MjM
Deity
I remember I did see 1 guy in the formation who did not have a sixpack. 
300
- Thread starter Jet
- Start date
Winner
Diverse in Unity
It should have ended with an "almost 1,000 years later" starwipe, where they show Sassanid King Shapur I capturing Roman Emperor Valerian, and Valerian bowing before him
Or with the 627 Battle of Nineveh with Byzantine Emperor Heraclius making a daring invasion into the very heart of Persia, crushing the Persians and forcing them to surrender
Persians have always been losing to Greeks
PrinceOfLeigh
Wigan, England
Sod that, draw them on like Dawgphood. Most girls can't tell the difference.She wants to drool over the muscular bodies of the Spartan soldiers... which means you should go to gym and do some exercise, before she leaves you
MjM
Deity
Or when the last Greek Empire was utterly destroyed in 1453 by the Turks!
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Mott1
King
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2006
- Messages
- 742
This link is entertaining:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6455969.
The irrate Mr Yousefi is upset with the way ancient Persians have been depicted in 300! he has called upon Iranian cartoonist to help educate us uneducated bigoted Westerners of the real Persian empire.
No doubt he has called upon the very same Iranian cartoonist who accurately depicated the real Israeli imperialistic empire.
Thanks for the education Mr Yousefi!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6455969.
The irrate Mr Yousefi is upset with the way ancient Persians have been depicted in 300! he has called upon Iranian cartoonist to help educate us uneducated bigoted Westerners of the real Persian empire.
No doubt he has called upon the very same Iranian cartoonist who accurately depicated the real Israeli imperialistic empire.
Thanks for the education Mr Yousefi!
aneeshm
Deity
PrinceOfLeigh
Wigan, England
Touche Mr Yousefi, 300 is far more offensive
aneeshm
Deity
Coming as I do from the country which:
a) Is home to the "Last of the Persians" (the Parsees of Mumbai, the last people to have preserved intact the culture of Achaemenid Persia (they still give themselves names like Xerxes and Cyrus))
b) Is a sister culture to the Persia depicted in the movie (both share a common cultural root, and are based on the concept of Aryan culture)
I must say that I am rather disturbed by the movie.
I'll give my reasons one by one.
The first is the historical inaccuracy.
Now I know that many people will counter with "It's based on a goddamn COMIC BOOK, just enjoy it, it's not supposed to be real". My point is not that.
You know that it is based on a comic book. I know that it is based on a comic book. Most people on CFC will know that it is based on a comic book. But does the common man in India who watches it know that?
I went to watch the movie with a good friend of mine, quite cultured and knowledgeable about history, but who had never taken much of an interest in the histories of Greece and Persia, and their interaction.
He came away believing that it was the truth. It took me some time to explain to him that the movie had got all the details ass-backwards, that it was the Persians who were lovers of freedom when compared to the Spartans, that the Persians were not monsters, that they were a noble people who shared much with our own India.
And this is the impression which was carried away by one who is quite intelligent.
Now imagine the image the common man of India, who knows not much of his own history, much less that of two empires only distantly connected with India in time and space, will form of Persia and her people.
At least the makers of the movie could have had the decency to add a disclaimer somewhere at the beginning of the movie that it was not true to history.
The second is the total hypocrisy
I was aghast when I saw the Spartan king throw the Persian messengers into the well, and when this was shown as a good thing.
In one of our epics, the Ramayana, the spy-cum-messenger from the good side, sent into the territory of the bad side, is caught by the bad ones. He has caused quite a bit of damage to some state property. The villain of the piece, Ravana, wants to kill him for his insolence.
But his ministers and his own brother are shocked at the suggestion, and tell him that such a thing would be an abomination, unthinkable, and that he should not entertain such a thought. Finally, Ravana relents, and instead chooses to punish the messenger for the damage he has caused (the messenger being a half-human, half-monkey, the punishment is that his tail hair will be set on fire), but that he will be allowed to go back.
Even the greatest villain of our epics, written long before this Sparta thing happened, did not kill a messenger. And we have the Spartans, supposedly from the "Good Side", arrogantly killing the messengers the Persians sent them. And that is then portrayed as good! Absolutely shocking, and totally immoral and adharmic behaviour is condoned here!
