{"id":15757,"date":"2021-02-10T22:52:36","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T22:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=15757"},"modified":"2025-04-08T13:04:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T13:04:39","slug":"fascism-and-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/fascism-and-film","title":{"rendered":"Fascism and Film"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Excerpted from Carl Plantinga\u2019s<\/em> \u201cFascist Affect in 300<\/em>,\u201d<\/a> in <\/em>Projections 13(2), 20-37. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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The stories we tell each other, or present via mass media, are important components of the cultural ecology of a place and time. This article argues that 300<\/em> (2007), directed by Zach Snyder and based on a comic book series both written and illustrated by Frank Miller, evinces what can legitimately be called a \u201cfascist aesthetic\u201d that depends in large part on the moods and emotions the screen story both represents and elicits. While many other commentators have charged this film with incipient fascism, this article both deepens and expands on the claim by showing how the film’s elicitation of affect contributes to this aesthetic. The article argues that the affects represented and elicited in 300<\/em>, when taken in conjunction with and in relation to the ideology they support, constitute what can be called \u201cfascist affect.\u201d Read the full article>><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fascism Affect in 300<\/em><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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The word \u201cfascist\u201d appears all\ntoo frequently in today’s political climate. It is often used loosely, so one\nhad better take care when using the term. And yet in relation to the epic\naction film 300<\/em> (2007), the word fits well. Adapted from the\n1998 comic series created by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, 300<\/em> tells\nthe story of 300 courageous Spartan soldiers who, led by their ferocious King\nLeonidas (Gerard Butler), valiantly battle the threatening Persian army of\n300,000 men until, after being betrayed by a hunchbacked Spartan outcast, they\nall are slaughtered. Their defeat, however, alerts the rest of the Greeks to\nthe significance of the Persian threat, and promises future victory as the\nentire Greek nation rises up to battle the Persians. The story is loosely based\non the Battle of Thermopylae during the Persian Wars of the fifth century BCE.\nConsiderations of the film as history, however, are ultimately less interesting\nthan analyses of the film’s political function in its contemporary context. 300<\/em> can\ncertainly be seen as a political allegory that embodies tensions resulting from\nthe Iraq War and conceptions of Iran as a node of the \u201caxis of evil.\u201d This\narticle will instead discuss the film’s incipient fascism, a broad threat\nthat resonates more powerfully today, given the events of the past few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

300<\/em> is a highly stylized fantasy film shot almost entirely on blue-screen soundstages with digital backgrounds added in postproduction. 300<\/em> is notable for its striking visual style, for its idealization of the courageous Greeks (all handsome men who sport muscular physiques and wear only tight leather \u201cshort shorts\u201d and capes), and for its vulgarization of the invading Persians (represented as monstrous and\/or effeminate).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 1: King Leonidas and his buff Spartans stand proudly before a hill of dead Persians (300<\/em>, Warner Bros., 2007)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many scenes feature the\npreparation and training for combat, fierce chanting (\u201cA-whoo, A-whoo!\u201d), and\nforcefully intoned epithets (\u201cWe are Spartans!\u201d and \u201cNo prisoners! No mercy!).\nFemale characters get in on the slogans as well, for example, when Queen Gorgo\n(Lena Headey) sends her husband-king off to battle by telling him to come back\n\u201cwith his shield or on it.\u201d The film’s centerpiece, however, is the fighting\nitself, which is represented graphically, often in slow motion, with fountains\nof spurting blood, decapitations, impalements, deep base choir intonations to\nsuggest the powerful maleness of it all, and rhythmic drumming as underscoring.\nAfter the Greeks are slaughtered, the last scenes serve as a eulogy for the\nfallen heroes, with music and mise-en-sc\u00e8ne<\/em> suggesting the\nmythic significance of their mission and sacrifice. We see the dead Leonidas on\nhis back, his body pierced by arrows, his arms splayed to the sides in an\nobvious reference to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. The film did\nvery well at the box office, with a lifetime gross revenue of over $450\nmillion, which led to a sequel, Rise of an Empire<\/em> (Noam Murro,\n2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Director Zack Snyder’s wife and\nproduction partner, Deborah Snyder, described 300<\/em> as a \u201cballet\nof death\u201d (Daly\n2007<\/a>). Perhaps it is this, in conjunction with the film’s implicit fascist\nideology, that caused audiences at the Berlin Film Festival to walk out and to\nboo the film. 300<\/em> also provoked intense criticism in the\nMiddle East for its portrayal of the Persians as monsters and deviants, with\nthe Iranian Academy of the Arts lodging an official complaint against the film\nwith UNESCO, calling it an attack on the historical identity of Iran. 300<\/em> has\nbeen called homophobic, racist, antidisability, tribalist, and militaristic. It\nis the film’s incipient fascism, however, that unites these tendencies\nwithin a unified ideology. 300<\/em> has been called \u201cthe ur-text of\nthe alt-right,\u201d \u201cHamilton<\/em> for neo-fascists,\u201d and \u201cour Birth\nof a Nation<\/em>\u201d (Breihan\n2017<\/a>). New York Post<\/em> critic Kyle\nSmith (2007)<\/a> writes that the film would have pleased \u201cAdolph’s boys,\u201d\nwhile Slate’<\/em>s Dana\nStevens (2008)<\/a> compares the film to the Nazi racist screed, The\nEternal Jew<\/em> (Fritz Hippler, 1940).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are these charges of fascism fair? And should we take the sociopolitical and ethical experience offered by such an action\/adventure fantasy seriously? This article will argue in the affirmative for both questions. Yet these charges of fascism are easily made, and this article goes beyond that to attempt to understand some of what makes fascist ideology, in a story format, attractive to many audiences. To do this, I will first discuss fascist art generally, then I will examine the moods and emotions that 300<\/em> attempts to elicit through the viewing of the film and in support of the fascist ideology that it exhibits. I call this \u201cfascist affect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read the full article on BerghahnJournals.com. <\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Understanding Fascism<\/a><\/em> is a series of excerpts from titles published by Berghahn Books clarifying what fascism is and how it functions in the modern world. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpted from Carl Plantinga\u2019s \u201cFascist Affect in 300,\u201d in Projections 13(2), 20-37.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":15726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1462],"tags":[1477,1474,2054,1220,1167,1463,1475,2053,177,255,103,1476,1466],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15757"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15791,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15757\/revisions\/15791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}