Re: What faction did you play first?
There is such a difference between what 300 did and what other historical, but hardly accurate, films like Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Alexander, etc.
There is a feature of war, whereby the enemy are seen as inhuman - as monsters. It is the kind of understanding that allows such offences as Abu Ghraib to go unchecked and unquestioned by otherwise decent human beings. This moral image was transformed into the physical image of the persians. Of course people are going to realise that the persians didn't look like mutant freaks, but what they will take home from that symbology is that they were monsters, souless slaughters unfit for the title of human-being. Further symbology acts to portray the film as a battle between the western democracies and the middle-eastern tyrannies (Spartans and democracy, my arse!). This combined with the element of monstrosity in the persian soldiery paints a picture that is both relevant and bias. I'm not talking about people reflecting, "wow, those persians are awful people, I bet the iranians are as well", but a subtle connection, unknown, can seriously influence how people react to modern political messages. I'm certainly not saying that the producers of the film were playing the political game and supporting a war against Iran or against the middle-east in general, but it sure as hell wasn't responsible.
Also it was damn crap cinema. I could watch more than 15 mins before I had to switch it off. I can understand why people like it. But if we are right in assuming that ordinary people have more important things to worry about than the delicacies surrounding the political climate of the modern world today, then it sure as hell ain't responsible of a media to play to the fears and hopes of a bigoted minority and then wrap it up in an action-packed cgi fest of muscles and homo-erotic nudity. Cinema is a medium that can both entertain and be intelligent, its a shame that it so often fails to do either.
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Originally Posted by Atraphoenix
from Satalexton 
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