Iran outraged by Hollywood war epic

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

300 is an adaptation of a Frank Miller comic, not a serious retelling of that history. Miller himself was inspired by an old early 60's sword and sandal movie called the 300 Spartans.

I'm not all that bothered with the fact that it isn't accurate - just that the production seems to have been hijacked for dubious purposes.

[dalegg 143]

Was I the only one that felt a strange urge to go get a massage after seeing that movie?

[Anais Nin 0]

I just saw this film. The Iranians outrage is justified. Hollywood likes to see themselves as espousing Greek values - f#ck off, American fascists!

I also like this piece below:

I agree with your review of the 300 as a historical representation – it is after all Frank Miller’s vision not history . But with no disrespect intended, you are guilty of poor historical research and representation which nears bigotry when equating the Spartans with the Nazis.

Your comparison is insulting to Hellenes, especially those, like my family, who fought and lost people against fascism both internal and external between 1940 and 1974. The left in the modern world tends to look to the Spartans as models not the right. The Russian and the Chinese Revolutions had Spartacus divisions, the Trotskyites in post-war UK and here, formed Spartacus groups.

Most fascists and Nazis had Persian and Roman Imperial fantasies. I have no intention of writing a hagiography of Spartans, but they must be analysed in context of the ancient world and their impact in the formation of a secular Hellenic i.e., Western notion of citizen militia and polis/based society.

Freedom, or eleuqeria, is a powerful notion for Hellenes that is why Greeks fought the Nazis in WWII with sustained vigour and success. The Jews of Greece, those not taken by the Nazis were members of the Greek Resistance EAM-ELAS because the Hellenic universalist notion of citizenship and freedom, in Greece Jews were regarded as Greeks first and foremost - unlike in European states, were they formed separate Jewish resistance movements due to anti-Semitism.

The Greek quisling government of 1941 – 1945, as well as the Greek Orthodox Church refused to adhere to the Nazis’ orders to give up Jews and supported over 3000 Jews into marrying with Greeks, and thousands converting into Greek Orthodoxy so as to not be singled out by Nazis, in less than three weeks. (Report No 6 Inter-Allied Information Committee London 1942) This cannot be said of the Vichy Government in France for example – or the horrific anti-Semitism in the Baltic and some Eastern European states in the same period. You can view the Institute for Jewish Policy Research 1997; Jewish Heritage of Greece GNTO 1992; Peter Levi Atlas of Greek Word on File NY 1980 and more on this matter such as the NYC Holocaust Museum and The Virtual Jewish History Tour of Greece by Shira Schoenberg.

As Churchill remarked of the campaign by Greek citizens and partisans against the Nazis in Crete, where over 20,000 Nazis were killed, after the British abandoned the ANZAC divisions, "Greeks do not fight like heroes, heroes fight like Greeks'.

Few historians, can deny the impact the Spartans’ stand against the Persians at Thermopylae, (qermo (thermo) – hot pilae –pillars) had on the formation of modern notions of citizenship. Equating Spartans with Nazis reveals a profound lack of ancient, modern Hellenic historical knowledge as well as the development of fascism in Europe post 1915. This lack of historical knowledge is possibly one of the terrible effects of post-modernists’ lack of deeper inquiry, sadly Michel Foucault was an exceptional Hellenic historian and spoke Ancient Greek fluently. I guess the dictum, Trotsky was better than Trotskyites applies here, as Foucault was far better than contemporary media and cinema studies post-structuralists. Your analysis has no weight when measured against the impact Greeks had on the both the west and the east from 700BCE.

The problem with the 300 is its appalling misrepresentation of the Persians as anthropomorphic monsters rather than as the culturally diverse, theocratic and autocratic empire they were. Movie reviewers in Greece canned the film for the same reasons you have - the implicit demonic representation of Middle Eastern and Asian peoples– but they critiqued from a far more informed perspective.

The Persians were a multicultural and multi-religious empire spaning the Indus Valley, the Bactrian Region, the Byzantium and most of the Middle East. The core reason they did not succeed in securing Greece, regardless of Hellene vassals in their camp from Asia Minor, was the Battle of Thermopylae. There are a number of sources in relation to Persian conflict with Greece, such as Paul Cartledge’s The Spartans and Epic History, which you need to read it seems.

Your suggestion that Persians did not have Africans representing them is wrong. The Persians had Nubian, Egyptian, Greeks, Indians, Middle Eastern, Mongol, Caucasian (i.e. from the Caucasus and Steppes) people their armies as ‘slaves’, vassals and mercenaries. The practice of slavery in the ancient world has little relation to the modern British, US and European slavery based on Eugenic views that African and other non- Anglo/French/Spanish and Germanic peoples were inferior and thus were fodder for the modern colonial enterprise of the new world. In fact it is Eugenics theory advanced in the US in the late 19th Century which informed the Nazis and their racial classification of the world.

