Oliver Stone's 'Alexander' is behind the times

WorldNet Daily ^ | 12/2/2004 | Ben Shapiro

[worldclass]

A large part of "Alexander's" downfall is attributable to the moral distastefulness of the subject matter. Alexander the Great is played as a mop-top, indecisive bisexual by Farrell. During the course of the movie, Farrell kisses a eunuch full on the mouth and exchanges numerous lingering glances with boyhood chum and grown-up gay lover Hephaistion (played by an eye-liner-wearing Jared Leto). Anthony Hopkins, playing Ptolemy, intones: "It was said ... that Alexander was never defeated, except by Hephaistion's thighs."

[95 Bravo]

My 17-year-old son works at a theatre. He gets free admission, so he & a friend went to see this last night. His opinion was exactly the same as yours- "it was OK, but they portrayed Alexander as GAY!"
I've only ever liked one of Oliver Stone(d)'s flicks, "Platoon". At least he had his ass in the grass in Nam. Other than that, all his flicks have been political fantasies.
I had hoped "Alexander" might be worth watching. Now I know I can skip it.

[Blind Eye Jones]

I couldn't agree with you more. Hollywood wants to repackage history and the gay element is a big part of it. So much media with lesbian scenes and gay lifestyle, eg., the Hours, Monster, the Cat Woman scene I wasn't aware of, Britney, Christine and Madonna kissing on MTV, Will and Grace, etc. I wouldn't be surprise if this was coordinated by the Hollywood elite to soften or normalize America's perceptions of gays in order to advance the gay marriage issue in the last election. With Michael Moore winning the Oscar for best documentary and the Kerry film at the Democratic convention we know that truth takes a back seat for fiction and politics.

[Barb4Bush]

It really is difficult to pick who was the worst actor in the film. Everyone seemed to be competing hard for the honor but I think I'm going to have stick with Angelina as the winner. Someone somewhere else called it a Bela Lugosi impersonation with a 38D chest. Real bad, but it was at least entertaininly bad, which I guess is what you're saying.

[MaineRepublic]

"Nothing in Hollywood but liberal freaks. God should destroy this city."


Yeah, that probably wouldn't be good for his image...

[longtermmemmory]

...and despite the disappearing male audience watching general television and the continued disasters at the box office, the hollyweird solution is MORE homosexuals. On top of this, there is an added push to use GLSEN (and their subsidiary of the Gay/Straight Alliance recruiting clubs) to indoctrinate and mandate acceptance.

Somehow dumping 160 million to produce a homosexual commercial for normalcy is a bad movie to stockholders' share values.

There has to be a ledger somewhere which calculates the profitability of various subjects just as they calculate the expected profits based on performers.

[longtermmemmory]

It is rated R. Yet when it comes out on DVD, the under 17 crowd will be able to buy and recieve full exposure to Stone's "gay" movie.

[longtermmemmory]

Is hollywood needed anymore? Production seems very decentralized and the only thing actually in hollywood seems to be Oscar type shows.

[worldclass]

I think it very problematic to use classical histories and assume that comments about sexuality can be taken at face value. I enjoy history and found your insight quite interesting. BIAS in reporting is a long-time phenomenom....nothing like a good smear campaign to destroy your opponents, whether Roman or American.

[sgtbono2002]

It wouldnt hurt His image with me.

[Continental Soldier]

Oh, dear! Haven't we all wised-up to Oliver Stone by now? What have been his accomplishments in film? To render tantalizing the blood lust of mindless killers? To fully distort the facts of the Kennedy asassination? And now to use a remarkable historical figure to pander to the purient interests of Hollywood homosesxuals? Enough!

[Blind Eye Jones]

Yes, the public pocket book will decide the fate of the movie industry trends. Maybe some day in the future people will look back and label this period as "the gay epoch" "the sexually charged alternative times" "the libertine heyday." But if Hollywood takes the lead from the moral climate of middle America maybe there'll be a regression into a 50's "Leave it to Beaver" mentality against the "Far From Heaven" scenario. But the point is, how does it impact upon our times... do movies simply tell us a story or are they convincing us that whatever humans do (being gay, being a pederast, being pornographic) is OK because that is who we are. Do movies justify behavior or do they simply tell a interesting story and leave it to us to decide what is right and what is wrong? I think Hollywood can't simply leave it to fate to decide their own fate. I'm sure some Hollywood types have to push the envelope and justify their own predilections and existence regardless of the consequences. Money and morality is the mix... but survival is dependent on money and, therefore, I think they'll back off their mainstream push. However, the alternative choices will always be there. Alexander was taught by Aristotle who was taught by Plato, and it was Plato who wrote the Symposium about Greek poets and their male love affairs. Hollywood types are like those poets but unlike Greek culture they can't live in peace until they rule or convince the mob that what they do should be sanctioned by the state. To them, politics, like theater or movies, is working an audience...

[longtermmemmory]

"Athens had the strictest laws pertaining to homosexuality of any democracy that has ever existed" (62) Adonis Georgiades, Debunking the Myth of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece (Omofilofilía Stín Archéa Ellátha: O Mýthos Katareëi). Georgiades Publishing Co. Academias 84, Athens 106 78. 2002. Tel: (+ 302 10) 38 36 231

=snip=

Greek vase painting has been a favorite source for the distorters of Greek culture and civilization. Georgiades points out that, of the tens of thousands of vases unearthed so far (the count for just the province of Attica, where Athens is located, is over 80,000), only 30 or so have an overtly homosexual theme; representing, in other words, just .01% of the total (127).

