Those of you who have followed my various blogs with any regularity know that I have been campaigning for many years against the inhumane and unsightly practice of excessive eyebrow tweezing, trimming, and shaping by males (see here, here, and here, for starters).

I went to see 300 the other night, and was shocked and horrified, first and foremost, by the evil Xerxes' eyebrows:


This is where it ends, innit? Culture, I mean. It's particularly dispiriting as the actor who plays Xerxes, Rodrigo Santoro, has absolutely scrumptious eyebrows in real life:


See.  I told you. They look good enough to eat, don't they? Terrible casting here. I mean, it's perfectly obvious who should have played Xerxes, innit?


Not that the Spartans were much better. Leonidas with his rat-tail, codpiece and cape, spouting all manner of sententiousness we were supposed to take seriously. Everybody's raving about all those monster abs and those leather thongs, but to me they looked like a bunch of steroid-addled WWF rejects in search of a smackdown. And they got one in the end, didn’t they?

Bad casting and costumes aside, 300 was like watching my five year old nephews play Mortal Combat on X-Box. While there were some arresting images (though no one seemed to mind the one of the grown man sucker-punching the six-year old early on), the overall effect of the over-done effects was mind- and butt-numbingly tedious. I mean, how many times can you see someone gored before you're bored to tears? Don't tell me, let me guess: it's somewhere in the range of six- to eight-hundred, right?

What was somewhat interesting, sort of, in a way, was that this ridiculously hyper-violent dick-flick was actually part chick-flick. This was, in a genre sense, Titanic on steroids. In fact, if it hadn't been so gleefully apocalyptic, it could be classed with any Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello beach blanket flick. Think of the bloody parts as the musical bits, and you're there.

Of course, the violence, the convoluted and mock-profound plot (meant, no doubt to spark all manner of serious debate about political allegories, none of which bear the least scrutiny), and the sentimental, un-Spartanlike hetero love story were all geared toward adolescent sensibilities (and their attendant sensitivities, which are sometimes lost on their elders, I'll admit). But make no mistake: this was a date-movie. And by all indications a wildly popular one. And not primarily a gay date-movie, either.

The fact that chicks are game for this level of retarded gore should not really surprise anyone. Never fear, despite historic claims to the contrary, women are perfectly capable of bad taste and violence, too. A random trip on the Orange Line any day of the week will confirm this. The difference between male and female violence seems to be mainly in the methods and implements employed. And female violence may be a tad less senseless on average than the male variety—men sometimes kill out of boredom, women usually have a reason—not always a good one, mind you—but some sort of reason.

I think it may also be a vanishing myth that women don't get off on the kind of supergore you see in this flick. Social conventions of feminine virtue, and the saccharine vision of femininity that undergirded them, seem to be fading into the mist of time. The degree to which we believe in such myths often determines how closely we adhere to their proscriptions.

The good news is that appallingly bad, hyperviolent spectacles like 300—or any World Wrestling Entertainment production—can now be enjoyed by couples as a prelude to a steak dinner (we'd like ours raw, please!) and maybe a night of tequila titty shots and fag-bashing afterward!
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*See here.