by Luisa Thiel

Persepolis has been one of the most commercially successful comic books of the last decade. Its filmic adaption, which was produced in close collaboration with the author Marjane Satrapi, was equally successful and was awarded several prestigious film awards, amongst others the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.

The book is divided into two parts: Persepolis. The Story of a Childhood. and Persepolis 2. The Story of a Return. It has no continuous plot, but is rather told in an episodical, autobiographical style, depicting situations that define and influence the protagonist’s life and add up to the account of a young Iranian woman’s life.

This close reading of the text will take a look at the features of modernity depicted in the graphic novel and to what extent these are transported by the specific capabilities a comic book / graphic novel has. The first aspect of consideration will be the fragmentation depicted in traumatic experiences and how these are conveyed by the images. Moreover, this analysis is going to show in how far Karl Marx’ quote “all that is solid melts into air” and the connected notion of instability can be linked to Persepolis.

“By coincidence the first book is about my childhood, so I draw like a child. In the second book I draw like a … a … I was going to say, like a human being … like a grown-up.” (Marjane Satrapi - Root 2007, 154)

As stated above by the author, the first book is told from a child’s perspective. The story of Marji, the protagonist, is told through nineteen chapters that guide the reader through precocious Marji’s experiences and her up-bringing in an upper-class family with leftist parents; their protest against the Shah and the Islamic regime; her developing class consciousness; the traumatic experiences of getting to know of the torture and killing of family and friends; the chaos caused by the Iran-Iraq war and Marji’s extreme outspokenness which causes her parents to send her to Europe to keep her from harm at the end of the first book (cf. Chute 2008, 96f).

As graphic novel, the book is supplied with features that derive remarkably from those of a narrative: graphic novels claim their own historicity and are, through their hybridity consisting of images and text, able to transport complex visualisations that enable them to depict unspeakabiliy, invisibility and in audibility that characterise recent trauma theory (cf. Chute 2008, 93). “The medium of comics can perform the enabling political and aesthetic work of bearing witness powerfully because of its rich narrative texture: its flexible page architecture; its sometimes consonant, sometimes dissonant visual and verbal narratives; and its structural threading of absence and presence.” (94) The first insight into this notion of trauma is already depicted in the first chapter of the book “The Veil”. The first frame shows Marji in her veil (Satrapi 2008, 3). The next picture shows four girls sitting next to each other, all wearing veils and can only be distinguished by small features like fringes and different hair structures. The inexperienced reader is confronted with a row of similar looking girls and needs to be told by the text of the frame that Marji actually is not shown in this image, only part of her arm and veil is depicted at the left-hand part of the frame. This spacing in the frame presents the first notion of fragmentation: Marji’s self-presentation is fragmented and split in between two frames, her character is caught in the constraints of the veil, real expression of her self is not possible – she is torn between two life philosophies: the one practised by her mother, freedom of the self, and the one imposed on her at school, the radical restriction of individuality. Miller (2008) says that she is portrayed as being “split between modernity and Iranian tradition” and considers these first two pictures as “emblematic of her inner divide” (40). The representation of the inner divide through this picture is certainly true, but the status of being split between these two concepts itself is a feature of modernity.

Another feature of the first part of the text is that its drawings are very simplistic. The pictures are very bold and depict the events in a very simple and general way. Traumatic experiences like the story of the death caused by torture of the family’s friend Ahmadi, that Marji overhears, are depicted like imagined by a child (Satrapi 2008, 51) – they represent the child’s-eye perspective on trauma. The emphasis is not on the memory value, it is rather on the bold and deep impression these experiences left in Marji’s memory and mind: “The visual emptiness of the simple, ungarded blackness in the frames shows not the scarcity of memory, but rather its thickness, its depth; the ‘vacancy’ represents the practice of memory, for the author and possibly for the reader” (Chute 2008, 98).

Most of the time the events that are traumatic for Marji, are drawn on a black background: the visit she pays her uncle Anoosh in prison (Satrapi 2008, 69), his death connected with the bombings – his whole-sided frame even shows her completely unbound from any context floating in space (71), the beating of her chest during the funeral marches for the death of the war (95), the actual bombing of Teheran and the situation in which a mother leaves her child in Marji’s arms and flees during a bombing (103-107). One happening, which seems to be of the utmost importance, is the attack on Teheran in which the street and house Marji’s family lives in is destroyed by bombs (140-142). The background of these frames is white and in most of the pictures no other items are shown than Marji, her mother and the remains of the buildings. The frame that represents Marji’s state of mind is a blank, bold black square with the heading “No scream in the world could have relieved my suffering and my anger” (142). The incommensurability of death for a child and the immense loss of neighbours and friends are transported through this picture. Although nothing is to be seen or heard, the simplistic display of this black frame condenses all the feelings and the inability to articulate the traumatic experience of this moment for Marji.

Throughout the first book, Marji has to cope with and constantly adapt to new situations because the Iranian state undergoes several revolutions and war or war-like states. “All that is solid melts into air” never was an issue concerning the political affairs of the state Iran and this has enormous influence on its inhabitants. The core of Marji’s private space, her family, remains quite solid apart from the death of Anoosh, but he might be counted as member of the wider circle, as he only stays with Marji’s family and in her life for a short period of time. Therefore her private space is not yet affected by the instability that is spreading in the country. The surrounding unstableness causes traumatic experiences for Marji but does not destroy her familial structure. Nevertheless, her life is “marginalized throughout the story and beyond” (Notkin 2003, 8), represented by the veil, and this is how instability makes its way into her life.

