The monstrosity of the Persians is primarily based on racial difference, although hideous sexual behaviors also come into play. They are monsters that deviate from bodily normativity. Ephialtes’s monstrosity is predicated on his physical disability, but he is only one of many deformed and punished bodies. In B. J. Chaplin’s excellent study of the film, he argues that disability is used in 300 to represent “ 'particular bodies in particular societies' and 'moral deficiency.' ” King Xerxes wins Ephialtes over (to the dark side) when the two meet at the king’s harem, in a carnivalesque scene of disfigured lesbians, disfigured Persians (including Persians missing limbs), a human with a goat’s head, lots of moaning, and a good dose of Orientalist costumes and nudity. Xerxes promises “all the pleasures of the world” to Ephialtes, who agrees, kneels before him in a suggestive pose and then issues a series of grunts before he sets off to betray the Spartans.

XREF: Connects to wider scholarship on Orientalism in Western film representations of Persia/the Middle East.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 675