Created by Jacqueline Cudworth April 22, 2007 Masculinity in Literature Media Project

1. Trailer Created by Jacqueline Cudworth April 22, 2007 Masculinity in Literature Media Project Raritan Valley Community College

2. A surprise runaway success --- WHY is it so successful? Because it has: Powerful Multi-layered appeal that speaks to many audiences and in particular many masculinities. 300 Box Office Gross since March 9, 2007 (7 weeks) Domestic: $206,905,000 48.8 % Foreign: $217,100,000 51.2 % Worldwide: $424,005,000 (Japan opening June 9th) Production Budget: $65 million http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=300.htm In spite of the issues relative to: racism, sexism and homophobia as well as historical inaccuracy the movie has been charged with by some reviewers. Box Office Mojo

3. WHY is it so successful? Because it has: Powerful Multi-layered appeal that speaks to many audiences and in particular many masculinities. • Comic Book/Graphic Novel Audience • Visually Stunning/operatic • Almost exact translation from book to film • Muscle Packed Action Heroes • Myth and Archetypes • Kimmel’s “4 rules of masculinity” • Katz’s “Tough Guise” • Separate Spheres and ‘Boy Culture’ (Rotundo) • Christian Audiences • Christ-like temptation and sacrifice • Muscular Christianity (Putney) • Wife/Girlfriend Acceptance • Gay Audiences

4. Graphic Novel Audience: Visually stunning. Portrayed almost exactly from the book. Dark, dramatic and visually gripping, more opera than drama. Solace in Cinema 300-comic-to-screen-comparison

5. King Leonidas(and the Spartans) embody “four basic rules” of masculinity (Michael Kimmel ): King Leonidas – “a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful” (Young). 1. No Sissy Stuff. Masculinity is based on the relentless repudiation of the feminine. (Ripped masculine beauty, warrior culture) 2. Be a Big Wheel. Masculinity is measured by the size of your paycheck, and marked by wealth, power and status. As a US bumper sticker put it: ‘He who has the most toys when he dies, wins.’ (He’s the King, he’s got his own private army) 3. Be a Sturdy Oak. What makes a man a man is that he is reliable in a crisis. And what makes him reliable in a crisis is that he resembles an inanimate object. A rock, a pillar, a tree. (He is stoic and leads by example.) 4. Give ’em Hell. Exude an aura of daring and aggression. Take risks; live life on the edge. (Stands against overwhelming odds, search for Glorious death.) Clips Glorious Death Give them hell -Come and Get them...

6. Leonidas as a combined model of American Masculinity: Genteel Patriarch and Heroic Artisan "Genteel Patriarch" --- devoted family men, caring, sensuous, refined, and sophisticated, and "Heroic Artisan" ---craftsman, or artisan who proclaimed his economic autonomy and political citizenship as a "son of liberty" during the Revolution (and including its later evolution as a cowboy --- “Cowboy” ---Kimmel notes Worster about the cowboy: “His virtues are artesian virtues: “self-discipline, unswerving purpose, the exercise of knowledge, skill, ingenuity, and excellent judgment; and a capacity to continue in the face of total exhaustion and overwhelming odds. He is free, in a free country, embodying republican virtue and autonomy” (32)---again tough, independent, own code, etc. This combination results in a skilled, strong, powerful, selfless, chaste, fearless, and patriotic man; a hardworking patriot whose physical labor is an art as well as a product, which in this case, is the Spartan warrior.

7. Fighting for Freedom Son’s of Liberty XERXES: There will be no glory in your sacrifice. I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories. The world will never know you existed, at all.LEONIDAS: The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle was over that even a god-king can bleed. (Foreshadows Leonidas’s blooding of him at the end of the film) Clips Lay down your weapons We will fight in the shade

8. Tough Guise/ Real Man (Katz ) Blood - Gore – Action (Director, Zack Snyder: “I really just wanted to make a movie that is a ride”) • Tough – Strong (Joins a long list of hypermasculine testosterone soaked action movies, Gladiator, Braveheart, Troy, Rambo, Terminator, etc.) Emphasis on: • Athletic, Physical prowess • Strength, • Toughness • Smart, Independent Clips This is Sparta! Training Video

9. Narrator: Fight Club Gerard Butler: Actor 300 You aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at fight club.... Fight club isn't about winning or losing fights.  Fight club isn't about words.  You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread.  You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood.  This guy trusts himself to handle anything. There's grunting and noise at fight club like at the gym, but fight club isn't about looking good.  There's hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved.” (Chapter 6). Those were really your abs in the film? GB: Yeah, I tried to borrow someone else's, but they wouldn't give them up. That was seven months of training. There was always a part of me going, 'Okay, am I going to stop doing this?' But I really was really kind of happy and surprised that I kept it up. I kind of became, I think, a bit addicted to it or perhaps addicted to the advantages it was giving me. Because after a certain point, I never once felt silly or strange standing in my cape, that started to become, just a couple of days after putting it on, one of my biggest allies. Wearing that costume and feeling so strong and that your body was an intimidating factor and an inspiring factor for your army, as we all were. I mean, you're surrounded by probably a few tons of muscle, and when you pull that together and pull that spirit together and have nothing but focus and belief and pure intention... the power of that! You become a thousand times stronger. It actually makes sense that you could hold off an invading army that doesn't have that belief, that are in disarray, that you could hold them off quite easily. Clip Spartan Warrior class

10. Similarity of mindset • Both were speaking about the immense feeling of self-confidence and power their individual fitness delivered to them, alone and in competition. • A feeling so strong they felt empowered to tackle almost anything. • Both also mentioned how empowering it was to be part of a brotherhood that was characterized by this strength.

