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300
TEHRAN (AFP) Tue Mar 13, 8:09 AM ET

War epic "300", a smash hit in the United States for its gory por- trayal of the Greco-Persian wars, has drawn the wrath of Iranians for showing their ancestors as bloodthirsty "savages". The press, officials and bloggers have united in denouncing the film as another example of "psychological warfare" against Tehran by its American arch enemy at a time of mounting tension over its nuclear programme. "Hollywood declares war on Iranians," said the headline in the reformist daily Ayandeh-No of the film which tells the story of the 300 Spartan soldiers fighting off ancient Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae. Thermopylae painting by the French artist Jacques-Louis David at the Louvre (Paris). It seeks to tell people that Iran, which is in the Axis of Evil now, has for long been the source of evil and modern Iranians' ancestors are the ugly murderous dumb savages you see in '300'," fumed the paper on its front page. A cultural advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the film as "American psychological warfare against Iran." "American cultural officials thought they could get mental satisfaction by plundering Iran's historic past and insulting this civilization," Javad Shamaghdari told semi-official Fars news agency. Three MPs in the Iranian parliament have also written to the foreign ministry to protest to the production and screening of this "anti-Iranian Hollywood film". The film has already proved a major box office hit in the United States and, unsurpris- ingly, Greece. It is highly improbable the film would ever be screened in the Islamic republic but contraband DVDs of the latest American movies are often available on the streets no sooner that they are internationally released. Cyber savvy Iranians have already started online petitions and set off "Google bombs" against "300". Romantised image of the Hellenic Empire. The furor over "300" is by no means the first time Iran has been left fuming over Western portrayals of its ancient history. Iranians were also enraged by the 2004 epic 'Alexander' about the conquest of the Persian Empire and a notorious 2005 British newspaper review of an exhibition of antiquities which branded ancient Persia the "Evil Empire". ___________________

Iran accuses Hollywood of
'psychological warfare'


President Ahmadinejad's spokesman branded the film 'an insult to Iran'. (Photo: Warner Bro)

by Robert Tait in Tehran
Wednesday March 14, 2007 Guardian (London)

Hollywood is already firmly established as a source of cultural decadence in Iran's pantheon of hated western symbols. But now the country's Islamic leadership has accused it of "psychological warfare" over its depiction of the battle between the Greeks and Persians at Thermopylae in 480BC, regarded as a key event in the birth of western democracy by some historians. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government has joined MPs, bloggers and local media in denouncing the newly-released Warner Brothers epic, 300, as a calculated attempt to demonise Iran at a time of intensifying US pressure over the country's nuclear programme. -Mr Ahmadinejad's spokesman branded the film "an insult to Iran" while four MPs have urged the foreign ministry to pressure other Muslim countries to ban it. The film, directed by Zack Snyder and based on a novel by Frank Miller, grossed nearly £40m in ticket sales in three days after opening in north American cinemas last week. It portrays the heroic endeavours of 300 Spartans, under King Leonidas, who are shown resisting an invading force of 120,000 Persian troops led by Emperor Xerxes. The plot depicts the tiny Spartan force repeatedly outmanoeuvring the invaders and being defeated after a three-day stand-off only through treachery. Iranians complain that it represents them as savage, murderous and warmongering. The film's availability in Iran has been limited so far to pirate DVDs, but that has not stopped an outpouring of official condemnation. The government spokesman, Gholamhossein Elham, described the film as "cultural intrusion" and an attack on Iran's ancient civilisation. "Such a fabrication of culture and insult to people is not acceptable by any nation or government," he told reporters. "[Iran] considers it as hostile behaviour which is the result of cultural and psychological warfare." The reformist newspaper, Ayandehno, accused the makers of trying to set international opinion against Iran to fit President George Bush's description of the country as belonging to an "axis of evil". "In the film Iranians are considered to be monsters devoid of any culture, humanity and wisdom who know nothing except attacking other lands, threatening peace and killing human beings. There is no option other than to confront, fight and destroy this wicked tribe so that the world can be saved from this axis of evil," the paper's film critic wrote. It is not the first Hollywood production to cause upset in Iran. There was widespread anger over the favourable portrayal of Alexander the Great in the 2004 film, Alexander. The Macedonian king is reviled in Iranian culture for destroying the seat of Persian imperial greatness at Persepolis after defeating Emperor Darius III in 330BC.

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NOTICE: After World War II, Mary McCarthy, the American Socialist and French translation expert, translated and published an essay in the weekly New Republic journal written before WW2 by the French antiquities scholar and philosopher Simone Weil called "The Iliad - a poem of War". Ms Weil claimed that Homer's poem The Iliad was a fable relating less about the capture of Helen of Troy than about the fact that the Persians finally lost against the emerging Hellenes not because of any 'ideological superiority' but because the Persians continued using only Bronze for their metal military armour whereas the development of Iron had begun and become easier and cheaper to forge and use as military shields and swords against them. (GPS fiba publisher)

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Year of the PIG