[lit-ideas] "Have Loeb, Will Travel" (Was: Leonidas)

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:59:46 EST
Geary declined, but I think the moment that provoked the undescribable  
consternation was:
 
from wiki (below).
 
I assume the simile with Xerxes is a fine one? I just don't know. What we  
want to know, us foreigners, if it was a _good_ thing or a _bad_ thing (alla  
Sellars/Yeatman).
 
I notice that it's Rodrigo Santoro who plays Xerxes in "300". Why is it  that 
they give stereotypical roles to Latinos? He played an oligophrenic hunk in  
"Love, Actually", and I like him, but he shouldn't have shaved his balls, as  
apparently he did, to get the part.
 
His English is pretty broken, and there is an interview to him, in as I  
recall, Rotten Tomatoes, where he expands on Xerxes. He says he read Herodotus  
to 
get some inspiration, and was motivated by the 'round' character that he had  
to display. He tried, he says, not to make it too unidimensional -- as  
apparently Butler playing Leonidas is, as critics in Greece saw. 
 
The film was boycotted by Iran, as saying that it promotes gratuitous clash  
of civilisations (sic). And the professor of Greek at Cambridge that they used 
 for pronunciation -- and who apparently has written books on Sparta -- could 
not  get the implicature of Leonidas:
 
"We won't be less than THOSE boy-loving Athenians"
 
-- which in my opinion does not necessarily ENTAIL that Spartans hate  boys.
 
Cheers,
 
JL Speranza
       Civilisation-Clasher, but otherwise  harmless
 
"At his inauguration on March 4, 1861, the German American Turners formed  
Lincoln's bodyguard; and a sizable garrison of federal troops was also present, 
 
ready to protect the capital from Confederate invasion and local 
insurrection.  In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln declared, "I hold that 
in 
contemplation  of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these 
States is 
perpetual.  Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of 
all national  governments," arguing further that the purpose of the United 
States Constitution  was "to form a more perfect union" than the Articles of 
Confederation which were  explicitly perpetual, thus the Constitution too was 
perpetual. He asked  rhetorically that even were the Constitution a simple 
contract, would it not  require the agreement of all parties to rescind it? 
Also in 
his inaugural  address, in a final attempt to reunite the states and prevent 
the 
looming war,  Lincoln supported the pending Corwin Amendment to the 
Constitution, which had  already passed Congress. This amendment, which 
explicitly 
protected slavery in  those states in which it existed, was designed to appeal 
not 
to the Confederacy  but to the critical border states. At the same time, 
Lincoln adamantly opposed  the Crittenden Compromise, which would have 
permitted 
slavery in the  territories. Despite support for the Crittenden compromise 
among some prominent  Republicans (including William Seward), Lincoln denounced 
it 
saying that it  "would amount to a perpetual covenant of war against every 
people, tribe, and  state owning a foot of land between here and Tierra del 
Fuego."
 



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[lit-ideas] "Have Loeb, Will Travel" (Was: Leonidas)

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