WHILE accessing my e-mail account a week ago, I happened upon a hyperlink connecting to a forum, which connected to a cluster of other forums featuring tons of people clearly upset with the undertones and concepts conveyed in the movie “300.” What amused me was the paradoxical polarity of the whole ordeal and how it had a “nah, it couldn’t be, but basically could be” way about it. In a nutshell, for those who don’t know, “300” is the brain-child of veteran graphic novelist and “Batman” and “Sin City” writer Frank Miller. Miller, in his longstanding career, has built a reputation among convention-flocking fan-boy nerds and comic book history connoisseurs for coating his heavily conservative, right-wing themed anecdotes with an exploitatively grandiose sense of style. By now, many of you local readers have either indulged in the film due to a devout Internet and novel following or were coaxed into it by your adolescent nephew, hungry for a dose of good old Hollywood shock value. It needn’t matter what demographic you fall under. Just so long as you take my advice and PLEASE do not consider the film educational or in any way, a true historical account of what actually happened at Thermopylae. Believe me, the latter is why such an international uproar is occurring over the movie “300.”
Via online text-based and video-based blog spots like the Yahoo forums and Youtube, many Iranian-Americans and other ethnic Americans have voiced concern over the movie. Their concern stems from the way some ignorant American theatergoers have taken “300” as a sort of pro-war battle cry for American assault on the Middle East and other non-American nations. However difficult it may be to prove that Miller really wrote “300” as anti-third world propaganda, it should be known that he based it almost scene-for-scene on a 1962 Greek government-funded propaganda film titled “The 300 Spartans.” One particular attribute of the film that is receiving negative feedback is how all the Spartans are depicted as gallant, physically ideal Caucasian hero-types while the Persians are misrepresented as hideously disfigured, brown-skinned, homoerotic, women-bashing barbarians. Persians, in historical reality, were some of the most humane and accommodating conquerors who allowed many female rights, not present in Greek society, at the time and religious and political freedom for those they conquered. Oh, and as for Gerard Butler who played the Spartan king Leonidas? It might interest you to know that King Xerxes the Persian looked more like Butler in reality. He was not an effeminate Brazilian supermodel with one million pierced pores. So I can see how those parts might offend modern Iranians who are descendants of the ancient Persians (who, in reality, are just as if not more Caucasian than Greeks). I, for one, would not feel comfortable watching a movie that gloriously portrays Spanish conquistadors as beautiful saviors while my Chamorro ancestors are depicted as savage, flesh-eating mongrels.
On the other hand, I would also not take “300” outside of the context for which it is intended. It is genre entertainment on a grind house theater level and worth no other type of acknowledgment. People offended by the fact that the disabled brown-skinned characters in “300” are butchered mercilessly by fair-skinned He-Man types without discretion or conscience, rest assured. The conscript infantry which the Persian king Xerxes composed from the nations he conquered were, in fact, mostly white like he was. Trust me people; the Battle of Thermopylae was not a historical black-face minstrel show like uneducated theatergoers are touting it to be. History has ways of being more impartial and balanced than many of our present-day leaders will ever be capable of.
And don’t get me wrong Iranian-American movie watchers, for I do empathize with you to a certain extent. With all these anti-Iran, anti-Middle East sentiments running rampant in the U.S. it can be a bit squirm-inducing to sit through a film that screams “kill the Persian!” ever so casually. But again, I urge you not to fall prey to the semi-self-induced insecurity that could accompany such a trip to the movies. At its core, “300,” is a testosterone injected gratuitous splatter fest and nothing more. Miller knew that writing a novel that was historically accurate would not be half as entertaining as one that is wildly sensationalized. “300’s” director Zack Snyder knew it too. That’s just the nature of the industry beast. Any self-respecting, intelligent individual, be they Iranian or not will be able to distinguish that. Anyone who thinks “300” is actually historical truth and actually a good reason to despise Iranians is actually an idiot. I apologize for lack of a better word. But that’s just my 2 cents.

BEN SALAS II
Dandan, Saipan