It's my first day back at school and the printers won't print, I had to climb under yellow CAUTION tape to get to the seventh floor Beit Midrash and my teachers decided to give us major extensions for both of the papers I was worried about. So at least that last is a pleasant development.
On that note, my English teacher continues to be fabulously entertaining. In class today:
"You have all these mad words flying around your head and then you use them inappropriately in conversation and alienate people. Or at least I do that."
And then:
"This isn't like the Persian court in the movie 300 where they are all walking around naked and smoking hookah. Xerxes is fabulous in that movie; he's this incredibly gay guy with piercings who walks around naked half the time. There's this exoticism to the movie...yes, and then there are the half-naked women kissing each other.
[pause]
Oh, is this okay? Is it okay to mention hookah, naked people or lesbians in class? Did I say something (he winks) naughty?
[pause]
It's really kind of a hateful, frightening movie- so much ideology in it- it's almost fascist."
I'm so seeing 300.
I actually thought that much of the ideology in the movie was something many of us could use today... It's definitely worth seeing, whatever your opinion is!
ReplyDeleteI saw 300 on the plane on the way back to israel (well most of it, except for the parts that i had issues watching.. so i don't know exactly what went on in the persian court -- whatever it was isn't a tenth of what it probably should have been.)
ReplyDeletewhat struck me was mainly what struck me in Gladiator, that hollywood doesn't get avodah zarah--they make it seem as cold and dead as american christianity. As much as they worked in 300 to give it a little more flavor, (from what i did see, it's more like a NiN/Marilyn Manson/[insert other current equivalent] video) which is most likely thanks to frank miller and nothing to do w/ hollywood, they're concept of religion is a dead and lifeless one.
otherwise the messages were barely veiled political commentary + americana (the highly fictionalized watered-down highschool sort -- kinda disney/singapore in it's detachment from reality)
[sorry if i'm hating on american culture so much. i still haven't worked out all its influences on me.]
Yitz:
ReplyDeleteIt's ok. I saw the same things as you politically. The war between the Greco-Roman West and the Persian East is still going on today. I found it very applicable to a view of modern society.
I found it interesting that the movie came out just as things started heating up more with Iran. I was somewhat afraid it was going to be a propaganda piece, in that it was somewhat fascist and is a very popular movie.
I get a little worried when I hear people say how awesome it was, without any reservations on their part.
Oh...another point I failed to mention.
ReplyDeleteView the west as the Greeks for a while. Then view the west as the Persians for a while. It's an interesting comparison.
Just which side is which?