This movie is unrequited American Propaganda, Heres Why:
(From another discussion Board
and I stand by my earlier comments about the fact that the story works best if you read it as a metaphor of the War on Terror, and that, being aware of it, but desperately trying to reverse the roles, the screenwriters have tried to make Leonidas some unlikely avatar of George W. Bush. This, obviously, spoiled what should have been good, bloodthirsty fun--imagine if the characters of "Sin City", say, were ranting about Roark being a closet liberal and the Old Town whores being the embodiment of all-American conservative values. I mean, that would make as much sense as the cringe-inducing lines in "300" about the Spartans fighting against "tyranny and mysticism" and for "reason and freedom".
I also find it annoying that "300" goes so far down the line of what one could call "ideological correctness", which is political correctness for right-wingers. Because the Spartans must absolutely represent the GOP's idea of heroism, all of a sudden they no longer have slaves (not one mention of slavery in the whole movie, but with all the male citizens off to war and the women raising the next generation of soldiers, who exactly gets the work done?), nor of course do they practice pederasty (in fact it's the Athenians who are explicitly referred to, dismissively, as "boy-lovers", and of course there's plenty of decadent bisexual stuff going on under Xerxes's tent). Worst of all, Leonidas is portrayed as a noble king who just has to circumvent the opposition of both the established clergy and the city's parliament to have his war (which a self-styled "politician" decries as "illegal", but then it turns out he was on the Persians' payroll all along).
Then there are unpleasant facts about the portrayal of the Persians themselves. As has already been observed in another thread, many of them look definitely African, while Xerxes himself is a hairless, copper-skinned giant. Much of the Persian army is actually made of sub-human creatures, snarling, misshapen beasts straight out of a white supremacist's nightmares, and the Greek traitor is severely misshapen. The Spartan oracles are warty monstrosities themselves, and, surprise, they're opposed to the war because they were bribed by the Persians.