=snip=

Moreover, a percentage of these 30 or so could have been commissioned by homosexuals, or even by "straight" customers who saw them as a means of ridiculing behavior they disliked or thought to be amusing. (It is important to note that Greek vases were a major export item and have been found from Russia to Gibraltar, as well as throughout Northern and Western Europe. In the province of Attica alone -- where Athens is located -- over 80,000 have been found to date.-- cf Georgiades. p.127.) When one compares this small number to what we see today on TV, in ads, books, magazines, the cinema, etc., one can just imagine what future generations will think of us.



That such behavior was the subject of ridicule can be seen in the disapproval voiced by Socrates, for instance, who, as Xenophon tells us in his Memorobilia, when he found out that Critias loved Euthydemus, tried to restrain him by saying that such a thing was "mean," and that it was "unbecoming" of Critias to ask of Euthydemus "... a favor that it would be wrong to grant." When Critias persisted, Socrates berates him by saying that "Critias seems to have the feelings of a pig [that can't] help rubbing [itself] against stones"( Emphasis added.). And it is Xenophon as well who tells us in his Lacedaemonian Constitution, that Lycurgus, the great Spartan lawgiver, "... banned the [physical] connection [between man and boy] as an abomination; and forbade it no less than parents were forbidden from sexual intercourse with their children and brothers and sisters with each other." Spartan life was harsh, and boys from a certain age slept in barracks with other boys as part of their training.

=snip=

Though Plato never married, he had much to say on what he felt was normal behavior between the sexes: Much that would blow to pieces the devious and self-serving assertions being put forward by our postmodern "scholars," and "intellectuals" today. Here is a sample: In his Laws he states quite categorically that "... male does not touch male for this purpose, since it is unnatural...." And again, in the same work, he tells us that "... when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature (kata physin), but is contrary to nature (para physin) when male mates with male or female with female, and that those ... guilty of such enormities [are] impelled by their slavery to pleasure." Plato's views might even be termed puritanical by many today for in his "Seventh Epistle" he tells us that "...if one's existence is spent in gorging food twice a day and never sleeping alone at night ... [then] not a single man of all who live beneath the heavens could ever become wise." And Plato, who has been called the wisest man who ever lived, was certainly wise enough to know that compulsive homosexuality leads inexorably to the utter enslavement of, first, the individuals who practice it, and second, the society in which it is allowed to flourish. For, as the Emperor Julian (the "Apostate") -- a scholar of the first rank who was superbly schooled in Greek paideia -- so aptly put it in his Sixth Oration: "Then never think, my friend, that you are free while your belly rules you and the part below the belly, since you will then have masters who can either furnish you the means of pleasure or deprive you of them."

=snip=

It may be reasonably argued that there was something wrong with the culture that fostered these irregular and illegal homo-erotic relationships between some Greek males in the 6th, 5th, and 4th centuries. What must be repeatedly emphasized, however, is that, unlike in America (and more and more in Europe) today, this activity was never legalized, never encouraged, never lauded as being perfectly normal, never part of the Greek educational curriculum, never depicted on the stage as something trendy and "cool." No candidate for public office, known to be a homosexual, could ever, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, have been elected; no openly homosexual person -- male or female -- could have avoided death, banishment, or, at the very least, severe public censure. The idea of same-sex- marriage would have been incomprehensible and repugnant beyond words to them;

[Blind Eye Jones]

Plato's Laws was perhaps his last and most mature work but how do you account for Socrates' attraction to Alcibiades in the Symposium? Though Socrates voices the 'Ladder of Love' image, the movement of the erotic from the base to the sublime, he still has his 'belly' or the lusts of the flesh -- even though he doesn't act upon it. Furthermore, how do you account for the Athenian tyrants' love affairs or the sexual nature of the tyrant in Xenophon's Hiero? Though they held office (though not within a democracy), their tyrannical nature seemed to exclude any concern for normal sexual practices...

I would agree that the practice was frowned upon in Greece and it makes a lot of sense from the point of view of nature, the gods and society. However, the philosophers, the ones who question or challenge the authority of the gods, nature and society, may believe that they are exempt from such norms and practices. But, in order not to be banished from society, they had to preach a salutary myth (noble lie). Their real thoughts would then have to become shrouded in esoterica to protect themselves from society's censors. This seems to be Allan Bloom's take on Plato and Socrates, that Socrates was condemned to death for not believing in the gods and corrupting the youth (perhaps in more ways that one). What Plato really thought, after seeing Socrates condemned to death, could only be understood by another philosopher who would have to go beyond the surface meaning of a text. But maybe you see this as postmodern sophistry and you take Plato's words at face value.

Still an interesting and controversial topic. I haven't read the postmodern take on it, but Allan Bloom was gay even though he was considered right wing or conservative in his thinking. And this leads to another question I can't fathom: why are gay republicans called log cabin republicans? What does a log cabin have to do with their sexuality... unless it is a historical reference of some sort?

[longtermmemmory]

the homosexuals who claim to refer to are attempting a tripple entendre. The log refers to male anatomy, the choice of using log cabin is also connected to homosexual claims that lincoln was a homosexual.

That information is old news, odd you would not realize this about these 5th columnists.