'300' takes stereotyping to new level

But "300" is, after all, a cinematic adaptation of a comic book. Snyder's last masterpiece was a remake of "Dawn of the Dead." Protests are probably best reserved for threats of preemptive invasions rather than for fantasy flicks - even when they bang the drums of jingoism.

"300" drinks deeply at the cauldron of rage that is still boiling over in the United States six years after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Two invasions, a trillion dollars in smoke and 3,000 dead Americans have not sated the Achilles-like anger in a remote part of the American psyche.

The movie unleashes that abiding desire to curse, brag and rave at "endless Asian hordes." Bring' em on, you barbarian slaves, you, you ... black, gay, effeminate, depraved cowards. Your friends are hunchbacks, deformed giants, midgets, magicians, eunuchs, perverts, lesbians and executioners. To hell with you and your "mysticism and tyranny."

Nobody expects historical accuracy from a Hollywood movie based on a graphic novel. But using domestic racial and sexual stereotypes to demonize the enemy is breaking new ground. In "300," Persian "immortal" knights are snarling beasts beneath their sinister masks and their king is a pierced and bejeweled androgynous savage.

But more significantly, Snyder's Persians - not the disposable extras covered up to their eyes in male burqas - are predominantly black and by implication of mannerism and affect, homosexual. Even allowing the widest berth for the genre and the medium, one still marvels at Snyder's audacity in demonizing the "Asiatic hordes" while morphing the Spartan warrior in the mold of the white American survivalist.

Snyder's Spartans are white guys fighting a sea of racially inferior blacks, yellows and browns. They are staunchly heterosexual and weary of their elected elders (ephors), who are seen as sacrilegious lepers, traitors and scheming politicians.

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