TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — The hit American movie 300 has angered Iranians who say the Greeks-vs-Persians action flick insults their ancient culture and provokes animosity against Iran."Hollywood declares war on Iranians," blared a headline in Tuesday's edition of the independent Ayende-No newspaper.
The movie, which raked in $70 million in its opening weekend, is based on a comic-book fantasy version of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days.
Even some American reviewers noted the political overtones of the West-against-Iran story line — and the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks.
In Iran, the movie hasn't opened and probably never will, given the government's restrictions on Western films, though one paper said bootleg DVDs were already available.
Still, it touched a sensitive nerve. Javad Shamghadri, cultural adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the United States tries to "humiliate" Iran in order to reverse historical reality and "compensate for its wrongdoings in order to provoke American soldiers and warmongers" against Iran.
The movie comes at a time of increased tensions between the United States and Iran over the Persian nation's nuclear program and the Iraq war.
But aside from politics, the film was seen as an attack on Persian history, a source of pride for Iranians across the political spectrum, including critics of the current Islamic regime.
State-run television has run several commentaries the past two days calling the film insulting and has brought on Iranian film directors to point out its historical inaccuracies.
"The film depicts Iranians as demons, without culture, feeling or humanity, who think of nothing except attacking other nations and killing people," Ayende-No said in its article Tuesday.
"It is a new effort to slander the Iranian people and civilization before world public opinion at a time of increasing American threats against Iran," it said.
Iran's biggest circulation newspaper, Hamshahri, said 300 is "serving the policy of the U.S. leadership" and predicted it will "prompt a wave of protest in the world. ... Iranians living in the U.S. and Europe will not be indifferent about this obvious insult."
2 comments:
Sigh. I’m a little fuzzy on this one. I just read the comic again and I’m seeing the movie tonight, so I don’t really have all the info. I didn’t think the comic portrayed the Persians in a particularly unfair way, but then again they’re the bad guys in a war story, so there’s not going to be a well-rounded overview of their culture.
It’s possible the movie is more insulting than it’s source material; this piece mentions a “sexually flamboyant” portrayal and I don’t recall that in the comic. I also know that, while 300 was written before the Trade Center went down, Miller’s post-9/11 work (and nonfiction things he’s written) express a lot of anger – he announced that Batman vs. bin Laden project, for one thing. So he’s honked off, clearly, and that’s the perfect state of mind to insult an entire culture.
On the flip side there’s the constantly confusing world dynamic between the Islamists who don’t deserve to be insulted, bullied, bombed, occupied etc. and the ones who keep on sending suicide bombers. Unlike most Americans I acknowledge that difference exists but I still don’t know where the line is. And as a result, every cry of “insult!” carries with it this implied threat that I don’t appreciate (recalling the Mohammed cartoons, of course).
Add to that the fact that this is a fictional account of a battle that actually took place and it gets fuzzier.
I’m looking forward to seeing this movie, though. IMAX, bitches!
I pretty much agree. The only thing I would add is the motivational or propagandistic intentionality, whether indended or not. I had some similar problems with Two Towers riding the groove of post-9/11 sentiment ("These troubled times; we have to fight now; world threatened" etc.) especially given how infrequently one hears Tolkien called a "multiculturalist." Using Lord of the Rings as white-men Christianist wartime propaganda has happened before (early Cold War) and there's no escaping it, given what the books are like. But Jackson had to make the movie that way, whereas going ahead and destroying "the Persians" in 2007 looks a little funny to me (especially given the current Vulcanite social mentality that embraces Leni Riefenstahl athletic-warrior imagery.
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