To say that the current political climate in this world is at a boiling point – would be a massive understatement. We’re very divided, with most viewing themselves as being correct in their beliefs – and not listening to any other opinions. No debate. Of course, not everyone is like this. That would be a broad statement to imply that every single person is the same as someone in a certain group? Wouldn’t it?
Well, a new editorial from AV Club says that it was actually Zack Snyder’s 300 film basically helped establish this current climate we’re in.
Here are a few notable parts of the article:
The thing about 300 is that it works, at least on an animal-brain level. Snyder had come from directing commercials and helming a 2004 Dawn Of The Dead remake that retained none of the subversive punch of George Romero’s original but had plenty of intense thrills of its own. 300 was where he got to reveal the full scale of his visual ambition, and no movie had really looked like it before. It was elemental Conan The Barbarian blood-and-thunder shit, but rendered in ecstatic video-game graphics, with gore for days. Its score is all choral wails and fuck-shit-up metal riffs, and it comes from the guy who, I swear to god, is Marilyn Manson’s current guitarist. It’s a primal, guttural roar of a movie, and its battle scenes, in particular, were something new.
He adds:
But 300 is also an influential movie in another, more insidious way. There’s a great recent episode of the Chapo Trap House podcast in which the hosts discuss 300 as “the ur-text of the alt-right,” as “Hamiltonfor neo-fascists.” It’s a compelling argument. This is a movie that makes a grand, mythic spectacle out of the whole defending-the-white-homeland trope, and if you look at the YouTube comments on any of the scenes above, you will witness some serious human ugliness. It would be a pretty big stretch to blame 300 for Donald Trump or whatever, but the movie really did lionize the heroic white warriors fighting to repel the endless dark-skinned hordes—to, in the gravelly narrator’s words, “rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny.” (Oh no! Mysticism!) This sort of bullshit did help establish a world where Donald Trump could be elected president, and it deserves to be remembered for that. It’s an influential movie in all the wrong possible ways. It’s our Birth Of A Nation.
So there you have it. 300 is all to blame.
Though, given the past nature of some of these websites – should we really be surprised that Zack Snyder is being blamed for something like this? He could cure cancer and his haters would still find something to complain about.
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