We all know that comic book artist Frank Miller is an arrogant macho jerkwad, but I didn’t know the magnitude of his jerkwadiness. He’s written an angry diatribe against the Occupy Wall Street movement.
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.
And then he gets really cranky.
Apparently, us liberals are hurting America, because we’ve got a war to fight against al-Quaeda and Islamicism, and we need to get out of the way so the investment bankers can fight it for us. I guess wrecking the economy was all part of a secret plan to defeat terrorism.
Anyway, ol’ Frank lives in a cartoon fantasy world where violence solves everything, and all it takes to solve a problem is a bigger gun and the will to use it indiscriminately, which I think we all could have learned from his graphic novels and movies without reading his blog. And now that we’ve read his blog, we don’t need to pay for his commercial products anymore! Miller’s simple-mindedness stands exposed even further.
Which is funny if you think about it. Could anyone take 300 seriously? I giggled through it all — it was hysterically campy, all macho homoeroticism energetically portrayed with a complete lack of awareness of how over-the-top it all was. It fervently espoused an elitist right-wing view of the world, where only kings ruled divinely and the peons were all slaughtered off-stage.
David Brin has sallied forth to smite the lunacy. He takes an interesting approach: he discredits Miller’s authority on history by utterly demolishing the pseudo-history of 300. It seems hardly worth doing — didn’t we already know that 300 was a great goofy ahistorical joke? — but there’s a nice analogy to be drawn. The contempt Miller shows for the 99% protesting American economic inequality is paralleled in the contempt he shows for everyone other than royalty and professional killers in his work.
Frank Miller rails against effete, pansy-boy militias of amateur, citizen soldiers. But funny thing, none of his Spartan characters ever mentions those events, just a decade earlier! How bakers, potters and poets from Athens – after vanquishing one giant invading army, then ran 26 miles in full armor to face down a second Persian horde and sent it packing, a feat of endurance that gave its name to the modern marathon race. A feat that goes unmatched today. Especially by Spartans.
That Athenian triumph deserves a movie! And believe me, it weighed heavily on the real life Leonidas, ten years later. “300″ author Frank Miller portrays the Spartans’ preening arrogance in the best possible light, as a kind of endearing tribal machismo. Miller never hints at the underlying reason for Leonidas’s rant, a deep current of smoldering shame over how Sparta sat out Marathon, leaving it to Athenian amateurs, like the playwright Aeschelus, to save all of Greece. The “shopkeepers” whom Leonidas outrageously and ungratefully despises in the film.
It just goes to show you can’t trust a fascist thug to recognize reality.
By the way, is it required for comic book artists to be crazy, or does it just help? (Uh-oh, I know Melissa Kaercher…what dark secrets lurk beneath her superficially normal (OK, mostly normal) personality?)
Frank Miller jumped off the deep end some time between The Dark Knight Returns and around 2000. His output has grossly suffered as a result- look at the politics in DKR as compared to The Dark Knight Strikes Again.
Today, he’s just a self parody.
I’m pretty certain that not all Comic book authors/artists are not like that, as I have many friends who are in the profession and have been absolutely appalled by Frank Miller’s spiraling drop out of reality; no doubt being fueled by his knowledge that he’ll never go broke due to the movies based off of his work.
But to his credit (but not much, more like the one thing that prevents you from wanting to claw his and your own eyes out), he at least had the decency to take Batman out of his latest project, replacing it with some sort of O.C. so he could soapbox his undying hatred of everything non-western conservative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Terror_(graphic_novel)
Didn’t the original marathon run the OTHER way? As a way to tell Athens of the victory?
The original marathon was Philippides’ run from the battle to Athens, where he announced the victory. And died.
The battle was also immediately followed by a forced march of the entire Athenian army 26 miles back to Athens, in order to defend it from the Persian navy and remainder of its army.
Wow, the thought that 300 could have been written as anything but hyperbole has caused my brain to spontaneously reboot.
That’s like finding out Mork and Mindy was written as a historical documentary.
They always had a hard time getting Sparta to actually fight. After the Athenians defeated the Persians at sea (thanks in part to a storm that earlier destroyed a number of Persian ships), the bulk of the Persian army went home (couldn’t count on getting fed), while a goodly force remained.
Sparta had to be cajoled and threatened to actually fight, rather than letting others do it. Still, they did eventually fight, and did it well, along with the other Greeks.
The Thespian 1000 should always be counted with the Spartan 300 at Thermopylae, and rarely are. I guess actors don’t seem like the greatest fighters, and while they probably were good fighters (yes I know, not actors), it’s probable that Spartan warriors were the main bulwark allowing other Greeks to retreat. Even so, Thespians contributed a good many more bodies in the fight to the death than did Spartans.
Glen Davidson
People who are willing to put in the kind of work required to make comics, especially at the kind of pay it usually involved, are not normal by any means, but usually in a good way. You have to be very passionate about your craft to put up with everything it entails, but then anything where you can end up working 12+-hour days without seeing the sun much can do things to the human mind. Still, the vast majority of people I’ve met in comics have been really cool.
My mother, who learned ancient Greek, is of the opinion that Philippides didn’t die of the run, but of the horribly complicated grammar of ancient Greek.
And why is it that so many people who are good at one thing so often go off the deep end and start spouting shit about stuff they have no clue about?
Comic book artists and economic politics, actors and medicine, singers and science… the list is endless.
David Brin, that’s familiar.
Oh, THAT David Brin! And I see that he has just published a few books that I haven’t read yet.
So now I’ll have to spend a few days reading them while my pile of work keeps growing. Thanks a lot.
I grew up in the fifties and comic books and their authors were the original anti-establishment. Comics delighted in tweaking the noses of the “normal” people and pissing off the grown-ups. Even as a young child I devoured comic books and their subversive message.
And now my hero Frank Miller is a hopeless establishment wingnut? How is that even possible? He should be banned from comics for life for violating the unwritten code of pissing off the people in power.
It’s rather worth noting that the Spartans wound up resting on their laurels for a great many years after the height of their power. When the Spartan government responded to Philip II’s threats to attack Laconia with their famous “if” message, thinks had reached the point where neither Philip nor subsequently Alexander could even be bothered to follow through on it — by then Sparta was no longer really relevant.
