<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Lulu_Jane @ Mar 27 2007, 09:30 AM) [snapback]285160[/snapback]</div>
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Finally, just to clarify what I meant by calling the movie "homoerotic" - I didn't mean that the movie is "meant for gay people," I meant that the film hails all things masculine and uses the male form almost like art (for a good example of homeroticism look at the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe.) Conversely the film portrays women as secondary, and either weak or whorish. That is not a fault of the film, after all it is based on Frank Miller's comic and Frank Miller treats femle characters as either *****s or weak in pretty much all his comics (a perfect example of this is Jessica Alba's character in Sin City who combines the worst of his misogyny, a stripper and a princess that needs to be saved.)
Besides, "sword and sandal" movies (gladiator/roman/greek themed films) have a long and noble history of being homoerotic. Spartacus, Ben Hur and even Gladiator. How else do you think Tony Curtis became a gay icon? So to finally clear this up - Homerotic does not mean the same thing as "a movie for gay people."[/b]
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Well so it's the historic era what is homoerotic, not the way you portray it?
Anyway you're right here, the outfits in 300 would suit in a gay porn movie better than in real ancient Sparta. LOL Even though historically Greek men had less trouble showing themselves with few clothes than men nowadays, or even naked. Women on the contrary were forced to remain at home as much as possible, men even used to go to the marketplace because they didn't trust their wives to it... What takes me to your second, very relevant point.
An admirer of classic Greek (especially Athenian) culture as I am, I think that one aspect of their culture was sick, their misogyny. Few people may be aware but Greek women's status was really bad, worse than in the Roman culture for example. And I have this crazy theory, that Greek men's tendency towards pederasty was a consequence of this social illness. I don't mean to diss gays, to start with these relationships in ancient Greece were nothing like the homosexual ones that can arise nowadays freely. Not only they were more widespread or even socially encouraged, nowadays they would have been considered criminal since they tended to be pederastic. I think that Greek men behaved as if they were in prison because their social traditions concerning women kept them in prison in a sense. They were supposed to never establish a peer-to-peer relationship with any woman, only sexual ones, but every man needs a romantic other half or at least likes to have intercourse other than sexual with his romantic partner, so they had to resort to their own sex, because strangely enough that was more socially acceptable in their culture than establishing a full relationship with a woman. Still they liked only young boys not grown up men, I think that supports the idea that it wasn't the masculine bodily features what attracted them.
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Yep, there were definitely more than 300, because Spartans were really into slavery (like the rest of the Greek city-states of the time) so the original "300" all had their own personal group of slaves who would have fought alongside their Spartan owners.
Also, the number 300 is really unreliable because ancient Greek historians who recorded events (such as Herodotus) are notorious for exagerating numbers to make their stories more compelling.[/b]
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Spartans were quite special about slavery, actually their political and legal system was quite special. Slavery was of course accepted in ancient Greece although that wasn't different in the rest of the world, slavery wasn't questioned until the XIXth century in the West. But whereas most Greeks could have "personal" slaves --if they could afford them--, Spartans slaves ("Helots") were state-owned. The Spartan political system was built upon the nasty idea that an individual's sole purpose was to serve the State, at least that is shown in the first part of the movie.
However little I like Spartan culture, I can't take from them that they were brave warriors, be that a virtue or not. Most likely it was the Spartans who fought in first line, while the less armed Perioikoi served as a reserve and the Helots as servants assisting the Spartan hoplites and a last resort reserve.
As for the numbers, the Persian ones could very well have been exaggerated, if only because they were a wild guess from the start, but I don't think the Greek ones are so untrue. Scholars didn't believe that only 192 Athenians had been killed at Marathon, until the graves were found and the number found to be exact. Modern man tends to think that History is now a flawless science while ancient historians were but taletellers, but we're forgetting that, even with their limited means, they were trying to do the same as the historians of nowadays. Even a non-historical work such as the Illiad proved itself right about the basic fact of the existence of Troy and its destruction, and nobody took it seriously before the archaeological evidence was found. Or the Bible about the existence of the Hitite empire. Anyway 7,000 Greeks would have been more than able to defend a narrow mountain pass against whatever number of lightly armed and morale-lacking Persians.