And the Spartans lecturing the Persians about freedom is like the British lecturing Mahatma Gandhi about non-violence. Sparta was a society which consisted of professional soldiers, who had to be professionals in order to keep under their control the helots and serfs. The so-called "free men" never did a day's worth of productive work in their lives. They were legally debarred from doing any trading or agriculture.
The reason Sparta was so militaristic was because it was necessary to keep the serfs and helots in line, or they would revolt. And they did frequently revolt, and had to be put down repeatedly and mercilessly.
How people from such a society can talk of freedom and other values like that, when they did not actually practice any of them, is beyond me.
Completely, totally, and unbelievably hypocritical.
The third is the demonisation and dehumanisation of the Persians
No matter which way you slice it, the Persians are shown as a monstrous culture and people. Even though it may be from the point of view of the Spartans, this fact remains.
And also the fact that this is the impression that the audiences here in India carried away from this movie. They really believed that the Persians were like that.
There are roughly 60,000 Persians - yes, the same Persians who were shown to be demons in the movie - living in India today. Imagine you were one of them, and went to watch the movie. Now imagine how you would have felt.
Xerxes and others of the Achaemenid line are the heroes of these people. These are the people who fled the Islamic invaders, and settled in India, bringing their ancient culture to her sister, their only protector left in the world. They even brought the ashes of their fire temples, to maintain ritual continuity with their old fire temples, in which a fire continuously burns to this day - a fire which has never gone out for over a thousand years. Just because a culture is dead or nearly dead does not mean that you go and do to it what has been done in the movie.
In India, with the passage of time, the villains of our epics were progressively demonised over time. But in spite of all that, we still had the decency to acknowledge their greatness. Ravana, though a bad person, is still praised for his piety, for his composition of the great prayer to Shiva, the Shiva Tandava Stotram, for his contributions to the science of medicine.
And not only that, but Persian culture is shown in unimaginably horrible terms. The man with saws or blades for hands? The wanton killings? The sexual perversions? All this, and much more? For a culture which has given the world so much, to which all of us are so indebted? To a culture which was the first to have a universal charter of rights? To one of the first to give religious freedom to its inhabitants?
And the portrayal of Xerxes. The Persian king was always a figure of nobility, and nothing at all like what he was shown. Imagine how you would feel if one of your cultural heroes was shown in such a horrible light. Imagine how the few hundred thousand real Persians left in the world must feel right now, seeing their hero shown in such a way.
And the denigration of their religion. Zoorastrianism is one of the noblest religions in the world. They are essentially fire-worshippers. They use fire as a representation of Ahura Mazda, the force for good. According to them, the world is a battle-ground, where Ahura Mazda constantly fights Ahriman, his eternal enemy, in the ever-continuing fight between good and evil, and that we are fighters, and have to decide on which side we fight. This mirrors very closely the Indian concept of Dharma, or "that which is right".
Note that this religion is still alive, it is still practiced!
That such a great religion could be shown as nothing more than the aggrandisement of the God-Emperor, who is shown as someone who really has a God complex, continues to disgust me.
And now imagine how the opinions of simple people towards the Parsees (Persians) in India will change when they watch this movie, this being their only source of information on the subject.
The whole thing just horrifies me.
The fourth reason is the bloodsport
I like to think that human society has advanced since the times of the ancient Romans, and that we no longer enjoy seeing people suffer gruesome and horrible deaths. It seems, however, that I was wrong, and that we as humans are no better after all than our predecessors when it comes to bloodlust.
But is this what we should be encouraging? Is this really right? A friend of mine (a girl) was constantly cringing when she watched the movie.
Now I, having seen real decapitations, and real beheadings, don't think much of the violence - as always, it pales before the real thing. But what of others? Is it right to pander to the bloodlust and baser feelings of people? It is not a matter of whether this person has the right to or not - he absolutely does - but a matter of whether it is right to do so. And I emphatically say that it is not. As a culture, humanity should be moving away from all this, not towards it.