The Spartans and Hellenes had no notion of race – their world was divided into citizens and non-citizens, and secondary into Greek and non- Greek speakers. The Greeks were fighting each other most of the time over ideological, political and economic issues. Thus a Greek speaker, for example the ex-slave Aesop, of African descent could, as he did, become a citizen and a Hellene. Barbarians or barbaroi, were simply a non Greek speaker – the term has little relation to its current usage.

Ancient slaves represented diverse social strata, races, religions, skills and circumstances. Many slaves led prosperous lives. Some of the greatest Persian generals were ‘slaves’, in fact the Persian Immortals where slaves– not unlike the Janissary elite forces of the Ottomans a thousand years latter. The stoic philosophers, Epictetus and Plutarch were slaves. One could become a slave through war, personal and family debt, employment and birth – but a slave was not classed by colour and a slave could become a citizen, or a city dweller - the process of becoming a slave, a citizen or a dweller was complex and revealed more about social structure, ritual, political landscapes, beliefs and economic systems than racial views. In the revolution by Helots against the Spartans during and after the Peloponnesian Wars many Helots were offered citizenship by Sparta so as to fight the Athenians.

The Persian army was constituted by slaves and mercenaries, many of them Greeks. John Keegan points out that slave armies can not be considered from a contemporary western prism – many slaves had significant financial, political military power but were not simply, in the Greek and later Roman cases ‘citizens’ or in the Persian case, were vassals of Empire. (Keagan:1993)

Any comparison with ancient military slavery in Persia, (similar later to the Mameluke phenomenon) is very intellectually na�ve. Jean – Pierre Vernant suggests that social and class relations in Ancient Greece, China, Persia and Israel were vastly different to what we developed in the modern world post 1300 AD. (Vernant:1990)

The fundamental difference which 300 fails to make is as Keegan, Cartledge, Vernant, Man, et al highlight, the Hellenes were the first citizenship based militias in the Mediterranean. The only genuine comparisons in the ancient world are China and Israel in the same time 500BCE represents the ‘rationalisation’ of society, but from very differing and ideological, economic and political circumstances. (Vernant:1990)

In the contemporary world the closest comparison to Hellene hoplites, or citizen based militias, are the Chinese Reg Guard, the Vietcong, the partisans in South Eastern Europe in WWII –Tito’s Red Army, EAM – ELAS, the anti-British EOKA A in Cyprus and Haganah in Israel, one may add the NLF of Algeria in their battle with France. Again, these militias’ cruelty to enemies and sympathisers was part of a military strategy. To equate Spartans to the genocidal terror of the Nazis defies rationality, reveals a poor reading of history, is bigoted and almost pornographic.

In the case of Thermopylae, the Persian sea and land forces amounted to approximately 150,000 and the defence of the gates of fire was held for three to five days by a group of 6000 Spartans, Thespians, Arcadians and Helots. (Herodotus as all Greeks was prone to enthusiasms in numerical terms) Herein a fundamental problem in your analysis of the Spartans’ relation to the Helot serfs and the Perikoi our out-dwellers, the Helots were Hellenes, but not Spartan citizens. Their condition has more in common with that of Japanese landed serfs under Samurai, or serfs of Britain and France during the Middle Ages.

The 300 Spartans in Thermopylae stayed fast to the end for ideological and strategic reasons as Keegan reveals in A History of Warfare. (Keagan:1993) The Spartans wanted, not unlike the Russian partisan and regular troops during the Siege of Stalingrad, to be seen as the guardians of the Western/Hellenic ideals, as opposed to their emerging enemy, the powerful maritime democracy of Athens.

As soon as the Hellenic front (Athenians, Spartans, Thebans and others) beat the Persians, a year after in Platea, war between Sparta and Athens began. In the case of the Spartans – one can draw comparison to the Soviet Union and in the case of Athens – the democratic west. Keegan and Cartledge suggest one should look at the Battle of Thermopylae akin to the Battle of Stalingrad - a moral victory against ‘tyranny’. (Keegan:1993) Cartledge says it was the most important battle in our development, more important than The Battle of Hastings and akin to the resistance by Greek, Yugoslav and Russian partisans against the Nazis in the WWII (Cartledge:2003). Thermopylae defined what we now consider the west. The rule of law, a citizenship based polis and militias, and individual freedom.