Interesting trivia: Tsakonian, the last remaining dialect of Doric Greek (the origin of the Spartan Dialect), is the only dialect of modern Greek that has an unbroken pre-Koine heritage. On the other hand, Sparta itself was essentially nearly abandoned till 1834, so…
At last, the comics world has its own Ted Nugent!
How long until Miller starts writing/drawing for WingNutDizzy?
Nice writeup, but you gave Miller far more “ink” than he deserves. I laughed loud and long at 300 and do the same to Miller’s thoughts. Babblers like him and Bachmann and the like should be ignored and marginalized. That said, nice post PZ.
JeffreyD:
Jeffrey! Oh, {hugses}. I saw 300 as eye candy amusement, nothing more. No one actually took that thing seriously, did they?
Caine: I for one didn’t (for that matter, I didn’t see too many differences between 300 and its parody that was released a few months later)
Paraphrased Miller: “Goddamn hippies and their iPhones and their sheltered lives! How dare they protest when there’s an al-Qaida out there! Go join the army!”
Amazing that he manages to whine about these protesters like this, and their privileged lives when:
1. The protest is about the extreme privilege of a much wealthier social class. If mere possession of iPhones earns Miller’s ire, well…
2. The complaint about sheltered lives and the call to join the army is funny coming from a man who never served, and who has been in the comic business since he was 20 or so.
3. The idea that one has to stop protesting anything if we are at war is also funny, and how he invokes the 70’s really makes me think that his complaints were just lifted straight from those whining about Vietnam protesters. Or from somebody during the Bush administration. The war apologists sure have been quieter about protests being bad in the last 3 or 4 years, huh? Wonder why that is ?
A.R., I never saw the parody, I mean 300 was in itself a parody. If people took that nonsense seriously, ooh, that’s a whole world of stupid.
Oh please, the way the other Greeks were portrayed was barely noticeable in the sea of pseudo-history that was 300. This was the same 300 where the hyper-authoritarian death-cult that was Sparta was portrayed as an idyllic thriving culture with happy families everywhere instead of children forcefully taken from their parents at 8, and women playing a vital part in politics. Not to mention that it had Leonidas casually laugh at the Athenians for pederasty when in reality Sparta was the boy-rape capital of the world. And not to mention the hilarious irony that Sparta was totalitarian slave state with 5-10% freemen and a huge majority of helots that were treated like animals and routinely slaughtered by the Spartan army to keep them from revolting…but in the comic/movie, they are out fighting for reason, justice, and freedom for all men!
You could make a more realistic film about Hitler defending civil liberties in Germany, saving Aryan children from being eaten by rich Jews, and valiantly fighting against the oppression of the Polish Empire and their army of communist cyborgs.
So glad I’m not the only one who saw it this way. I couldn’t sit through to the end of the thing. My eyes were aching from all the eye-rolls.
The worst part is Miller is someone who should know better and has consciously chosen to turn off that part of his brain
*cough* Dave Sim *cough*
No, it’s not required for a comic book writer/artist to be mentally askew, but it does happen. I read Cerebus from the start, along with Elfquest and other independent comics of the same time. Hell, I organised Dave Sim’s first UK tour, because I was running a comic shop and I wanted to promote independent comics. I met him several times, and I liked the guy less each time I met him. Check out his wikipedia entry these days. Not nice.
I did have fun with signing sessions with Alan Moore (always affable, and good with children) and Neil Gaiman (he turned up having fallen asleep in his garden in the sun writing some Sandman, suffering with sunburn and too polite to ask for help: we had a signing session involving a trip to the nearest chemist for a gallon of moisturiser, Neil stripping to the waist and me massaging the stuff onto his back while he did his thing… happy days…
But, yeah, *cough* Dave Sim *cough*
Ken Miller… “Malax”
Brian Clevinger is pretty awesome from the brief meeting I had at Comiccon at his booth and his twitter feed. And his comic Atomic Robo included Carl Sagan fighting a Lovecraftian God. The introduction to the trade is a love note of how awesome Sagan is.
Oh and Warren Ellis is crazy in the other direction as the batshit angry liberal atheist.
What really amazed me about 300 was discovering that Xerxes was a dead ringer for Denis Rodman. I can’t recall an American movie that was more overtly racist since Birth of a Nation. What made it especially funny was that a movie with a frankly fascist outlook and an obviously Nazi aesthetic managed to portray the Persians as a bunch of mud people. Folks, Iranian = Aryan. It’s the same goddam word, for Christ sake. I understand making a hash of ancient history; but if you’re going to resurrect 1930, you should at least get your racial stereotypes right.
He creates comic books – why are his politics relevant or important? I really love Heinlein’s books even though I don’t share or care for his politics.
Because Miller’s books are largely his political view now a days.
Also he wrote one of the shittiest Batman stories ever
Wait, the same guy who created the Roarks is against Occupy Wall Street?
Idiot. OWS is exactly an exercise of our “blessed” First Amendment.
That’s exactly what makes FA right so “blessed”: we extend them to everyone – to louts, thieves, rapists, an unruly mob … Everyone !
It doesn’t stop being an exercise of the First Amendment just because lying turds like you, Frank Miller, say it does. See, that’s the difference between someone like you who hates the freedoms America is supposed to stand for, and someone like me who actually loves America – I know the FA gives you the right to say your bizarre bigoted crap. Even though I hate you and everything you stand for, I won’t pretend you aren’t exercising your First Amendment right.
I might have been able to take 300 with a grain of salt if it weren’t for the impassioned speech defending freedom. You know, like owning slaves and eugenics. Freedom.
The racism too.
And the homophobia.
And the ugly=evil thing.
Actually the whole film drove me nuts come to think of it.
Off topic: Do these blogs need so many ads? I appreciate that you guys want to make a few bugs off blogging, but I think the current setup might be a bit too much. Plus, you are making money off the objectification of women. Take a look at some of these ads.
Cassius Corodes:
Because people listen to him. This has been your *duh* moment of the day.
