Dr Bahram Bahrami, UK
Presently we Iranian are facing two
facets of US militaristic doctrine, on one
hand, we can see their exercise of hard power and our country being encircled by
US armies to the east, west and south. On the other hand, they are constantly
flexing their soft power and there is no day that western media are filled with
rumour, exaggerated claims and bare faced lie. In the aftermath of the dismal
failure of axis’s of evil jibs and domino effect policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, now they turned to Hollywood to shore up the
sides by propagating the idea of “clash of civilizations” in the west. Thus, the
dehumanizing and demonisation of Persian/Iranian culture and the people have
become a constant theme of western media.
The film ‘300’ by Zack Snyder with
Frank Miller attached as an executive producer and consultant, is in line with
these arrays of vitriolic and spiteful anti-Iranian movies such as Not Without
My Daughter and Alexander, courtesy
of Hollywood, charging the full frontal attack against Iranian and Iranian
culture. These “cultural terrorism”
does not stop at visual presentation, it goes beyond and manifest themselves in
a bid to seize ancient Iranian tablets containing administrative details of the
Persian empire, which has been held in US for scholarly purposes by the
University of
Chicago's Oriental
Institute. The question that, why we Iranian still needed foreign scholars to
teach us about our own heritage and why the number of peer reviewed articles or
books published about our country/culture is near zero, need a whole book to
discuss which is beyond the scope of this article.
Certain groups put the argument that
these attacks are natural reaction to the excess of revolution. This is a
simplistic or delusional view which is clearly being illustrated in the case of
the 1953 coup d’etat and Achaemenid era tablets. The university of Chicago had these tablets since 1937;
forgetting the past 28 years of the revolution, what were they doing with these
for the rest of 42 years? What has been gleaned from these artifacts and our
past?
I think these lines best
answer/describe the American attitude towards our culture and priceless
heritages: while holding a precious clay tablet of 2,500 years old without
gloves, researcher at the Oriental Institute says “tablets may not be pretty,
but they're still mantel-worthy for collectors”!
Meanwhile, through numerous
satellite media that have been mushroomed mostly thanks to special funding by US
they have been transmitting by in large nothing but the worst possible
bastardisation of Persian music and cure for obesity. These attacks by wolves in
Iranian clothe on our culture does not end by only fostering new generation of
hypochondriacs with bad taste in music, but some also desperately try to sew the
seeds of internal strife among our
people by mercenary intellectuals.
The unfortunate trends that have
been developing in some quarters, is the ease by which many Iranian seems to
accept these as a reaction to Iranian government, rather than threat to our
country and culture. Disregarding the simple truth that even if Iranian regime
changed tomorrow, as long as there is independent and nationalistic forces that
run Iranian government we would still be facing these onslaught on our culture
and country.
This by no mean excuses the Iranian
government if it treats its own people inhumanely and disrespects their rights,
and the government should endeavor to improve the standard of life and liberty
of all Iranian.
Now western media is telling us why
Iranian are up in arms against a fantasy flick based on comic novel? Warner
Brothers, the film's producers issues statement saying “The studio developed
this film purely as a fictional work with the sole purpose of entertaining
audiences; it is not meant to disparage an ethnicity or culture or make any sort
of political statement.”
However, Mr. Miller the author of
comic novel and executive producer of the movie, is not shy about his aim, in
his interview with PW Comics Week on February 28, 2006, he states: superheroes
are “gods,” - not the ones we worship, but more like mythological gods “who live
among us.” Furthermore, due to their popularity, superheroes provide him with
“the biggest megaphone I can find.” Miller asserted, “superheroes are folk
heroes and how can a folk hero not interact with folk?” He further expounded,
we're “now in a clash of civilizations,” and “superheroes should be front and
center” and he sees the story of “300”- where a small band of Spartan warriors
fend off a vast Persian army in a battle that probably saved modern
civilization-still has relevance today, reflecting the struggle in the middle
east and the fight of modern society against certain fundamentalist Islamic
groups.