From a military perspective the Spartans were the first to perfect close order battle techniques - the phalanx by hoplites - they were in effect the first marines and citizen militia. Spartans were trained for war from the age of seven through agoge, or upbringing. Agoge became a template for Jesuit and later British education and military training schools such as the School of Rugby, Cambridge, Sandhurst and Oxford (Keagan, Cartledge, Vernant et al). The Spartan boule, senate, remains with us today, as do Spartan tactical military and political approaches.

The Nazis on the other hand saw the Roman Empire as a template, thus the eagle signatures and triumphal symbols – things the Spartans saw as frivolous. The Third Reich, was in the fantasy of these fascists, to be realised after 1st the Aryan (Persian) and 2nd Roman. The cores source of Nazi mythology is to be found in their misfortunate understanding of the Aryan – later Persian Empire. Their vision of Aryan as we all know now had little to do with the multicultural and sophisticated Aryans of the past – i.e. Persians.

Harsh Spartan upbringing was more about warrior codes, not unlike the Samurai and the Zulu, nothing remotely resembling the Nazis – in fact the IDF and the Swiss Army are possibly the most contemporary institutions resembling the Spartan civilian militias.

The Spartans wavered between philoxenia (love of the stranger) and xenophobia (fear of the stranger) depending on the epoch. In reality they had established links with the Persians, the Medes and the Indians for over 100 years prior to the Spartan/Persian conflict. They honoured and respected Xerxes and much of their xenophobia was targeted mainly towards other Hellenes – their imperial ambitions did not exceed the confines of Laconia and the Peloponnesus – unlike say the Athenians, Alexander the Great and latter, Romans.

Spartans were a stoic, laconic (thus the etymological reference to Laconia) society based primarily on self preservation and complex codification of their warrior ethics and laws. Sadly after their collapse, the enduring fifty year cold and hot war with Athens, in which they finally sided with Persia against Athens, and the ultimate rise of Rome, Sparta became an S&M tourist site for Roman gentry.

The conditions in Laconia were harsh (Keegan, Cartledge, Vernant, Grant et al ) and reflected the rise of a class of independent warrior citizens, similar class distinctions that made Greece, China, Israel, and India sophisticated new rationalising cultures by 500BCE. Laws made sure that handicapped children were abandoned to die or thrown off cliffs – the accuracy of these laws and their impact is debated. It had much to do about sustaining a small state of citizens in a harsh environment as well as the propaganda which the Athenians developed during the Peloponnesian War against Sparta. In this area I suggest a reading of Jean-Pierre Vernant’s Myth and Society in Ancient Greece is a good start.

Spartan women were the freest of ancient Greece, they had political influence, took on male and female partners and unlike any other Ancient Greek women could read and write and take part in gymnastics (gumno - astia = naked exercises). Athenian women scorned them as ‘thighslappers’ because they wore one piece dresses with significant thigh slits and no make up, they were extremely fit and sun worshiped as opposed to their Athenian and other Hellene cohorts who spent most of the time in-doors weaving. Spartan women were encouraged to be independent and healthy in order to ‘breed Spartan men’ . (Cartledge:2003) Unlike the film 300 suggests Spartan men had long-term male partners they would never leave to die in battle while being married to women from the age of about twenty. Rome used Spartan and Helot hoplites because they would never leave their lovers to die alone in the battle field.

As Plutarch writes, when a Spartan went off to fight, the Spartan mother or wife would bid farewell by pointing to his shield and saying, ‘return either carrying it or on it’ – this was because the shield would double over as a stretcher for wounded soldiers and because the shield was essential for hoplites.

The Helots, were oppressed, but they fought against the Persians, as they were after all Hellenes. They also brought down Sparta after the Peloponnesian War. The Athenians implored the Helots to rise against the Spartans in favour of Athenian style liberal democracy. The constant threat of revolution by the Helots was a real danger for the Spartans. Spartacus (i.e. The Spartan in Lt.) almost succeeded in bringing down Rome years later. (My mother comes from the exact state in Peloponnesus where Spartacus was born – Ilia.)

The Spartans, or Lacedemonians had a very specific way of talking and expressing themselves thus laconic and as I point out above the word itself is etymologically linked to Laconia in Greece. Laconic humour and irreverence were essential to Spartans in their battle preparations, as was choral singing ways of combating internal fobia, phobia, and creating phobia in their enemy.

Interestingly, agoge was about reaching a form of Zen, or Nirvana. Thomas McEvilley, professor of Art History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City suggests in his study of comparative philosophies between Greeks and Indians that Indian/Persian philosophy and systems impacted on the Greeks of pre-Socratic time and in return Greek thinking and values had impact on Indian and Persian thinking in post-Socratic times, particularly in terms of singular notions of god, ethics and aesthetics. (McEvilley:2006)

The Spartans, never moved into battle with war cries, as they were seen to be unmanly and could dissipate energy for long term fighting. Rather they moved into battle in the lambda shape, (Greek L - L), in choral unison. The Spartans always respected andrismo or androcentric values in enemies, this is very distinct from machismo, which was seen as unmanly – again the Spartans had a much codified notion of battle, song, dance and poetry and they were after all bisexual and proud of it.

