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Doping Up the Public Mind for War? A Review of the Film 300
By Gary Leupp
Created Mar 29 2007 - 9:32am
I always take in the Hollywood period dramas set in ancient Greece or Rome.
My film-buff son is into this too, so we went last week to see 300, the
Warner Brothers' blockbuster produced by Zack Snyder and based on the
graphic novel by Frank Miller about the epic battle of Thermopylae between
the Greeks and Persians. It had by that time grossed over $100 million and
no doubt influenced a lot of minds.
The film tells a familiar historical tale. (Rather, it ought to be familiar,
but history instruction in our public schools is not necessarily
comprehensive.) In 480 BCE, Greece was threatened by an invasion by the
Persian army, the greatest war machine of its day. The empire of King Xerxes
extended from the Indus River to Egypt, and drew its troops from the ends of
the realm. The king personally led them in battle against the Greeks.
Or rather, some of the Greeks. Greece at the time was a collection of
city-states, politically disunited, divided as much as unified by dialect
and culture. Some city-states, including Argos and Thebes, actually aligned
themselves with Xerxes. Herodotus, the "Father of History" and perhaps the
world's first professional historian, paints a picture of a "free" Greece
united against an oppressive "Asia." But that is a chauvinistic
simplification. The fact is, Persia and the Greek city-states were all
slave-based societies whose notions of "freedom" had little in common with
our modern conception.
According to Herodotus (our sole source), 300 Spartan warriors alongside 700
Thespian volunteers defended the pass of Thermopylae against the invaders,
inflicting heavy losses on Xerxes' forces. Led by Spartan King Leonidas,
they went down in defeat but gave rival Athens time to prepare the fleet
that decisively defeated the Persians at Salamis a few months later.
The story has been dramatized before, notably in the 1962 Hollywood
production 300 Spartans starring Richard Egan [1] as Leonidas [2] and David
Farrar [3] as Xerxes. This new version is distinguished by what one critic
calls the "monochromatic, cartoonish quality of [its] computer-generated
special effects"---and by its timing. Warner Brothers had been planning a
remake of the 1962 film since the late 1990s, based on a novel by Stephen
Pressfield entitled Gates of Fire, with Bruce Willis in the role of
Leonidas. But that project fell through, paving the way for 300 -- just in
time to help subliminally shape the movie-going public's perception of
Persians prior to the attack planned on today's evil empire by Vice
President Cheney and his neocon staffers.
Persia is Iran. (I want to say, "Persia, of course, is Iran." But I can't
assume that all or even most Americans make the connection.) The word comes
from "Fars," a region of modern Iran, while "Iran" is related to the word
"Aryan" and connotes "land of the Aryans." In 1935, the Persian shah opted
to use the name "Iran" but the two terms are basically interchangeable.
"Persia" just doesn't have the emotional baggage of "Iran." During the
Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-81, many dealers in Iranian rugs decided to
call them "rugs from Persia." Persia on occasion has thus served as the good
Iran, the historical cultural Iran, as opposed to the modern evil enemy. But
300 makes Persia evil too.
The Iranian government has protested the film; last Wednesday President
Ahmadinejad in his Iranian New Year's address called it part of a
"psychological warfare" campaign against his country. Javadd Shamaqdare, a
cultural advisor to the Iranian government, also denounced the film as
"psychological warfare," accusing its producers of "plundering Iran's
historic past and insulting its civilization" Editors of the Iranian
newspaper Ayandeh-No declared that the film "seeks to tell people that Iran,
which is in the Axis of Evil now, has long been the source of evil and
modern Iranians' ancestors are the dumb, murderous savages you see in 300."
Iran's UN mission has stated that the film is "so overtly racist, so
overflowing with vicious stereotyping of Persians as a dangerous, bestial
force fatally threatening the civilised 'free' world", that it encourages
"contemporary discourses of hatred ... [and] a 'clash of civilisations'."
Some western film critics have echoed Iranian objections. Dimitris Danikas
notes [4] that 300 depicts Persians as "bloodthirsty, underdeveloped
zombies" and feeds "racist instincts in Europe and America." Slate's Dana
Stevens calls it [5] "a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and
nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war."
