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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
 Posted - 05/28/2007 : 9:42:42 PM
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But it does make for interesting conversation. And I know I've learned something from this.
Well, I should say I've had my prior convictions strengthened.
The movie actually does a pretty good job of illustrating the more advanced and modern society and government system of the Greeks versus the Persians.
Notice that Leonidas is restrained from just declaring war? It is not his decision alone to make. He has to get consensus. Permission even. He does not have absolute power and must get the permission of elected officials in order to get things done.
Those of us living in constitutional democracies must be so used to that sort of thing that we didn't really notice it in the movie. How else do we explain Asta Kask's contention that Spartans "loathed democracy and individualism"?
One cannot conceive of a Babylonian king like Xerxes thus constrained. In the Eastern mold, he was an absolute ruler and answered to nobody. Least of all "elected" officials. And they were still living that way in "Babylon" up until a few years ago.
It seems that I have encountered a few modes of thought here.
One, that Europe and America as they are today was pretty much inevitable regardless of whether or not Greece survived and developed independently in order to pass it's traditions on to the Romans.
Such is not the case.
Two, the Greeks and the Persians were "morally equivalent". That it is "wrong" or "judgemental" to point out that Greek society had a lot more going for it than the Persians. As we can see from these instances of democracy and representative government, the Greeks were the future and the Persians, had they won, would've been a huge step backwards for Humanity as a whole.
One need only compare the civilization that came from the Greeks, western, to the societal legacy that traces back to Babylonian and "eastern" ways of thinking. The concept of women's rights alone should make this an easy choice for you.
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The Rev. D.D.
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
203 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2007 : 10:41:46 AM
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CDiehl--
The review of The Last Samurai is in the Nuggets section.
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This is The Rev. D.D. signing off and heading for the tub! |
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Asta Kask
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Sweden
263 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2007 : 11:43:02 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by CDiehl
Edit - About the thread title, I'm not sure how accurate it is to call 300 "a hymn to slavery." For one thing, while the society that's cast as the "good guys" have slavery, so do their enemies, so it's not exactly like the Battle of Gettysburg.
I agree that the title is harsh - but the Helots would probably have been freed. Divide and conquer...
I have to give you this as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWbD91urM-k
And of course, Leonidas will survive:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEz2Mc1Gg60
As for the Spartans' attitude to democracy - when they took Athens they certainly didn't keep democracy. They installed a tyranny that managed to kill about 10% of the population in 6 months...
- Who is John Galt? - |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2007 : 11:20:51 PM
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I wouldn't expect any ancient culture to establish a constitutional republic among an enemy country they had just vanquished. I am content to be thankful that democracy of any sort existed in ancient Greece. No such thing existed anywhere else in the world and current historians seem to have a difficult time explaining why it even surfaced there.
As far as I know, without getting too deep into minute research, the first nation to go out and defeat an enemy and then proceed to install democratic institutions would be the United States. Our most obvious instances being Germany and Japan, but even our "colony" of the Phillipines was electing it's own leaders prior to WWII.
Until the 20th Century, democracy was a very rare thing indeed. Democracies that would go out and "assist" other countries into becoming democracies...even rarer still. |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 05/30/2007 : 4:56:51 PM
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CDiehl
quote:
Edit - About the thread title, I'm not sure how accurate it is to call 300 "a hymn to slavery." For one thing, while the society that's cast as the "good guys" have slavery, so do their enemies, so it's not exactly like the Battle of Gettysburg.
The truth is that there were also slaves owned in the "free north" at the time.
I didn't think much of what little I saw of "The 300" (Previews, excerpts), and think that a better depiction can be found in "The 300 Spartans"(1962). It's more of a straight forward adventure/war story.
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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