{"id":1382,"date":"2007-03-07T13:57:38","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T18:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/not-just-tan-spartan\/"},"modified":"2007-03-07T13:59:37","modified_gmt":"2007-03-07T18:59:37","slug":"not-just-tan-spartan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/not-just-tan-spartan","title":{"rendered":"Not just tan: Spartan"},"content":{"rendered":"

In keeping with my inner classics-geek of that previous post, here’s Victor Davis Hanson on 300<\/a>, the movie adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic book<\/a>\"\" about the battle of Thermopylae:<\/p>\n

[T]he impressionism of 300 is Hellenic in spirit: its buff bare chests are reminiscent of the heroic nudity of warriors on Attic vase paintings. Even in its surrealism — a rhinoceros, futuristic swords, and an effeminate, Mr. Clean-esque Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) who gets his ear flicked by a Spartan spear cast — it is not all that different from some of Euripides\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 wilder takes, like Helen<\/em> or Iphigeneia at Taurus<\/em>, in their strange deviation from the party line of the Homeric epics. Like the highly formalist Attic tragedy — with its set length, three actors, music, iambic and choral meters, and so forth — 300<\/em> consciously abandons realist portrayal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t remember a ton of the comic book. The one time I read it, I was at a friend’s house in Auckland, NZ, trying desperately to stay awake till nightfall, so as not to get wrecked by jetlag. Fortunately, he was one of the greatest cartoonists in the antipodes, and had a room full of comics that I hadn’t read.<\/p>\n

And, yes, I’m thinking of catching 300<\/a> at the local IMAX. Sue me.<\/p>\n

(Here are some terrible pix<\/a> from the premiere.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In keeping with my inner classics-geek of that previous post, here’s Victor Davis Hanson on 300, the movie adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic book about the battle of Thermopylae: [T]he impressionism of 300 is Hellenic in spirit: its buff bare chests are reminiscent of the heroic nudity of warriors on Attic vase paintings. Even in … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Not just tan: Spartan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,4,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-literature","category-politics-implicit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-mi","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1437,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lazy-sunday","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":0},"title":"Lazy Sunday","author":"Gil","date":"April 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a quiet Sunday here at Chez VM. Well, it was louder earlier in the day, when I was shredding bills and records as part of the process of rearranging my home office. The process started when I bought a new desk on Wednesday, replacing the two tables that occupied\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1385,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/hot-gates-hot-box-office","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":1},"title":"Hot Gates, Hot Box Office?","author":"Gil","date":"March 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was going to mark-out for 300, and that Amy & I would likely go catch it this weekend at the local IMAX, so as to get the full theme-park experience of Thermopylae on a giant screen. This morning, I went online and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":291,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/funny-books","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":2},"title":"Funny Books","author":"Gil","date":"July 15, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Really long article on comics, by Charles McGrath in the New York Times. Oh, wait. It's about graphic novels, not comics. My bad. It actually has some good points about the narrative form, and some neat comments from cartoonists. It doesn't really get into the finances of the business, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2131,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/long-and-vending-road","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":3},"title":"Long and Vending Road","author":"Gil","date":"July 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was a kid, my family took roadtrips down to Disney World around Thanksgiving. We rolled down the highway in a Country Squire station wagon, and I recall our two big stops being Pedro's South of the Border, where we bought fireworks, and one of the highway rest areas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5194,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/funny-books-2","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":4},"title":"Funny books","author":"Gil","date":"April 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"During the height of the finance boom, I was able to get paid $375 per hour \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and a minimum of three hours \u00e2\u20ac\u201d by investment groups that wanted my advice about pharmaceutical facility acquisitions. I knew then that banks were going to implode. 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Plumb the depths of the Unrequired Reading archives . . . if you dare!)","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}