11. Separate Spheres and ‘Boy Culture’ (Rotundo) • Spartan boys upbringing reflects some similarities with 19th Century “Boy Culture” due to the strict separate spheres of Spartan society ---yet Spartan society boys did not lose the intergenerational influence (more like Heroic Artisan period of pre-industrial society) • Hierarchical society with a member’s status dependent on: • Mastery: Set tasks and goals for themselves which required discipline in order to complete. • Self-control • Competitive activity, direct confrontation • Physical challenges. • Sometimes brutally violent and physically aggressive where one could hurt and be hurt. • The boy fought for a place in the gang’s inner circle, through competition and loyalty, hoping to win admiration and respect.

12. Christian Audience • Xerxes temptation of Leonidas (Satan's temptation of Christ) Xerxes: Your Athenian rivals will kneel at your feet... if you but kneel at mine. Leonidas: That is quite an offer. Only a mad man would refuse it. But this kneeling business... I'm afraid killing all those slaves of yours has left me with a nasty cramp in my leg.

13. Christian Audience • Leonidas as a Christ figure altruistically dieing as a sacrifice to save Greece (Western World.) • Remember me (“He did not wish tribute, nor song, or monuments or poems of war and valor. His wish was simple. "Remember us" he said to me, that was his hope, should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be. "May all our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones, go tell a Spartans' passerby, that here by Spartan law, we lie.”) Clip Remember me

14. Muscular Christianity Sought to reconcile the Greek ideal of manliness with piety. Athletics held the key to healthy, moral bodies. 'A healthy body equals a healthy mind'; (Spartan tough preparation to be a warrior “the power of the savage” from age 7 on.) Ugliness, defect/weakness of body or disease; was considered by some indications of moral degeneracy (a rather repugnant idea and shown in the film with Ephialtes a ‘defective’ Spartan who is allowed to live (because his parents are weak) and then grows up to betray his people.) While in times of relative peace, the factory could be the working man's battlefield; when under threat, more bloody combat was demanded, therefore a man had to be prepared to fight.

15. Wife/Girlfriend appeal • Love, Sex, Empowered women • Consumate love: A nexus of passion, intimacy and commitment. A partner who is not merely an object of desire and sexual passion, but also one who shares intimacy borne of friendship, caring, closeness, and connectedness, and one that inspires a conscious decision to share that person’s life in commitment. • Empowered women: Gorgo’s speech to the council and avenging herself on Theron. • Balanced relationship: Leonidas seeks and accepts Gorgo’s council. Queen's speech before the council Clip

16. Wife/Girlfriend appeal Gorgo: Has the oracle robbed you of your desires as well? Leonidis: It would take more than the words of a drunken adolescent girl to rob me of my desire for you.Gorgo: Then why so distant?Leonidis: Because it seems that though a slave, captured by lecherous old men, the oracle's words can set fire to all that I love.Gorgo: And that is why my king loses sleep and is forced from the warmth of his bed?Leonidis: Then what must a king do to save his world, when the very laws he has sworn to protect force him to do nothing. Gorgo : It is not a question about what a Spartan citizen should do, or a husband, or a king. Instead ask yourself, my dearest love, what should a free man do? Clip What would a free man do?

17. Gay Audience In spite of its overall negative portrayal of homosexuality, or its (once again) rendering it invisible (at least relative to the Spartans, since Ancient Greece would hardly meet the modern definition of heterosexual), the movie is eye candy not merely for women. One reviewer called it: “the largest single display of masculine beauty ever put on film.”

18. Resources: Katz, Jackson. Tough Guise. Media Education Foundation. 1999 Kimmel, Michael. The History of Men. State University of New York Press. Albany. 2005. Miller, Frank. 300. Dark Horse Publishing, US. 1999. Putney, Clifford. Muscular Christianity. Class handout “Fishers of Boys”. Harvard University Press. 2001. Rotundo, Anthony. American Manhood. Class handout “Boy Culture”. University of Chicago Press. 1990. Solace in Cinema. 300-comic-to-screen-comparison. March 2007. April 2007. http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=300&w=33612731@N00 Warner Brothers. 300. Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures International. 2007. Young, Phillip. Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration. Pennsylvania State University Press. June 2000.