http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070313/ap_en_mo/iran300_movie;_ylt=AquHEOJjD1twEiUSVI8nV3jqChkF
The hit American movie “300” has angered Iranians who say the Greeks-vs-Persians action flick insults their ancient culture and provokes animosity against Iran…
“The film depicts Iranians as demons, without culture, feeling or humanity, who think of nothing except attacking other nations and killing people,” Ayende-No said in its article Tuesday.
I would suggest that the film doesn’t depict Iranians, but the millenia-old culture that led to the people who eventually called themselves Iranians… And Iraqis and Saudis and all the other tribes with whom they chose to war before the Great Satan ever blundered into their personal space.
Ironic that they’re more concerned with the portrayal of antecedents than in fixing the image of the modern Iranian people: Hypersensitive to the point of national outrage over a fictional, brainless, poorly-reviewed Hollywood movie that – thanks to the tremendous religious and political repression of culture – won’t even play in their country. 300 is fiction; the idiotic reaction is news.
(This reminds me of a rather dim Catholic girl in one of my third-year classes at University. She demanded an apology from my French history prof for insulting “her” church in describing its Crusaders, and the rape and pillage they wrought on the East. Thankfully, he just blinked and continued on with the lesson.)