The last is the values being propagated
Lots of people before me have gone over this in the thread. Suffice it to say that aggressive militarist eugeneticist slavery-based fascism, coupled with superioritism, does not appeal to my sense of morals and values.
I consider the movie also a very great insult to Arya cultures all over the world, including my own. India is a sister culture to Persia, and that our values and way of life, which still continues in many ways similar to the old times, are shown in such a manner is disturbing to me.
I can't fully express my distaste for the movie in words - it brings up too many associations and memories - but I hope I have done a fairly decent job of why I think this movie is disgusting beyond belief, and beyond redemption.
a) Is home to the "Last of the Persians" (the Parsees of Mumbai, the last people to have preserved intact the culture of Achaemenid Persia (they still give themselves names like Xerxes and Cyrus))
b) Is a sister culture to the Persia depicted in the movie (both share a common cultural root, and are based on the concept of Aryan culture)
I must say that I am rather disturbed by the movie.
I'll give my reasons one by one.
The first is the historical inaccuracy.
Now I know that many people will counter with "It's based on a goddamn COMIC BOOK, just enjoy it, it's not supposed to be real". My point is not that.
You know that it is based on a comic book. I know that it is based on a comic book. Most people on CFC will know that it is based on a comic book. But does the common man in India who watches it know that?
I went to watch the movie with a good friend of mine, quite cultured and knowledgeable about history, but who had never taken much of an interest in the histories of Greece and Persia, and their interaction.
He came away believing that it was the truth. It took me some time to explain to him that the movie had got all the details ass-backwards, that it was the Persians who were lovers of freedom when compared to the Spartans, that the Persians were not monsters, that they were a noble people who shared much with our own India.
And this is the impression which was carried away by one who is quite intelligent.
Now imagine the image the common man of India, who knows not much of his own history, much less that of two empires only distantly connected with India in time and space, will form of Persia and her people.
At least the makers of the movie could have had the decency to add a disclaimer somewhere at the beginning of the movie that it was not true to history.
The second is the total hypocrisy
I was aghast when I saw the Spartan king throw the Persian messengers into the well, and when this was shown as a good thing.
In one of our epics, the Ramayana, the spy-cum-messenger from the good side, sent into the territory of the bad side, is caught by the bad ones. He has caused quite a bit of damage to some state property. The villain of the piece, Ravana, wants to kill him for his insolence.
But his ministers and his own brother are shocked at the suggestion, and tell him that such a thing would be an abomination, unthinkable, and that he should not entertain such a thought. Finally, Ravana relents, and instead chooses to punish the messenger for the damage he has caused (the messenger being a half-human, half-monkey, the punishment is that his tail hair will be set on fire), but that he will be allowed to go back.
Even the greatest villain of our epics, written long before this Sparta thing happened, did not kill a messenger. And we have the Spartans, supposedly from the "Good Side", arrogantly killing the messengers the Persians sent them. And that is then portrayed as good! Absolutely shocking, and totally immoral and adharmic behaviour is condoned here!
And the Spartans lecturing the Persians about freedom is like the British lecturing Mahatma Gandhi about non-violence. Sparta was a society which consisted of professional soldiers, who had to be professionals in order to keep under their control the helots and serfs. The so-called "free men" never did a day's worth of productive work in their lives. They were legally debarred from doing any trading or agriculture.
The reason Sparta was so militaristic was because it was necessary to keep the serfs and helots in line, or they would revolt. And they did frequently revolt, and had to be put down repeatedly and mercilessly.
How people from such a society can talk of freedom and other values like that, when they did not actually practice any of them, is beyond me.
Completely, totally, and unbelievably hypocritical.
The third is the demonisation and dehumanisation of the Persians
No matter which way you slice it, the Persians are shown as a monstrous culture and people. Even though it may be from the point of view of the Spartans, this fact remains.
And also the fact that this is the impression that the audiences here in India carried away from this movie. They really believed that the Persians were like that.
There are roughly 60,000 Persians - yes, the same Persians who were shown to be demons in the movie - living in India today. Imagine you were one of them, and went to watch the movie. Now imagine how you would have felt.
