This thread's purpose is to discuss politics in works of fiction/media. Please do not use this thread to talk about politics or media in isolation from each other.
I was thinking of asking what people thought were the most interesting post-election Trump related media.
The Good Fight on CBS Access devoted their entire second season to dealing with the subject.
Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 13th 2023 at 3:23:38 PM
Oh, bother.
For all the problems 300: Rise of an Empire had, it show us what Spartans look like from an outside perspective. To outsiders like Themistocles, the Spartans look like a bunch of brutal batshit assholes.
Edited by M84 on Apr 17th 2019 at 7:14:37 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Would that it were so simple.
Rise of an Empire still shilled Sparta. Sparta had minimal involvement in the Battle of Salamis. They didn't even have a navy at the time and when they got one, it was financed by Persia.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Apr 17th 2019 at 8:11:56 AM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
"and when they got one, it was financed by Persia."
Where's the Shame Bell when you need it?
Edited by Oruka on Apr 17th 2019 at 5:26:10 AM
Would that it were so simple.
Like, the commanders at the battle were Eurybiades, a Spartan, and the Athenian Themistocles, but Greece won that battle in spite of the Spartans, not because of them. The decisive entrapment of the Persian fleet at Salamis was entirely Themistocles' idea.
Rise of an Empire shows the Spartans coming at the nick of time and crushing the Persians, but they were there the whole time, contributed a minority of men and ships, and their general was only nominally in charge because Laconian towns didn't want to serve under the sole command of an Athenian. Rise of an Empire is actually a really good example of how a film can be nominally be pro-X while being implicitly pro-Y — being the pro-Athens movie while really being the pro-Sparta movie.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Honestly, with power actresses like Eva Green and Sullivan's decent perfomance they could have done a Perspective Flip as Themistocles ended up being treated as a Worthy Opponent and retiring among the Persians.
Because, well, Athenians were an Ungrateful Bastard.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Also, Alcibiades.
Whoa.
The excuse that 300 is a In-Universe piece of propaganda has always been a Millerian dodge like no other. It's an idea that doesn't actually make a nick of sense, namely because 300 doesn't really fit Spartan values. Why would dyed-in-the-wool Spartan Dillions retell the epic tale of the 300 while whitewashing their proud slavery tradition? Or not mentioning their equally proud tradition of man love? It simply does not make sense. If it was actual propaganda Dillios wouldn't have retold the story with scenes like Leonidas screaming about free men and freedom and calling Athenians "boy lovers!" when Sparta had state-sanctioned pederasty.
Honestly, I really wish more media would focus on Persian Commander Mardonius. He has a very interesting historical character and a "character arc" in the War. From what we're told, he was insistent on avenging himself upon Greece after the Ionian Rebellion, yet was unwilling to corrupt himself and compromise. So this drive to vengeance and Honor Before Reason led to his death.
Edited by Gaon on Apr 17th 2019 at 7:00:27 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Be pretty, know who to please, say what they wanna hear and always know the ship manifest to get out of Dodge. 
Oh, bother.
The Unreliable Narrator thing is apparently mainly to help justify the more fantastic elements of the events.
Especially when you consider that Dilios wasn't actually present at the end of it despite narrating it (which is why he's the Sole Survivor).
Disgusted, but not surprised
Servant of the Omnissiah
Given that it came from the same whacko who wrote that awful piece of trash called Holy Terror, I'm more than willing to bet it's just the usual projection from Miller about how Middle Eastern people are "evil barbarians".
Irony of all Ironies, the Spartans ended up looking like the real assholes throughout the whole thing. What a surprise.
Edited by TechPriest90 on Apr 17th 2019 at 10:23:23 AM
I hold the secrets of the machine.
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Definitely, Miller is a absolute trash.
Watch me destroying my country
Random aside but 300 was written before Miller lost his mind post-9/11.
It was him rewriting a movie he watched as a child but remembered being way more badass than it turned out to be as an adult through Nostalgia Filter.
Western militaries glorifying Sparta has also been a thing for millennia.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
While 300 is very likely fueled by Miller's xenophobia, "Greeks good, Persians bad" has been a long-standing narrative going all the way back to the classical era.
Crash Course History actually did an episode on the concept of historical bias and how it shaped and still shapes people's perception of Greece and Persia.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 17th 2019 at 4:29:20 PM
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Reed Richards once had the Fantastic Four fight with the Spartans.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Would that it were so simple.
"Honestly, with power actresses like Eva Green and Sullivan's decent perfomance they could have done a Perspective Flip as Themistocles ended up being treated as a Worthy Opponent and retiring among the Persians.
Because, well, Athenians were an Ungrateful Bastard."