On the other hand film critic Dale McFeatters calls the Iranians "picky,
picky," alleging (quite falsely), "Well, your leader did threaten to wipe
Israel off the map." And Stanford history professor Victor Davis Hanson,
reportedly admired by Cheney and his (professional historian) wife, posts
his opinion on the right-wing RealClearPolitics website: "We rightly
consider the ancient Greeks the founders of our present western
civilisation -- and, as millions of movie-goers seem to sense, far more like
us than the [Iranian] enemy who ultimately failed to conquer them."
Even if Zack Snyder and Frank Miller had no intention of making an
anti-Iranian film, or promoting any sort of "psychological warfare," they've
made a film in which Iranians are indeed generically depicted in the worst
possible light. A Warner Bros. spokesman says, "The film 300 is a work of
fiction inspired by the Frank Miller graphic novel and loosely based on a
historical event. The studio developed this film purely as a fictional work
with the sole purpose of entertaining audiences; it is not meant to
disparage an ethnicity or culture or make any sort of political statement."
But it does disparage.
Herodotus depicted the Persian ruler positively enough: "Among all this
multitude of [Persian] men," he wrote, "there was not one who, for beauty
and stature, deserved more than Xerxes himself to wield so vast a power"
(Persian Wars, Book VII, 187). But the Miller-Snyder Xerxes is not even an
Iranian-looking man but (like some other Persians in the film) a distinctly
African figure, who happens to be effeminate and wholly vicious. Leonidas in
contrast is white and manly and wholly heroic in his fight for "freedom."
Color is kept to a minimum in the film; the warriors appear in shades of
black and white, with the Greeks' red cloaks standing out provocatively
around the uniformly chiseled abs of the heroes. The Persians in contrast
are ugly or deformed.
"The Greeks will know that free men stood against tyrants," says the
cartoonish Leonides (Gerard Butler) preparing for his suicidal defense
against the evil Persians. Greece is the "world's one hope for reason and
justice" versus the "dark will of the Persian kings." "We rescue the world
from mysticism and tyranny," he declares. "No retreat, no surrender. That is
Spartan law. A new age has dawned, an age of freedom, and all will know that
Spartans gave their last breath to defend it."
The message is indeed clear. Sparta = Greece = the Western World = freedom.
Persia = slavery and oppression. This was perhaps the gist of Herodotus'
message; he did write that while the Greeks knew that men were free, the
"Asiatics" knew only that one (the ruler) was free. But that was a skewed
notion in his time and can only dangerously circulate in our own, while Iran
is in the neocons' crosshairs. Again, I think the Iranians might be
over-concerned, since much of the film-viewing crowd won't even associate
the ancient Persians with the modern Iranians, but the "clash of
civilizations" theme is definitely there.
I would propose that those exposed to it imagine a different Xerxes that the
nose-pierced caricature in the film. Imagine a Xerxes who addresses the
American audience, including the Christian fundamentalist audience, as
follows:
"I am Xerxes, Emperor of Persia, son of Darius, grandson of Cyrus. My
grandfather Cyrus liberated the Jews from their Babylonian exile and let
them return to Judea and rebuild their temple. My father Darius urged our
people to revere the 'God of Daniel.' I myself married Esther, a Jew."
"I come from a long line of believers in the One God preached by
Zarathustra, our Persian prophet whose teachings have influenced the Jews
during their exile among us. I refer specifically to their concepts of
Satan, Heaven and the future Messiah which weren't part of their pre-exile
belief system and are clearly borrowings from our Persian religion.
"I am now embarking on the conquest of Greece, a backward region populated
by primitive polytheists who worship capricious amoral deities and practice
absurd religious rites. But my ancestors and I, having already conquered
many Ionian Greeks, respect Greek philosophers and indeed have many of them
in our employ. We have established a multi-ethnic empire. In that empire,
Greeks fill important roles from the Mediterranean to India.
"These Spartans confronting us at Thermopylae are cruel men who
annually--for sport!-- make war on the defenseless helots that live around
them. They have nothing to tell us Persians -- or the world in general --
about 'freedom.'!"