Guest:
Gee, another idiot doesn’t understand how adsense works. You don’t like ’em? Hit the paypal button, donate, and use adblock.
“Idiot. OWS is exactly an exercise of our “blessed” First Amendment. ”
Its quite debatable whether the “occupy” aspect is protected by the first amendment. Several occupations have been challenged on the grounds of noise and sanitation. Business in affected areas have seen a decline in sales so they have complained too. It will likely come down to a court decision, and a few are already underway to challenge eviction orders.
Also he wrote one of the shittiest Batman stories ever
I’M THE GODDAMN BATMAN
…
yes i agree with you entirely. ugh.
So I have a full-time job. Does that mean that I shouldn’t get paid if I have a part-time job as well?
I just responded to a nonexistant troll. Sorry.
Well….I’m a comic book artist I’m…welll I’m not sane but we’re not all Frank Miller!
One thing you can do about the bad ads: click on them and send me the URL. We want to actively shut off inappropriate ads — they don’t make us money because people won’t click on them, and advertisers appreciate us sparing them ineffective placement.
You know what time it is?
(Pulls out and opens a pocket watch)
It’s Miller Time!
There’s a reason Frank Miller has a special segment of his own in Linkara’s Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn.
Even aside from its possibly racist undertones, 300 failed as mindless entertainment. How is watching silly battles using slow-motion every four seconds entertaining?* I was bored out of my mind, and rolling my eyes every time we went into another fight that was off-and-on Slow Mo.
* Contrast that with the battles from a much better movie, such as Troy.
Who is Batman? Let think about this for 5 seconds.
Batman is a violent, ruthless vigilante who has taken the law into his own hands because he personally believes that the system is corrupt and incapable of acheiving justice.
Yeah, I think that’s about right. Oh and Frank Miller portrays him as a hero……SUPERhero even.
Nothing hypocritical about that at all.
#35 – Cassius Corodes
The First Amendment is not just “Freedom of Speech”
Wow… Let’s see Occupy is safe by Freedom Speech / Press, Peacefully Assemble (with some little issues here and there) and by Redress of Grievances.
I think Occupy has a pretty good case as long as they stay peaceful within their encampments.
PZ @ 40
That is useful information.
Maybe it should be in the FAQ.
IIRC, Hitler derided Britain as “a nation of shopkeepers.” With two examples, anyone with imperial ambitions should be very wary of shopkeepers…
As for David Brin’s writing… I’d recommend the first three Uplift books–Sundiver, Startide Rising, and Uplift War–but not so much the later three.
–W. H. Heydt
Old Used Programmer
So disappointing to here this kind of stuff from Frank Miller after he did so much good in the graphic novel industry…Alan Moore is much the same…
Good thing Mike Mignola is still my favorite. Seems like a pretty cool guy.
Wait a minute. Miller didn’t direct 300. That was Zack Snyder. Miller did the comic.
Now Mill DID direct “The spirit”. Anyone remember that Turkey?
Miller’s been loosing it since 9/11 and he wasn’t exactly a pinko lefty back then either. I remember picking up a book of conversations between him and Will Eisner which mostly consisted of him ranting and Eisner telling him to chill out. If you want to see the latest example of his disintegration look up Holly Terror. Apparently it’s his version of a Batman vs Al Qaeda story that DC didn’t let him do back in the day. It’s always depressing watching creators you admire fall apart like this. Especially when it effects their artistic output as badly as it does their world view.
Though one small thing I’ll say in his defense is I believe the line about “no soldiers” in the other Greek armies was in Herodotus.
Michael Zeora: IANAL, but I have a personal interest in legal matters and have been following various law blogs regarding this. There are a few precedents regarding the cities duty to maintain good sanitation (for example) overriding the right of people to encamp for protests. This has been the reasoning for several orders to evacuate, so that they can clean up the place.
The right to free assembly also only works (AFAIK) based on zoning, so each occupy area will have to be judged independently, and things like blocking access to private property play a role here. Finally the use of bullhorns etc. without a permit is another issue that can lead to eviction as its causing noise pollution to nearby residents and businesses.
Wasn’t the story of the “300” caught in that classic painting “Fellatio at The Bridge”?
Caine – hugs back, darlin’. For you and A.R., the spoof, Meet the Spartans, was actually a better movie. Well. OK. It sucked as well, but had a couple of funny scenes.
Long ago, I pretty much decided that no movie does history well. I am sure there are exceptions, but nothing comes to mind.
Night all.
SHit I wasn’t even thinking of that one
TWO of the worst Batman ever.
And he did two of the best. So his entire career is a scratch.
Jeezis. Can’t you hogglers do subtle?
That hoggle was kinda whiney, too.
I can’t tell if 300 was meant to be homoerotic or homophobic. It goes both way…….so to speak.
this has got me thinking about 300 and I am finding that it is not a good movie to think about.
Has anyone seen “the immortals”?
Am I correct inthinking that it’s the same goddamn thing?
I thought the whole point of 300 was to be a showcase of massively exaggerated comic-book bombast? I quite enjoyed it myself, taking it on that level, because I thought it was quite original and refreshing to see something so unashamedly stylised and in-your-face. I’m not sure I’d call it parody, but everything about it definitely suggested to me that this was not meant, even slightly, to be taken as historical or realistic or a comment on the world of today. It struck me as a self-contained fantasy world, pure and simple. Am I to take it that this was not the author’s intention then?
Although… having said that (and I was teaching Athenian political history to 17 year olds when it came out!) it did strike me as historically relevant in one regard – as a showcase of the kind of ill-informed racist attitudes many Greeks undoubtedly held toward the Persians and each other. If you take the film as an exaggerated war story told by Spartans for Spartans – to show themselves and their violent society in a good light – then it actually makes a kind of sense. The framing device of the Spartan narrator helps in this regard, I think.
Frank Miller is this generation’s Al Capp.
JeffreyD!!! *hugs & chocolate*
Missed you.
–
I never could make myself watch 300; it was just so ludicrous on the face of it.
