Prepare for glory : the multiplication of the digitally hyperreal hero in Frank Miller’s/ Zack Snyder’s 300
Part of : Γράμμα : περιοδικό θεωρίας και κριτικής ; Vol.18, No.1, 2010, pages 189-204
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189-204
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Individuality, subjectivity and community in mass-mediated, “abstract” society
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The filmic adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 by Zack Snyder stands right between recorded history and postmodern entertainment, with its storyline crammed between an actual event and its virtual filmic shell. The muscular homogeneity of the Spartan army, made possible with digital technology, is viewed as a kaleidoscopic reflection of the relation between one story and its many narrated versions, visually exemplified by the army of 300 Spartans, in which specificity is effaced and the individual conflates with the dehumanized mass. Drawing on the libidinal dynamics of male muscularity, the film fuses history, the superhero tradition and current so cial anxieties to present an abstract ideal, death in the noble service of freedom, through a specific, contemporary viewpoint. Digital post-processing ensures that the aesthetics of the film is the same as that of the graphic novel, minimalist but hardly life-like; thus the film celebrates the ability of digital imaging to transform a single abstract idea/ ideal into a pop culture spectacle, faithful, as such, to the time and era that it addresses.
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Περιέχει σημειώσεις και βιβλιογραφία.The individual and the mass: literary and cultural reflections
