It won't be difficult to keep...
For any of you in pharma land who hail from Iran, and who may happen upon this, a very happy Norooz. Today marks the Persian new year...a far more fitting time to begin a year, when new life is bursting forth, than during the dark and frigid days of January. Iranians everywhere are celebrating this feast, improvising where they can't find the exact ingredients or Haft Sin components.
But unfortunately, this year's Norooz finds "300" the top U.S. box office smash. More propoganda against the nation that brought the world Rumi, Omar Khayyam....and, more recently, Freddy Mercury and Andre Agassi.
Iran's ancient prophet Zoroaster had a maxim that translates, roughly, as "thou shalt not be boring." How could anyone hate a culture based on that principle?
Unfortunately, Hollywood's latest box office smash not only glorifies Spartan culture (or lack of it----after all, this was the city state that routinely put its newborn daughters to death) but refers to Persian culture in the usual way.
There's a lot on the web about this. In one of hundreds of articles on te subject, Ephraim Lytle of the University of Toronto discusses some of the film's inaccuracies in "Sparta, Spandex, and the Disturbing Distortions of 300,".
On the face of it, who could dislike an underdog story, in which a tiny nation defeats a large empire? Not this one, thanks.
Of course, boycotting won't change anything, but why not start a movement? ( For a tongue-in-cheek insider's look at the growing boycott movement, read this).