–
@31:
The entire business about trying to kill a physically disabled person who offered assistance to the oh-so-heroic Spartans, and portraying him as some kind of horrible traitor *to the people that rejected him* disgusted me. As far as I’m concerned, any society that fails to enshrine compassion for its members regardless of capability is one I cannot express support for, as a human and as someone whose body doesn’t work up to “standard”. The movie was stupid, the ostensible heroes were fascist pigs, and Xerxes was almost more sympathetic than the Spartans. Hey, at least he didn’t kick the disabled guy down a bloody well…
@ #60
That was a… tad harsh don’t you think?
The reason you’d either doante to support or look at the ads is because running a website isn’t free- the server, the bandwidth, these all cost money.
and Baboons are quite intelligent.
I’m so totally with you. (Of course, this means we’ll find out that he runs a cockfighting ring or something.)
Frank Miller needs to jump off a cliff or something. He’s slipped into irrelevance and it seems like he’s not taking it well.
Can you imagine Miller conservatism? Abortion is wrong, especialy when you just throw the kid on the bone pile later.
Also:
*waves at Jeffrey!*
*waves at Shala!*
Don’t bother, redartifice. That comment will be deleted. The troll posted the same thing a few minutes earlier.
Also, don’t bother pointing out anything about baboons. There is a group of people who really dislike the people at this blog and refer to us as baboons. It is just one of their many tells.
Cartomancer: “If you take the film as an exaggerated war story told by Spartans for Spartans – to show themselves and their violent society in a good light – then it actually makes a kind of sense.”
That’s the way I saw it. Since at one point they fight mythical beings it didn’t occur to me that anyone would think its was supposed to be realistic or historical.
Re: David Brin, I’m working my way through the second trilogy, and so far I’ve enjoyed all five Uplift books I’ve read. Eugenics creeps me out, but the novels aren’t exactly celebrations of the concept… interesting ideas being tossed out.
Gah! Merciless Cthulhu, I’m still trying to erase the image of Samuel L. Jackson in a SS uniform.
@aKIRA
I love the Spirit.
Yes I’m sure it won’t be deleted this time
Notordame @ #71:
2/10 for the trolling, since I *almost* entered a real reply to the comment.
@66
thought I’d try at least… sigh.
What astounds me is the fact that YOU PEOPLE don’t get it. George the Great laid it out in simple terms “the terrorists hate us for our freedoms” as long as we give them up, we have nothing to fear. If you insist on your freedom of speech, who knows what will happen to us. Oh and prosperity. Your encouraging terrorism if you don’t give all your money to BOA.
ing @70
Uh…okay
I won’t judge. There might be a good reason here.
Why did you love the spirit?
Isn’t it cute how someone hates us so much, but so much wants to be one of the cool kids that xe has to adopt a title that half the people who actually earned it don’t even use.
Mindless appeal to authority and sucking up to the cool kids FTW!
Aquaria:
Oh, the douchebiscuit would say it’s mockery, but jealous is as jealous does.
Maybe it was just me, but I always viewed it as a violent Chippendales show.
Well, Miller’s been nuts for quite awhile, but this is a special kind of nuts. You can’t protest banks because of terrorism? What is that even supposed to mean?
…And about the ads, they’re served semi-randomly, the blog author does not get to see them all or even approve them for inclusion. There is no method at all, aside from asking readers to report, for them to know what has been advertised on their site.
As for me, I don’t see the ads because most are flash-only. I just don’t load flash-only ads.
PS, Caine is still a troll.
I could not watch the whole thing “the 300” it was just to dumb more like WWF wrestling than drama with beef cake.
I thought what it was was an attempt to exploit a new way to make a movie, a hi-bred live action cartoon aimed at the young male market.
If you write like a precocious 11 year old for kids violent simplistic fantasy stories where “the good guy” wins through violence you might become disconnected from the real world and take your own thinking to be as the words of gods.
I made a mistake of clicking on one the other links toward the end of the post and now I know that some people think that the earth is growing in size.
I never would have known that had I not discovered PZ’s wonderful blog.
thanks I guess
uncle frogy
I thought the comic book of 300 was OK, about a 5/10. It was well drawn and it took a few of the best lines from Herodotus and reused them for a modern audience. But it was also shallow, unhistorical in a bad way (that is, it diverged from history out of ignorance and lack of care), blind to the many faults of Spartan society, and full of irritating anachronisms (Spartan soldiers using modern military slang).
Now that I know 300 was an outline of Miller’s political philosophy, I give it a 2/10 and only because it still has nice artwork.
Is calling Caine and Sallystrange trolls sorta your thing?
This was obvious even at his peak. Art (Maus) Spiegelman was disgusted by Dark Knight, calling it a Fascist work of art complete with the ubermensch arriving on a white horse to control the subhuman masses. Miller, not surprisingly, is an Ayn Rand disciple.
A comic book insider who knew the guy summed up Dark Knight to me at the time in four words: “Frank Miller got mugged.” After that, the poor little man simply hated people. It may have taken longer for the rest of the world to realize what a creep he was, but he’s made it abundantly clear since then.
crissakentavr:
Yes, yes, you little pearl clutcher, people who have been regular commenters for years and received OMs, they’re the trolls.
Are you ever going to stop your whining, Cupcake?
Caine:
So, assuming Miller’s piece isn’t parody, and he really does want those kids off his lawn… what does the fact that some Occupy protestors are veterans do to his, uh, thesis?
Oh, it’s not. Except insofar as Miller became a parody of himself years ago.
Nothing at all. Miller has no interest in “facts”.
I don’t know if I’d characterize Occupy protesters as thieves as rapists, but I’d characterize the protest as futile and non-constructive. Okay so some completely disparate groups ranging from libertarians, anarchists, socialists et al are “against” Wall Street in some scattershot sense but what are they for? Ask one group and you’d get a completely different and orthogonal answer to the next. And why does setting up some filthy tent city to “occupy” various cities accomplish this? It doesn’t. As soon as these people pack up or are sent packing this entire protest will be completely forgotten.
Am I the only one here thinking that people are reading a tad too much into 300?
