Orientalist Representation of the Persian Society in Zack Snyder’s 300

Abstract

his research focuses onZack Snyder’s300,based on ofpost 9/11 movie that shows one of the famous events in the ‘clash’ between West and East: The battle of Thermopylae during the Greek-Persian wars. It does not claim to be history but a form of fictionalized history taken from a graphic novel by Frank Miller. This research claims that Zack Snyder depicts the Persian society through the orientalist stereotype which shows Persian society as ‘mystic’, ‘barbarian’, and ‘tyranny’ and that practices slavery. The assumption between the East and the West is inherited in his representation for the consumption of western audience. To prove this claim, this thesis uses theoretical insights of Edward Said, Ziauddin Sardar and Blain Brownrelated to Orientalism. Keywords: Orientalism, Clash of civilization, Barbarian, mystic