Heartbreak and hobos with shotguns. Lots to say here, to catch up, and I swear at the end there's a great video of a hobo with a shotgun as a reward for my self indulgence.
So I've been a mess lately. Heartbroken. My health has been a little touch and go, borderline dangerous but I'm on the mend finally.
Professionally things have been good. I work with two wonderfully supportive people who I couldn't ask for more from. We have lots of big plans. Last week they brought me to a screening of 300 with the director present as he works with our parent company. I didn't care for 300 much though, even though I got a huge kick out of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. As brilliantly as I thought it was visually realized, 300 is big time trouble. You can't have parables in this day and age about the battle of freedom vs tyrrany when you're telling the story of a facist society that practices eugenics and owns slaves as nicely summarized here. And then say your film exists completely in a political vacuum and has no relevance today. The fact Spartans owned slaves is nicely ignored in the movie.
Why should we care? The battle of Thermopylae is a morally complicated knot that poses a tricky dilemma. Martial, facist Sparta ends up helping save Athens, the birthplace of many liberal ideals we hold today. The real story there to me is whether or not there is a place for despotic elements when pushed against opposing forces. It's one of the questions we have to face ourselves today. How do we react to one extreme of political will? By doing the complete opposite and thus becoming as bad as our enemy for the sake of preserving what is good? That's a fucking good question and a story for today.
300, the 1800s version
_
Does art exist in a political vacuum? Are some narrative truths higher than how they can be reminiscent of what is current and relevant? I don't believe so. I think that stuff used to be called propaganda and it was considered harmful. I believe politics today are the construction of a mass consensual hallucination or narrative largely dependent on mythmaking. I always think of Orwell's "The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." And that's it, we're drowning in art that only seeks to entertain and mythologize. Mythologies are fucking dangerous. Mythologies are essentially photographs of victims of war with the blood photoshopped out.
I honestly believe 300 is a racist and facist movie, and it's such a sign of institutionalized racism and xenophobia that the question of whether or not it is is actually up for debate. It just is and I'd be more ok with it if it would just be shamelessly proud about it. It's a rendering of history that's utterly bullshit and in which all morally uncomplicated good is represented by Anglo Caucasians from the British Isles (playing Mediteranneans) and all evil is well, anyone not white or straight or not a gym rat. Sometimes I wonder if I take these things too seriously, but it's my belief that the big problem with racism isn't the overt stuff, it's the entrenched accepted kind that leaks into people when they're not paying attention. And rewriting history is a big part of it. I guarantee you thanks to 300's box office more people are going to know this account of Thermopylae than Herodotus'. That's why it's dangerous. Because consensus is derived more from pop culture these days. And it's one thing to say your movie, despite having speeches requesting a surge in troops with the line of dialogue "Freedom isn't free", has no political viewpoint. Until you hear that Snyder and Miller are big fans of one Victor Davis Hanson.
I used to love Frank Miller but I'm sick of his Ayn Rand-ian sense of superiority that's starting to shine through in his work. All this fetishistic love for hard, tough macho alpha male fuck kill urges is fine if it's just harmless male fantasy. And could even poke fun at itself but 300 is also terribly problematically homophobic. Because on one hand it's the gayest movie made since someone filmed eight guys blowing nine guys. And yet still the Spartans must get their digs in by basically calling Athenians fags. I sat next to Frank Miller at comiccon in a bar and the guy sounds and looks like the only fight he ever won was a battle with a Double Dragon machine in an arcade circa 1982 even though he somehow knows that he must sing the warrior's praises.
_
Anyway this made me smile amidst all of this and it's to let you know I'm totally fine with gratuitious gore and violence especially when its put together by a bunch of ingenious and obviously broke dudes in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It's a trailer made for a contest for the movie Grindhouse, which I really have no interest in seeing.
They had a contest in which they asked people to make their own Grindhouse trailers and this is the winner, which is faultless and pitch perfect. Everything about this, from the score to the acting style to the odd dialogue that thinks its clever but isnt really to the music to the design of the title font to the fact that watching it on youtube makes it look like a bootleg of a bootleg... This is note for note a 70s exploitation quickie grindhouse movie through and through. I'd rather watch this than the actual Grindhouse movie.