No, but then again, one doubts that it was ever intended to be taken as a historically factual recounting of events. Granted there are bound to be some that did so anyway, just as there were people that believed The Matrix a bit too much. Personally, I’m fairly certain the movie was simply intended to be 90 minutes of over-the-top quasi-historical craziness for the hell of it. Entertainment, what a concept!
If you look at almost any culture in history, there is a very high chance that there are multiple instances of heroic endurance / selfless bravery / psychotic violence / etc. So, Miller chose classical Greece as his era (a rich crop of the aforementioned if ever there was one), and chose the Spartans at the Hot Gates. He could have chosen the Athenians, and we could dissect endlessly whether he has something against the Spartan contribution as a result. He could have changed era slightly and examined Alexander, or maybe jumped sides to tell the battle from the Persian point of view.
Whatever the choice, I have a feeling his outbursts re. the Occupy silliness would cause the same overexamination.
Criticise his diatribe on the grounds of the misunderstanding and contempt contained therein, and criticise the movie / graphic novel on their own merits and flaws. Mixing the two together is, I think, conflating two entirely seperate works.
Adam@90,
Why don’t you know whether you would apply this obviously false and dishonest characterization? I’d have thought it rather easy to decide not to associate yourself from such brazen lies.
The Occupy protests have already achieved one very important thing: they have obliged the media to take note and report that there are people who do not accept the vast concentration of wealth and power that has taken place in the USA (and most other countries) in the past three decades. Polls have shown very broad support for the protests.
Adam @ 90:
Yeah, those aimless kids don’t know what the hell they want… apart from reinstitution of vital banking regulations, tightening the income gap between the Rich and everyone else through increased taxation of the wealthy, reinvesting in America through funding of education and infrastructure well as securing the social safety net and expanding it into health care, protecting worker’s benefits and their right to collective bargaining… I mean, apart from all of that, what does #OWS stand for?
Seriously Adam, go fuck yourself.
Listening to a few news stories surrounding the “rapist” issue it seemed to me the main problem is that of unresponsive police – if the authorities take the stance of “us vs. them” – arresting protesters for almost no reason while ignoring protesters when they are asked for help – that’s bonkers. Police should be on the side of non-violent protesters, in communication with organisers and facilitating progress of a protest.
Adam
What they are for is something very basic, and very central to government – that Wall Street stop buying out the political process.
The effect of Wall Street corruption of government is fairly marked. Not that long ago the robo-signers scandal broke, in which banks were defrauding people of their houses. Where are the prosecutions?
This corruption extends to the US news media, which pushes dodgy economics and often outright fails to report on issues in a manner which matters. A policy’s wisdom is judged on electability, not on how it impacts people.
Worse the backlash in certain policy’s cases is either exagerated or minimised according to the US media’s paymasters’ will, or due to sheer negligence. Consider how the Tea Party is portrayed versus the Wall Street protests.
The US media has become little more than the PR arm of a national oligarchy. As Washington is no longer the seat of US government, as amply demonstrated by Barack Obama’s stunning failure as a president, the protesters are protesting the real seat of power.
Wall Street.
Internet Venn intersection
I like his lede:
I like exactly one Brin novel: “Kiln People”. Much recommended. His other books (especially horror books like The Terror) not so much.
US media: When a reporter mentioned that G. W. Bush had quit the Air National Guard early, his own TV company did a cangaroo court number on him.
This rant of Miller’s is DEFINITELY nutty.
But I think it’s stupid and petty to attack back by complaining about the accuracy of 300. If you thought it was, in any way, intended to be historically accurate, you completely missed the point of the work. He even did an interview in a recent issue of Dark Horse Presents (issue #1 or 2 I think) where he discussing this in the context of the 300 prequel he’s currently working on.
Miller and Sim, too bad they turned out to be such wingnuts.
Miller talks pretty tough for a guy who writes comics for a living. Get a proper fucking job, you moocher. ;)
@Akira MacKenzie. Some of the protestors might echo your sentiments but its clear others do not at all. That’s the problem when libertarians rub shoulders with anarchists, liberals and a hodge podge of other disparate groups. They share a fine strand of commonality and radically different demands. You only have to read stories such as this to realise that – http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/11/13/occupy-seattle-interrupts-pro-occupy-wall-street-forum-drives-away-supporters.
And boo hoo if it upsets you that I should point it out. If these groups really want to change things they should be leaning on their representatives or running their own, rather than engaging in silly disjointed protests which will achieve absolutely nothing in the long term except in strengthening local ordinances to prevent recurrences.
[meta]
Adam, you’re one of those who merit the epithet of ‘naysayer’.
(And boo hoo if it upsets you that I should point it out)
Us are?
Steve Ditko?
@John Morales no I’m not a naysayer. I just think that this protest is aimless, leaderless and has achieved largely nothing of note for all its noise and duration.
Adam,
Since you’re so clearly wrong on two out of these three cliams, and the third could be regarded as a feature rather than a bug, you must be an idiot.
@KG sure thing, whatever you say. Meanwhile the protests still continue to be aimless, leaderless and achieve nothing of note.
If miller was a sensible dude who could get in the mindset of an authoritarian nut well enough to write the crazy stories he does, we would all be praising him for his remarkable ability. As it is, its disappointing that he is not, but I think his work has value. Dark Knight returns is a Batman story that needed to be told, an insane character finally treated like the paranoid violent weirdo that was glossed over in previous incarnations. 300 was an exercise in modern mythmaking, much like what the ego-bloated authoritarians of the distant past did. Every dragon slaying story that survives today was written by some dickhead like miller.
Adam,
It is simply false that the protests are aimless. This is not a matter of opinion but of fact. One aim is, as I already said, to show that there is opposition to the concentration of wealth that has taken place in recent decades. Since this aim has already been achieved, it is also a simple matter of fact that they have achieved something of note, which would not have been achieved by “leaning on their representatives”.
But no doubt you will keep on denying these plain facts.
@KG, it is aimless. Let’s visit occupywallstreet.org which sets itself up as the centre for this movement, though there are other such sites. Very first sentence “#OCCUPYWALLSTREET is a leaderless people powered movement for democracy”. So a major site proclaims it’s leaderless right there on its headline.