The writer of such a script could claim Biblical authority. In Isaiah 44:28,
the God of Israel declares through his prophet that Cyrus "is my shepherd,
and he shall carry out all my purpose." Throughout Chapter 45 of Isaiah he
speaks directly to Cyrus -- "his anointed" -- calling him "righteous" and
informing him that "the wealth of Egypt and the merchandise of Ethiopia"
will "come over to you, and be yours." The Book of Ezra opens with King
Cyrus issuing an edict declaring, "The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me
all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at
Jerusalem in Judah." In Daniel 6:26 a King Darius issues a decree that "in
all my royal dominion people should tremble and fear before the God of
Daniel." Esther 2:15-18 describes Xerxes' marriage to the Jewish maiden
Esther. None of this is historically reliable; Daniel and Esther are indeed
novelettes rather than history. The point is, these texts revered as Holy
Writ by many if not most Americans depict Persia positively.
The Greeks, on the other hand, cause "many evils on the earth." They build a
gymnasium in Jerusalem, for example (1 Maccabees 1:8). The Jews don't
approve of that sort of Greek thing, so Judah rises up in rebellion against
Seleucid rule in the second century BCE. Their rebellion against the "free,"
"rational" Greeks is depicted as heroic.
The Greco-Roman world continued to make war on Persia off and on up to the
end of the Roman Empire. But Alexander the Great, having defeated the
Persian King Darius a century and a half after the battle of Thermopylae and
acquired his vast empire, admired Persian ways and actively promoted the
cultural synthesis we call Hellenism. Roman troops brought the worship of
the Persian god Mithras back to Rome from their Persian campaigns; the cult
of this god born on December 25 was a formidable rival of Christianity to
the fourth century. The greatest of the late Roman philosophers, the second
century Neoplatonist Plotinus, admired and sought to learn from the
Persians. Manicheanism, founded by the Persian prophet Mani, was another
religious rival to Christianity from its inception in the third century. The
knowledge of the Persian Magi (Zoroastrian priest-astrologers) was respected
in Rome and Magi of course appear in the New Testament (Matthew 2:1-12).
In short, 300's depiction of the battle of Thermopylae is not merely
inaccurate, as any film adaptation of a graphic novel has the perfect right
to be, it's what the Iranians say it is: racist and insulting. It pits the
glorious Greeks with whom the audience must sympathize against a "mystical"
and "tyrannical" culture posing an imminent existential threat. It is, de
facto, an anti-Persian/anti-Iranian propaganda film, and should be rated
appropriately: not just R (for racist) but X -- for extremely stupid and
vicious and dangerously ill-timed.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Gary Leupp
Created Mar 29 2007 - 9:32am
I always take in the Hollywood period dramas set in ancient Greece or Rome.
My film-buff son is into this too, so we went last week to see 300, the
Warner Brothers' blockbuster produced by Zack Snyder and based on the
graphic novel by Frank Miller about the epic battle of Thermopylae between
the Greeks and Persians. It had by that time grossed over $100 million and
no doubt influenced a lot of minds.
The film tells a familiar historical tale. (Rather, it ought to be familiar,
but history instruction in our public schools is not necessarily
comprehensive.) In 480 BCE, Greece was threatened by an invasion by the
Persian army, the greatest war machine of its day. The empire of King Xerxes
extended from the Indus River to Egypt, and drew its troops from the ends of
the realm. The king personally led them in battle against the Greeks.
Or rather, some of the Greeks. Greece at the time was a collection of
city-states, politically disunited, divided as much as unified by dialect
and culture. Some city-states, including Argos and Thebes, actually aligned
themselves with Xerxes. Herodotus, the "Father of History" and perhaps the
world's first professional historian, paints a picture of a "free" Greece
united against an oppressive "Asia." But that is a chauvinistic
simplification. The fact is, Persia and the Greek city-states were all
slave-based societies whose notions of "freedom" had little in common with
our modern conception.
According to Herodotus (our sole source), 300 Spartan warriors alongside 700
Thespian volunteers defended the pass of Thermopylae against the invaders,
inflicting heavy losses on Xerxes' forces. Led by Spartan King Leonidas,
they went down in defeat but gave rival Athens time to prepare the fleet
that decisively defeated the Persians at Salamis a few months later.
The story has been dramatized before, notably in the 1962 Hollywood
production 300 Spartans starring Richard Egan [1] as Leonidas [2] and David
Farrar [3] as Xerxes. This new version is distinguished by what one critic
calls the "monochromatic, cartoonish quality of [its] computer-generated
special effects"---and by its timing. Warner Brothers had been planning a
remake of the 1962 film since the late 1990s, based on a novel by Stephen
Pressfield entitled Gates of Fire, with Bruce Willis in the role of
Leonidas. But that project fell through, paving the way for 300 -- just in
time to help subliminally shape the movie-going public's perception of
Persians prior to the attack planned on today's evil empire by Vice
President Cheney and his neocon staffers.
