Go Tell the Spartans

In response to posts such as this, I think it good to mention my take on 300. My short review is as follows: It's a graphic novel turned into a film, and as such, thoroughly enjoyable.

My longer review: action scenes great, alternating between the chaos of battle and the tactics which impose order on that chaos. Dialogue windy but not horrible (a shame that movie Spartans can't be, uh, laconic). Historically, the film's incomplete to off. The most accurate portrayal, aside from the intro on Spartan boyhood, was of the uniforms of the warriors, from the red cloaks to the shields with the L on them (L for, uh, Laconia). Only problem is, that the bronze breastplates seem to be missing.

Larger than that is the fact that the real heroism of Thermopylae is missing. Leonidas didn't march against the Persians alone, but with a combined Greek army, including Athenians, Corinthians, Thebans, the lot. It was outflanked, and Leonidas volunteered his boys to hold the pass so that the rest could live to fight another day. It was a sacrifice to save the military strength of Greece, not a showing-off to rally the people. Spartans did not throw their lives away so that philsophers would admire them.

The bit about the Persian envoys getting tossed down the well and Leonidas telling Xerxes to "come and take" the Spartan arms appears to be legit, though. And like I said it's a comic book, with all the intensity from plot-frugality that suggests.

So check it out. There isn't much else worth seeing.

And Spank Me! And Me!

This post over at Protein Wisdom makes me ponder something I have long been pondering ("I 'fink so, Brain, but..."): the fact that victimization is the path to power in the modern age.

It isn't just that certain segments of society claim to be oppressed. Everyone does, be they of the Right or the Left, poor or middle class (and Ayn Rand even made a fair argument that the rich and powerful can be oppressed). Every rabble rouse begins with the pretense that the other side is a group of tyrannical psychotics devoted to the implementation of their hideously ill-informed social model, regardless of the real-life damage it does to those that they never see, and that the People! Must! Rise! More, that they are willing to silence ("marginalize") anyone who has the courage to stand against their madness.

Remember 1994, the year of the "Angry White Male"? Lefty chatterboxes had a pile of fun going after that one. How on earth could a white male feel oppressed in America? Ridiculous. Laughable. Yet the idea worked. The fact that some didn't think the AWM's had the right to feel oppressed changed not the fact that many of them did, and were willing to vote for those that said they would represent the AWM's feelings and redress their percieved wrongs.

Thus, the perception of oppression: making people believe that you are wronged, is a path to a place at the table, regardless of whether you bring anything to that table other than the hunger to be fed. Naked power, without expectation of restraint or result, belongs to him who sells his wretchedness with a scapegoat.

Sounds like more proof that we live in the Age of Revolution.