So what’s it’s aims? Well a line or two down it says “we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy.” Well that’s specific. Or not. That could mean anything from tighter regulation to redistributing the wealth to the masses. Maybe they get more specific elsewhere, maybe like this blog where someone bats a few ideas around – http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/hey-president-obama-our-one-demand.html. Except the comments show every single poster has a different idea. It’s aimless.
And no wonder its aimless and leaderless when the movement is cobbled together disparate groups, many from opposing ends of the lunatic fringe.
And what it has achieved of note? Well it’s gotten the press I guess, and given some activists something to occupy their time. But has it forced any policy changes? Nope. Has it gotten substantive support from any political party? Nope.
So I feel quite comfortable in what I think of the movement. The only question is how the protestors will end up being dispersed. I reckon most cities are just waiting for the bad weather to kick in and do their work for them.
As far as I can tell (and I’m speaking for others here, since I haven’t seen the movie or read the comic book, and don’t really want to) the complaint is not so much that it’s historically inaccurate, but that it glorifies the Spartans while ignoring or even denigrating the Athenians.
IOW, it’s a facist apologia.
Harlan Ellison pretty much said all there was to say back when Miller’s egotistical jerkiness began to hit its stride (with the tide of critical and popular applause that greeted his revisionist Batman comic series):
“My, how the tiny have risen.”
And stayed risen apparently. Miller might be the sort of legend in his own mind who’s entitled to make these angry pronunciementos, but I don’t think he’s much of a legend in anyone else’s or even terribly relevant anymore, except to nostalgic fanboys.
The once lauded, now culturally irrelevant, often do tend to reappear like this, in full blowhard regalia. Looks like Miller has just joined the bandwagon…well, at least he hasn’t turned up on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ as of yet…
As I said, the problem isn’t just the historical inaccuracy of 300, but the bias so obviously displayed.
There’s an attitude in 300 that he’s using to denigrate the 99% — it’s useful to see it laid out.
For those doubting that 300 was intended to be historically accurate, the letters columns in the issues of the originally published series, wherein Miller and his fans offer up absurd convolutions to explain away Miller’s inaccuracies, show that Miller and much of his original audience took it seriously.
Not enough has been made of Snyder’s contribution to 300’s suckiness. Sure, he had crappy source material to work with, but 300 the movie was so much worse than the source material for being Snyderized.
Adam, KG explained how your claim that OWS is aimless is wrong.
You respond with,
Has it occurred to you that some people have different ideas about how to achieve their broader goal of reducing wealth inequality?
The fact that there is disagreement about how to achieve the overarching goal does not mean there is no goal at all.
Adam,
Leaderless =/= aimless. A rather simple point, but apparently way beyond you.
Right, so you’ve now admitted it’s not aimless.
Wow! People at the start of a bottom-up movement have different ideas. Who’d a thunk? That doesn’t mean it’s aimless. You’ve actually quoted an aim above.
This is the only thing of any possible interest you’ve said. Do you actually have evidence that more than an insignificant proportion of the protestors are “libertarians” in the current American sense – i.e. right-wing and pro-capitalist? All those I’ve heard speak seem to come from the anti-capitalist left.
Right, so you are now admitting it has achieved something of note. By your own admission, you were wrong to say it is aimless, and wrong to say it has achieved nothing of note.
I don’t know as much about the situation in the USA as about that in the UK, but if you look here you will see that the Green Party of the USA does support the movement (as do the UK and Scottish Green Parties). So you’re wrong again. Policy changes? Not yet. How long did it take the Civil Rights movement to achieve policy changes, Adam? No doubt you were, or would have been, one of those whining about its failure to do so a couple of months after it started.
It is one of those movies where you had all the resources you needed, all the access to the original vision (Miller was friends with Eisner for Christ sake) and all that acting talent and name you could need to make a hit, and it failed SPECTACULARLY. It wasn’t your run of the mill boring yawn, failure; it was a David Lynchesq parade of WTF imagery and nonsensical pandering. Someone making a xerox of their ass cheeks is a major plot point for crying out loud, and it’s treated seriously as if this were the forensic results from CSI! Why is SLJ as Octopuss (A character that is notable for NOT being seen) dressing up as Russian aristocrats, British buisnessmen, Mad Scientists, Shoguns, and Nazis? NO explanation? Why is there a head on a foot hopping around? Why did they melt a cat? Why does anything happen? The movie is a mess. It’s a comical mess. It’s a monument to Miller’s insanity and/or narcissism that he couldn’t put aside what he liked for a single goddamn second to make the swan song for his dead friends magnus opus. This is a movie where the director opens up the coffin of his BFF and takes a dump in it and looks around for praise. It’s a horrible movie, but horrible in all the ways that make it entertainingly bad
But the Civil Rights movement is so aimless. There was no single leader behind it all, and what were its aims anyways? To promote equal treatment of all citizens? Psh, that is pretty specific. Or not. That could mean trying to achieve voting rights for all, or equal pay for all races and sexes, or consistent treatment of all groups by the police, or a general reduction in the bigotry of the people. You see, all those civil rights activists had different ideas, therefore the movement as a whole was AIMLESS. duh.
That’s why the Civil Rights movement was not able to achieve anything.
– I like exactly one Brin novel: “Kiln People”. Much recommended. His other books (especially horror books like The Terror) not so much. –
I think re The Terror yr thinking about Dan Simmons who interestingly has, like Miller, said some Mighty Strange things regarding the Mooslim Menace.
Holy crap – that really is Neal Adams with the geologic crackpottery. Who knew?
I actually kind of liked The Dark Knight Strikes Again. It had an enjoyable lunatic energy matched by the crude artwork. Never could get why some folks who got so exercised about it had praised DKR back in the day.
Miller’s The Spirit – never saw it since the ads betrayed to me his fundamental misapprehension of the character and the strip. “My city screams” ? WTF? For me, Eisner’s work was essentially sentimental and warm-hearted, for all the wicked femme fatales and the unforgivable negroid caricature of Ebony white.
