´300´ Reasons Why This is a Bad Movie

OK, a non-Argentine related blogpost. I saw ´300´ and it made me so mad I just had to bash it on the internet.

First of all, it´s a bad movie. The dialogue is atrocious, the acting it terrible, the cinematography unwatchable, the fight scenes look like something out of a video game (which they no doubt soon will be), the plot twists idiotic, and the music 80s-era metal.

But, beyond that, it´s one of the most cringingly neo-fascist warmongering pieces of garbage I´ve seen in a long time.

It would be bad enough if it were in the one-white-man-can-kill-500-swarthy-Orientals mode, and the ´Greeks´ looked like they just got off the last chariot out of Stockholm, and the ´Persians´ are all faceless snivelling wretches or inhuman monsters. All of those are the case, but that´s not all.

It all starts because evil Persian emperor Xerxes (and whatever happened to ´ombra mai fui´?) asks for tribute from Sparta. Rather than pay it, the Spartans would much rather risk their entire civilization. As Leonidas explains, beating the Persians would mean ´a new era of freedom´ and would ´liberate the world from mysticism´, but that doesn´t stop him from praying to Zeus and going to oracles and leaving the weaker children on cliffs.

The Persians are constantly derided as ´slaves´, apparently ignonring the Spartans fondness for slavery. The Athenians are similarly scorned as ´boy-lovers´, ignoring the Spartans liking for that too. In one scene, with no apparent irony, Sparta´s King Leonidas tells his young son that ´Your strength in battle comes from the soldier beside you´. And not just in battle, kingy.

Back home, Leonidas is being backstabbed by a slimy anti-war politician who says he doesn´t want Sparta to go to war because one, it´s illegal, and two, Leonidas is provoking it anyway. Obviously the real reason he refuses to give Leonidas the support he needs is because he WANTS Sparta to lose, being in the pay of the Persians and all. Of course, he´s not wily enought to not carry his bribe around with him, and when he finally refuses to lend his support to the war effort, Leonidas´s queen stabs him in the middle of a council meeting, to warm applause and cries of ´Traitor!´

Ultimately, noble Nordic Leonidas is betrayed by the misshapen Spartan who ought to have been left on the crags to die, but his mother was too weak to weed out the Untermenschen, and now look what happened: he went running to the Persians, just because Xerxes didn´t treat him like dirt.

In the end, one feels inclined to agree with the NY Post´s Kyle Smith when he says: ¨Keeping in mind Slate's Mickey Kaus' Hitler Rule - never compare anything to Hitler - it isn't a stretch to imagine Adolf's boys at a "300" screening, heil-fiving each other throughout and then lining up to see it again.¨

Last Monday, I had just gotten onto the suprisingly clean and efficient (though hot and crowded) Buenos Aires subway when a message came over the intercom informing us that the train conductors were now on strike. The commuters groaned, but we complied.

Arriving at the University of Buenos Aires sometime later, there was no one in my classroom. Not to worry; punctuality was not an Argentine virtue. Five minutes passed, then ten. Twenty. Thirty. Finally, someone poked their head into the room and informed me that the whole University was on strike. I chuckled appreciately. Those wacky Argentine professors, always going on strike because they don´t make any money.

Not exactly:

Via the BBC:

The main teachers' union is to strike on Monday in protest at the violence.

The teachers are demanding higher wages, arguing that inflation has reduced the spending power of their salaries.

The violence on Wednesday happened when police fired tear gas to disperse the several hundred-strong group of demonstrators, some of whom responded by throwing stones.

One protester, Carlos Fuentealba, was hit by a tear gas canister and taken to hospital but later died of his injuries.

Fuentealba's death is only likely to further fuel what is already a volatile protest over pay and conditions, says BBC Americas editor Will Grant.

Other teachers' protests have been reported around the country.

The government, though, has a fantastic diversion set up. 2007 being the 25th anniversary of the Falkland Islands war, a desperate and costly attempt by a crumbling and dictatorial regime struggling to hold on to power, there´s obviously alot of nostalgia. Thus, the following slogan has begun sprouting up on billboards all over the city (wait for it)...



The Falkland Islands Are Ours!

Unfortunately, even some of the left-wing groups are going along with it, under the pretense of fighting ´British imperialism´. Of course, the idea of a second Falklands - excuse me, Malvinas - war seems nuts, so did the first.

EDIT: I went back to school today, and the professor was out on strike again. This time, though, it seems like an ordinary salary dispute... though the last protest started as an ordinary salary dispute too.