Persia is Iran. (I want to say, "Persia, of course, is Iran." But I can't
assume that all or even most Americans make the connection.) The word comes
from "Fars," a region of modern Iran, while "Iran" is related to the word
"Aryan" and connotes "land of the Aryans." In 1935, the Persian shah opted
to use the name "Iran" but the two terms are basically interchangeable.
"Persia" just doesn't have the emotional baggage of "Iran." During the
Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-81, many dealers in Iranian rugs decided to
call them "rugs from Persia." Persia on occasion has thus served as the good
Iran, the historical cultural Iran, as opposed to the modern evil enemy. But
300 makes Persia evil too.
The Iranian government has protested the film; last Wednesday President
Ahmadinejad in his Iranian New Year's address called it part of a
"psychological warfare" campaign against his country. Javadd Shamaqdare, a
cultural advisor to the Iranian government, also denounced the film as
"psychological warfare," accusing its producers of "plundering Iran's
historic past and insulting its civilization" Editors of the Iranian
newspaper Ayandeh-No declared that the film "seeks to tell people that Iran,
which is in the Axis of Evil now, has long been the source of evil and
modern Iranians' ancestors are the dumb, murderous savages you see in 300."
Iran's UN mission has stated that the film is "so overtly racist, so
overflowing with vicious stereotyping of Persians as a dangerous, bestial
force fatally threatening the civilised 'free' world", that it encourages
"contemporary discourses of hatred ... [and] a 'clash of civilisations'."
Some western film critics have echoed Iranian objections. Dimitris Danikas
notes [4] that 300 depicts Persians as "bloodthirsty, underdeveloped
zombies" and feeds "racist instincts in Europe and America." Slate's Dana
Stevens calls it [5] "a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and
nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war."
On the other hand film critic Dale McFeatters calls the Iranians "picky,
picky," alleging (quite falsely), "Well, your leader did threaten to wipe
Israel off the map." And Stanford history professor Victor Davis Hanson,
reportedly admired by Cheney and his (professional historian) wife, posts
his opinion on the right-wing RealClearPolitics website: "We rightly
consider the ancient Greeks the founders of our present western
civilisation -- and, as millions of movie-goers seem to sense, far more like
us than the [Iranian] enemy who ultimately failed to conquer them."
Even if Zack Snyder and Frank Miller had no intention of making an
anti-Iranian film, or promoting any sort of "psychological warfare," they've
made a film in which Iranians are indeed generically depicted in the worst
possible light. A Warner Bros. spokesman says, "The film 300 is a work of
fiction inspired by the Frank Miller graphic novel and loosely based on a
historical event. The studio developed this film purely as a fictional work
with the sole purpose of entertaining audiences; it is not meant to
disparage an ethnicity or culture or make any sort of political statement."
But it does disparage.
Herodotus depicted the Persian ruler positively enough: "Among all this
multitude of [Persian] men," he wrote, "there was not one who, for beauty
and stature, deserved more than Xerxes himself to wield so vast a power"
(Persian Wars, Book VII, 187). But the Miller-Snyder Xerxes is not even an
Iranian-looking man but (like some other Persians in the film) a distinctly
African figure, who happens to be effeminate and wholly vicious. Leonidas in
contrast is white and manly and wholly heroic in his fight for "freedom."
Color is kept to a minimum in the film; the warriors appear in shades of
black and white, with the Greeks' red cloaks standing out provocatively
around the uniformly chiseled abs of the heroes. The Persians in contrast
are ugly or deformed.
"The Greeks will know that free men stood against tyrants," says the
cartoonish Leonides (Gerard Butler) preparing for his suicidal defense
against the evil Persians. Greece is the "world's one hope for reason and
justice" versus the "dark will of the Persian kings." "We rescue the world
from mysticism and tyranny," he declares. "No retreat, no surrender. That is
Spartan law. A new age has dawned, an age of freedom, and all will know that
Spartans gave their last breath to defend it."
The message is indeed clear. Sparta = Greece = the Western World = freedom.