So I've been a mess lately. Heartbroken. My health has been a little touch and go, borderline dangerous but I'm on the mend finally.
Professionally things have been good. I work with two wonderfully supportive people who I couldn't ask for more from. We have lots of big plans. Last week they brought me to a screening of 300 with the director present as he works with our parent company. I didn't care for 300 much though, even though I got a huge kick out of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. As brilliantly as I thought it was visually realized, 300 is big time trouble. You can't have parables in this day and age about the battle of freedom vs tyrrany when you're telling the story of a facist society that practices eugenics and owns slaves as nicely summarized here. And then say your film exists completely in a political vacuum and has no relevance today. The fact Spartans owned slaves is nicely ignored in the movie.
Why should we care? The battle of Thermopylae is a morally complicated knot that poses a tricky dilemma. Martial, facist Sparta ends up helping save Athens, the birthplace of many liberal ideals we hold today. The real story there to me is whether or not there is a place for despotic elements when pushed against opposing forces. It's one of the questions we have to face ourselves today. How do we react to one extreme of political will? By doing the complete opposite and thus becoming as bad as our enemy for the sake of preserving what is good? That's a fucking good question and a story for today.
300, the 1800s version
_
Does art exist in a political vacuum? Are some narrative truths higher than how they can be reminiscent of what is current and relevant? I don't believe so. I think that stuff used to be called propaganda and it was considered harmful. I believe politics today are the construction of a mass consensual hallucination or narrative largely dependent on mythmaking. I always think of Orwell's "The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." And that's it, we're drowning in art that only seeks to entertain and mythologize. Mythologies are fucking dangerous. Mythologies are essentially photographs of victims of war with the blood photoshopped out.
I honestly believe 300 is a racist and facist movie, and it's such a sign of institutionalized racism and xenophobia that the question of whether or not it is is actually up for debate. It just is and I'd be more ok with it if it would just be shamelessly proud about it. It's a rendering of history that's utterly bullshit and in which all morally uncomplicated good is represented by Anglo Caucasians from the British Isles (playing Mediteranneans) and all evil is well, anyone not white or straight or not a gym rat. Sometimes I wonder if I take these things too seriously, but it's my belief that the big problem with racism isn't the overt stuff, it's the entrenched accepted kind that leaks into people when they're not paying attention. And rewriting history is a big part of it. I guarantee you thanks to 300's box office more people are going to know this account of Thermopylae than Herodotus'. That's why it's dangerous. Because consensus is derived more from pop culture these days. And it's one thing to say your movie, despite having speeches requesting a surge in troops with the line of dialogue "Freedom isn't free", has no political viewpoint. Until you hear that Snyder and Miller are big fans of one Victor Davis Hanson.
I used to love Frank Miller but I'm sick of his Ayn Rand-ian sense of superiority that's starting to shine through in his work. All this fetishistic love for hard, tough macho alpha male fuck kill urges is fine if it's just harmless male fantasy. And could even poke fun at itself but 300 is also terribly problematically homophobic. Because on one hand it's the gayest movie made since someone filmed eight guys blowing nine guys. And yet still the Spartans must get their digs in by basically calling Athenians fags. I sat next to Frank Miller at comiccon in a bar and the guy sounds and looks like the only fight he ever won was a battle with a Double Dragon machine in an arcade circa 1982 even though he somehow knows that he must sing the warrior's praises.
_
Anyway this made me smile amidst all of this and it's to let you know I'm totally fine with gratuitious gore and violence especially when its put together by a bunch of ingenious and obviously broke dudes in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It's a trailer made for a contest for the movie Grindhouse, which I really have no interest in seeing.
They had a contest in which they asked people to make their own Grindhouse trailers and this is the winner, which is faultless and pitch perfect. Everything about this, from the score to the acting style to the odd dialogue that thinks its clever but isnt really to the music to the design of the title font to the fact that watching it on youtube makes it look like a bootleg of a bootleg... This is note for note a 70s exploitation quickie grindhouse movie through and through. I'd rather watch this than the actual Grindhouse movie.
Labels: 300, george orwell, herodotus, hobo with a shotgun
