Region | Iran
300 'is no laughing matter'
Iranian community in the US stunned and angered by Hollywood action film.
- By Pamela Constable, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
- Published: 00:00 April 11, 2007
- Image Credit:
- 300 is a wildly exaggerated portrayal of the battle of Thermopylae between the mighty Persian army and a small band of Spartan troops in 480 BC.
Washington: Spring is a time of festivity and rebirth for Iranian-Americans.
The vernal equinox brings Nowrouz, the Persian New Year an occasion to celebrate Iran's ancient, civilised culture with poetry readings, musical concerts and banquets.
Enter the wicked King Xerxes and his brutish armed hordes, who for the past several weeks have been stomping across a thousand US multiplex screens, beheading brave Greek soldiers and besmirching 3,000 years of Persian history.
The opening of the Hollywood action film 300 - a wildly exaggerated portrayal of the battle of Thermopylae between the mighty Persian army and a small band of Spartan troops in 480 BC - has stunned and angered Iranian-Americans across the country.
A few have laughed it off as an adolescent, Nintendo-like glorification of gladiatorial gore, too remote to have relevance today and too silly to harm either the prestige of their large, well-established community - more than a half-million nationwide - or damage Iran's cherished heritage as the cradle of Persian civilisation.
But these are sensitive times. For many Iranian-Americans, a caricature such as 300 is no laughing matter.
Movie as fact
"In this new world, a lot of people get their education from movies, and only a tiny fraction of Americans read about such history in serious ways," said Trita Parsi, president of the Washington-based National Iranian American Council.
"One can say this is just a cartoon, but it would be wrong not to take it seriously, and it is extremely unfortunate for the Iranian-American community."
Parsi and others said that as relations between Iran and the United States have deteriorated many Iranian immigrants have clung to their history and traditions as sources of pride and sentiment, isolated from politics.
Until now, moreover, Iranian-Americans - an affluent community that includes many scientists and business leaders - have largely been spared the negative media stereotypes that have been attached to Arabs, whom many Americans have come to associate with terrorism.
Recent Hollywood films have treated the community sympathetically. In The House of Sand and Fog, for example, Ben Kingsley plays a dignified, exiled Iranian military officer.
But 300 tramples thunderously over Iranians' cherished notions of a noble and benevolent past. King Xerxes, widely portrayed in history books as a wise warrior-ruler, becomes in the film a simpering, cruel sybarite who employs a marauding force of masked monsters.
His Spartan adversaries, in contrast, are handsome musclemen who fight bravely against hopeless odds and die for justice and honour.
"Some people say it is just a comic book, and no one with a basic understanding of history would take it seriously," said Goli Fassihian, 36, an Iranian-American who works for a health-care programme in Washington, D.C.
"But for the average American today, there is a fine line between reality and perception of the Middle East and its people. We have to be very careful about how we portray history, because it can become fact."
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