Stone Defends Alexander

Megastar.com ^ | 18 November 2004 | Sid Billington

[Time is now]

Do you like to read Hephaistion? Maybe you can come by and help me straighten out my Longfellow.....

[lilylangtree]

Saw on the History Channel where Alex's daddy, Philip of Macedonia, discarded his young lover for another young fellow. The discarded lover was dropped into the middle of a bunch of other fellows who raped the fella over and over. So the discarded lover gets his revenge by pulling a knife and sticking it into the gut of ole Philip. And that's how Alex the Queer became King.

[rintense]

The only Stone movie I liked was Joy Luck Club- but its a chick flick.

[E-Mat]

http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/34381.htm

Here's a summation of the "evidence" of Alexander's sexuality:
http://www.pothos.org/alexander.asp?paraID=42

Imagine if Hollywood directors and actors had shaped history.
People would have wasted most of their time figuring who should do who and how,
and the only thing humanity would have accomplished would be extinction by venereal plague.

[Leonine]

Pre-Christian morality?? What a lie! Augustus and Tiberius, the rulers in Christ's day, were decidedly and legislatively anti-homosexual. Moses' statements against homosexuality are clear and unequivocal: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." And that was in 1400 B.C., and I do mean B.C.. Even older capital consequences are found in the legal codes of India, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. In every culture I know of and certainly among the barbarians, homosexuality was severely censured and punishable by death. Even in Hellenic Greece and Silver Age Rome, it was a vice primarily of those who had lost their religion (as it is today). Too much education coupled with too little intelligence, too much time coupled with too little talent (to utilize that time), and/or too much liberty (with one's minions) coupled with too little responsibility are among the many prods of mental aberrations. Homosexuality and other full-blown mental illnesses are rife in such situations, and such were the situations in Hellenic Greece, Silver Age Rome, Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Britain, and contemporary America. It is not tolerant to confirm the insane in their insanity; it is but a cruel jest. Yet, psychologists who know better must keep silent or lose their accreditation. If Stone actually understands ancient history, then he is culpable. Honestly, though, I think he really is so very ignorant.

[Racehorse]

It is not tolerant to confirm the insane in their insanity; it is but a cruel jest. Yet, psychologists who know better must keep silent or lose their accreditation.

Or, they might suffer the fate of Charles Socarides, whose only crime was he chaired the American Psychiatric Associations peer committee on homosexuality when gay activists successfully lobbied the APA to remove homosexuality from the diagnostic manual.  For decades afterwards, Socarides has been hounded whenever and wherever he publicly speaks.

Some may be interested in reading his How America Went Gay, from which the following is taken:

My wife, Clare, who has an unerring aptitude for getting to the heart of things, said one day recently in passing, "I think everybody's being brainwashed." That gave me a start. I know "brainwashing" is a term that has been used and overused. But my wife's casual observation only reminded me of a brilliant tract I had read several years ago and then forgotten. It was called After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 1990's, by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen.

That book turned out to be the blueprint gay activists would use in their campaign to normalize the abnormal through a variety of brainwashing techniques once catalogued by Robert Jay Lifton in his seminal work, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China.

In their book Kirk and Madsen urged that gay activists adopt the very strategies that helped change the political face of the largest nation on earth. The authors knew the techniques had worked in China. All they needed was enough media-and enough money-to put them to work in the United States. And they did. These activists got the media and the money to radicalize America-by processes known as desensitization, jamming and conversion.

They would desensitize the public by selling the notion that gays were "just like everyone else." This would make the engine of prejudice run out of steam, i.e., lull straights into an attitude of indifference.

[ , , , ]

The best thing about this technique, according to Kirk and Madsen: The bigot did not even have to believe he was a loathsome creature

[ . . . ]

Finally-this was the process they called conversion-Kirk and Madsen predicted a mass public change of heart would follow, even among bigots, "if we can actually make them like us." They wrote, "Conversion aims at just this...conversion of the average American's emotions, mind, and will, through a planned psychological attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the nation via the media."

[Hildy]

I just can't help laughing when I look at Collin Farrell in that ridiculous hairdo. It might be as big of a flop as Heaven's Gate. I certainly hope so. Troy was a huge flop too, wasn't it? These people never learn.

[yarddog]

I was a Classics major, at least for awhile, and read quite a bit on Alexander. I have never seen any real evidence he was homosexual, even in the standards of that time which were different from the present time.

I might mention that while it was more common and more accepted, (maybe not more than the last few years tho) in ancient Greece, it was still the object of derision and looked down on.

I particularly remember reading how the youth, Alcibiades told how Socrates never tried any "funny stuff" with him when he slept in the same bed with Socrates. This was done to defend Socrates, in other words not being homosexual was looked on as a positive trait.

[Shqipo]

At least there is no Tony Curtis-like Spartacus scene.

