ABSTRACT
Just two weeks before the 2007 Shifting Frontiers VII conference in Boulder, the action epic 300 opened in theaters. Screenwriter and director Zack Snyder had ample heroic material with which to work in the three hundred Spartans who fought to the death against a throng of invading Persians at Thermopylae. But Snyder had no interest in allowing the ancient sources to retell their story. Rather, he faithfully animated the images in Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300, itself inspired by the 1962 film, The 300 Spartans .1 As one reviewer of Snyder’s film wrote, the result is “an over-the-top take on ancient Greek history.”2 Another critic summarized the movie more concisely: “The Chippendales wage war.”3 Some admirers of the film thought it a spectacular reworking of the heroic genre for the computergaming generation. Other viewers considered its intentions less benign and noted that the film displays beautiful Greeks fighting bravely for western freedom and democracy against evil hordes of grotesque slaves, and oddly orientalized Africans. The fearless Spartans do not die in vain, and their sacrifice inspires all Greeks to mobilize against the Persians bent on annihilating Athenian democracy. Judging this to be thinly veiled propaganda in favor of an American assault on his country, a spokesman for the Iranian government condemned 300 for glorifying “hostile behaviour which is the result of cultural and psychological warfare” and for offering “an insult to Iran.”4
