300 Reasons Hollywood Sleeps With the Devil

.........................................................Ancient Iranian Soldier by Faraz Shanyar (Source: 300themovie.info)

For all the dimwits out there who can only identify the politics in a film when it slip-slaps them across the face like JFK or Syriana, here's a hint: when Hollywood directors and producers openly admit to collaboration and cooperation with the Pentagon, amongst other branches of the US government and Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America for 38 years till 2004, was a perpetual presence in Washington DC, and the US Army is turning to Hollywood for security advice, well, hmmm, maybe there's a relationship there. You think?

But it looks like Iranians have to once again come to the rescue and teach the world a thing or two about the realities of the United States government -- it's not enough that the Iranian government and arguably a majority of Iranians both domestically and internationally have to constantly point out that the Bush administration are a bunch of sadistic nincompoops (the worst breed of nincompoop, by the way), now we have to demonstrate that Hollywood is in bed with them, too!

Just consider the recent protests by the Iranian government and Iranians on the internet who are against the misrepresentation and ridiculous portrayal of Iranians in the Hollywood film "300".

First of all, let's get this little nugget straight: Iran has always been called "Iran" by Iranians -- it's the West, first the Greeks and then the British and their sheep, who insisted on calling "Iran" by the name "Persia" which inaccurately referred to the entire nation by the name of one of its states, "Pars," because it happened to be the site of Persepolis and other hellenized monikers. Ipso facto, anything to do with "Persia" or "Persians" is a reference to Iran. Thankfully, in 1935, Reza Shah corrected this ignorance by deeming that Iran insists on being called Iran, and not Persia.

Now then, taking into consideration the hilarious demonization of Iran in the last few years (funny how the US government took a break from haranguing Iran with accusations during all those years when mass executions were taking place and times were as tough as now, if not worse, in Iran), it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to realize the reasons behind wanting to demonize ancient Iranians in a Hollywood blockbuster -- hey, if you can't make the contemporary ones look bad, then abuse history, eh?

Since Hollywood has been demonizing various groups for a long, long time, it's not surprising anymore. What is annoying is that anyone still exists out there who doesn't believe that it's happening. For the rest of us, there's this marvellous Google bomb by Iranian artist Pendar Yousefi -- proving once again that an Iranian with an internet connection is an unbeatable force to reckon with.