Seriously. Here’s Neal Stephenson’s mockery of the politically correct liberal kneejerk anti-300 reviewers:
* “300″ is not sufficiently ironic. It takes its themes (duty, loyalty, sacrifice, the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds) too seriously to, well, be taken seriously…
* All of the good guys are white people and many of the bad guys are brown. (How this could have been avoided in a film about Spartans versus Persians is never explained; the distinctly non-Greek viewers at my showing seemed to have no trouble placing themselves in the sandals of ancient Spartans.)
But such criticisms aren’t really worth arguing with, because they are not serious in the first place – and that is their whole point. Many critics dislike “300″ so intensely that they refused to do it the honor of criticizing it as if it were a real movie. Critics at a festival in Berlin walked out, and accused its director of being on the Bush payroll.
It really does take somebody totally imbecilic to believe that there’s still something to notions like duty, loyalty, sacrifice, and the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds. It’s a good thing for all of us – and we hate to use this phrase, but it’s appropriate here – that elite Hollywood opinion-setters are here to calibrate the proper level of cynicism.
References:
* It’s All Geek to Me [NYT]
Previously:
* 300 Trailer
* Slate’s Negative Review of 300 Provides Countless Reasons To See The Movie
* The Greek Deliberative Tradition
