Whoa! Talk about reading a lot of complexity into something simple!

That normal Spartan soldiers were lucky enough to be born with straight spines doesn't mean they earned honor

that Ephialtes was born a hunchback doesn't mean he deserved contempt

What "300" does is to draw our attention to a simple paradox: democracies can bestow unearned failure; tyrannies can bestow unearned privilege.

Do you know what the -real- Sparta was like? For starters they got rid of defective infants by exposure (Sparta was not unique in this regard). They took males away from their families at age 7 and brutally trained...

In addition to the brutality shown to Spartans, the treatment of the Helots (slave-serfs) was brutal....

   I was using the term projection in the sense of an unconscious transfer of one’s emotions to another object or person, rather that of a defense mechanism.

It needn't be unconscious, and it needn't be defensive.

This is quite common in artistic criticism and esthetic appreciation.

Yes, even by Objectivists.

     The term psychologizing usually refers to the practice of speculating about another person’s mental state, which of course would not apply to a fictional character.
 
Again, a writer of fiction would never make such a foolish statement -- clearly, you've never written fiction. If we cannot speculate about the psychology of fictional characters, then we also cannot speculate on their physical characteristics (after all, they don't "really" exist). Nor can we ask questions about their choices and actions (because, according to your lights, fictional characters don't really have "choices", nor do they "act"; they are merely amusing puppets whose strings are deftly pulled by the writer).
 
It's not only perfectly natural and rational to speculate on the psychology of fictional characters -- to speculate on their psychology as if they were real beings -- but the writers of fiction want us to do so. Not to speculate would be a sign that the writer had failed to make the character convincingly real.

   Dictionaries do not typically stipulate constraints on usage.  Logic does that.

Actually, as you confessed in your first line above, mere personal preference -- in this case, whim -- often stipulates the constraints, which is the reason you backpeddled by writing "I was using the term in the sense of..." I take it, therefore, there are senses other than yours in which one can use the word. There is no constraint, logical or lexical, on using the word "psychologize" in reference to fictional characters. You merely prefer to constrain your usage of the word to references about real people (which must make your fiction reading extremely dull).
 
To each his own.

From the standpoint of the audience, it's perfectly all right to take a character or an event as being symbolic of something larger than itself (one can even do this with real people and real events); but this need not have anything to do with the intentions of the writer; in fact, part of the fun for the writer is to learn the different ways a person might ascribe symbolic meaning to his fictional creation; it's often something completely unexpected.
 
So, beyond presenting a stylized depiction of a historical figure, I don't think Miller, et al., intended Ephialtes to symbolize  any idea or moral precept explicitly. The only symbol in the film in regard to Ephialtes is his twisted physical condition (not certain, but I don't think the historical Ephialtes was a hunchback), prefiguring a twisted choice he will make. He's portrayed as a pathetic character, physically ugly, and spiritually suffering from his yearning to serve his country...a yearning that we discover can never be satisfied.
 
That said, I take the character of Ephialtes as symbolizing several things: the fragility of democracies (they can sometimes be betrayed by someone who is just plain disgruntled with his job); and the paradox that a democracy can sometimes bestow undeserved failure on someone, while a tyranny can sometimes bestow unearned privilege.
 
This, of course, is personal interpration, not analysis, the latter being concerned much more with purely technical aspects of craft.

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Which artist? Frank Miller, who wrote the graphic novel? Or the five screenwriters (Miller among them) who adapted the novel to a screenplay? Or the directory (who was among the five writers)? Or the editor (who can often change the meaning of a story entirely by putting scenes in a different order from that of the screenplay and novel, and can emphasize certain things at the expense of others)? That's a different issue, and one not so easily answered.

know for a fact Frank Miller has read a lot of Rand, so I don't think my analysis is that far off the mark.

LOL! I know for a fact Hillary Rodham Clinton has read Rand. . . and liked her! For you, it seems, to have read Rand is ipso facto to have agreed with her.

Of course it's possible to analyze a work of art. Analysis, however, does not mean that one assigns symbolism to this or that character;

There's a famous example of this from the 16th century, a play titled "Everyman", in which characters are explicitly named for the moral qualities they represent: "Good", "Evil", "Temptation", etc.

