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OUTED -- How The Post reported it in Thursday's
Pulse: "Does my butt look big in this toga?"

LIGHT IN THE SANDALS

1 posted on 11/20/2004 8:04:49 PM PST by OESY
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To: OESY

I know that some of this ground has already been covered very eloquently here, but this post basically my thoughts on the release of "Alexander"

This film is art, the artist can do what he wants with his own canvass (and meed condemnation or praise by its consumers). I wonder whether the Greeks that demanded that Warner Bros. and Oliver Stoned add a blurb telling the audience that his movie is a fiction regarding Alexander's sexual behavior (as was done for The Godfather movie) did research confirming that there is no actual first hand documentation made of his homosexuality. Even if that, it strongly looke like a frivolous charge that the lawyers have made. Their demand to add a blurb at the beginning of the film would only remind people that it is possible that Alexander the pagan didn't have gay sexual relations according to what they may or may not know about history... Not a fight worth the effort.

In those times man on man and man and boy sex was seen as more "prestigious" than man and woman sex (yes, at least in those times people understood that your actions were by choice) this film will encourage a look back at history, it will on my part since I don't know that much about this Alexander The Great. Ptolemy, the narrator in the movie, wrote that Alexander was defeated "by Hephaistion's thighs." Hephastion is not a female name.

You don't see sex between the two, but you get dialogue such as "Stay with me tonight, Hephaistion." Oliver Stone says fuck you if you don't get that. I don't. I'm not really into guys cheating on their wives with other guys, even though I might be able to sympathise with the characters in the movie, its hard to sympathise in such perverted soap opera scenarios. And by American standards that is perverted. Also, I read somewhere that Alexander was married to more than one woman... Its worth noting here that in 1890, a good while after the war ending slavery, a huge step in progress, the U.S. Supreme Court stated in a ruling, "The organizatoin of a community for the spread and practice of polygamy is, in a measure, a return to barbarism."

We know that tastes are subjective but not standards. Excuse me if I make that leap as you may see it. Democrats argued that black people were not truly human beings, they thought they had the right to slavery, just as they think they have a right to destroy a human being in the womb today by denying the humanity through certain semantics of diminishing popularity. The danger of the self-confidence in what seems worthy of popularity in "our" day continues to repeat itself; that thinking that the popular things of our era are infallible while the popular of other eras were so obviously foolish and corrupt (guess no one saw Anna Nichole Smith's ludes overdose presentation on national television). The American republic has a critical reliance (based on historical lessons - which in turn are based on the Judeo-Christian perspective) on principles and standards that are inviolable and absolute, that's why though it is wisely not a pure democracy; hence the Amendment process is left to us to remedy unforseen challenges to this civilization. This means of democracy takes more patience and work than simply punching a ballot, or trying to legislate from the bench, during any particular moment in history and it makes long reflection more necessary (this stuff is covered better in The Federalist Papers of Jay Madison and Hamilton).

I hope that this movie will encourage a new generation to reconsider the lessons of history if it is an interesting enough production, I think a big problem is that people keep trying to do revolutions without appreciating and preserving truths that transcend all the generations. Not everything that is old is good and not everything that is old is bad. Some people that I talk with, including the ones I disagree with usually, know that already, but for some others it seriously needs to be told.


88 posted on 11/21/2004 4:50:48 PM PST by Sirc_Valence (As socialists formed trade unions against employers the ACLU formed against the U.S.)
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To: OESY

Alexander the Fabulous.


89 posted on 11/21/2004 5:07:23 PM PST by bk1000 (A clear conscience is a sure sign of a bad memory)
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