300 a Veiled Analogy About Bush?

Articles on the Drudgereport like this one really piss me off. It would seem the muck raker is trying to force the producers of the upcoming (March 9th) film, 300, to take a stance on the Iraq war, either pro or against. My biggest problem with it all is that sometimes, just sometimes, stories aren't really analogies for anything! 300 was obviously produced because of the success of Sin City, another Frank Miller masterpiece (that also wasn't some secretive plot against the Bush administration, mind you).

Why does this war film suddenly have to carry a deeper meaning, or to be a commentary on our modern lives? Because the main plot happens to be about war? It simply looks like a celebration of gore and battle cinematography. It doesn't need to be about anything else, really.

Does it?

Maybe, in fact, that's the entire point of the movie, for despite the success of the Spartan warriors to deflect the oncoming Persian army, the ultimate outcome is the same: Sparta fades away into a few paragraphs in our high school history books. Maybe that, in fact, is the point: for all the saber rattling, war is a waste of time, a sort of Superbowl before the invention of the proverbial football.

In other words, Matt Drudge, you're the messenger standing on the edge of the cavernous hole and those of us who actually think for ourselves are the guys kicking you down into it, all the while yelling "This is Sparta!" How's that for an analogy? Now go crawl under a rock and shaddap.