Oedipus Pecs

I haven't seen 300, not for any particular reason beyond I'm not even sure what the last film I saw in theaters was. But not seeing a film has never stopped my from writing about it, so I was mighty intrigued when the Los Angeles Times today ran dueling think pieces about the film by Carina Chocano and Patrick Goldstein. Chocano got to a point that's driven me nuts for years (I taught college students, remember), that she put about as well as I've ever seen it:

The interesting question is how "entertainment" has come to be accepted as a valid, irreducible argument against interpretation; how, in a broader sense, the act of putting things in context has come to be seen as inherently suspect. Whether it's the attorney general claiming lack of clarity on the firings of U.S. attorneys, or a Lionsgate executive admitting mistakes were made regarding the torture billboards for Captivity pasted all over town, it seems that no connection is too clear, no cause and effect too obvious for shocked denial and feigned surprise not to be a viable option.

That's not to suggest that anything involving 300 exists on the same plane of importance — it's just a good example of a trend that would be funny if it weren't so insulting.

Exactly why is it that we as Americans assume the only way to be entertained is to stop thinking? You'd think we'd like to think, given for so many of us our jobs are about not thinking (there's a reason Office Space is a cult favorite you know). Even in creative jobs we generally are stuck hewing to a format or style or boss who knows so much better than we do (note: I do not work for such a boss anymore). So why can't our entertainment push us a bit? Isn't it fun to have to figure things out, puzzle connections, fill in artfully left behind blanks?

I guess not, for the usually wise Patrick Goldstein takes the "the adults don't get it" tack in his essay. To drive his point home he does this:

Critics are largely shaped by the aesthetic of the cinematic past, which is why you often get the feeling they've been dragged, kicking and screaming, into a new world they describe as coarser, more superficial and less intellectually stimulating than the golden age of their moviegoing youth.

The complaints are almost always the same. "It's an epic without a dream," said one critic. "The loudness, the smash-and-grab editing, and the relentless pacing drive every idea from your head, and even if you've been entertained, you may feel cheated of some dimension — a sense of wonder, perhaps." Those words were written 30 years ago by Pauline Kael, reviewing Star Wars.

Nothing like trotting out the much reviled den mother of many critics still today--after all, her acolytes get called Paulettes--to prove how stuffy and behind the times those of us who can't just go with the flow are. (And it's taken 30 years for Kael to become a symbol of the stodgy--good things she's dead and doesn't have to hear such claptrap.) Goldstein then goes on to quote the film's director:

[Zack] Snyder has learned that film is a subliminal art, in the sense that he uses his visuals to supply the film's emotional underpinning. In 300, the sky is always dark and unsettled, as if to signal the bitter bloodshed to come. "We tried to make the sky reflect the emotion in the movie, which you can't do in a regular movie," he says. "That's what is great about this kind of green-screen filmmaking. It's not just the actors who matter. Every element in the frame supports the emotion of the moment."

First, it seems neither Goldstein nor Snyder have learned that the pathetic fallacy has been part of art way before moving pictures were a twinkle in Edison's eye. Second, are you trying to tell me no filmmaker before Zack Snyder has used every element in a frame to support the emotion of a moment? Did someone drop Andre Bazin in shoes lined with mise en scene cement into the Mariana Trench when I wasn't looking?

Or perhaps the key is the word "emotions." Snyder doesn' want you to think about 300, he wants the grunting animal brain at the top of your spine to go "WEEEEE!" And sure that "WEEEEE!" is us--to the tune of $129.2 million in just 10 days--but let's hope it's not all of us, and I don't mean that as something snooty and exclusive. I just want the rest of our brains to have something to do, too.