300: Rise of a Wannabe Feminist Empire

I recently saw the movie 300: Rise of an Empire, which is the sequel to the action packed movie 300, which was released 7 years ago. Although it was entertaining and contained interesting special effects, the film did not portray women as progressively as many suggest.

First, I will give a bit of background on the events and characters, and why I believe that this is not an empowering film for women. (Hint: There may be a few spoilers!)

Themistocles is an Athenian politician-soldier who is the male protagonist in the film. Themistocles is the leader of Greece, and desires for the city-states to all unite together to defeat King Xerxes and his evil naval commander and advisor, a woman named Artemesia.

Themistocles

Artemesia plays a dominant role in the film and exists mainly as a damaged mechanism of revenge. It is accounted by Themistocles, that Artemesia is actually Greek by birth. When she was a child, her mother was raped by a group of Greek soldiers, and her family was killed in front of her. She alone was a survivor of the attack, but was taken captive by the Greek soldiers.

Young Artemesia watches as her family is slaughtered

Upon captivity, she was forced into sexual slavery for many years until she was abandoned by her captors and rescued by a Persian warlord (coincidentally, the man who was kicked by Leonidas into the bottom of the pit in the first movie). The warlord trains Artemesia in the art of war and conquest, and she becomes a very feared, yet respected naval commander for King Darius and then to his son Xerxes, upon Darius' death.

Artemesia convinces a grief stricken son, Xerxes, to avenge his father's death and defeat the Greeks once and for all.  In the midst of this battle, the directors found it necessary to insert a sex scene between Artemesia and Themistocles. Upset by recent Persian defeats in the battles against the Greeks, Artemesia invited Themistocles to her quarters to "negotiate". However, her true intent was to seduce him and persuade him to join forces with her. The two engage in a rough, (almost rape-like) sex scene, which given Artemesia's background, was a bit disturbing. Commentators have argued that this scene is "empowering" for women because Artemesia initiated the encounter, but I would argue differently. The fact that Artemesia did not have confidence in her military abilities and had to sexualize herself in order to have a shot at winning against the Greeks is not empowering at all, and is downright offensive. In addition, seducing Themistocles did not even work, for as soon as he had sex with her and got what he wanted, he left and returned to the Greek camp. Empowering?

In addition, Artemesia and King Xerxes had an argument about battle tactics toward the end of the film. The argument ended with a hard slap in the face to Artemesia, which resulted in a bloody nose and her falling to the ground. This scene depicted that although she was respected as a military commander, Artemesia was not respected as a woman, and Xerxes did not consider her to be on his level even though she had been controlling the armies on the front lines of battle. One must ask, does this scene glorify violence towards women in certain situations?

Further, Artemesia represents a typical female character stereotype found in the film industry. She has been abused, and therefore, has become violent with an unquenchable desire for vengeance. In the eyes of viewers, she is psychotic and evil, even though she does not act much differently than the protagonist. These qualities eventually lead to Artemesia's dramatic demise at the end of the film, in which she is killed as a result of what she has done.

Perhaps the writers of this film were genuinely trying to give women a strong female character in an action movie, but it missed the mark. Artemesia is portrayed as aggressive, revenge driven, and is supposedly a military mastermind--qualities that are usually assigned to men. However, despite the fact that she has these qualities, her character is sexualized in the scene between she and Themistocles, which proves that she is not as competent as he, for she had to rely on her sexuality in order to gain the upper hand in the battle of Artemesium, which she lost anyway.