Xerxes and others of the Achaemenid line are the heroes of these people. These are the people who fled the Islamic invaders, and settled in India, bringing their ancient culture to her sister, their only protector left in the world. They even brought the ashes of their fire temples, to maintain ritual continuity with their old fire temples, in which a fire continuously burns to this day - a fire which has never gone out for over a thousand years. Just because a culture is dead or nearly dead does not mean that you go and do to it what has been done in the movie.
In India, with the passage of time, the villains of our epics were progressively demonised over time. But in spite of all that, we still had the decency to acknowledge their greatness. Ravana, though a bad person, is still praised for his piety, for his composition of the great prayer to Shiva, the Shiva Tandava Stotram, for his contributions to the science of medicine.
And not only that, but Persian culture is shown in unimaginably horrible terms. The man with saws or blades for hands? The wanton killings? The sexual perversions? All this, and much more? For a culture which has given the world so much, to which all of us are so indebted? To a culture which was the first to have a universal charter of rights? To one of the first to give religious freedom to its inhabitants?
And the portrayal of Xerxes. The Persian king was always a figure of nobility, and nothing at all like what he was shown. Imagine how you would feel if one of your cultural heroes was shown in such a horrible light. Imagine how the few hundred thousand real Persians left in the world must feel right now, seeing their hero shown in such a way.
And the denigration of their religion. Zoorastrianism is one of the noblest religions in the world. They are essentially fire-worshippers. They use fire as a representation of Ahura Mazda, the force for good. According to them, the world is a battle-ground, where Ahura Mazda constantly fights Ahriman, his eternal enemy, in the ever-continuing fight between good and evil, and that we are fighters, and have to decide on which side we fight. This mirrors very closely the Indian concept of Dharma, or "that which is right".
Note that this religion is still alive, it is still practiced!
That such a great religion could be shown as nothing more than the aggrandisement of the God-Emperor, who is shown as someone who really has a God complex, continues to disgust me.
And now imagine how the opinions of simple people towards the Parsees (Persians) in India will change when they watch this movie, this being their only source of information on the subject.
The whole thing just horrifies me.
The fourth reason is the bloodsport
I like to think that human society has advanced since the times of the ancient Romans, and that we no longer enjoy seeing people suffer gruesome and horrible deaths. It seems, however, that I was wrong, and that we as humans are no better after all than our predecessors when it comes to bloodlust.
But is this what we should be encouraging? Is this really right? A friend of mine (a girl) was constantly cringing when she watched the movie.
Now I, having seen real decapitations, and real beheadings, don't think much of the violence - as always, it pales before the real thing. But what of others? Is it right to pander to the bloodlust and baser feelings of people? It is not a matter of whether this person has the right to or not - he absolutely does - but a matter of whether it is right to do so. And I emphatically say that it is not. As a culture, humanity should be moving away from all this, not towards it.
The last is the values being propagated
Lots of people before me have gone over this in the thread. Suffice it to say that aggressive militarist eugeneticist slavery-based fascism, coupled with superioritism, does not appeal to my sense of morals and values.
I consider the movie also a very great insult to Arya cultures all over the world, including my own. India is a sister culture to Persia, and that our values and way of life, which still continues in many ways similar to the old times, are shown in such a manner is disturbing to me.
I can't fully express my distaste for the movie in words - it brings up too many associations and memories - but I hope I have done a fairly decent job of why I think this movie is disgusting beyond belief, and beyond redemption.
The spartan caste system is offending to you?
The movie was meant to be seen as entertainment for whoever liked it. I dont see you campaigning against movies such a Sin City, which imo were entirely boring, but still they have an audience so they make $, which is one of the main reasons a movie gets made, afterall.
The movie was meant to be seen as entertainment for whoever liked it. I dont see you campaigning against movies such a Sin City, which imo were entirely boring, but still they have an audience so they make $, which is one of the main reasons a movie gets made, afterall.
Bozo Erectus
Master Baker
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2003
- Messages
- 22,389
In addition to everything Aneeshm said, its just flat out lousy movie making. The only reason it made so much money is because of the much hyped graphics, which IMO made a bad movie even worse.
aneeshm
Deity
The spartan caste system is offending to you?
Please do not try to dignify the Spartan system by equating it with the varna system. Indeed, the helots would have loved to come to India and continue their occupations, because of the much more liberal system that prevailed in India at the time.
