300 = racist death cult garbage

Canada
March 11, 2007 6:26am CST
The movie is a fictionalize recount, based on a novel by Frank Miller, of the Battle of Thermopylae, in which around 300 Spartans (and various other Greek cohorts) supposedly defeat over 1 million soldiers from the Persian Empire. Can anyone say, "Alamo?" In the trailer for 300, you have a scene with a very African looking emissary, played by actor, Tyrone Benskin (whom King Leonides calls a Persian) getting kicked down a hole by King Leonides, played by actor, Gerard Butler, along with some other rather non-descript Muslim-looking Persian guards (an anachronism, since Islam didn't come into being until nearly 800 years later). There are also other scenes depicting the Persian Emperor, Xerxes I, played by actor Rodrigo Santoro, stylized in nuevo-tribal looking African, complete with numerous royal piercings, and other scenes with Lord-of-the-Rings type over-sized beasts plowing through the battlefield. Unfortunately and fortunately, whichever way you look at it, Persians, or Iranian actors were in short supply. Of course, the Spartans, or the heroes, are played by mostly actors of American-looking background actors (very similar to LOTR) poorly made up to look like the Mediterranean Greeks of the day. The movie message is clear - It's white people (really white Americans - the self-proclaimed protectors of Western civilization) versus the Hordes of Darkness (actually, a line used in the - "they came from the darkness"). Racist code language under the cover of "artistic license" through images, symbology, and screenplay has long been a fixture in American film, and the movie, 300, shows that it's not beneath even the most glamourized, computer graphics enhanced, 21st century film to play to silent racist sentimentalities. The Spartans represent an ultra-militarized state, the Persians represent Muslims. I wonder what other geo-political scenario this resembles. The parallel is blatant -the U.S. in the middle east. What are they selling here? What are they trying to get us to be enthusiastic about?
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