Persia = slavery and oppression. This was perhaps the gist of Herodotus'
message; he did write that while the Greeks knew that men were free, the
"Asiatics" knew only that one (the ruler) was free. But that was a skewed
notion in his time and can only dangerously circulate in our own, while Iran
is in the neocons' crosshairs. Again, I think the Iranians might be
over-concerned, since much of the film-viewing crowd won't even associate
the ancient Persians with the modern Iranians, but the "clash of
civilizations" theme is definitely there.
I would propose that those exposed to it imagine a different Xerxes that the
nose-pierced caricature in the film. Imagine a Xerxes who addresses the
American audience, including the Christian fundamentalist audience, as
follows:
"I am Xerxes, Emperor of Persia, son of Darius, grandson of Cyrus. My
grandfather Cyrus liberated the Jews from their Babylonian exile and let
them return to Judea and rebuild their temple. My father Darius urged our
people to revere the 'God of Daniel.' I myself married Esther, a Jew."
"I come from a long line of believers in the One God preached by
Zarathustra, our Persian prophet whose teachings have influenced the Jews
during their exile among us. I refer specifically to their concepts of
Satan, Heaven and the future Messiah which weren't part of their pre-exile
belief system and are clearly borrowings from our Persian religion.
"I am now embarking on the conquest of Greece, a backward region populated
by primitive polytheists who worship capricious amoral deities and practice
absurd religious rites. But my ancestors and I, having already conquered
many Ionian Greeks, respect Greek philosophers and indeed have many of them
in our employ. We have established a multi-ethnic empire. In that empire,
Greeks fill important roles from the Mediterranean to India.
"These Spartans confronting us at Thermopylae are cruel men who
annually--for sport!-- make war on the defenseless helots that live around
them. They have nothing to tell us Persians -- or the world in general --
about 'freedom.'!"
The writer of such a script could claim Biblical authority. In Isaiah 44:28,
the God of Israel declares through his prophet that Cyrus "is my shepherd,
and he shall carry out all my purpose." Throughout Chapter 45 of Isaiah he
speaks directly to Cyrus -- "his anointed" -- calling him "righteous" and
informing him that "the wealth of Egypt and the merchandise of Ethiopia"
will "come over to you, and be yours." The Book of Ezra opens with King
Cyrus issuing an edict declaring, "The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me
all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at
Jerusalem in Judah." In Daniel 6:26 a King Darius issues a decree that "in
all my royal dominion people should tremble and fear before the God of
Daniel." Esther 2:15-18 describes Xerxes' marriage to the Jewish maiden
Esther. None of this is historically reliable; Daniel and Esther are indeed
novelettes rather than history. The point is, these texts revered as Holy
Writ by many if not most Americans depict Persia positively.
The Greeks, on the other hand, cause "many evils on the earth." They build a
gymnasium in Jerusalem, for example (1 Maccabees 1:8). The Jews don't
approve of that sort of Greek thing, so Judah rises up in rebellion against
Seleucid rule in the second century BCE. Their rebellion against the "free,"
"rational" Greeks is depicted as heroic.
The Greco-Roman world continued to make war on Persia off and on up to the
end of the Roman Empire. But Alexander the Great, having defeated the
Persian King Darius a century and a half after the battle of Thermopylae and
acquired his vast empire, admired Persian ways and actively promoted the
cultural synthesis we call Hellenism. Roman troops brought the worship of
the Persian god Mithras back to Rome from their Persian campaigns; the cult
of this god born on December 25 was a formidable rival of Christianity to
the fourth century. The greatest of the late Roman philosophers, the second
century Neoplatonist Plotinus, admired and sought to learn from the
Persians. Manicheanism, founded by the Persian prophet Mani, was another
religious rival to Christianity from its inception in the third century. The
knowledge of the Persian Magi (Zoroastrian priest-astrologers) was respected
in Rome and Magi of course appear in the New Testament (Matthew 2:1-12).
In short, 300's depiction of the battle of Thermopylae is not merely
inaccurate, as any film adaptation of a graphic novel has the perfect right
to be, it's what the Iranians say it is: racist and insulting. It pits the
glorious Greeks with whom the audience must sympathize against a "mystical"
and "tyrannical" culture posing an imminent existential threat. It is, de
facto, an anti-Persian/anti-Iranian propaganda film, and should be rated
appropriately: not just R (for racist) but X -- for extremely stupid and
vicious and dangerously ill-timed.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson