Why is the movie 300 so racist?

Question

They had a few black people in it and all of them get killed. Even a poor brother gets kicked down an endless hole and another gets his arm chopped off for cracking a whip on the white folks. I was the only person of color in the whole theater and no wonder! I wish I never saw this racist movie. Anyone feel the same?

Answer 1

I knew this was gonna happen! When I fist saw the commercial, I thought of it as "Looks pretty cool, but oh man people are gonna be piss! Not just pissed, superpissed!" I also the film was gonna piss off some Persian country and I was right.
Well, basically there is controversy over the film and if you were Persian like Iranian or Iraqi, you would have been super pissed. Cause those guys are right not very happy with the film. Some how I knew the movie would cause trouble for Persian countries.
300 is based upon some battle, though I know that there's gonna be potrayals that might be racist, but there will be some stuff are accurate. I think the fact that there is deaths are true and the Spartans and the Persians were fierce warriors is accurate. Also the fact the guys back then were so pro-war, was true. Weren't guys back then excited to kill anything?
Maybe the guys should make another except telling the point of view from the Perisan army just like Clint Eastwood did in "Letters From Iwo Jima" which of course is a movie that shows the point of view from the Japanese.
Oh and yes I'm gonna watch it later on, because its a bloody war movie, including "Letters From Iwo Jima"!

Answer 2

Yes the movie has a lot of stereotypes. Firstly the persians (the bad guys): they were black, brown, gay, lesbian, deformed, handicapped. The hunchback was the only traitor in the movie. Xerxes the god king of the persians was either a transexual, hermaphrodite, androgynous, drag queen.
the good guys(the spartans) were well chiseled good looking, beautiful and extremely white.

The graphics and the passion in the movie were quite good but the racial undertones and stereotypes ruined what should have been a great movie.

In modern movies racism is never blatant but is almost subliminal. Most people just looking to enjoy a movie would not notice these subtleties. but they play a big role in subconsciously giving the message the white people are the model humans and everyone else is less than perfect.

when the movie da vinci code was released there was some controversy because the bad guy was played by an albino. Albinos complained because there was a trend in movies to always portray albinos as evil. The producers of this movie did not learn anything from that controversy, and proceeded to make the hunchback the bad guy. This could have been a good movie but when one can draw the line between good and bad based on skin color or physical deformities then it becomes issue. Maybe it would have been better if there were no blacks at all in the movie.

Answer 3

uhmmm...am I the only one that knows that this movie is based on a comic book and "loosely" based on history???? I've seen the movie twice and I am black. I don't believe this movie is racist!!! Don't you know that EVERY race has done some cruel things in history. Not just whites. As far as them making Persians look like monsters you should know that the movie is being told like it probably would have been told 100s of years ago in Greece, with oracles, mystics, and monsters to make the tale more exciting and interesting. Almost like a Homeric epic tale. They didn't have television so they had to get their kicks some how! As far as 300 being racist period...how can that be when the black people in the movie was part of the most powerful country in the world at the time!!! And THEY WON!!!! So please stop complaining...you are making us black folks look bad and just enjoy 300 for what it is...a MOVIE!!!!!

Answer 4

As has been mentioned: the Greeks are a "white" race. The Persian army was filled with African and Asian slaves. But here's something else to consider: the entire movie is told by the Spartan with one eye as he readies an army of 10,000 Spartans to fight the remaining Persians. He's pumping them up for battle. How does one do this? By turning the other side into monsters. This is why the Immortals had demonic faces. Why the messenger had snake-like eyes. Why Xerxes was so huge. Why the executioner was a big white blob with no arms. Why they had a mutant berzerker. These "monsters" are so horrific, overdone, and mythical that the audience is supposed to realize they're not to be taken literally any more than we're supposed to think the eyes of the wolf at the beginning actually glowed with red fire.

The narrator, a Spartan, is telling his fellow Spartans "these Persians are all monsters who are the opposite of what we are: noble, perfect warriors." The audience is supposed to realize you're seeing the movie through this Spartan's eyes and this Spartan is indeed a racial supremacist. The movie itself isn't racist but it has racists in it and you're supposed to take note of this, and the fact that all is not well with the Spartans, from the very beginning when you are shown they kill "unfit" children. Through the narrator the audience is supposed to see that this sense of supremacy is the hubris that caused their King's death more so than the Persians.

EDIT: And sorry to those of you who think there were no Africans in the Persian Empire: Xerxes' empire included Egypt, which had a huge black population. Let's not also forget that the Arab nations that were in the Empire had large quantities of black slaves that could be taken by Xerxes to inflate his army at whim. These slaves did indeed inflate the army (Herodotus, anyone?)

Answer 5

Well I agree this movie is butcher of history plain and simple. Sparta wasn't a democracy first off. Second the Persians never conquered Black Africa Egypt included (Eyptians were black I've been to the valley of the kings in luxor) Secondly, the Persians didn't use Nubian coins. Thirdly, the Persians are an Aryan race akin to India not Arabia. The previous poster talked about how Europe was white etc etc. Try this on for size the invading Brown hordes you saw are representative of what Jesus looked like. Does that change your opinion of all the misrepresentations such as the passion of the christ? I mean since you seem to thrive on accurate descriptions of history. This whole movie is nothing more than propaganda for an invasion of Iran. Total BS.

Answer 6

I don't really know what you expect. A lot of the movie was fictious but it was based on a battle in which a small group of well trained greeks used tactics to cause numerous casualities to an army made up of mostly enslaved people from Africa and Asia.

I don't see how they could depict the battle with any degree of accuracy without showing Greeks killing the invading armies of the eastern worlds which include Africans. Though I believe in the movie it showed them killing more white people than Africans.

The theme of the movie was the sacrifice of brave people to create world of freedom. Freedom and release from slavery was a constant topic of conversation throughout the movie. I found this movie to be against racism if anything.

Answer 7

Ya It Is Racist, that's just the Truth. It's Masked behind Adreanaline, Gore, nice affects, and Alot of Action, but There is a white Racist energy behind it, that's for sure. That's why im not gonna watch it.

I wonder what all you white people will be saying when they make a Movie about Hannibal, who was Black and kicked the white ppls *** in Rome??? Or When they make a Movie about Cyrus the Great, who Conquered Many, a whole lot of Greek states, created the first charter of human rights and freed all jewish slaveS? and is known as one the Greatest Kings of All Time in history???

It'll Happen, Eventually.

Answer 8

I thought it had great visuals, and celebrated manhood, courage, masculinity, and all that -- and I did like the movie.

But I have to agree with the racist connotations. Think about it, the good guys were white, and the bad guys were Persian and black. But even worse, is that the Persians and blacks fought alongside demons, goblins, ogres, zombies, and other representations of evil ugly beings; thereby making the Persians and blacks synonymous with demonic evil.

One white person told me "but it's history, stop complaining." It's LOOSELY outlined on the Battle of Thermopylae, but by no means is this movie part of history. It's fiction. The 10-foot-tall god-kings and the demons and goblins in the movie should tell you that.

So therefore, this movie completely relied on the construct of the writers' imaginations, not on actual history.

Answer 9

Anything White people do is racist, the best and easiest excuse in the book. Here is a history lesson to my Non-European friends:

Though Persia was an advanced civilization, they were brutal, and enslaved, raped, pillaged as much as other ancient empires. They had a fierce, advanced army and the Greek army, weakened and demoralized, managed to defeat them. This is what 300 is about. 300 Makes me proud.

Persia, Islam, the Moors, Arabs... have never been innocent. Starting in 780AD they raped the entire Mediterranean for close to1000 years. Where’s my 40 acres and a mule? ...Being of Southern Italian/Sicilian background, I know what I am talking about. The Saracens have always been brutal and vile. Every White person, particularly Whites of Southern Europe should embrace the film '300'!

Answer 10

Most racist movie I have seen in a while. They hide behind a vale of fiction but the story is so close to actual history. Frank Miller takes what he wants from history and distorts everything else. Why are the Persians portrayed as deformed, demonic, transsexuals? Why? Even if it is fiction, does it give you the right to portray other races as demons?

Historically, it was the Spartans who were the barbarians; they practiced foeticide and slavery. Freedom my ***.

Sin City was on my top 10 favorite movies of all time. But after seeing this grotesque piece of ****, I have reconsidered.

Btw, do you notice how all the people who didn't find the movie racist are white ;-). And why would you, all the white people are portrayed as self-sacrificing gods of masculinity.

Edit:
Steven T makes sense. I will calm down now. :-)