the TWILITE thing

[Cicero]

The ultimate conclusions were goofy, but much of the underlying information about the history of mythology and religion was quite accurate. The assertions about the Priory of Sion, were ridiculous,

The ridiculous quotient of the Da Vinci Code goes somewhat beyond the Priory of Sion. Defend it as literature or at least entertaining pulp if you must, but let's not go down the road of its psuedohistory amounting to anything, please.

Certainly, it's errors are more complicated than that, but quite a lot of what it does contain is well-established fact (particularly in the differences between Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic religious traditions, and between early and modern Christianity).

 

[Praxius]

If I had a daughter I wouldn't want her to read the series given the message seems to be that life isn't worth living until you find a stalker/boyfriend. I'd just point her to the Whedon section on the dvd shelf for her vampire fix.

See if I had children of the teenaged age, if they wanted to watch it, go ahead. I know I seen plenty of movies at a young age that I imagine many here would think how or why the heck I would be able to watch them.

When I was around 7 or 8 years old I couldn't sleep one summer night so I got up and popped in my Dad's Platoon VHS and watched that.... around the same time I seen Full Metal Jacket, Pet Symmetry, Nightmare on Elm Street 1, 2, etc.....

I'm not a crazy killer or did anything that broke the law, the movies didn't make me do stupid things anymore then video games or music did.

I think people are taking the movies the wrong way if they think the message is all about life not being worth living if you don't have some stalking/killer boyfriend..... all I see it as is a typical reflection of what just about every girl goes through in school in some fashion or another, even some guys.

I'm sure all of us came accross someone in our youth that struck us a paticular way that they seemed to absorb all of our time thinking about them or doing things with them whom might not be the best for us in the long run. It happens.

Who here never had a crush when you were younger that you wondered what they were doing, where they were, what they were thinking, etc..... teem hormones do that to a person, this isn't some rare occurance, nor is it promotting that sort of lifestyle..... it's just showing us that sort of lifestyle, similar to how American History X showed us another sort of lifestyle.

When your a teen, or at least when I was one, emotions, feelings for certain people, everything is spiked to extreme, everything is either great as it ever could be, or it's all miserable as hell and you wish you were someone else, living somewhere else. You can have situations in your life where it seems that if this paticular thing in your life doesn't go as you really want it to, then your world is over and yes, it can feel that way for many. All this movie does is tap into these aspects of a young life and shows these people that hey.... you're not alone, and this is why so many relate to it and flock to read the books and see the movies.

It touches base with all of the emotions, feelings and reasonings of that era in life.

For me personally, to believe the saga is all about being some submissive victim to some abusive, violent stalker and commit suicide if they don't want you anymore is plain silly. If we want to get that detailed about messages, then how about focusing on the fact that the vampire is old enough to be her great grandfather, thus promotes pedophilia..... then again, so does the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but I don't remember hearing such an outcry over that.

Seriously it's just a movie. Like it or hate it, that's all it is.... it's not the scourge of the world or a plague that is out there to destroy all our daughter's innocence.

Someone mentioned High School Musical earlier.... nobody has an issue about the message it sends kids?

Nobody has an issue about a crappy movie about all kinds of happy, wonderful teenagers in high school who sing and dance all over the place and that this is what you can expect when you get to high school?

Expect to get your arse kicked and your lunch money taken, is more like it...... and if you even try to dance or sing, prepare for the rest of your school life to be a living hell.

Yet it's perfectly fine?

 

[ria 75]

I'm a bit late for the poll, I'm afraid.

Twilight 1 was rather inde and that was good.
Also, the female director, the contemplative perspective.

Sequels will be quite a different genre (action) with a different style of directing. Not quite for the same audience. Or at least one should not expect the same sort of thing. Whatever charm existed at first will be gone.

Edit: But what's with all the hate in this thread?

 

[Praxius]

Twilight only encourages young girls to believe that creepy stalker based abusive relationships are healthy and wonderful; anyone over the age of 13 that likes that shit should be ashamed of themselves and take a leisurely stroll into an oncoming transport truck.

