#HOPLITE SHIELD GAY MOVIE#
To let the movie tell it, the Spartans completely went it alone. The actual history is so much more fantastic than Miller’s silly comic book drama-kings. How friggin’ cool is that? Why leave out this brilliantly poetic statement? This single sentence says so much more than Miller’s overly-verbose narration, which violates the show don’t tell principle of storytelling. He replied, “Marry a good man, and have good children.” ( source) Plutarch mentions in his Sayings of Spartan Women that, after encouraging him, Leonidas’ wife Gorgo asked what she should do on his departure. Now compare this with what historians think he actually did say: In case this extrapolation is too subtle for you, the point is that Spartans are tough. They’re too tough for that, and Sparta is a hard land, where you can’t be soft in any way, and that means being hard, and being hard means not saying goodbye to your wife when you go away to battle. In the film, when King Leonidas leaves his wife to go North into battle, he does not say anything, and the narrator makes sure we the audience understand that Spartans don’t say goodbye. King Leonidas asserts his heterosexuality by making love to his queen and calling their allies, the Athenians, “Boy lovers.” However Anton Powell’s book “Athens and Sparta” states, “references to particular homosexual attachments of Spartans are conspicuous even by Greek standards ( source)” The Athenians term for sodomy was to “ Spartanize” someone.īut this confuses homosexuality with pedophilia and stereotypes homosexuals as lacking masculinity, and one thing neither history nor this film can deny is that the Spartans were definitely macho. I kept waiting for the King Leonidas and the other Spartan warriors to fling off their capes and start gyrating their hips so the Persian army could stick dollar bills in their leather Speedos, but I suppose the slow-motion “ warnography.” as one critic put it, came close enough to make a few overly-excited fanboys wet their pants.īut the film warns us not to apply any homoeroticism to the Spartans’ many six-pack abs, swollen pectorals, and bulging packages. They didn’t dress like Chippendale dancers like this film portrays them. Secondly, I submit the following historically-accurate picture of a Hoplite for comparison to the red-caped, bikini-clad heroes from 300. While true that Spartan boys were indoctrinated into military life at a very young age, the Hoplites, or Spartan warriors, initiation rites did not involve killing wolves, but Helots, who were the Spartans slaves, doing all the menial labor so the Spartans could enjoy their warrior-class lifestyles. Putting aside the trolls, trollocs, giants, zombies, and other fantasy fiction staples comprising the Persian army in the film, or transforming Ephialtes of Trachis into a deformed hunchback, the film still has a great deal of historical accuracy in its depiction of… well… very little of substance in the film is true to history. What a shame then that Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 had me wondering so early on, When are the Persians gonna hurry up and kill these guys?įirstly, I have to take a critical eye to the film’s alleged historical accuracy. Some historians argue that if the Persians had successfully invaded Greece it would have changed the face of Western civilization forever, possibly even erasing the concept of Democracy. The Battle at Thermopylae, when 300 Spartans led 5,000 Greeks against a Persian army 2.6 million strong, is considered by many the first great clash between Western and Eastern cultures. It’s straight guys who don’t know they’re gay. I know I’m homophobic, but not about gay guys.
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