So considering that he openly says
his works is politically motivated and sees himself as vanguard of intellectual
onslaught against the East, there is no wonder that we in Iran take this
“B movie” as orchestrated affront to our cultural heritage and national
dignity.
The questions that should be put to
these proponents of clash of civilizations are; if their assumptions are right
‘why are they incapable of resting their case on its merits? Why do they feel
compelled to attack their perceived opponents ad hominem?
The simple answer is that they lack
confidence and substance in the strength of their case and feel obliged to
resort to skullduggery to compensate. This movie should be reminder to all
Iranians that “the barbarians are at the gate” and their aim is not the Iranian
government, their aim is our independence, our culture, our civilisation and our
resources. Now is a time that we can justifiably say that they pose an
“existential threat” to our culture, country and our way of life.
The ‘300’ false impression of our
heritage can be seen as a part of coordinated effort, and that this film is only
a segment. The result is to demonize Iranian equivalent to the blood libel. The
consequences have been as predictable as they are disturbing. The ‘300’ is not
only satisfied by caricaturising our culture and moral characteristics, it
reduces our being to savage monsters that should be slewed in alter of western
hegemony. As Dana Stevens of Slate magazine put it: “If 300, the new battle epic
based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, had been made in
Germany in the mid-1930s, it would be studied today alongside The Eternal Jew as
a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as
an incitement to total war”.
As for original author of ‘300’,
Herodotus can be called one of the first writers of dodgy dossiers, filled with
half truth and downright lie, very much a darling of right-wing war mongering
leaders. His fictional portray of Thermopylae,
has been used again and again during cold war and now during the supposedly
ongoing “war of civilisation”, pitching freedom loving Spartans against the
nasty totalitarian Persians, invading from the East.
It is amusing while Herodotus is
Persian subject (born in Halicarnassus, a Persian
ruled territory) he still was free to travel throughout the Persian empire and
talk about the decadent and totalitarian system of Persia, and he
was still free to pen his poisons about king, his system and Persians. While if
he was living in the present day “free democracies”, his phone would have been tapped, emails
intercepted and having shown sympathy by thought and deed to foreign government,
he would have been incarcerated for life if not condemned to death in a secret
Military court. There is no wonder that Lucian of Samosata A.D. 120-180, called Herodotus a liar in
Verae historiae deny him a place
among the famous on the Island of the Blessed (in B. P. Reardon, ed., Collected
Ancient Greek Novels. (Berkeley: 1989) 619-649).
“civilised” nations of
Greece, Rome and Spartan rested on
the institution of slavery to function. Use of ‘helots’ with no rights whatsoever, not even the
right to life by Spartan citizen warriors, is a prime example. Not forgetting
the ‘noble act’ of crypteia, in
which Spartan youths, practice their art of noble fighting by hunting down
helots at night, and killing as many as was necessary to keep their population
from expanding to an unmanageable degree. These civilised principles of Spartan
are in addition to barbaric act of systematised infanticide practised by
militaristic governing system which ruled Sparta, as their way of selective breading of
perfect citizen thus future soldiers. Therefore, it is more than astonishing
that physically impaired, Ephialtes, survived infanticide practise and lived to
plea to Leonidas for a chance to serve Sparta in the 300!
Persian
Empire was
truly the original multi culture society created over twenty five centuries
ago. There were no slavery in ancient Persia, and it was Cyrus the Great,
Xerxes's grandfather, which drafted the first declaration of human rights in 539
BC, guarantee the sanctity of human rights and individual freedom by freeing
hundreds of thousands of Jews from Babylonian slavery.
Finally, the refusal by the western
media and moviemakers to allow any of these points to be shown or aired is a
monstrous deliberate act and betrays a deeply-rooted aversion for the East and
more importantly for the one the greatest civilisation in the history which is
so instantly morphs into virulent anti-Iranian prejudice cloak in just another
narrative of history!
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