Death of a Diva

Yesterday, the world awkwardly celebrated the so-called Women's Day while centuries have passed and still the western world is confused with its masculine ego driven by ignorance and fed by arrogance and long dated male supremacy; no matter how hard they try. 

Hollywood was first in the frontline to release its latest blockbuster mayhem of madness just hours before March 8th dawned to show just how they are still "bloody" committed to feminism and women rights in their new movie 300: rise of an empire serving as the sequel to the earlier version of an even worse distortion of history that this time was supposed to narrate the tale a true "lady" who lead the Persian Army against the dispersed tribes of Greece and defeated them marking what 21st century could and should see as an example of a nation who was so well advanced in culture that had a young  woman as its army general, leading soldiers in combat against savage villagers of the time who only knew how to subjugate and prosecute women for not only their uncivilized era, but for centuries to follow that is ever stained in our history from treating women as mere child-bearers, during the rule of Louis XIV and his Filles du Roi to senseless scavenging excuse for a human hunt of witchcraft throughout half a millennium in two different continents.

Noam Murro, the amateur director of the film, following the footstep of his mentor Zack Snyder who pioneered the franchise collaborating this time around as the producer with his wife Deborah and their oddly, yet rightly named film company Cruel and Unusual Films, in this sequel, had a hard time ending the movie since not only the plot was ridiculously crooked with little complication or characterization except for the "tyrannical blood thirsty Persians who were just pure evil and nothing more" and the "freedom loving" Greeks who fought fiercely and bravely against all impossible odds, typical western superhero material, and surprisingly won almost every single battle except for the one history actually has clear records for, downplayed tactfully, being the fall of Athens that got little reception in the plot filled and spewed with little dialogue or a decent narrative, nothing but bloody scenes in stylish gore that left half the audience in revolt and disgust that Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News courteously calls it "an ashen video game" safely giving it one out of five stars in the weekly review.

Nonetheless, what strikes me is how could the West who knows little about human rights let alone women's rights and its history from the Roman gladiators who provided entertainment through the slaughter of slaves, to the Vikings who were infamous for their savagery and bloodshed, to the insatiable thirst of its monks and masons who falsely accused innocent women of witchcraft, to their King Henry VIII of England who beheaded two of his unfortunate not four ;) but six wives, both convicted with fabricated evidences of adultery, to the physical torture and prosecution of suffragettes only decades ago, now trying to lecture the East on women rights. It is no surprise that the only surprise they could come up with on celebrating 8th of March, Women's day, would be a mere mockery of one of Persia's bravest women generals, Artemisia, who brought the male dominated Greek tribes down to their knees and was the living example of women bravery and courage. 

Ironically, Zack who wrote the screenplay himself, still claiming that the movie is solely fiction basing it on Frank Miller's inconveniently unpublished graphic novel distorts facts and history and ends the uncomfortably dragging plot by bringing the Persian Diva Artemisia down to her knees, which historically never happened, in the last scene of the movie, in a desperate attempt to provide the plot with some conclusion, portraying the Greek General Themistokles standing "manly" victorious looking down his sweaty six abs as Artemisia falls "femininely" down to her knees. Sadly, it is the best ending the West could come up with to such a contradicting tale, an absolute hysteria, leaving the East to wonder, with such male adrenaline still pumping and running on its heated chest and through its ignorantly arrogant veins, how could the West ever claim that it has left behind, its male madness. 

Alireza Manzour

09.03.2014