[RockAgainsttheLeft04]

Troy was a waste of my 7 bucks for sure, but the silly, failed epic wasn't a Box Office flop. In North America, the 130 or so million it took in didn't come close to covering the 175 million production costs, BUT Troy benefitted from an extremely rare condition for an American film--it made over 2/3rds of it's total BO overseas, bringing it's total gross to about 500 million dollars.

I guess Europeans and Asians just love Brad Pitt.

[Lancey Howard]

"You only need five words. Alexander says, 'Stay with me tonight, Hephaistion,' and you get it. If you don't get it, f*** you, it's your problem."

Hey, Ollie - - I get it.
However, I will NOT be getting tickets to your movie, and I will certainly not bother watching it for free if the "opportunity" ever arises.

[Lancey Howard]

(Bronx accent) "Yonder lies da castle of my fodder." - Tony Curtis (/Bronx accent)

[RockAgainsttheLeft04]

Oliver may be a communist relic with a penchant for outlandish conspiracy theories, but he is a capable filmamker--JFK and U-Turn aside...

Platoon was a gritty, "war is hell and you're a ground level witness" kind of film, and Natural Born Killers was a stunning, shocking, but extremely entertaining bit of psychadelic cinema.

And the violent, epic gangster classic that is Scarface was scripted by Stone back in his pre-directoral days, so he deserves at least some of the credit (Brian DePalma directed). Stone also co-scripted the underrated Year of the Dragon starring Micky Rourke as a NY cop waging war against Chinatown Triads, and the FReeper fave Conan the Barbarian (starring the Governator, and co-scripted by patriotic director John Milius).

Looking for Fidel--a sympathetic portrait of the evil dictator of Cuba--is an extreme leftist blot on his career, but Nixon was actually pretty even-handed (I was surprised to see Stone's script acknowledge--and apparently accept as true-- a few of the dastardly acts the Kennedy's committed against Nixon, such as when RFK had Nixon's innocent mother audited when she was on her death bed and when Kennedy stole Illinois in 1960).


I cautiously look forward to Alexander, and hope to get another Gladiator...and not another Troy.

[Rastus]

You get at least one more shot, as at least one more Alexander movie is in the works. Be warned, though: this one stars di Caprio as Alexander, and the gay angle is mentioned on its IMDb page. It's being directed by Baz Luhrmann, who is not exactly my cup of tea.

[Rastus]

The only Stone movie I like is Conan, and I understand that's pretty much Milius all the way.

[Rastus]

Some may be interested in reading his How America Went Gay, from which the following is taken:

A little off-topic, but when did San Francisco go gay? Was that another development of the late-'60s Haight-Ashbury days?

[whereasandsoforth]

What is the IMBd page? And why would it mention "Alexander"?

Actually, prissy historians have tried to make homosexuals out of every individual that achived any status. Jesus being your main clue. The fact that Alexander may have or more likely did not catch a penis on the fly is not intellectually responsible.

Just like always, the seriousness of the charges is more important than the reality to the Dan Rathers that WEALLY WEALLY want us all to be homosexuals. And why? Were their mothers a closeted vagina luster?

Since Alexander, how in the name of the gods did this planet manage to reproduce?

[Rastus]

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0327405/

[Racehorse]

Actually, without thinking, I took the thread off topic with that link to Socraides' article. Don't know when San Francisco went gay, if it did. Would be interesting social history to read when and how gays gained such political clout in a major city.

[Racehorse]

Thought you might be interested in this story now linked from Drudge. Greek lawyers are threatening a lawsuit against Stone and Warner Brothers.

ATHENS, Nov 19 (Reuters) - A group of Greek lawyers are threatening to sue Warner Bros film studios and Oliver Stone, director of the widely anticipated film "Alexander," for suggesting Alexander the Great was bisexual.

The lawyers have already sent an extrajudicial note to the studio and director demanding they include a reference in the title credits saying his movie is a fictional tale and not based on official documents of the life of the Macedonian ruler.

"We are not saying that we are against gays but we are saying that the production company should make it clear to the audience that this film is pure fiction and not a true depiction of the life of Alexander," Yannis Varnakos, who spearheads the campaign by 25 lawyers, told Reuters on Friday.

[snip]

"We have not seen the film but from the information we have already there are references to his alleged homosexuality, a fact that is in no historical document or archive on Alexander," he said. "Either they make it clear that this is a work of fiction or we will take the case further."
 

This is not the first time Greeks have been angered by suggestions Alexander was homosexual and had affairs with young men.
 

Two years ago hundreds of northern Greeks from the province of Macedonia, where he was born, stormed an archaeological symposium after one speaker presented a paper on the homosexuality of Alexander. Police were called in to evacuate the participants

[snip]

Varnakaos said as Stone has the right to freely express himself, the audience should have the right to know.
 

"We cannot come out and say that (former U.S.) President John F. Kennedy was a shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team and so Warner cannot come out and say Alexander was gay," Varnakos said.

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story.jsp?id=2004111912090002191970&dt=20041119120900&w=RTR&coview=