First you complain about a movie sending the promotion of abusive relationships..... and then you tell people to go kill themselves...... interesting solution you came to.

By all means, show me where the abuse is in their relationship.

Where in the story does he smack her around, rape her, or otherwise abuse her?

Frig, he followed her around, originally because he was going to kill her and all that..... that's a given since he's supposed to be a vampire. But then he came forward, admitted to it all and said he didn't want to do that.... and didn't as far as I'm aware. Shortly into the story he then began to protect her and made sure other freaky vampires and such didn't kill her..... he even saved her from being crushed by a truck.

So besides following her around a couple of times and watched her in her sleep (which isn't anything new for a vampire character in a story) Exactly where is the abuse?

I'm not a huge fan for the movies or the stories, but I appreciate it for what it is.... a means of entertainment.

And when people start to take Entertainment as some sort of guidebook or religion that's going to ruin society, then I believe those are the people who need to not look both ways before crossing the street.

(at least in my solution you have a chance of living )

 

[Ethros]

From the teenage girls I know, it seems the main reason they like the Twilight series is because they frap themselves off over Robert Pattinson.*
They don't seem to notice or care that the films are dogshit. Plus teenage girls opinions have never been the benchmark of quality IMO


*(I nearly wrote Ray Patterson then, I forgot his name. Then I had to look up who the hell Ray Patterson is. He's the Steve Martin character in the 200th episode of The Simpsons. I like how random my brain can be )

 

[ria 75]

Addendum : grown-up women like the first movie too. (Not just teenage girsl.) It's possible to enjoy it even with a bit of critical perspective.

 

[Praxius]

Addendum : grown-up women like the first movie too. (Not just teenage girsl.) It's possible to enjoy it even with a bit of critical perspective.

Indeed, my wife isn't a teenager, nor is her friend/my co-worker who seem to talk non-stop over the whole thing, in fact, she just watched the new one last night.

It's not exactly my thing, but I'll sit and watch them.... I got stuck watching far far worse then these type of movies, that's for sure. Then again working for a period of time in a Drive In Theatre, and a cousin I hung around with who worked at the regular theatre and a time in college for a couple of years without Cable tv, I've seen a long list of movies over the years.

Then again, I can see the appeal for the Twilight Saga in much the same way The Matrix Saga appealed to many guys back in the day. All sorts of mixed and bad messages in those movies.

 

[Kegg]

Certainly, it's errors are more complicated than that, but quite a lot of what it does contain is well-established fact

Naturally. Mona Lisa is a painting, Christianity is a religious practice, and so on. As Lapis observes it does grab bits and bobs of real information, much of which isn't too big in the popular eye - Gnotisicism isn't all that popular.

But pretty much everything it weaves and deduces from this information is completely preposterous (and that includes the rather bizarre reworking of church history, which is paranoiac and doubtless makes for great pulp storytelling but as history is worthless).

 

[melancholymecha]

I have to admit Id feel a bit iffy about young girls watching it...if I had a daughter Id probably watch it with her & then talk about the themes with her...
I feel that way about Grease too. I absolutely hate that film's message at the end, in some ways its worse than Twilight.

 

[Praxius]

I have to admit Id feel a bit iffy about young girls watching it...if I had a daughter Id probably watch it with her & then talk about the themes with her...
I feel that way about Grease too. I absolutely hate that film's message at the end, in some ways its worse than Twilight.

Actually I found Grease way over the top (esspecially for it's time) in it's sexual references and many of the odd decisions the various characters made.

Promoting street racing as a way to solve disputes while your own school teacher (or was it the principle, I can't remember) cheering you on.

One character who basically sleeps around with all the guys and worried about if she was pregnant, etc.

And how about all the greaser bad boys that all the women thought were sexy and hot, even if they gave off insulting and degrading remarks to pretty much everybody around them and thinking that they were the kings of the world?