From the standpoint of the audience, it's perfectly all right to take a character or an event as being symbolic of something larger than itself (one can even do this with real people and real events); but this need not have anything to do with the intentions of the writer; in fact, part of the fun for the writer is to learn the different ways a person might ascribe symbolic meaning to his fictional creation; it's often something completely unexpected.

So, beyond presenting a stylized depiction of a historical figure, I don't think Miller, et al., intended Ephialtes to symbolize any idea or moral precept explicitly

That said, I take the character of Ephialtes as symbolizing several things: the fragility of democracies (they can sometimes be betrayed by someone who is just plain disgruntled with his job); and the paradox that a democracy can sometimes bestow undeserved failure on someone, while a tyranny can sometimes bestow unearned privilege.

This, of course, is personal interpration, not analysis, the latter being concerned much more with purely technical aspects of craft.

Have you read the graphic novel?

No. Are you claiming it’s necessary to have read the book before seeing the movie adaptation?

The movie adaption was very close to it and as you said Frank Miller participated in the screenplay adaption and said he was very happy with how it turned out. So what are you going on about here? Have you even read the graphic novel?

You’re repeating yourself. In that case, I shall too: It should not be necessary to read the book after seeing the movie adaptation in order to understand some point about the story – not if the adaptation was successful. But if Frank Miller was happy with the way it turned out, then I am happy with the way it turned out.

I know for a fact Frank Miller has read a lot of Rand, so I don't think my analysis is that far off the mark.

LOL! I know for a fact Hillary Rodham Clinton has read Rand. . . and liked her! For you, it seems, to have read Rand is ipso facto to have agreed with her.

I should have added Frank Miller has read a lot of Rand and agrees with a lot of Objectivist principles. Is that better Claude?

Nonsense. You don’t know that at all. Here’s what I’ve found on the Miller-Rand nexus

“We all borrow from the classics from time to time, and my story for this chapter in the life of Martha Washington is no exception. Faced with the questions of how to present Martha’s rite of passage and how to describe the fundamental changes in Martha’s world, I was drawn again and again to the ideas presented by Ayn Rand in her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. Eschewing the easy and much-used totalitarian menace made popular by George Orwell, Rand focused instead on issues of competence and incompetence, courage and cowardice, and took the fate of humanity out of the hands of a convenient ‘Big Brother’ and placed it in the hands of individuals with individual strengths and individual choices made for good or evil. I gratefully and humbly acknowledge the creative debt.”

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0588340/bio

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/000281.html

[Frank Miller, on his creative debt to Ayn Rand]

So he liked “Romantic Manifesto” because it legitimized the hero in literature. I don’t think this counts as having read “a lot of Rand,” unless by “a lot” you mean “he read something by her and really liked it.” I think that’s probably what you do mean.

As evidence by your post you clearly know next to nothing about Frank Miller.

Perhaps. By that standard, only his parents and his hairdresser are qualified to make statements about his work. First you imply that one must read the original book before seeing and judging a movie adaptation; additionally, you imply we must read several biographies of the author.

 Nonsense. (But a nice attempt at a diversion.)

Of course it's possible to analyze a work of art. Analysis, however, does not mean that one assigns symbolism to this or that character;

Nor does it mean that you can't Claude.

If “analysis” to you means: “character X (who is tall and handsome) symbolizes the great value of ‘Freedom’; character Y (who is very ugly and stupid) obviously symbolizes ‘Hypocrisy’; etc., and these are not merely my reactions to the work of art but are objectively ‘there’, in the work of art itself, placed there with loving care by the artist himself,” then I certainly won’t argue with you. I would never dream of infringing your right to be sophomoric.

I have analyzed art by pointing out the symbolism.

You have merely pointed out your preference to interpret certain story events as symbolic – as being signs and signifiers that point to meaning outside of themselves. It’s very laudable, but the symbolism is in your head.

Just because you arbitrarily state that I can't doesn't mean it is so.

