stock market equities. Indeed, it boggles the mind to see that the AS is holding up Ireland as an example of racial peace in Europe! Perhaps they think that Fox News has us all too worried about those swarthy Muslims to remember the sad saga of class driven race violence that has wracked Erie for over 100 years.

And sorry AS, the USA is not less racist than European societies and it certainly does not owe any of the dubious progress that it has made to capitalism! Today in America, among males age 25 to 29, 12.6% of blacks were in prison or jail, compared to 3.6% of Hispanics and about 1.7% of whites (from a 2004 report on the US DOJ website, also see comments and thank you for the corrections). In addition, nearly every black political leader in America has been assassinated or discredited due to the effects of institutionalized racism.

This magazine and other publications like it are examples of why it is so very important for socialists and progressives to fight to gain access to the public debate. If we do not, this sort of pseudo-journalism filled with lies and distortion will define the terrain of human thought and continue to destroy our world.

A socialist perspective gives us the context, intellectual honesty and political bravery to fight racism by addressing its root cause - capitalism.