Maybe it's because one focuses more on songs and dancing and the other focuses on special effects and fighting, that one is tollerated more then the other.

I'm still finding it quite hypocritical some of the views against the Twilight series and books when I imagine I could list of a pile of movies that were very similar in style & message that I'm sure one or two fall into other people's own "Popular" lists that they don't think are the same.

But I agree and it makes perfect sense to watch the movie with your children, just as it makes perfect sense to check out what video games and music your kids are playing and to check up and make sure they understand what they're all about.

Of course in the teenage years, you'll get the typical eye-rolling attitude with a response "Yes mom/dad.... I know what it means, god I'm not 10 years old anymore, pssshh....." and then goes into giving you the expected answers they think you want to hear

 

[Lapis Exilis]

I have to admit Id feel a bit iffy about young girls watching it...if I had a daughter Id probably watch it with her & then talk about the themes with her...
I feel that way about Grease too. I absolutely hate that film's message at the end, in some ways its worse than Twilight.

Actually I found Grease way over the top (esspecially for it's time) in it's sexual references and many of the odd decisions the various characters made.

Promoting street racing as a way to solve disputes while your own school teacher (or was it the principle, I can't remember) cheering you on.

One character who basically sleeps around with all the guys and worried about if she was pregnant, etc.

And how about all the greaser bad boys that all the women thought were sexy and hot, even if they gave off insulting and degrading remarks to pretty much everybody around them and thinking that they were the kings of the world?

Maybe it's because one focuses more on songs and dancing and the other focuses on special effects and fighting, that one is tollerated more then the other.

Grease the musical stage play wasn't particularly aimed at teenagers - it was aimed at adults who had nostalgia for the period. The movie found a huge young audience though.

I'm still finding it quite hypocritical some of the views against the Twilight series and books when I imagine I could list of a pile of movies that were very similar in style & message that I'm sure one or two fall into other people's own "Popular" lists that they don't think are the same.

But I agree and it makes perfect sense to watch the movie with your children, just as it makes perfect sense to check out what video games and music your kids are playing and to check up and make sure they understand what they're all about.

Of course in the teenage years, you'll get the typical eye-rolling attitude with a response "Yes mom/dad.... I know what it means, god I'm not 10 years old anymore, pssshh....." and then goes into giving you the expected answers they think you want to hear

Oh, if we wanted to walk through the material that presents bad examples of human behavior in fiction, we'd end up with an incredibly long list because good stories are made of bad (or at least ambiguous) people. Someone upthread mentioned The Iliad - Achilles is an arrogant, violent, petulant little shit who commits a horribly dishonorable crime, but he's still the hero of the piece.

The thing is that SF/F has a history of tokenism with female characters (just as it does with many minority characters). They are ostensibly strong, honorable and capable - but they are rarely the main characters, they exist mainly to advance the story of a white male hero who saves the day, and they are usually domesticated in the end.

For instance, Princess Leia was outspoken and a take charge kind of chick in Star Wars (and she was ahuge improvement over most of what we'd seen before in SF), but she's little but a whiny love interest for Han by Return of the Jedi (and she is strangely demoted from being the leader of the rebel forces as she was in Star Wars) and her only function in the greater drama of the Skywalker family is to be the reserve Jedi (of course ObiWan hangs out near Luke because lord knows the girl isn't going to be the important twin) and to be the vulnerable loved one threatened by the bad guys in the end to trigger the hero's final transformation.

Aeryn Sun in Farscape - bad ass warrior chick, right? But it's still John Crichton's story and she's just the love interest, and she ends up mommified by the end as well. (And do you want to talk stalkers? Crichton edged that line upon occasion as well.) So the message for girls there is, it's okay to be a bad ass, so long as some guy loves you and you settle down with him to raise a family when the battles are over.

