http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2007031...1&printer=1;_ylt=AlVbHrvcoPz.aKCSGxAgSACbOrgF Iran outraged by Hollywood war epic Tue Mar 13, 8:09 AM ET War epic "300", a smash hit in the United States for its gory portrayal of the Greco-Persian wars, has drawn the wrath of Iranians for showing their ancestors as bloodthirsty "savages". The press, officials and bloggers have united in denouncing the film as another example of "psychological warfare" against Tehran by its American arch enemy at a time of mounting tension over its nuclear programme. "Hollywood declares war on Iranians," said the headline in the reformist daily Ayandeh-No of the film which tells the story of the 300 Spartan soldiers fighting off ancient Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae. "It seeks to tell people that Iran, which is in the Axis of Evil now, has for long been the source of evil and modern Iranians' ancestors are the ugly murderous dumb savages you see in '300'," fumed the paper on its front page. A cultural advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the film as "American psychological warfare against Iran." "American cultural officials thought they could get mental satisfaction by plundering Iran's historic past and insulting this civilization," Javad Shamaghdari told semi-official Fars news agency. Three MPs in the Iranian parliament have also written to the foreign ministry to protest to the production and screening of this "anti-Iranian Hollywood film". The film has already proved a major box office hit in the United States and, unsurprisingly, Greece. It is highly improbable the film would ever be screened in the Islamic republic but contraband DVDs of the latest American movies are often available on the streets no sooner that they are internationally released. Cyber savvy Iranians have already started online petitions and set off "Google bombs" against "300". The furore over "300" is by no means the first time Iran has been left fuming over Western portrayals of its ancient history. Iranians were also enraged by the 2004 epic 'Alexander' about the conquest of the Persian Empire and a notorious 2005 British newspaper review of an exhibition of antiquities which branded ancient Persia the "Evil Empire".
Along interesting and similar lines there are a number of wikipedia entries that have been edited under wikiproject Iran to label ancient creations and accomplishments as Iranian when that is not clearly the case. I'm sure that it has been said before, but it appears that much of the cultural identity of the Iranian people comes from the greatness of the ancient Persian civilization to the point that they chaffe at anything which diminishes their significance.
WTF ... Did the real historic ending not play well in Peoria? Did the movie producers change the endiing so that the Spartans actually win the battle?
Who cares, it's a crappy movie anyways. Apparently, Iranian leaders like to live in a state of perpetual outrage. Oh, and here's a neat little map I came across that shows just how vast the Persian Empire was (brown shade, mostly): Go here if you want if you want a higher resolution: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/World_500_BCE.png
With all the money this film is going to make our Ministry of Cultural Propaganda should be set on funding for awhile.
I think sending back 300 men to die holding off a Persian invasion was an incredible waste of our time travel resources. To do that to create a comic book movie for propoganda purposes against the peaceful, sane, honest, trustworthy, glorious government of Iran is shameful.
Interesting that the same people who decry this film, do not decry calling America the "Great Satan".
Hard to believe they were taken out by the Greeks and Macedonians... a pitifully small group, when you think about it. D&D. Here We Are, There You Go.
We can't even entertain ourselves without offending someone. Hell, pretty soon we'll be getting an earful on the harm that nocturnal emissions cause to the earth's water supply.
The Assyrians, Medeans, Babylonians, Hittites and Egyptians all had their run in antiquity. But indeed, it was Persia that shone brightest economically, socially, and militarily during the Axial Age. Simply put, it was the world's first true superpower. In culture, it was every bit Greece's equal, if not superior (look up Achaemenid Empire, Susa, or Persepolis in Wikipedia). People forget that Greece was saved only by the might of its superior military system (world's first phalanx + heavy cavalry) and difficult terrain (and not by its slavery-driven socioeconomic system). If there had been no Alexander, it is very likely that we'd all be speaking Elamite or Aramaic today.
