Medieval Muslim tropes persist verbatim in modern film

Evidence

King Xerxes towers over King Leonidas, much like the giants of medieval lore who terrified Christian knights. Other giants in the film include the 10-foot tall Persians with lobster claws and filed teeth who show up at the final battle, and the giants with missing arms and metal prosthetics carrying dwarfs (who serve as archers) on their backs. Xerxes represents a long list of medieval tropes about Muslims: they are giants; they have black or brown skin; they are bisexual; they like men, they have sex with boys; and they are generally creepy. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 677

Categorization

• XREF: This connects directly to the reader’s own inquiry on how the Muslim monster was manufactured in the Western imagination — this shows the medieval tropes surviving intact into a 21st-century blockbuster.
• SEED: Article angle: tracing the literal survival of medieval monster tropes into modern cinema as evidence that the image precedes and outlives any real contact.