Ellen Ripley - well, at least she's actually the main character in the Alien stories - though in the first movie that's largely so you can have the standard horror story ending of the vulnerable female (in her panties no less!) threatened by the awful monster. In Aliens she gets to be a fully actualized hero who saves everyone's ass. But by 3 and 4 she masochistically sacrifices herself and ends up a physically manipulated lab rat.

There are a few examples of really solid female central characters in SF/F - tons of them in the books actually, but the filmed material doesn't fare as well, because you can count the truly powerful, admirable female heroes on one hand - Xena, Buffy, Sarah Connor (as long as you stop as the original Terminator, after that, as usual the woman gets shunted off so the guys can take center stage).

And if we want to break down how admirable the messages are for a few of the major male heroes in SF/F - Anakin Skywalker - talented young man manipulated into evil, slaughters innocents, tries to kill his wife and kids, but hey, it's all okay so long as you kill the Big Bad (after millions have died) and ask for forgiveness moments before you die. Now there's someone I want my kids emulating.

Not that kids actually emulate the characters they see in fiction. To paraphrase Dennis Miller, "If your kid can be pushed over the edge by anything Stephanie Meyer has to say, then you're not doing your fucking job as a parent."

 

[SeerSGB]

I have to admit Id feel a bit iffy about young girls watching it...if I had a daughter Id probably watch it with her & then talk about the themes with her...
I feel that way about Grease too. I absolutely hate that film's message at the end, in some ways its worse than Twilight.

Hehehe, I heckle my way through Grease everytime the wife watch's it Now she just tells me to put on the headphones and go play on the computer.

And it's not just a bad message for the girl, don't forget the guy that wanted to clean his life up for the girl and then ditched the whole ideal once she tramped out for him.

 

[Kegg]

she's little but a whiny love interest for Han by Return of the Jedi (and she is strangely demoted from being the leader of the rebel forces as she was in Star Wars)

She was never the leader. But she was a leader. Honestly, when it comes down to it the Rebellion are something of an ad hoc plot device - there's the evil Empire, our plucky heroes, and of course the vaguely defined organisation of non-enities who are on our heroes' side. The internal workings of said organisation and even the existence of leadership is sort of vague. Clearly, Tarkin and Vader reign on the Death Star, and Vader's unquestioned ruler of the fleet in ESB, but who's to say Leia is in charge of Yavin or Hoth? Is she giving General Riekan orders or advice? Either way it's not exactly of royal stature.

Ellen Ripley - well, at least she's actually the main character in the Alien stories - though in the first movie that's largely so you can have the standard horror story ending of the vulnerable female (in her panties no less!) threatened by the awful monster.

Dan O'Bannon was going to have the Ripley character as a male, and the captain as a female. It's sort of interesting as his draft of the script was written asexually - any of the roles could have been cast as male or female.

And in defence of the first movie, Ripley's the only character who not only keeps her head and recognises the dangers from the start.

There are a few examples of really solid female central characters in SF/F - tons of them in the books actually, but the filmed material doesn't fare as well, because you can count the truly powerful, admirable female heroes on one hand - Xena, Buffy, Sarah Connor

That's... that's a pretty interesting list, when I think about it, in that I have not even the remotest interest in any of those characters or their franchises. I'd be fairly hard pressed to name a really strong female hero in sci-fi, regardless.

 

[Tyson]

First you complain about a movie sending the promotion of abusive relationships..... and then you tell people to go kill themselves...... interesting solution you came to.

I didn't tell "people" in general to kill themselves, I told people who apologize for and defend shit that encourages fools and children to embrace self-destructive dumbfuckery to kill themselves. This is an important distinction.

Besides, a little bit of exaggeration helps blow off some steam.

By all means, show me where the abuse is in their relationship.

If you can't see if after having paid attention to the movie or the book, there is something wrong with you. Please, never marry or have children.

Where in the story does he smack her around, rape her, or otherwise abuse her?

Because all abuse is physical, right? Again, pay attention to the story. If you seriously can't wrap your brain around what's wrong with the whole relationship, I don't think anyone can help you.

