James Nicoll takes a sadistic pleasure in inflicting reactionary crybaby rants by once respected writers on his readers, so it’s no wonder I first Frank Miller’s grandpa Simpson’s rant about Occupy Wall Street there. It’s bad:
The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.
The only thing missing there are the whores, whores whores.
We really shouldn’t be surprised at Miller’s sentiments. He’s not just another supposed liberal driven loony by the September 11 attacks, but somebody who has built his career on writing increasingly outlandish rightwing revenge fantasies. Daredevil, Elektra, Batman: Year One, Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns, 300: none of these are leftwing stories are they? Not that they weren’t good rightwing revenge fantasies, but they did sort of indicate a mind not welcoming to leftwing shenanigans like the Occupy movement.
Therefore, should this rant matter for your enjoyment of Frank Miller’s …unique… brand of comics? Of course not. You knew what you were getting with Miller before: to get outraged now is a bit too late. Apart from that, this Randy Milholand Something Positive strip has it covered.
Jack Crow
November 13, 2011 at 2:40 pmI just finished reading about that. He’s always been this way? Explains the overt fascism of the Dark Knight reboots.
Robert
November 13, 2011 at 8:14 pmDavid Brin’s got a nice rant up about that, too. There’s bits of the Thermopylae story I’d never heard before, like the other folks at the battle. Never been terribly interested in it, so never sought more than the usual textbook accounts, which neglect to mention:
Even when it comes to the Battle of Thermopylae itself, “300” tells outright lies. For example, 1,000 Artemesians refused to leave their comrades at the end. They stayed in the pass and died next to Leonidas’s 300 Spartans. More shopkeepers. Their valor was inconvenient to Miller’s narrative, So he just wrote them out. Worse, he slandered them, depicting them running away.
Oh, remember those helots? As slavemasters, Spartans made the later Romans seem positively goody-two-shoes, by comparison. In his book and movie “300” Frank Miller never shows the two thousand helot luggage-bearers who Leonidas’s gang of bullies whipped before them into the pass at Thermopylae, carrying their masters’ gear and food and wine and shields.
Where were those slaves during the battle? Why, in the front line! Handed spears but no armor, they slowed down the Persians with their bodies, then made the ground conveniently slippery with their blood. Huh, funny how that got left out! I’m sure it was just an oversight.
But the worst slander of all is one of glaring, outrageous omission and tunnel vision. It is what “300” might have shown happening just offstage, simply by turning the camera! Indeed, Leonidas could see it with his own eyes, in plain view throughout the fight, if only he chose to swivel his head. (Alas, Frank Miller doesn’t let him turn, in the comic and film.)
The Athenian navy, hard-pressed and outnumbered, guarding his flank in the nearby Artemisium Straits. Again, a citizen militia of fishermen, merchants, blacksmiths and philosophers, they too were at Thermopylae! A few miles out to sea, they battled odds no less desperate than Leonidas faced, without the convenient cliff and wall, against vastly superior Persian forces. Only with this one important difference.
Where Leonidas failed to hold for more that a day or so, the Athenians kept firm! They only retreated when the Spartans let them down!
The commander of that brave flotilla, Themistocles, is a hero far more in keeping with American traditions. A Washington-like commander who makes good use of volunteers – plus new technology and brains – to stave off hordes of arrogant, professional conquerors. Less interested in pompous bragging and macho preening, he cared about his men, striving to achieve both victory and survival. He despised “bold gestures.” What mattered were results. Saving his country. His civilization. His men.
Forced to give way when Leonidas failed to hold a narrow pass, the Athenians kept up a fighting retreat, survived the burning of their city, (where their courageous women handled a skillful evacuation)… till Themistocles finally drew the vast Persian navy into a trap at a little island called Salamis… glorious Salamis…
…where outnumbered Athenians utterly crushed their Persian foe, sending Xerxes fleeing for his life. THAT was what saved Greece, not futile boasting and choreographed prancing on the bluffs of Thermopylae. (And again, what a movie someone might make out of the true story!)