I am not campaigning against, I'm just telling you why I think the movie was an abomination unto everything that is right in this world.
Well said, aneeshm.
However, I have read that the Persian soldiers and people were virtual slaves to the king. I don't remember where I read that. It may have been in one of the histories of the world present in the manuals that come with Civilization 1 or 2.
However, I have read that the Persian soldiers and people were virtual slaves to the king. I don't remember where I read that. It may have been in one of the histories of the world present in the manuals that come with Civilization 1 or 2.
She wants to drool over the muscular bodies of the Spartan soldiers... which means you should go to gym and do some exercise, before she leaves you
okay , maybe so.
damn, think i got to lose some weight.
Well, it is to the Greek defeat of Persia that the West owes its freedom. And Sparta played a big part in that. But, that doesn't mean that the Spartans themselves were free.
PrinceOfLeigh
Wigan, England
All good points. But there are at least two scenes with naked boobs so I prepared to ignore the underlying messages.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Anneshm, I have a few comments:
This film is clearly made for the Western audience.
Immoral and the other thing, perhaps to you. I find it OK, those bas***s deserved that. They came to Spartans, insulted them, threatened them and mocked them, so they were killed. They deserved it.
That's true, still, they were much more familiar with the concept of individualism and personal freedom than Persians of that time. I read in one history book (I have no idea if it's true), that Persians didn't even have a word for freedom, they were completely unaware of this concept.
Sparta was a part of the Greek civilization. It was less "free" than Athens or Corinth, but then, even the cradle of democracy, Athens, was full of slaves serving their masters in this democratic society. Freedom applied only to free people, not slaves or subjugated barbarians.
Ancient Persia was an oriental, despotic empire. From the Greek point of view, there was only one citizen of the Persian Empire - the king himself, because the other people were his slaves.
Greeks considered them less worthy because they were not free. After Greeks, the Western people adopted this view: the East was a synonym for despotism and suppression of the individual.
Well, as harsh as it sounds, that's the price for freedom (of speech and artist expression).
I haven't noticed any denigration of Zoroastrianism.
Well, that's not really a problem of the film-makers.
Western popular culture is about giving people what they want. That's a fact, there is no point in saying it's wrong - we all know that, but we like it too.
That's not what Westerners see. We see courage, valor, will to fight to the death for your own people and for your freedom from foreign rule.
You see an insult where there is none, so again, that's not a problem of the film-makers, they don't care and I, quite frankly, don't care as well. If you don't like it, don't watch it.
This film is clearly made for the Western audience.
Immoral and the other thing, perhaps to you. I find it OK, those bas***s deserved that. They came to Spartans, insulted them, threatened them and mocked them, so they were killed. They deserved it.
That's true, still, they were much more familiar with the concept of individualism and personal freedom than Persians of that time. I read in one history book (I have no idea if it's true), that Persians didn't even have a word for freedom, they were completely unaware of this concept.
Sparta was a part of the Greek civilization. It was less "free" than Athens or Corinth, but then, even the cradle of democracy, Athens, was full of slaves serving their masters in this democratic society. Freedom applied only to free people, not slaves or subjugated barbarians.
Ancient Persia was an oriental, despotic empire. From the Greek point of view, there was only one citizen of the Persian Empire - the king himself, because the other people were his slaves.
Greeks considered them less worthy because they were not free. After Greeks, the Western people adopted this view: the East was a synonym for despotism and suppression of the individual.
Well, as harsh as it sounds, that's the price for freedom (of speech and artist expression).
I haven't noticed any denigration of Zoroastrianism.
Well, that's not really a problem of the film-makers.
Western popular culture is about giving people what they want. That's a fact, there is no point in saying it's wrong - we all know that, but we like it too.
That's not what Westerners see. We see courage, valor, will to fight to the death for your own people and for your freedom from foreign rule.
You see an insult where there is none, so again, that's not a problem of the film-makers, they don't care and I, quite frankly, don't care as well. If you don't like it, don't watch it.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
It is kind of disturbing how often this happens in American movies. Even Aragorn killed messengers!