I am merely informing you of the typical practice of good writers everywhere: outside of allegory (which is risky precisely because the symbols are so overt), explicit assignment by a writer of his character to moral precepts or abstract ideas is shunned. For good reason: it’s didactic and therefore boring; it’s judgmental and therefore predictable. Boredom and Predictability are not sound esthetic values for a fiction writer to pursue. At any rate, they are not practical values.

There's a famous example of this from the 16th century, a play titled "Everyman", in which characters are explicitly named for the moral qualities they represent: "Good", "Evil", "Temptation", etc.

So you're saying symbolism must be entirely explicit with no degree of subtlety?

The more subtle you make it, the more difficult it is to prove that it really is a symbol. But I see that now you’re asserting that if we disagree with your opinion that Ephialtes symbolized “X” in the story, it’s because we’ve missed some sort of subtlety in his character. Well, we all saw the grimace on his face when Leonidas wished him long life through his death rattle, yet we all concluded something different about its significance. Either Miller’s characterization is so subtle as to be ineffective as a literary device for imparting the idea that it is, in fact, symbolic of something; or…the grimace is simply ambiguous and might mean many different things, depending on how one interprets it.

Actually, Hardin missed it entirely. He claimed merely that the final words of Leonidas were symbolic of the movie’s theme, which he summarized as “morality and freedom as requirements for man’s life on earth.” When I requested evidence for such a conclusion – evidence that I expected he would glean from the movie itself (i.e., action or dialogue) – he replied, instead, with an abstract philosophical statement regarding how he thinks such a character would feel (or rather, should feel) about his actions: “The longer he lived, the more obvious and painful it would be that he had forfeited the values that make life worthwhile.” The “would be” is a disguised “should be,” since this is not evidence gleaned internally from the movie, but rather his speculations on psychology.

Then he tried a little misdirection by claiming, in effect, “It’s right there in front of your nose! You mean you don’t see it? I find that puzzling!” And then, a little later, “But I can’t be speculating on the psychology of the character; that would be psychologizing, and we cannot do that with fictional characters,” which ranks right up there with statements like “But I can’t be broke; I’ve still got more blank checks!”

Rushing to Hardin’s defense, you attempted to supply some internal evidence by saying in effect “Hardin is obviously correct about the movie’s theme, as well as about Ephialtes’ psychology: he grimaced on hearing the dying words of Leonidas. That grimace is proof-positive that he was suffering from having betrayed Sparta; and since he was suffering from having betrayed Sparta, it consequently proves that the theme of the movie was indeed “morality and freedom are requirements for man’s life on earth.”

This is both psychologizing and projecting, in approximately equal measures.

Why not the writer just state in a footnote "hey get it you moron? This is symbolism" if you're so damned worried about misinterpreting symbolism.

Because (1) once a writer explicitly states to the reader “X means Y”, it’s no longer symbolism. “X” becomes a mere signifier of “Y”. This is convenient in mathematics and in traffic signage, but convenience is usually not a much sought after value in esthetics. (2) There are already plenty of readers and critics willing to do that on behalf of the writer. There are some on this very message board – indeed, this very thread – who will gladly write what are in fact extended footnotes to those who presumably lack subtlety, and who will gladly shout “Hey, don’t you get it, you moron? Can’t you choose to think and therefore conclude with me that character X is a symbol for concept Y? No? Well, then, there’s obviously something wrong with both your psycho-epistemology and your sense of life [note to self: be sure to look up some pithy statement by Miss Rand bearing on this, and quote it in full]!”

 While I understand if something is too subtle and vague symbolism can be misinterpreted, but not so in this example we are discussing.

At what point does something become “too subtle” or “too vague”?

And you are certainly not the final arbiter to whether I'm wrong in my analysis of the symbolism.

You’ve provided no “analysis”. You’ve given us a subjective interpretation, that’s all. I wouldn’t dream of being an arbiter, final or not, of your subjective interpretation of a work of fiction.

And this film was heavy on the symbolism, to the disfigured Ephors, the disfigured sex slaves in Xerxes' camp, to the disfigured Ephialtes. Only the most extremely obtuse individual would not pick up on the fact this symbolism was supposed to mean these characters, the antagonists, had a vice (i.e. disfigured=antagonist).

