Last week at the Apollo, Oberlin students lifted St. Ides to Spartan battle cries in Sin City creator Frank Miller’s latest film adaptation, 300. While for many it may be just another violent, machismo-infused debacle in the vein of Braveheart, for others, 300 extends the freedom-chanting and chest-beating to a blatantly racist, culturally irresponsible and politically ill-meaning vilification of the Middle East, specifically Iran.

The film depicts a historic battle in which only three hundred Spartans faced endless hoards of Persians and died honorably in battle. In another time, 300 might pass for any historical war film; however, in our age of relentless U.S. versus Middle East opposition, a story that pits Western heroism against Middle Eastern treachery is no coincidence.

I spoke with visiting MENA studies professor Jafar Mahallati, a Persian-American, to see how he felt about the film. Over Persian tea, Mahallati illuminated to me the Persian-American perspective, as well as his own personal sentiments, greater concerns about the film’s moral ethics and meditations on the possible import of movie-making in general.

Mahallati told me about going to see the film, conscious of being surrounded by Oberlin students, and then having to teach his ethics class the next day.

“It created a lot of bad feelings for me,” he said. “You have to imagine how it feels to be Persian and an American and see a film like this.”

Mahallati defended Iranian dismay by pointing out that Iran was the only Middle Eastern nation to express sympathy to the U.S. on 9/11 and by enumerating the several cultural contributions to America by Persian-American citizens, who have headed the Carnegie Foundation, the Mall of America and NASA.

Mahallati charged the film with accounts of “multiple stupidity,” and said that it served “no good purpose.” He said that to single out one battle depicting the Persians as a warmongering, violent people, is to ignore countless other examples of warfare in history, thereby unfairly demonizing the Persians. And to present the forerunners of Western civilization defending their freedom against Eastern usurpers perpetuates the myth that our current day struggles are rooted in an age-old, legitimate strife.

Not to mention the film’s use of racial profiling: the Persian army as turbaned clones, the Spartan army as rippling-abbed manly men. Racism, as well as homophobia, marks the Persian leader Xerxes’s role, portrayed as a black, sort-of drag queen who in one scene stands behind Spartan leader Leonidas, hands on his shoulders in a position suggestive of sodomy. Miller plots the stereotypes of our modern society in a familiar rhetoric of good versus evil, not only condoning them, but reinforcing them as time-appropriate manifestations of timeless truths.

Still, many think Miller is unaware of 300’s political ramifications, and was merely trying to make a high-grossing action movie. His next film, Holy Terror, Batman, depicts the superhero battling Al-Qaeda terrorists.

“There are better ways to make money,” said Mahallati.