This was a solid article posted by Faos in the hangout thread on the film. After reading it and watching the trailers to see the various Persians in the film I can somewhat understand why it might rub someone who cares about ancient Persia the wrong way. Particularly the 500 pound Jabba the Hut looking Persian seems out of left field. But of course the Iranian consipratorial theories are still very silly and it really is as much of a problem with the portrayal of the Spartans as the Persians. There are lots of people who see psudo-historical films like this and think it is an accurate portrayal of reality. I watched 'The Birdman of Alcatraz' the other day, and it was pointed out that because of the character in the film, people wrote the Department of Prisons demanding that Robert Stroud be released. While the character in the film was a thoughtful and sweet guy, in fact the real Robert Stroud once told a parole board that he wanted out because he had so many people left that he needed to kill. link The original posting has been modified to indicate that there are 'spoilers'. I don't see this but whatever. [rquoter] Sparta? No. This is madness An expert assesses the gruesome new epic Mar 11, 2007 04:30 AM The battle of Thermopylae was real, but how real is 300? Ephraim Lytle, assistant professor of hellenistic history at the University of Toronto, has seen the movie and offers his view. History is altered all the time. What matters is how and why. Thus I see no reason to quibble over the absence in 300 of breastplates or modest thigh-length tunics. I can see the graphic necessity of sculpted stomachs and three hundred Spartan-sized packages bulging in spandex thongs. On the other hand, the ways in which 300 selectively idealizes Spartan society are problematic, even disturbing. We know little of King Leonidas, so creating a fictitious backstory for him is understandable. Spartan children were, indeed, taken from their mothers and given a martial education called the agoge. They were indeed toughened by beatings and dispatched into the countryside, forced to walk shoeless in winter and sleep uncovered on the ground. But future kings were exempt. And had Leonidas undergone the agoge, he would have come of age not by slaying a wolf, but by murdering unarmed helots in a rite known as the Crypteia. These helots were the Greeks indigenous to Lakonia and Messenia, reduced to slavery by the tiny fraction of the population enjoying Spartan "freedom." By living off estates worked by helots, the Spartans could afford to be professional soldiers, although really they had no choice: securing a brutal apartheid state is a full-time job, to which end the Ephors were required to ritually declare war on the helots. Elected annually, the five Ephors were Sparta's highest officials, their powers checking those of the dual kings. There is no evidence they opposed Leonidas' campaign, despite 300's subplot of Leonidas pursuing an illegal war to serve a higher good. For adolescents ready to graduate from the graphic novel to Ayn Rand, or vice-versa, the historical Leonidas would never suffice. They require a superman. And in the interests of portentous contrasts between good and evil, 300's Ephors are not only lecherous and corrupt, but also geriatric lepers. Ephialtes, who betrays the Greeks, is likewise changed from a local Malian of sound body into a Spartan outcast, a grotesquely disfigured troll who by Spartan custom should have been left exposed as an infant to die. Leonidas points out that his hunched back means Ephialtes cannot lift his shield high enough to fight in the phalanx. This is a transparent defence of Spartan eugenics, and laughably convenient given that infanticide could as easily have been precipitated by an ill-omened birthmark. 300's Persians are ahistorical monsters and freaks. Xerxes is eight feet tall, clad chiefly in body piercings and garishly made up, but not disfigured. No need – it is strongly implied Xerxes is homosexual which, in the moral universe of 300, qualifies him for special freakhood. This is ironic given that pederasty was an obligatory part of a Spartan's education. This was a frequent target of Athenian comedy, wherein the verb "to Spartanize" meant "to bugger." In 300, Greek pederasty is, naturally, Athenian. This touches on 300's most noteworthy abuse of history: the Persians are turned into monsters, but the non-Spartan Greeks are simply all too human. According to Herodotus, Leonidas led an army of perhaps 7,000 Greeks. These Greeks took turns rotating to the front of the phalanx stationed at Thermoplyae where, fighting in disciplined hoplite fashion, they held the narrow pass for two days. All told, some 4,000 Greeks perished there. In 300 the fighting is not in the hoplite fashion, and the Spartans do all of it, except for a brief interlude in which Leonidas allows a handful of untrained Greeks to taste the action, and they make a hash of it. When it becomes apparent they are surrounded, this contingent flees. In Herodotus' time there were various accounts of what transpired, but we know 700 hoplites from Thespiae remained, fighting beside the Spartans, they, too, dying to the last man. No mention is made in 300 of the fact that at the same time a vastly outnumbered fleet led by Athenians was holding off the Persians in the straits adjacent to Thermopylae, or that Athenians would soon save all of Greece by destroying the Persian fleet at Salamis. This would wreck 300's vision, in which Greek ideals are selectively embodied in their only worthy champions, the Spartans. This moral universe would have appeared as bizarre to ancient Greeks as it does to modern historians. Most Greeks would have traded their homes in Athens for hovels in Sparta about as willingly as I would trade my apartment in Toronto for a condo in Pyongyang. [/rquoter]
Wow, can't believe I forgot Salamis and Marathon, both of which, coincidently were ATHENIAN victories... These were the battles that truly saved Greece.
Oh, so now the Persians hate our freedom too? Do the Persians suddenly hate manly warrior hero soldiers spreading freedom all over the world for Jesus? Yeah, okay Persians, you go ahead and do that, but if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go pet my FREEDOM KITTEN: - while I'm sitting on my FREEDOM RUG:
err, the US army involved number wise is smaller than the Iraqi army, not that number of soldiers really matters in today's warfare.
uhh. It's just a movie. Who gives a **** what a bunch of fanatical religious morons think. Did anyone care when the baptists boycotted disney?
