The West temporalizes the East as trapped in a medieval past

Evidence

The presentation of the Spartans as white, democratic heroes and the Persians as perverted barbarians uses time as a strategy to place the Other in another space, a space that is both medieval and otherworldly. The Spartans are ahead of their time, whereas the Persians, like all Orientals, are stuck. They are pre-modern. Remember, 300 is not about an ancient battle—it’s about the victory of the West’s advanced and modern civilization over Islam’s backward and brutal culture: “The Saidian (and post-Saidian) historical relationship between the West and the East can be productively recast in the temporal terms that Fabian describes: The West is always ‘here and now,’ and the East ‘there and then.’ And the there and then is, predictably, medieval.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 673

Categorization

• XREF: Links to Said’s Orientalism and Fabian’s Time and the Other; connects to how other monster-figures in the book (giants, demons) get temporally displaced.
• DEFINE: Names the ‘denial of coevalness’ mechanism through which the monster-Other is shoved into the medieval frame.