I saw the film 300 the other day (with about 300 other people in an IMAX theatre).

I wanted it to be about a different way to be a man, something unashamedly masculine borrowed from previous cultures and but after having been spliced with postmodern idealism. Something that probably narrative arts could only produce. I realized it is a fearlessness in the face of death, a warrior culture thing, that awaits resurrection.

I theorize that as women become stronger in their own identity as feminists they are becoming less agitated by choices that are uniquely masculine. It used to be the more repressive pressure you could put on your masculine energy the more attractive you were. The women I meet now have seen gay masculinity, for example, seen how sexual gay men can be when they aren’t looking over their own shoulder all the time, and then they look back at hetero masculinity with that lens. The casual sex and the porn are celebrated in Queer as Folk as though they are unique experiences that a different culture, queer culture, simply appreciates differently. How strange a turn for masculinity to reflect on itself with. Us emo boys (I’m a pre-emo really) know how to respect a woman. Now we know how to respect ourselves too? And this leads back to a possibility for full on postmodern manly battle courage like conviction? That it had been laid latent by accidental premature exposure to feminism? Wow.

My eyes were ready to see it. Culturally I did get some idealized, unembarassed, radical heroism from watching 300. I did. I am tempted to go right after work to see it again and see if it is still there. I might be able to ask myself what the limits of my masculinity really are.

When I saw it’s villains, though, I also saw how vulnerable this masculinity was in the imagination of those who made this film.

I loved the Mahabharata TV Series. I loved the Mahabharata. This battle echoed the battle of Kuruksetra in some ways. I loved old India the way Delacroix loved Morocco. So I also loved seeing this South Indian general. OK I admit it. Indian soldier didn’t fight at Thermopylae and I still felt a happy chill. However there was another chill to think that the enemy here was an amalgam of all things we would have colonially called “Oriental”.

The elite appeared to be far East soldiers with ninja swords. It’s hardly difficult for anyone to recognize that those swords are anything but Japanese influenced. It seemed the movie was indescriminately saying that ”any martial design East of Greece” is exotic enough to frighten straightforward manly men with it’s implied unorthodox and unidentifiable strategic uses and powers.

Then there was Xerxes. His palanquin is gorgeous, yet the king himself is bizarrely slave like, eunuch like in fact. I was utterly confused about what was supposed to be threatening about him, until I saw him close up.

He is effeminate looking with mascara, frosty lipstick, and Hindu bride jewelry. Then he spoke in a digitally lowered voice. He was completely unreal as the supposedly scary villain, an 8-bit video game boss. He is no more scary to me than a lullaby, but he was what these writers feared. A twisted bizarro version of themselves if they hadn’t learned to be men, perhaps?

A social epidemic of inner fear has made men feel like brave warriors for fighting the strangest paper tigers these days. I know. I have singlehandedly slain at least a thousand in battle myself.

Now instead I am wondering; during the Romantic period the French imagined with great pleasure the barbarism and lasciviousness of the Middle East because they didn’t feel they had the choice to be that way themselves. Now what are we imagining about Persia and the Middle East in this film? It looks pretty but it doesn’t threaten me much.