Indeed, and this represents subtlety to you? This is not far removed from the examples of allegory I mentioned earlier. Beyond the symbolism of “handsome and fit  = protagonist; ugly and disfigured = antagonist”, how, pray tell, do you jump from obviously overt symbols like that, to a confident assertion that “therefore, it must follow that Ephialtes’ grimace at Leonidas’s dying words are also a symbol (but this time a subtle symbol; not a crass one like physical perfection or physical deformity); in this case, a subtle symbol for Ephialtes’ impending (and worsening) guilt-trip at having betrayed great philosophical values, expressed in the very theme of the movie: “morality and freedom truly are requirements for man’s life on earth.”

You’re hanging quite a heavy load of conclusion on some pretty slim evidence: a grimace…which I (and others) interpret quite differently from you, and which Hardin missed entirely.  

So if Ephialtes was disfigured, what do you supposed his vice was? What made him an antagonist and why? (I should think his betrayal was good enough to say he was an antagonist) Why were all the protagonists (the Spartan soldiers and Leonidas' wife) physically perfect? Oh ye who knows everything about Frank Miller and 300?

Already noted above. Overt, crass symbols for “physical perfection = protagonist; physical deformity = antagonist.” Now that we agree that the symbol-system in this epic is overt, big, brassy, obvious, bordering on crass, and impossible to miss, you won’t continue to pin your hopes for winning this argument on the silly notion that “hey, just maybe there are some really subtle symbols floating around here; you know, like maybe a subtle grimace, signifying a whole bunch of higher-level philosophical and psychological concepts…”

From the standpoint of the audience, it's perfectly all right to take a character or an event as being symbolic of something larger than itself (one can even do this with real people and real events); but this need not have anything to do with the intentions of the writer; in fact, part of the fun for the writer is to learn the different ways a person might ascribe symbolic meaning to his fictional creation; it's often something completely unexpected.

So wait a minute, now you're saying one can take a character and attach a symbolic meaning to it?

Sure. I said that already in one of my replies to Hardin. It’s one thing to claim “I take event X or character Y as an apt symbol for the following: ABC.” That leaves open the possibility that someone else may say “I don’t see it that way at all, old chap. I rather took event Z and character W to mean that; X and Y were quite irrelevant”, and there need not be any contradiction between these two because they are both personal interpretations: they both admit that the symbolic associations were in their respective heads – a way of interacting with a story, rather than consuming it passively.

Clearly, these two people would not be Objectivists. An Objectivist would say “Event X and character Y have been given a symbolic meaning by the author; the symbolism is as objective as the words on paper, or the images on the screen. I see them (because I’m rational, I’ve read Rand, and I’ve read many biographies about the author), and if you are rational, you will see them too. If you don’t see them it’s because (i) the symbol might be too subtle for you to grasp, (ii) you’re irrational, (iii) you have something awry with your psycho-epistemology, (iv) you have a malevolent sense of life, or (v) you simply read a different book or saw a different film from the one I am talking about. That stands to reason.”

Have you read the graphic novel?



No. Are you claiming it’s necessary to have read the book before seeing the movie adaptation?

Which artist? Frank Miller, who wrote the graphic novel? Or the five screenwriters (Miller among them) who adapted the novel to a screenplay? Or the directory (who was among the five writers)? Or the editor (who can often change the meaning of a story entirely by putting scenes in a different order from that of the screenplay and novel, and can emphasize certain things at the expense of others)? That's a different issue, and one not so easily answered.

Is what I'm saying that terribly complex and not what the artist intended?

So he liked “Romantic Manifesto” because it legitimized the hero in literature. I don’t think this counts as having read “a lot of Rand,” unless by “a lot” you mean “he read something by her and really liked it.” I think that’s probably what you do mean.

As evidence by your post you clearly know next to nothing about Frank Miller.



Perhaps. By that standard, only his parents and his hairdresser are qualified to make statements about his work.

I would never dream of infringing your right to be sophomoric.