Zack Snyder's 300 Remains INTENSELY Problematic
While 300 is getting a 4K release, it is important to look back at the film and comic critically for the homophobic, racist and ableist portrayals.
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Director Zack Snyder's 2006 period epic 300, based on the comic series by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, is receiving a 4k release, which will no doubt reignite the controversies surrounding the film. Snyder employed green screen and staging to directly mirror the panels of the comic, resulting in stunning visuals, which were the primary focus for the positive reviews at the time. However, despite 300's technical and commercial success, reviews were overall mixed, with some critics singling out the film's racist, homophobic and ableist elements.
The film and the comic are fictionalized accounts of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae, which took place in 480 BC, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. In the battle, 300 Spartan soldiers, led by King Leonidas, held off the Persian army for three days in the narrow coastal pass. It's the comic and film's oversimplification of the Spartans and Persians that forms the basis of the narrative's problematic nature.
The shocking racism and pro-imperialism of 300 does not exist in a bubble, but it's irresponsible that the film refused to question or investigate the source material's problematic aspects in favor of focusing on capturing the comic's aesthetics. For instance, Snyder's Spartans are a society of white, able-bodied people fueled by aggression and violence, and they are praised as the unquestionable heroes. On the other hand, the villains are portrayed as a gender-fluid society that was visibly not white, and the incarnation of evil and treachery.
300's depiction of good vs. evil is overtly racist by having white be inherently good while people of color are inherently bad. It also reinforces the growing, untrue notion that foreigners entering a "white" country are to be feared and attacked. Harmful representation like that can support the false notion that it's right to fear immigrants, especially immigrants of color. The film's harmful depiction of race promotes the idea that racist ideologies like this are a way to protect a "morally superior" way of life.
Furthermore, 300's Spartans, the heroes of the narrative, are from a military based society that promotes violence, aggression and fascism; however, the film frames this society as a free democracy. In combination with the above noted anti-Middle East sentiment, this feeds into a warped notion of patriotism that prides itself in xenophobia and racism.
The film is irresponsible in its casual expression of fighting for so-called freedom when the government itself is far from a free democracy. King Leonidas claims that the Spartans are free men who are fighting against a tyrant, but the Spartans are the ones systematically murdering their own children for non-conformity, and they are the ones who have created a mono-culture of soldiers and wives that offers zero opportunity for freedom of choice or expression.
As mentioned earlier, the murder of children who do not conform to societal norms is one of many issues with the Spartans, pushing forward an ableist ideology. 300 glorifies the idea that individuals with disabilities and those who do not fit a desired, physical appearance have no right to live or be part of this society.
In the early scenes of 300, skulls of dead children who were deemed unacceptable are put on screen to glorify how "strong" the Spartans are since they only accept "perfect" individuals in their society. The film takes no responsibility in its depiction of this atrocity; instead, it frames this act as heroic. When there is a Spartan who does not fit the ideal body type, he is depicted as disgusting and evil. Any attempt at humanizing him is brushed away casually and does not follow through on making him a sympathetic character.
Along with demonizing those with disabled and different bodies, the film is homophobic, and some of the most homophobic images are intentionally incorporated by Snyder, who seems unaware of how problematic this depiction of gender and sexuality is. One of the biggest instances of this dated, homophobic representation is when Xerxes offers Leonida peace in exchange for "submission," which Snyder put in the film because, to use his words, "What’s more scary to a 20-year-old boy than a giant god-king who wants to have his way with you?”
Depicting a man as a physically more powerful force who threatens violence in exchange for sex is a lazy trope too often used to hammer home that a male character is a bad guy, and in this case it perpetuates the problematic stereotype of the predatory gay. For decades this type representation justified the false belief that straight men should fear gay men because they would inherently pursue them sexually, so films like 300 perpetuate the false, offensive notion that its okay to be violent towards members of the LGBTQ+ community because they are "pariahs."
300 may have been a box office hit that catapulted the careers of Snyder and Gerard Butler, but it is problematic. Looking back 14 years later, the racism, fascism, ableism and homophobia of the comic and film is as glaring and intensely problematic as ever. If audiences choose to return to 300 with the 4K release, they should be active viewers who critically analyse the problematic areas, a task unfortunately not performed by the filmmakers during production.
