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Hollywood Battle Upsets Iran
Holocaust denial is welcomed, but big screen adaptations of ancient battles have provoked complaints from Iran's authorities.
The latest subject of Tehran's ire is 300, a fantasy version of the battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), when a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army. All 300 Spartans died, but they bought enough time to allow Athens time to assemble enough men to defeat the Persians and halt Persia's expansion into Europe.
To Javad Shamqadri, the cultural adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, however, the film is part of a "cultural war against the people of Iran."
The Persians, he claims, are depicted as sexual degenerates and barbarians; the Spartans, by way of contrast, are noble warriors. A leading Iranian newspaper claims "The film depicts Iranians as demons, without culture, feeling or humanity, who think of nothing except attacking other nations and killing people."
Shamqadri says the release of 300 is part of a Washington-inspired campaign to demonise and humiliate the Iranian people. Oliver Stone's adaptation of the life of Alexander the Great, in which a golden-haired Colin Farrell found the Persians a walkover, also offended Iran - though if anything, Western viewers suffered more.
The film comes as tensions between the US and Iran hit a peak. The film's theme - about how the West defeated fierce hordes from the East - has been remarked upon by US critics, though it is worth noting that 300's writer, comic author Frank Miller, makes a highly unlikely Pentagon stooge.
The NY Post reports that Iranian government ministers hope to persuade Muslim countries to ban the movie: It will almost certainly be banned in Iran, though it is reported that pirated copies of the film are doing healthy business in Tehran.
Iran's news agency claims the western version of Thermopylae presented in the film is "fabricated history" - "No Greek king had the courage to stand up to (Persian emperor) Xerxes", it claims.
