300: I'm not sure what made me more uncomfortable, the homophobia or the homoeroticism

Wow, 300 was one awesome mess of a movie. I still can't quite get my head around it.

I'd like to begin by covering the awesomeness because it's pretty straight forward. The movie is about King Leonidas (played by Gerard Butler who you may remember not seeing in The Phantom of the Opera) who leads his army of only eighteen hundred abs against millions of Persians. The battle scenes are great with slow motion Matrix-style shots and limbs flying everywhere. It's also got demon warriors, a giant god-king and so many decapitations that I lost count. It's total eye-candy and a lot of fun.

The problem arises when you try to think what the movie is trying to say which is pretty much inevitable when you watch a war movie that was made while we're at war and especially when the bad guys are from the country that we're at war with.

So, you've got the white Spartans starting a war with Persia basically because Leonidas doesn't want to bother with diplomatic relations (I suppose you can argue about who actually started the war but Leonidas totally kills that Persian messenger before any Persians have a chance to kill white people). Clearly this guy's got some George W. Bush overtones, I mean he talks about freedom a lot. Then that means that the Arcadians are the British and the Spartan council is the Democrats . . . and then Theron is Nancy Pelosi?

That makes the Persian leader, Xerxes, Saddam Hussein, because he's trying to take away our freedom. Actually, Xerxes is a really tall god-king so maybe if you take the religious aspect into account he's really Osama bin Laden. Then again, aren't those guys both kind of old news, maybe 300 is looking to the future which would make Xerxes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After all, the Persian Empire included Iraq but it was really based out of what is now Iran.

Unless I've got the whole thing backwards. The Persian Empire was the closest thing the world had to a superpower, so that would make them the U.S. Then the vastly outnumbered Spartans would be the Iraqi insurgency, the Arcadians are al-Qaeda and the Athenians are the Kurds.

Or maybe I'm just completely off the mark. Xerxes is referred to as "The King of Kings" and "The Lord of Hosts" and he's willing to accept lepers and the deformed into his tent unlike the Spartans who throw babies that are too small into a death pit. So, I guess that would make Xerxes Jesus? (By the way, I know it's a controversial issue but I feel that I have to go on record as saying that I think these "fourth trimester" or "post-birth" abortions are wrong and I'm sorry if that offends any of you).

I really have no idea what this movie is supposed to mean, but I can tell you that the bad guys look like a lot more fun than the good guys. I know we're supposed to root for the Spartans, but these guys just seem kinda lame. I feel like if you asked one of these dudes to have a beer with you he'd tell you that he should probably get home so he could get a good night's sleep because he needs to wake up before dawn to start his work-out. I bet Xerxes and his rainbow coalition of lesbians and the physically imperfect threw the kind of parties that wouldn't be seen again until Studio 54 hit it's heyday.


So, is that supposed to be Cheney?