Month: March 2007

300 – Movie Commentary

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

-Dream, in Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night’s Dream"

[Spoiler Alert:  If you’re looking forward to seeing 300 for the first time, you may not want to read any of what follows.  If however, you’re reluctant to go because the trailers make it look like a bit of a freak show, then this post may change your mind.]

Read a lot of reviews about 300 before seeing it a week ago, many of them rather foolish.  Frank Miller, writer of the graphic novel, is on record as saying that he was trying to mythologize the battle, rather than retell it in a historically-accurate manner.  On that basis, it seems a bit besides the point to complain about historical inaccuracies, gargantuan rhinos and Persians by the way of Mordor.

And yet, when I first saw the movie a week ago, my feelings were mixed.  Sure, there were a lot of great images and battle sequences, but the rational mind still couldn’t help but get in the way.  What ABOUT all of those historical inaccuracies, gargantuan rhinos and Persians straight out of the land of Mordor?

My reaction was quite different upon a second viewing last night.  Because it was then that it sunk in more clearly that the events were being narrated by a one-eyed man in front of a campfire.  The narrator is Dilios, the sole Spartan survivor of the battle.  King Leonidas has chosen him to return to Sparta as a messenger of the battle’s outcome – not because of any ocular injury, but because Dilios is blessed with a gift with words that is almost unique among his people.  (Spartans were so well-known for their curt manner of speech that our word "laconic" is derived from the geographical part of the Peloponnese in which the Spartans lived.)

By the film’s conclusion, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place.  The entire movie is nothing more than Dilios’ speech before the Battle of Plataea.  So what we, the audience, have just witnessed for the last few hours is not a literal account, but Miller’s attempt to imagine how a Greek storyteller, circa 479 B.C., would have told it.  It’s a fish story, a tall tale, a wildly-exaggerated war story.  As Greek myths usually are.

No self-respecting Greek storyteller would ever tell of a hero-king who as a boy once killed a mangy wolf half-starved with hunger and injured from being driven away from its pack by the others.  No, it’s got to be 8 feet long, with fangs of black steel and eyes that glow like hot coals.  That’s the way myths work.

Whether it actually happened or not is completely irrelevant.  What matters is that it’s an allegory that foreshadows the main event that follows.  Storytellers love that kind of stuff.  Even baby Hercules got his start by strangling Hera’s serpents in his crib.

Likewise, the priests responsible for not giving the hero-king the aid he needed can’t be otherwise decent, ordinary clerics.  No, they’ve got to be grotesque, misshapen mutants from the Forbidden Zone, who satisfy their obscene desires with the beautiful, drugged-out maidens entrusted to their care.  Moreover, their opposition couldn’t have been because of an honest, yet benighted, zeal for religious law and custom.  No, they were black-hearted traitors – in the pay of the Great King himself!

I could go on.  The movie’s name should have been 1000, since 700 Thespians (not actors, but inhabitants of the democratic town of Thespia) were present.  But our Spartan storyteller can’t resist the urge to claim the glory – ALL the glory – for his fallen comrades.  In fairness, a Thespian bard might have jealously done the same.  Because to the ancient Greeks, winning eternal glory for one’s name was everything.  Rally round boys, and dream of the fame you may win in the battle to come!  If you’re lucky, you might meet and kill a strange behemoth from a foreign land.  Don’t think it can’t be done.  Why, didn’t I tell you that one of the brave 300 even felled a gargantuan rhino (remember that improbable creature?) with a single throw of his spear?

The enemy’s number is vast.  They’re fearsome, but not immortal.  At their head is the Great King, who commands and ensorcells them with his spell-binding voice, which is almost supernaturally compelling.  He’s more than a man – 10 feet tall – I saw him myself.*  But he may also be…LESS than a man, if you know what I mean.

You may have heard before that he fancies himself a god.  Funny thing though.  He bleeds just like the rest of us.

* Our Spartan storyteller of course exaggerates much, though it’s not clear if he’s even aware of it.

I experienced a similar phenomenon once several years ago, while driving through a rural area at 55 mph late at night.  In the darkness, a huge ghostly grey wolf, or giant dog, suddenly appeared in my headlights.  Its eyes glowed, though my 20th Century mind knew that was merely because the light was reflecting from the back of its retinas.

There was no time to react.  To my horror, it was run down instantly with a sickening thud.  There was nothing I could have done.  Pulling off the road, I weighed the possibilities.  If it was a wolf, I had just killed an animal that was endangered or threatened in the part of the country I was in.  On the other hand, if it was a dog, then I had probably killed some farmer’s poor animal.  (Sorry environmentalists, but the thought that I might have killed some child’s beloved pet is what distressed me the most.)

