So I listened to the pod’s episode on 300 and man did these guys miss a lot of stuff that makes the film even more cringy. For example, the guy who plays Xerxes wasn’t even played by a black actor. The dude was fucking Brazilian. Like they made a tan man even darker so that they had the ability to deny the racism the film implies. I always thought it was Peter Mensah who played Xerxes since he was on the film too. I know there’s more that I looked up when I did a simple google search of the actors. Also big surprise, there is no one in the Spartan army who is of Greek origin. They are all British or Australian. There’s more stuff that I think is funny but all it takes is a simple google search for the movie.
300 is a shit movie. It glorifies the Spartans (who were an absolute garbage society even without the institutional child rape) and has colored the popular view of the Achaemenid Persians (who were cool as hell) with ridiculous, dehumanizing fantasy elements.
Yep. Filmed when Cheney was plotting to invade Iran too. The head villain is coded as queer/androgynous ...and ...are these fucking Uruk-hai fighting for the Persians? WTF??
Well the Ptolomys also never learned Egyptian, the primary language of the people they ruled. Their court and aristocratic class all learned Greek and spoke to the pharaohs in Greek . So while they didn't have the same ideas of race, Cleopatra very much thought of her subjects as having a separate, foreign, and inferiors culture. Is that reasonable to say?
Cleopatra very much thought of her subjects as having a separate, foreign, and inferiors culture
Cleopatra was special for learning Egyptian and participating in Egyptian religious rituals, and publicly identifying herself with the goddess Isis (wrong Isis, NSA!). She did so because the court officials usurped her power by elevating her manipulateable underage brother ahead of her. So, unlike the earlier Ptolemies, she did embrace being Egyptian in order to strengthen her own position. In the end, the only reason she won was because of Caesar's intervention.
The argument seems to be that maybe Cleopatra wasn’t white on her mother’s side. But the ptolemies were infamous practitioners of inbreeding
The Ptolemies were doing sibling-/cousin-fucking since the Selucids, so it seems weird they would break it just this once for the king to have a child with the daughter of a priest of Ptah for unclear reasons. Ptolemaic kings didn't learn Egyptian and strongly retained a Hellenic identity - hell, intermarriage was illegal between Egyptians and Greeks in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Cleopatra's professed ability to speak Aramaic, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Latin, Parthian, Syriac and other regional languages and her closeness to Rome are seen as standouts as examples of her ambition to break the patterns of the moribund Ptolemaic kingdom.
(Closing hot take: Tomyris, who lead the Scythians to defeat one of the great ancient empire-builders, or Amage, literally a slay kween girlboss, would be a lot cooler story and those haven't really been done before.)
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she was entirely greek
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Persians will be called white, like, soon
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Persians are Aryan
So I listened to the pod’s episode on 300 and man did these guys miss a lot of stuff that makes the film even more cringy. For example, the guy who plays Xerxes wasn’t even played by a black actor. The dude was fucking Brazilian. Like they made a tan man even darker so that they had the ability to deny the racism the film implies. I always thought it was Peter Mensah who played Xerxes since he was on the film too. I know there’s more that I looked up when I did a simple google search of the actors. Also big surprise, there is no one in the Spartan army who is of Greek origin. They are all British or Australian. There’s more stuff that I think is funny but all it takes is a simple google search for the movie.
300 is a shit movie. It glorifies the Spartans (who were an absolute garbage society even without the institutional child rape) and has colored the popular view of the Achaemenid Persians (who were cool as hell) with ridiculous, dehumanizing fantasy elements.
Yep. Filmed when Cheney was plotting to invade Iran too. The head villain is coded as queer/androgynous ...and ...are these fucking Uruk-hai fighting for the Persians? WTF??
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Well the Ptolomys also never learned Egyptian, the primary language of the people they ruled. Their court and aristocratic class all learned Greek and spoke to the pharaohs in Greek . So while they didn't have the same ideas of race, Cleopatra very much thought of her subjects as having a separate, foreign, and inferiors culture. Is that reasonable to say?
Cleopatra was special for learning Egyptian and participating in Egyptian religious rituals, and publicly identifying herself with the goddess Isis (wrong Isis, NSA!). She did so because the court officials usurped her power by elevating her manipulateable underage brother ahead of her. So, unlike the earlier Ptolemies, she did embrace being Egyptian in order to strengthen her own position. In the end, the only reason she won was because of Caesar's intervention.
You can always use Iset, the Egyptian version of the goddess' name to fly under the radar of your personally appointed FBI agent
Okay thank you! I didn't know that.
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The Ptolemies were doing sibling-/cousin-fucking since the Selucids, so it seems weird they would break it just this once for the king to have a child with the daughter of a priest of Ptah for unclear reasons. Ptolemaic kings didn't learn Egyptian and strongly retained a Hellenic identity - hell, intermarriage was illegal between Egyptians and Greeks in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Cleopatra's professed ability to speak Aramaic, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Latin, Parthian, Syriac and other regional languages and her closeness to Rome are seen as standouts as examples of her ambition to break the patterns of the moribund Ptolemaic kingdom.
(Closing hot take: Tomyris, who lead the Scythians to defeat one of the great ancient empire-builders, or Amage, literally a slay kween girlboss, would be a lot cooler story and those haven't really been done before.)