Just got back from seeing the highly promoted movie “300,” and my only thought is how Pentagon generals must love it to death.
Playing in 2,700 theaters and grossing $70 million the first weekend, the movie is being pushed hard, in the hope that many will see it as a “chill-out” movie after a hard day’s work. The movie is a Pentagon fantasy.
“300” is about the battle at Thermopylae in 480 B.C., where 300 outnumbered Spartan soldiers delayed the Persian army for some time before being wiped out. But this movie has little to do with history and everything to do with war propaganda.
The movie uses all the racist myths that glorify Greek (Spartan) society as defenders of “Western Civilization” and denigrate Persia (current-day Iran) as Eastern and barbaric. In scenes remindful of the racism of Joseph Goebbels, the old Nazi propaganda minister, there are countless references to “endless Asian hordes,” “Persian beasts” and a “new age of freedom.” The Spartans are said to descend from Hercules himself. The severely racist theme of this movie makes it almost unbearable to watch, and has prompted the Iranian government to issue a protest. (See related box.)
I can picture the Pentagon warmakers salivating all over themselves watching this movie. They must so love an army where all the “good guy” Spartan soldiers say, “Yes, my Lord,” to everything the generals order, and whose only ambition is to die in battle. Meanwhile, the bad guys wear monkey-like masks (yes they do in this movie), and generally appear even worse looking than the rhinos, elephants and monsters they use in battle.
Following an old and worn-out U.S. war movie formula that flies in the face of reality, many thousands of the “bad guys” are killed en masse (even in slow motion), then one Spartan is killed and the “good guys” get really mad and swear revenge. To the director, one of them is worth more than many thousands of the “enemy.”
Another offensive stereotype taken out of the garbage can of Hollywood formulas and dusted off is presenting an “evil” person as disabled. The one traitor among the Spartans just happens to be a man with a severely disfigured back and face—who happens to look just like the Persian bad guys.
Pentagon fantasy vs. reality
In 1968 the song “Ballad of the Green Berets,” glorifying Pentagon death squads in Viet Nam, hit the top of the charts. But 1968 was the year the anti-war movement really blossomed among the population and resistance to the war grew—among the soldiers especially.
It was the year when “credibility gap” became the capitalist media’s byword for the difference between what the government said about the war and what the population thought was true.
Within a few years after that, “fragging” became a well-known term for soldiers tossing fragmentation grenades into their officers’ tents because they were sick of dying in a colonial war.
Does some of this sound familiar?
Bad news for the Pentagon in Iraq? They make up some good news. No weapons of mass destruction? They pretend there are some. Losing a terrible colonial war in Iraq that is becoming ever more unpopular? They make a movie that shows the opposite.
For the Pentagon in 2007, fantasy is so much better than reality.
As the war in Iraq loses popular support, more and more U.S. soldiers are realizing that while they are busy in training pumping iron, the Pentagon is busy on Wall Street pumping oil. U.S. oil companies are making record profits. Soldiers see that they are hated by nearly everyone in Iraq, whatever the Iraqis’ religion or political orientation. The veterans have learned that they won’t get decent medical attention or benefits when they return home, just as with the Vietnam war.
The film “300” will not change the current mood any more than the “Ballad of the Green Berets” did in 1968.
In the end, reality always trumps fantasy, as the Pentagon will find out to its dismay.
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