Fetching a flashlight from the glove compartment, I walked up and down the section of road I had just traveled.  But the carcass of no wolf or great dane could I find.  In its stead was only the bloody, lifeless body of a small red fox.

My imagination, in that split-second in the car, had inflated a puny little fox into a huge, preternatural wolf.  So it doesn’t surprise me that that in the frenzy of combat – with spears stabbing, weapons slashing – that a Spartan fearing for his life might perceive an attacker as a needle-toothed goblin instead of an ordinary, all-too human, man.

POSTSCRIPT:  It was telling that during one of the final scenes, when the Persians have surrounded the brave 300, and are drawing their lethal arrows upon them, that a Taiwanese sitting beside me blurted out, "Zhong guo ren" (The Chinese).

Interesting.

UPDATE (May 30/07):  On the subject of fish stories, I was recently reminded of "The War of the Simpsons," episode, which concludes when a bait shop owner is asked if anyone has ever caught a giant local catfish nicknamed "General Sherman":

Well, one fella came close.  Went by the name of Homer.  Seven feet tall he was, with arms like tree trunks.  And his eyes were like steel, cold and hard.  Had a shock of hair – red.  Like the fires of Hell.

Homer_simpson_2
Xerxes_2

(Images from Filmthreat.studiostore.com and Devir.com)

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On The Sunny Side Of The Street

I’m not going to heap scorn upon this China Post editorial.  Because there are days when I, too, think things might work out for the best in the Middle Kingdom:

Today’s communist leaders in China are pragmatists, who believes in Deng Xiaoping’s "cat theory" of getting results rather than Mao Zedong’s egalitarianism of glorifying poverty on an equal footing. The merit of the law should be judged by the answer to a single question: Do the people want it?

But the mainland people may want more-free elections, free press and independent courts, for example. Clearly, the National People’s Congress is in no hurry to work on these political reforms, which are lagging far behind. These are the reforms that can best safeguard against the abuse of power by corrupt officials. So, after property reform, political reform must be on the agenda.

Already, grassroots pressure for such reform is mounting. The rising middle class and increasingly well-educated people will demand political reforms that are now put on the back burner. If the past is an indication, we have reasons to be optimistic that such reforms will be carried out in another decade or two, if not sooner.

China’s communists may be more pragmatic than they once were, but is that pragmatism directed at doing what’s good for their country, or merely doing whatever allows them to hold their positions of power and privilege?  A selfless utilitarian might, out of a sense of pragmatism, be willing to allow himself to be voted out of office in order to better serve the needs of society.  But communist oligarchs obsessed with clinging to power may be much less inclined to do so.

Furthermore, while I agree that the well-educated will demand political reforms, it is not at all inevitable that they will succeed in getting these demands met.  Tienanmen Square happened once, and it can happen again.  And again and again.  Heinlein once depicted a society whose subjects were completely co-opted by a fascist state; they were perfectly free to make all the money they wanted, and as long they tended to their own gardens, the State was content to leave them alone.  The Federation was unapologetically brutal to those who dared meddle in politics, however.

"Starship Troopers" may have been fiction, but a few societies HAVE paralleled it in real-life.  Could China take that path as well?  I wonder…

There ARE indeed hopeful developments in China, but there are others the sober observer cannot ignore.  The creation of the "Great Firewall", continuing persecution against certain religious minorities, a blithely amoral foreign policy – these are all things that suggest China might be moving in a darker direction.

To this list, I might add China’s treatment of the free and democratic state of Taiwan.  A few years ago, a Taiwanese industrialist doing business there was threatened, with tax audits and overzealous safety inspections, into signing a document declaring his "opposition" to Taiwanese independence.  It was only last year that Chinese arm-twisting caused an airplane carrying Taiwan’s president to be forbidden from flying over Mexican airspace.  And let it not be forgotten that China currently aims a thousand missiles at Taiwan, in an effort to terrorize the population into submission. 

Taiwan is the canary in the coal mine, and how China treats it should be of interest to everyone.  Today, it’s Taiwanese industrialists who are being bullied into taking political stances; tomorrow, it may be businessmen from YOUR country.  Today, China prevents Taiwan’s president from freely traveling; tomorrow, it may prevent the president of some other democratic country it’s displeased with from doing so.

And the missiles?  Well, TODAY they, and other weapons, are targeted upon Taiwan.  And tomorrow?  Well, by now I hope you’ve gotten the picture.

Get Up And ‘Go’

How can anyone resist this?  A Taiwanese kid is taunted and bullied by schoolmates because of the port-wine stain that covers nearly a quarter of his face.  He discovers a board game, Go, and practices relentlessly.  At age 27, he wins a world championship, and a short children’s version of his autobiography becomes part of the educational curriculum.