Folks have already mentioned Steve Ditko (Objectivist creep) and Dave Sim (misogynist and self-styled possessor of The Truth about Ibrahimic religion).
My favorite lunatic artiste has to be Stanislav Szukalski – once proclaimed “Poland’s Greatest Living Artist’, creator of incredibly beautiful sculpture and drawings, who conceived the ‘science’ of Zermatism, which encompasses:
– the Protong, the primeval language contained within all others
– the rise of mankind on Easter Island following the Deluge and how the memories of that experience are expressed symbolically in EVERY piece of art (you can see it if you know how to look!)
– the forced interbreeding of mankind with the ‘Yeti’, the resulting half-breeds being the source of all mankind’s ills yet also the artists, movers and shakers of the world (the ‘clever dwarves’ of legend)
Oh – and heat causes gravity.
And ALL of this he documented with pages & pages of drawings. There was an exhibition of his surviving sculptures here in SoCal a few years back and they were quite amazing to behold.
Gosh, from the length of this post you all are probably wondering who the real lunatic is…
When I first read and saw 300, I figured it was just heavily romanticizing Spartan culture so that they could still be portrayed as the good guys. I just figured it was historical fluff meant to show a bad ass battle against odds and didn’t want any outside moral influences to detract from the heroic sacrifice and all that.
But now, that illusion is dead. Either Miller knew about the reality of the brutal and disgusting culture that sprang up around Sparta and thought it has merit, or he was largely ignorant of other. Possibly both. I’m guessing that he figures the helots should have been happy to have the Spartans around to fight all the others in Greek who would oppress the helots. You know, more than the Spartans already were oppressing the helots.
Oh my. I always thought plate tectonic denialism was a joke. *Headdesk*
@KG #114
There are quite a few Ron Paul types around at Occupy Portland, and I’ve seen some of their signs in pictures from other occupations. That’s about the extent of the right-libertarian presence, AFAICT, and I still haven’t figured out what the Paulistas are doing there in the first place.
@120
I think it has to do with the notion that it isn’t a free market. They figure that if we end all regulation and the like, the market will correct itself. That’s how the whole OWS movement has a connection with Paul and people that follow the libertarian ideology. It doesn’t have to make sense, that’s the important bit to remember.
For those not familiar with him Neal Adams was considered one of the great comic artists of the ’60s and ’70s.
Steve Ditko will be remembered for helping create Spider Man and Doctor Strange with Stan Lee. A lot of comic fans probably don’t know about his fondness of Objectivism, or that the Question, who he created for the defunct Charlton Comics and was later bought up by DC, was supposed to be an Objectivist superhero.(It would be interesting to know what he thinks of the current holder of the Question name and powers, lesbian ex-Gotham City cop Renee Montoya.)
I’m surprised no one has mentioned John Byrne. Byrne has been criticised in recent years for some of his comments, such as complaining about Jessica Alba being cast as Sue Storm in the Fantastic Four movies, and he’s beeen accused by some of having a problem with women in general that is reflected in his work.
Somewhere, the Beast’s list of the 50 Most Loathsome People in America 2011 just gained an entry.
And his punishment will be to be cast back in time to serve as a helot in Sparta…
Byrne’s just a jerk. I wouldn’t place him in the insane league with Miller. The oddest thing I heard Byrne say was to take credit for the guys-wearing-ponytails trend of the early ’90s.
While Ditko is (was?) an objectivist, he managed to keep his politics out of his work when doing work-for-hire on mainstream properties. He never exhibited a descent into 24/7 madness that sullied everything he touched. Given his reclusiveness, he seemed to almost have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to to his personal life, and because of this I have no problem rereading his classic work without the nagging “but this guy’s a lunatic” thought I get when rereading Millers Daredevil (which I still enjoy despite the creator’s madness) and listening to Ted Nugent (yes, I still listen to ’70s Nugent)
“…is it required for comic book artists to be crazy, or does it just help?
Johnny Hart, Chester Gould, Neal Adams, Scott Adams…sure seems like a connection might be there.
What??!!! The movie 300 wasn’t historically accurate???
WOW, next thing you’ll be telling that The Flintstones was a per-biblical documentary
Praize Jebuz
redartifice (#1): “Frank Miller jumped off the deep end some time between The Dark Knight Returns and around 2000. His output has grossly suffered as a result- look at the politics in DKR as compared to The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Today, he’s just a self parody.”
Sorta like Johnny Hart and “B.C.” after he became a fundy christian?
.
I haven’t read many “graphic novels” so I don’t know about the content of the stories, but Miller sounds like another Tom Clancy: a rabid fanboy and wannabe/neverwas who starts to worship an ideology and incorporates it into his fiction, rendering it worthless.
Whether it’s writers, artists, businessmen, golfers, athletes or whomever, as soon as people get rich, a lot of them say “I got mine!” and forget where they came from or how they got there. Greed and ego both corrupt absolutely, just as much as power does.
.
Dalillama@120,
Thanks for the info! You always get a few random nutters at any demonstration – somewhere I have a collection of the most splendidly loony leaflets I’ve been handed.
Actually, he on a few occasions seemed to try and was vetoed by his other writers. One infamous scene in Spiderman involving the protests in the 60s was written by Ditko for Spiderman yelling at them to get jobs and Stan Lee changed it to showing solidarity.
Also The Question in both incarnations is one of my favorite characters. While Ditko created him, his adopted father is Denny O’Neil who took him away from just being an objectivist mouth piece to a introspective figure who explored and dabbled a variety of philosophy.
The best Question might be a very meta issue where he reads Watchmen and tries to emulate Rorschach.
– complaining about Jessica Alba being cast as Sue Storm in the Fantastic Four movie –
welll, to this observer dyeing her hair even that dark blonde made the very pretty Jessica Alba look less like Sue Storm and more like a Brazilian prostitute – wrong wrong WRONG coloring for a blonde…and don’t get me started on Ben Grimm’s resemblance to a burn victim.
@Jaime
The Corman Thing looked better. Which is sad.
Also the issue was with Byrne using the Brazilian prostitute language. What is his problems with latinas and/or women?
So why is Oakland being singled out, over every other city with large numbers of people who have also embraced the OWS movement?