No they weren't. Themistocles was well known in his time for being super corrupt. Had he not saved Athens, he would have been fed hemlock. He was being held accountable. This is another shit trope — that holding a hero accountable for his actual crimes is ingratitude for his heroism. Athens had, if nothing else, a vibrant civic culture that in its best moments never stood for the wholesale embezzlement Themistocles was guilty of.
Alcibiades is another example of a genuine hero who, off the battlefield, was such a monster that he was repeatedly exiled for his crimes.
Re: Western militaries and Sparta. They do idolize them, and it's completely idiotic. The Spartan army ran the risk of falling apart after a single defeat and their myopic focus on an outdated version of the phalanx meant Athens was able to win battles purely by skirmishing, and when they lost a decisive battle against Thebes at Leuctra, their entirely society collapsed overnight. It took so long to train one Spartiate that they never had any reserves. Also, the practice of Spartan men marrying later in life and spending the prime of their youth soldiering meant the city-state was in a perpetual state of population decline. When they were finally conquered, they didn't even have enough people to appreciably resist.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Apr 17th 2019 at 11:26:27 AM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Servant of the Omnissiah
There's also that one time that they got their asses handed to them, and got their "pride" absolutely wrecked, by a Helot uprising after an earthquake in 465 BCE.
The Helots barricaded themselves on Mt. Ithome, and made the Spartans look like colossal idiots for four years straight. To the point that they eventually agreed to a peace treaty allowing all the Helots to escape to Naupactus without any retribution, because the Athenians ruthlessly outmaneuvered them.
So there's good reason to look at the Spartans and make a case for Crippling Overspecialization.
I hold the secrets of the machine.
A very short story I once wrote deconstructing The Spartan Way:
Once upon a time there was a king preparing for war. He wanted his soldiers to be the best soldiers possible. He took 10,000 men and sent them into the arctic to survive for 6 months. 5,000 of them survived. He then had the rest of them into the desert for another 6 months. 2,500 of them survived. He then sent them to kill a lion with their bare hands. 1,225 of them survived, though 225 of them were too injured to continue fighting. He then pit his remaining soldiers in 2 rounds of 1-on-1 fights. 500 men survived the first round, and then 250 the second round, though 50 were too injured and had to be sent back home.
He then took his army of 200 incredibly elite soldiers and began to invade the other kingdom.
He was promptly defeated by the enemy army of 10,000 soldiers.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
Would that it were so simple.
The Spartan Way is an Unbuilt Trope that actually doesn't need deconstructing — which I suspect is the case for a lot of the more overtly fascist tropes we've been discussing.
Like, the Spartans straight up lost the Battle of Thermopylae, weren't even the only ones there, and the same army that marched over Leonidas's corpse went on to burn Athens. It wasn't even a pyrrhic victory — the Persians lost maybe 20,000 men, which even in the low bar estimate of their army strength (around 300,000), meant they absorbed something like a 7% percent loss in manpower, which is amazing if the battle really was a meatgrinder. If we take Herodotus's 2.6 million at face value, it's basically nothing. Even in their most conventionally glorious moment, the Spartans weren't that impressive. And the 20,000 figure comes from Herodotus — if we scale that figure down with modern estimates of army strength, that's a paltry 2500-ish lost. The Persians thumped them hard.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Apr 17th 2019 at 12:58:37 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
What's noteworthy is that by the time Snyder's 300 movie released, a lot of people read it as a xenophobic response born of post-9/11 anxieties. However, Miller's comic predates 9/11 and is still very xenophobic, so this is a long-standing problem with his views.
Servant of the Omnissiah
Thing is, anyone who isn't a Sparta fanboy will readily admit that Thermopylae was a terrible defeat. Trying to chalk it up as some sort of glorious event is like trying to paper over Dunkirk in 1940 as a victory - good for morale, but it's all lies.
Last stands generally mean the army stuck doing that got into a terrible situation they didn't see coming. Elim Rawne said it best - "I hate last stands - there's no time to practice them."
I hold the secrets of the machine.
Ehhhh.
The historical battle is generally framed as a Doomed Moral Victor scenario. It's awesome because the 300 Spartans died heroically. Hence why it appeals to so many gung ho warrior-wannabes.
It wouldn't be as powerful or memorable if they hadn't all died after supposedly bloodying the military of Persia far in excess.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Sparta fanboyism always felt weird to me. Like a society like that has bunch of very obvious downsides people on thread have already memtioned.
There's a very large toxic belief in history that:
- War Is Glorious
- Warriors are better if they're only warriors.
- Violence is the Only Option
- If you throw away all morality, you're smarter than your enemies than just a scumbag.
The Spartans are a perfect storm of appealing to proto-fascists.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Also, killing supposedly evil oriental folk. That's always a bonus.
Edited by Kayeka on Apr 17th 2019 at 11:24:18 AM
That would certainly explain why they rely on their Adonis-like abs for protection rather than armour.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."