Frig,

Fuck's sakes, really?

he followed her around, originally because he was going to kill her and all that..... that's a given since he's supposed to be a vampire. But then he came forward, admitted to it all and said he didn't want to do that.... and didn't as far as I'm aware. Shortly into the story he then began to protect her and made sure other freaky vampires and such didn't kill her..... he even saved her from being crushed by a truck.

So besides following her around a couple of times and watched her in her sleep (which isn't anything new for a vampire character in a story) Exactly where is the abuse?

This is a series of books where the protagonist marries right out of high school, becomes a teenage mother in record time, and the love triangle between her, the vampire, and the werewolf is solved by having the werewolf fall in love against his will with her infant daughter. And this is portrayed as a desirable outcome. Edwardo tells her 'I've killed forty of fifty people, and I want to kill you so much...every single day, every moment I'm with you, I've desperately wanted to kill you.' And she's like 'I don't care. I love you.'...Well, there's definitely something wrong with her, and there's definitely something wrong with anyone who completely misses that.

I'm not a huge fan for the movies or the stories, but I appreciate it for what it is.... a means of entertainment.

I'm all for stupid, mind numbing entertainment now and then, I enjoy some of it myself. But people think the kind of shit in these books and movies is how shit should be, and that's fucked.

And when people start to take Entertainment as some sort of guidebook or religion that's going to ruin society, then I believe those are the people who need to not look both ways before crossing the street.

It wouldn't be an issue if parents parented and people actually matured out of a 13 year old's mindset when they grew up, unfortunately that doesn't happen, and demonstrated by the teeming, multi-aged hords of Twi-tards waiting for their own sparkly adonis to come and tell them how to live their lives.

(at least in my solution you have a chance of living )

What? Fuck you.

 

[Tyson]

I'm a bit late for the poll, I'm afraid.

Twilight 1 was rather inde and that was good.

Fuck's sakes.

 

[SeerSGB]

Actually there is one Twilight "product" I wouldn't mind checking out: Russet Noon

I don't know if the writer has guts, balls, or suffers from a mental defect but she sure got the hornet's nest stirred up.

Russet Noon is a Twilight fanfiction novel written by LadySybilla. It has caused a great deal of controversy in fandom and the publishing world, as the author claims the right to publish it professionally. LadySybilla believes that fans who support any given universe should have a share in the profits that this universe generates: "Every universe or, to put it in more commercial terms, franchise, feeds off our fantasies, dreams and hard earned dollars. When we give life to a universe, when we become its fans and financial supporters, we become the human batteries that keep its matrix alive

Link for more info

 

[Lapis Exilis]

she's little but a whiny love interest for Han by Return of the Jedi (and she is strangely demoted from being the leader of the rebel forces as she was in Star Wars)

She was never the leader. But she was a leader. Honestly, when it comes down to it the Rebellion are something of an ad hoc plot device - there's the evil Empire, our plucky heroes, and of course the vaguely defined organisation of non-enities who are on our heroes' side. The internal workings of said organisation and even the existence of leadership is sort of vague. Clearly, Tarkin and Vader reign on the Death Star, and Vader's unquestioned ruler of the fleet in ESB, but who's to say Leia is in charge of Yavin or Hoth? Is she giving General Riekan orders or advice? Either way it's not exactly of royal stature.

I'd argue that in Star Wars Leia is presented as the General in Charge at Yavin. Perhaps not the penultimate leader of the Rebellion, but without a doubt, high up the chain. Since it is presented as a guerilla sort of operation though, there's probably not a penultimate leader at all. However, she is clearly demoted further and further as the series goes on. She is clearly not the General in Charge on Hoth, and her status rapidly becomes "one to be protected" ("You go on. I'll get the Princess out on the Falcon.") By Jedi, Han is clearly designated as being of General rank and Leia volunteers to be on his team. Oh, how the liberated have fallen...

But you make good points about the amorphous nature of the Rebellion in the movies.