Oakland is very conservative and has issues with police brutality I believe.
I watched the parody Meet the Spartans before the original.
Much better that way.
Funniest scene in the original: when
LeónidasLionáidas says “Spartans!!! What is your professiaaaahn!!!” – “Ah-ooh!!! Ah-ooh!!! Ah-ooh!!!” X-D“I must be Frank.”
– Emperor Palpatine
…the dialect is nearly extinct. It preserves features that even Homeric Greek had lost except as the grin of the Cheshire cat, and at the same time it has a lot of innovations that the rest of Greek lacks.
Will awesomeness never cease.
Goddamned even.
In Civilization II, I liked to get rich peacefully and then simply buy the other countries, one city after another.
Almost.
The question remains: why would anyone make such a movie?
That’s because they’re afraid of our sniny fangs.
*yaaaaaawn*
Napoleon, not Hitler.
Ing @ 134:
I actually haven’t read Byrne’s precise objections to The 20thC Fox FANTASTIC 4. I was kinda-sorta agreeing with the miscasting of Ms Alba as Sue Storm on the grounds that they cast an actress with Latina coloring and made her a blonde ANYWAY. My use of the unfelicitous phrase “Brazilian prostitute” was an un-PC way of saying that it is unflattering for some people to affect a blonde hair color – to my etes it looks unstylish, ugly and fake. I was certainly not going down the geek-tacular road of “Dood, don’t cast Idris Elba as Heimdall in THOR cuz blah-blah blackity-black-black-black…”
I mean no disrespect to Jessica Alba, women in general, Brazilians, Brazilian women, Latina women, or sex workers of any gender, gender identification or combination thereof.
Wait – BUY cities in Civ? How come I never knew you could do that? Damn, I spent fortunes and years on ships that went straight to the bottom one after another in order to finally occupy or destroy a city.
I coulda just BOUGHT it?
Crap.
Not in the newer ones, but on the old Civ games once you had diplomacy, you could build diplomats and spies and send them out to subvert cities and units. The more money you spent, the better the chance of a successful revolution in your favour.
Again…because it won’t just be deleted.
Yeah but it seems that the sentient sack of shit thinks it can sneak it in by dropping one of it’s misplaced satirical elements.
Damn! Deleted again!
I think I’ll copy the next one.
Especially if it has the word “cunt”.
Those are special.
JeffreyD @ 52:
I think David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia comes pretty close. There are some things in that movie that were not in the book. There were also lots of omissions and mis-timings… well OK there are quite a few inaccuracies but I think a large part of that is due to us having a pretty good history and plenty of independent accounts and evidence to rely on.
Perhaps a better example might be Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers. As far as I know there is no criticism of the film’s accuracy. Though, when I first saw it I thought it was a documentary and it is not.
Enemy at the Gates is another that wasn’t too far off the mark.
The Military Channel currently has a series called “An Officer and a Movie” (sheesh) that plays some historical (usually WWII) type movie and has a guest officer who was present or an expert on the particular part of the war criticize it’s historical accuracy.
Why would you do that, chigau? You would just being doing the job of the sentient sack of shit.
@KG, you’re in denial I’m afraid.
[meta]
Adam, you’re afraid of KG’s state of denial of your naysaying due to your ignorance; this, I’m not afraid to opine.
As I said before, it’s not naysaying. These protests are incoherent noise and the ultimate outcome is fairly predictable.
Oh Adam dear…just because you don’t understand the big boy words doesn’t mean that the adults are just speaking nonsense, honey.
Of course it helps to be an adolescent dick to be a comic book artist; but I do know quite a few that manage not to go there. It also helps to be a little bit bi or gay (hey, we draw hot guys in spandex, what do you expect!). Miller’s problem is that he’s too established and hurting Wall Street hurts his stock portfolio which makes baby Leonidas cry. Try talking to some of the younger comic artists from the Midwest. Most of them are all for the 99%.
Damn shame that one more of my childhood icons has proven to be a dick, and idiot, or flat out crazy. John Byrne (Dick), Frank Miller (Dick and an Idiot), Niel Adams (Bat shit Fucking Crazy). Who’s next?
@Silent Service
Leifeld?
Let’s all have a good laugh now.
You could (and should) make the same point without using gendered-insults or insults which disparage those with mental illnesses.
Me, too. :)
And I’ve always tended to almost, but not quite, wipe out my last remaining opponent, ringing their last remaining city with the toughest troops I can build, and “milk” it for points until such time as I am ready to call it quits.
But since This Is…Not…TET!!!, I will stop my off-topic chitterchatter.
Everybody here who’s going on about how 300 was just a movie and nobody expected it to be true to history really ought to read Moff’s Law.
The stories we tell matter. They’re used to sway public opinion, to plant mental seeds. Entertainment is not off-limits for criticism because it’s “just entertainment.” Entertainment is and has always been a superb vehicle for propagating messages.
Well, I admit I’ve only shown you’re wrong on three counts so far. To judge by the violence used against Occupiers in Oakland, New York and elsewhere, the US authorities seem determined to nip the movement in the bud.
Oh dear, wrong again. And let’s just remember what you said about the protestors:
and
You don’t know that you’d tell obvious lies about the Occupiers, but you do regard them as “filthy”. Seems to me you have rather a lot invested in disparaging them. I wonder why, if they’re so insignificant.
Hitler, too. Krämerseelen, “shopkeeper souls”.
Yep. It worked in Civ II, was called “subvert”, and you had the option of paying 1 x the price and risk failure or paying 2 x the price and being guaranteed success. Democracies were immune, so were capital cities; otherwise, the price varied with the size of a city, its distance from the capital, the financial situation of the country, and the form of government (cities in theocracies were generally insanely expensive).
If that became too common, the other country would generally find a pretext for war (or of course declare war just so)… if they could afford it.
From Civ III onwards, you have to use your culture instead.
There is no flipping of cities because of culture in Civ V. Instead, culture points are used to open policies. And culture can be used to gain victory by opening and completing five culture routes. This is best done by have a small empire with a very entrenched defensive military.