Imperialism is all bound up with heteronormativity and Eurocentrism. The latter are two of the ways to shore up the power of the former, and vice-versa, of course. It's difficult to have empire without ridiculous, unattainable notions of racial purity, and it's tough to organize people if you can't stick them in nice predictable little family structures. In 300, imperialism is mostly expressed in terms of the discourse of enlightenment and justice. As Chomsky says, "terrorism is what they do." The same is true of wars of aggression and barbarism. I actually burst out loud the first time one of the characters in 300 claimed that if Persia won the war, the only light of justice, freedom, and reason would be snuffed out. We have heard this so many times before, and to state it without any awareness that that's exactly what the Persian Empire would have claimed in its own discourses.
We all know that the Spartans had slaves. That's common knowledge. So the claims of freedom and justice coming from the Spartans are really just elaborate justifications for "we'd like to not be wiped out in a war and occupied by an imperial force." If they'd made that argument, I actually wouldn't have objected. Nobody wants to be in that situation. But I doubt that the over-all Greek/Persian conflict was just based on Persian expansionism. When two cultures that are roughly equal in terms of military power and fight back and forth over the centuries, I have trouble believing it's one-sided, you know?
What's the most frustrating about imperial language in this film is not that it's super complex and buried under layers of subterfuge. It's that it's obviously a lie, or at best, the result of monumental ignorance. And what's the most frightening is how often people just buy into the big lie because it's what they've been told, over and over. They generally don't actually believe it, per se, but it's so much work to resist that lie, over and over again, that they just give up. We know, for a fact, that many of our elected leaders (no names) have been lying to us about matters of life and death since the day they took office. Literally, life and death. And what do we do? We shrug. We grumble. We watch The Daily Show and think we've done enough for the day.
I guess I don't have any clever quips, today. I don't know how to make fun of apathy in the face of horror.
Posted by orion at March 14, 2007 10:44 PM