Ellen Ripley - well, at least she's actually the main character in the Alien stories - though in the first movie that's largely so you can have the standard horror story ending of the vulnerable female (in her panties no less!) threatened by the awful monster.

Dan O'Bannon was going to have the Ripley character as a male, and the captain as a female. It's sort of interesting as his draft of the script was written asexually - any of the roles could have been cast as male or female.

And in defence of the first movie, Ripley's the only character who not only keeps her head and recognises the dangers from the start.

I'd forgotten about the genderless casting. Alien is an interesting study because, as you say, Ripley is the hardass on the crew, but the ending is still the vulnerable female in her panties - so in that flick she's a little of a New Kind of Female hero and a little of the traditional damsel in distress.

There are a few examples of really solid female central characters in SF/F - tons of them in the books actually, but the filmed material doesn't fare as well, because you can count the truly powerful, admirable female heroes on one hand - Xena, Buffy, Sarah Connor

That's... that's a pretty interesting list, when I think about it, in that I have not even the remotest interest in any of those characters or their franchises. I'd be fairly hard pressed to name a really strong female hero in sci-fi, regardless.

There are far more powerful female main characters in fantasy than in SF, which comes down to audience, of course. And books have far greater numbers of powerful female leads than tv and film do. Xena, the original iconoclast on this score, is actually pretty interesting as a series, though it floats between taking itself too seriously and a certain level of farce. I enjoyed it much more when it was aware of its own humorousness. I'm just making my way through Buffy at the moment and I find it hard to care much about Buffy herself. I read one comment about the character that went "Buffy may be Barbie with a kung-fu grip, but she's still Barbie." She's straight-forwardly uninterested in the intellectual (she commonly remarks on not doing homework, not caring about books or school), and she's just oh-so-cutesy. All brawn and no brains heroes have never done much for me, female or male.

Sarah Connor, on the other hand, I think is one of the great post-modern SF heroes - so long, as I said, as one stops at the end of The Terminator. The Terminator franchise is formulaic trash, but the first movie is fantastic and Sarah really is an admirable, powerful female lead.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

What? Fuck you.

One warning for flaming.

 

[KB24]

I'm a girl and I like Lord of the Rings. I don't, however, read Harry Potter. Even though it also flooded the market with everybody and their grandma writing about boy wizards, it's also gotten a lot of kids to read who wouldn't normally read.

With Twilight, however, I get the feeling that their are folks who only read these books and these books alone and instead of reading further into vampire lore and history, their just starting omg 1 hear Edward and frivel such websites. I don't think it's improved the reading condition at all. I wonder if there are scholastic numbers to shed the light? A few years ago they did a study about how half the kids in America stop reading books after 16. So sad.

Perhaps back in the day LOTR also saw a lot of knock offs in its wake, but again inspired a lot of people to read and develop big and magical things. What does Twilight do? Make girls like bad boys? Whoopdee, that's not even that new. ;0)

 

[Trent Roman]

While it wasn't beautifully written, it certainly wasn't claptrap. The ultimate conclusions were goofy, but much of the underlying information about the history of mythology and religion was quite accurate. The assertions about the Priory of Sion, were ridiculous, but much of the other material is supported by a great deal of 20th Century academic work. I particularly recommend This Believing World: A Simple Account of the Great Religions of Mankind, by Lewis Browne, an American rabbi.

The problem with DaVinci Code, as I see it, isn't about the data. It's a thriller, which generically never bothers much with factuality, about conspiracy theories, which are largely invented in the first place, and religion, which is entirely invented. So as far as I'm concerned he can make up whatever shit he wants to (so long as he doesn't try to pass it off as reality, which I understand is where some of the problems arise with a silly foreword).

The problem with DaVinci Code is that it's written at a pre-adolescent level. Literally. The short chapters always capped by a pseudo-climax reminded me of nothing if not my old Goosebumps books from grade school; same structure, and not particularly more complex in other regards. That, and the characters announcing that they have information which they then keep from the readers for most of the book, are just cheap, obvious attempts to build suspense that, in being so hackneyed, have exactly the opposite effect of boring one to tears. I don't think much of the story myself, but I'm sure there would have been ways to generate suspense without resorting to transparent tricks that just insult the reader's intelligence.