It’d be nice to think that his life story would both inspire kids to reach their potential, as well as teach them to show some humanity towards their fellows.  Yeah, it’d sure be nice.

UPDATE (Apr 1/07):  And now…the OTHER side of the story:

His father was a stern teacher. Whenever Chou lost a game he received severe punishment from his father.

Lovely man.

He’s Not Dead, Ma – He’s Just Sleeping.

So my gray-haired old mother called me the other day, and somewhere between telling me the weekly weather forecast and her menu plans for the next few days, she mentioned this story:

Rat poison found in US pet food

Now, Mom happens to own a (live) pooch of her own, so it’s hard for me to know if she’s exaggerating the scale of the story.  Nevertheless, she tells me that a few wealthy people lost dogs to the dog food in question, and that these are the kind of people who can afford expensive attorneys.

The China angle here is that the rat poison may have come from adulterated wheat gluten from the Middle Kingdom.  And that’s maybe not great PR for the Chinese right now, what with their big trade surpluses and all.

UPDATE (Apr 6/07):  Earlier this week, it was determined that the contaminant was not rat poison, but melamine, a chemical sometimes found in Asian fertilizers.  In addition, there are suspicions that hundreds of dogs may have died, although there are only 15 confirmed cases so far.  American imports of wheat gluten from the Chinese company in question have been suspended.

UPDATE (Apr 21/07):  There may only be 15 CONFIRMED cases, but statisticians now say that 39,000 cats and dogs became sick or died from the poisoned pet food.

Heaven, I’m In Heaven

I like Taiwan, but confess I’ve never heard it compared to ‘paradise’ before:

"What we want [in Hong Kong] is one person, one vote. But [current Chief Executive Donald Tsang] criticized us, saying that is a dream that can only be found in paradise. According to his logic, the people of Taiwan are all in the paradise," [said Emily Lau, the chairwoman of a Hong Kong pro-democracy party.]  "Hong Kong cannot compare with Taiwan in this regard."

UPDATE (Apr 6/07):  A good column on the Hong Kong "election" can be found here.

The Problem With Lists

Last week a Taiwanese nationalist found Chiang Kai-shek in a book listing the 100 most evil dictators of all time, and said something a bit foolish:

"[Since Chiang is on this list,] from the perspective of foreign academics, Chiang, Mussolini and Hitler were equally cruel."

Um, no.  I could come up with a list of my 100 most favorite foods, and would probably like numbers 79 and 84 equally well.  But I’m reasonably certain that I’d prefer #1 to #84.

Sorry, Chiang may have been bad, but he wasn’t Hitler.  It’s not even close.

Prison Term Looms After Militant Chiu Yi Loses Appeal

Back in 2004, Chinese Nationalist Party legislator Chiu Yi decided to contest a narrow presidential election in Taiwan by standing atop a truck with a bullhorn, and ordering it to crash through a police barricade around a courthouse in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung.

Oddly enough though, Taiwan’s China Post neglects to mention that, saying only that Chiu tried to "break into" the building with a mob.  The Post then mentions the aftermath:

Eight police guards were injured in a melee that followed.

No, not exactly.  At least ONE policeman was injured when the truck smashed into the barricade, not from any melee that happened afterwards.  He was led away in agony with a sprained (or broken?) arm – I saw the tape.

That’s assault with a motor vehicle, in my book.

KMT To CPC: Kidnap And Murder Taiwan’s President; We Don’t Mind

Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party bellyaches about military evacuation drills for the President in case the Communist Party of China orders a decapitation strike:

"The military wasted money just to create a war nightmare to impress upon the people the possibility of the enemy at the door before the two important elections," [KMT legislator Lin Yu-fang] charged.

If I recall correctly, the military undertakes these drills about once a year, so the charge that this is something new to influence elections is a bit hollow.  The Taiwanese can sleep well knowing the KMT takes their country’s security so seriously.

UPDATE (Apr 15/07):  There was an air-raid drill in northern Taiwan on Apr 10th at about 2 pm, which lasted about a half hour.  In my place of employment, we were told to turn out the lights and close the curtains.  Naturally, the KMT complained that that, too, was an election gimmick.

Japan Wins Taiwanese Hearts And Minds

So I read that Taiwan has at least 5 Japanese-inspired restaurants featuring waitresses clad in French maid outfits.  And the waitresses greet guests with a curtsy and a, "Welcome home, master."

That just beats the HECK out of China’s panda offer.  And it’s further proof that the West is falling SERIOUSLY behind Taiwan in some of the finer amenities of civilization.