It is a pity that few directors can bring to life on the screen the liminal qualities of the ancient world particularly the Battle of Thermopylae. It is even sadder that those critics that did not like the film, for good reason, did not exhibit the historical interest in conducting research beyond google to providing informed critiques. Cartledge’s, The Spartans an Epic History is a great book on Spartans if you are interested as is Steven Pressfield’s The Gates of Fire a fine historical novel of the Battle of Thermopylae.

I would like to end with an indication of the Spartan laconic humour: Of all the Spartans and Thespians who fought so valiantly the most signal proof of courage was given by the Spartan Dienekes. It is said that before the battle he was told by a native of Trachis [a nearby town] that, when the Persians shot their arrows, there were so many of them that they hid the sun. Dienekes, however, quite unmoved by the thought of the strength of the Persian army, merely remarked: 'This is pleasant news that the stranger from Trachis brings us: if the Persians hide the sun, we shall have our battle in the shade.' He is said to have left on record other sayings, too, of a similar kind, by which he will be remembered." (Pressfield:1998)

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Its hard to relativize ancient civilizations - but having a more than casual interest in ancient history it is a little offensive to me to see someone's historical heritage being trashed to apparently justify present day prejudices.

[Quinn 2]

It doesn't delve much into the wider context of that history - its more of a character study of Leonidas.

I found it to be a delightful physiological study of the male abdominal muscle.

Thank god movie theaters have seats, otherwise I would have fainted from all the beefcake overload.

[GaryC 7]

I just saw this film. The Iranians outrage is justified. Hollywood likes to see themselves as espousing Greek values - f#ck off, American fascists!

I see your still upset we will not let you into America! It's nice to see that our system of weeding out undesirables like yourself sometimes works. Have a nice day (somewhere else that is).

[Heracles 417]

I just saw this film. The Iranians outrage is justified. Hollywood likes to see themselves as espousing Greek values - f#ck off, American fascists!

I have not seen the film. I am lost with the point your trying to make? Same goes with that article..

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I just see it as a bad movie. I'm not sure much more can be made of it than that.

[Scott & Lai 12]

I just saw this film. The Iranians outrage is justified. Hollywood likes to see themselves as espousing Greek values - f#ck off, American fascists!

I have not seen the film. I am lost with the point your trying to make? Same goes with that article..

He's a rabid America-hater. That's pretty much the only point he ever has.

[almaty 19]

I just saw this film. The Iranians outrage is justified. Hollywood likes to see themselves as espousing Greek values - f#ck off, American fascists!

I see your still upset we will not let you into America! It's nice to see that our system of weeding out undesirables like yourself sometimes works. Have a nice day (somewhere else that is).

he was here..lived in st charles missouri

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Hollywood and its liberal propaganda.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Joking aside - if there is indeed propaganda in that movie its pretty far from 'liberal'. Quite the opposite in fact - considering that the movie depicts a race of heroic 'aryan-types'. Whether its intentional or not is another matter - but its in there regardless.

Nietzche would have had a field day with this.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Joking aside - if there is indeed propaganda in that movie its pretty far from 'liberal'. Quite the opposite in fact - considering that the movie depicts a race of heroic 'aryan-types'. Whether its intentional or not is another matter - but its in there regardless.

Nietzche would have had a field day with this.

Shhh...you're not helping the stereotype of Hollywood.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Attempting to put something boring (or something other posters will not appreciate).

Maybe Bollywood can produce a film titled Theen-so (hindi for 300) about the 1660 Battle of Pavan Khind (in which 300 Marathas held off the much-larger Bijapur army at a narrow gap so that Shivaji could reach Vishalgadh from Panhala; while these soldiers were slaughtered, some of them actually survived till they heard cannon-booms from Vishalgadh--and so had the joy of dying victorious).

[almaty 19]

Attempting to put something boring (or something other posters will not appreciate).

Maybe Bollywood can produce a film titled Theen-so (hindi for 300) about the 1660 Battle of Pavan Khind (in which 300 Marathas held off the much-larger Bijapur army at a narrow gap so that Shivaji could reach Vishalgadh from Panhala; while these soldiers were slaughtered, some of them actually survived till they heard cannon-booms from Vishalgadh--and so had the joy of dying victorious).

always, for me, appreciate info on India and Pakistan..it is the area, in history, i know the least about..thanks brother sriniv