I haven't seen the movie Twilight, and have only listened to about 1/3 of the audio book before I concluded that it is all basically teenage vampire fanfiction - also not my cup of tea. Vampires are a built-in sex metaphor, sure, but once again, this is a story aimed at 13 year old girls, who have little appreciation and no understanding for erotic passion in and of itself. What they are interested in is the notion of a higher courtly love that transcends sex - thus why Edward could "kill" (penetrate, i.e. fuck) Bella, but does not because he loves her. There's nothing erotic about it and there's not supposed to be. It is rather specifically anti-erotic.

Coincidently (or perhaps not), the local paper ran an article to coincide with the latest film's release that quotes Melissa Click, professor at Ole Miss, who reached similar conclusions as you did: the story essentially promotes abstinence and displays genophobia. Going from the inherently conversative context of antisexualism, other aspects of the film suddenly make more sense: the retrograde gender roles, the domestication of transgressive sexuality (the kernels of rape, bestiality and necrophilia in vampires/werewolves) into a more-or-less sanitized kind of fairy tale, the carefully paired-off and heteronormative Cullens as an eternal nuclear family, where father will always know best because the 'kids' are trapped in their infancy. I would take issue, however, with the idea that it's not about eroticism (and the article was accompanied by similar comments from fans about asexual 'love' relationships). Twilight isn't about philia (that would be a film like Wall-E); the characters can't stop gibbering about how difficult it is to restrain their passions, clearly eros. But it's a failed eros, a limp, unfulfilled eros, since consummation would be 'bad'; training the next generation of the Junior Anti-Sex League. The way I see it, if it's anti-erotic, then it is about eroticism, just coming at the subject from a negative viewpoint, yes? So I guess I was wrong about there being nothing there; not that I loathe it any less, I just now loathe it for different reasons--which is to say, the erotophobic agenda.

And it is violence porn - the "story" was so crudely drawn as to barely exhibit the faintest traces of a plot, characterisation largely consisted of flexing oiled CGI-enhanced muscles and the extended slow motion shots of spurting blood and the hacking of limbs was not only laughable but became increasingly tedious as the movie crawled on and on and on...

I'm not sure where you're getting this from but Frank Miller wrote 300, was a producer on the film, and the film was incredibly faithful. There is no meta-commentary or irony behind it or it's 'overblown exaggerated' violence, that's what Miller thinks is cool and has been there in everything from 300 to Dark Knight Returns to Sin City and others.

Oh, I'm familiar with Miller's comments, and I believe he's being entirely forthright on his opinions. I've also seen Zack Snyder's comments on the film, where he's repeatedly said that the movie has no ideological message one way or another (in apparent contradiction of Miller, and the superficial reading of the film that rather obviously sets itself up in the Clash of Cultures mode). But I don't believe Snyder. To me, 300 is like Starship Troopers or Colbert: the grotesque exageration of the message purposefully undermines it.

Is it a simple story? Of course: it's propaganda. It's Triumph of the Will with sandals and shields. Pretty good guys, ugly (and how!) bad guys. The film admits as much in the final scene, where you discover that the entire movie was a story being told to energize the troops on the eve of a major battle with the Persians--a 5th century B.C.E. version of a USO show--and by a character who wasn't even there for key scenes, and couldn't really know how they turn out, to say nothing of providing a source for the more fantastical elements of the movies (exagerated storytelling). Unreliable narrator; he's even missing an eye as though to reinforce his limited vision. That's how I see it, anyway; I admit I'm no film studies guy, so I'm not the best person to be mounting this defence. But that was my impression of it, and I'd be willing to bet that, give it ten years or so for scholarship to develop, 300 will be recognized as quite the subversive film (though not without difficulties), whatever its roots.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman