Really. My Zoroastrian buddy (who loved Miller’s graphic novel 300 and intends to see the movie this week) told me yesterday that the Zoroastrian and Persian message boards were full of outrage at the movie 300. So this wasn’t a surprise.
Interestingly, the link doesn’t say just what the Iranian official found objectionable about the movie’s caricature of the Persians. And it is a caricature, and a slanderous one as well. But dude, it’s a movie!
Anyway, a lot of American critics seem to take pains to mention the Persians’ effeminacy in contrast to the Spartans’ masculinity. I dunno, but if you take the hyper-masculine Spartans out of the reckoning, I really don’t see that the movie depicted the Persians or their slave soldiers as all that effeminate. Decadent, yes. Eyeshadow-wearing, yes. Emperor wears lip gloss, sure. And according to the credits, in one scene (presumably the court scene) there were a few transsexuals that I failed to spot as such. But I didn’t see any of the Persians prancing, talking with a lisp, or any of the other prototypical behavior of a queer queen. Maybe I’ve been living in the San Francisco Bay Area too long….
So the Iranians don’t like an American movie were the Persians are the antagonists? Get in line behind the rest of the offended. Mel Gibson should be persona non grata in the UK for both “Braveheart” and “The Patriot”, the Russians and Vietnamese should want to kick our asses for what we did to them in the Rambo movies, and if I recall “Midnight Express” didn’t exacrly paint an idyllic picture of life in a Turkish prison.
Nah, if American film-makers REALLY wanted to offend the sensibilities of the Iranians, we’d broadcast documentries of what actually goes on there. Ya know, homosexuals being hung to death on cranes, women being stoned with actual stones for committing adultery or other offenses. And I’m sure a few honor killings happen there too. Were such footage broadcast in the West, especially to certain rights groups, the howling over “300” would seem as nothing.