“[…] the narrative’s force and bite come from the radical disjuncture between the often-gorgeous minimalism of Satrapi’s drawings and the infinitely complicated traumatic events they depict […].” (Chute 2008, 99)

The second book shows her experiences in Austria and her return to Iran after her boyfriend cheats on her with another woman. After having trouble adapting to another culture in a personally challenging part of her life – namely puberty – Marji slowly settles down in Vienna. She makes new friends at school that introduce her to new philosophical concepts and make her slowly initiate her awakening. The living amongst people her own age makes her become a lot more aware of herself.

Not only become the drawings more realistic, they also are a lot less simplistic as in the first book. A lot more attention is paid to details, i.e. the facial hair of Lucia’s mother (Satrapi 2008, 173) and the development of Marji’s body is depicted quite thoroughly (191-192). Nevertheless she does not completely fit in the societal groups surrounding her and she is still haunted by traumatic experiences from the past (196), which slowly starts to destabilise her every-day life. Homesickness and the feeling of missing affiliation make her drift further away from her new found friends (199). When she tries to find footing by getting into relationships with men, she has to realise that her first boyfriend turns out to be gay (216) and her second boyfriend and first serious relationship cheats on her which ultimately disrupts her life and leaves her homeless (232-234). The connection to modernity that can be drawn here is that Markus, her boyfriend, was her only save private space in the foreign country and made her feel secure. After he used her to comfort himself and she in her state of love and affection supported him financially and emotionally although he did not do the same in return, he left her behind to follow his own, selfish interests. The reference to “all that is solid melts into air” fits perfectly here: the stableness that Marji established herself is destroyed by a selfish man, who can, with reference to Marx, be substituted in this context of modernity with capitalism. Markus does not have the same values as Marji does – she gives selflessly and he takes selfishly. He ignores the loyalty she feels and he is the cause for her complete disillusionment and her return home to Iran.

Interestingly, the chapter in which Marji decides to go back to Iran is named “The Veil”: she rather accepts the vanishing and covering of her achieved independence and self-awareness than to stay in a country that never was her home. Her return and her life at home is determined by veiling and the struggle to adapt to this lifestyle again. When she meets her husband, Marji seems to have found a tolerant husband and the frames that depict the couple in the beginning are pictures of a intense relationship on an intellectual and physical level – they are mostly shown as lying next to each other in an almost knotted position (Satrapi 2008, 282, 292). After their marriage however, the situation changes and the expectations on both sides differ too severely to be overcome (320) and they are shown as sleeping apart in separate beds (321). Finally, the marriage is divorced and Marji continues her life as single woman.

A theme that is continued throughout the second book is the veiling and covering of female attributes due to male overrule and patriarchy. The uniformity that is caused by this is addressed in the art class Marji attends and they are supposed to draw a life model of a woman completely covered in a chador (301). The impossibility of this enforcement is highlighted and constantly thematised as the fragmentation of the female body and the symbol of male tyranny (296, 307). The juxtaposition of internally being an articulate and aware young woman and outwardly having to cover themselves up is presented as cause of mental problems and illnesses (307).

In conclusion it is to say that Persepolis can be read as an account of modernity. Its specific appearance due to its genre already marks it as representing fragmentation – in its framing and loose structural limitations. The topics addressed in it, the visualisation and depiction of trauma that influences a complete life, the little fragments of destabilisation that ultimately end in loss of stability and control as well as the personal challenges that are imposed on the character, make a book that in an unusual way addresses issues of modernity and not only an artistic account of Persian history.

“It's difficult to create art based on events as they're happening. I generally think we shouldn't overestimate the role of art and literature. I think we artists need to remain humble. We cannot create big changes. The main credit should go to the people for their struggle.” Marjane Satrapi (FB interview)

Bibliography:

Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis’.”. Women’s Studies Quaterly, Vol. 36, No. 1 / 2, Witness (Spring – Summer, 2008). New York: The Feminist Press at the University of New York. 2008. pp. 92-110. Print.

Miller, Ann. “Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis: Eluding the Frames.”. L’Esprit Createur, Volume 51, Number 1, Spring 2011, The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2011. pp. 38-52. Print.

Notkin, Debbie. “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. Review.” The Women’s Review of Books, Vol. 20, No. 9 (Jun., 2003), Old City Publishing, Inc. 2003. p.8. Print.

Root, Robert L.. “Interview with Marjane Satrapi”. Fourth genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, Volume 9, Number 2, Fall 2007. Michigan University Press. 2007. pp. 147-157. Print.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Press_Release_Golnaz_interviews_Marjane_Satrapi/2095797.html

Works consulted:

Costantino, Manuela. “Marji: Popular Commix Heroine Breathing Life into the Writing of History”. Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 38, Number 3, 2008. University of Toronto Press. 2008. pp. 429-447. Print.

Labio, Catherine. “What’s in a Name? The Academic Study of Comics and the ‘Graphic Novel’.”. Cinemal Journal, Volume 50, Number 3, Spring 2011. University of Texas Press. 2011. pp. 123-126. Print.

Martin, Elaine. “Graphic Novels or Novel Graphics? The Evolution of an Iconoclastic Genre”. The Comparatist, Volume 35, May 2011. The University of North Carolina Press. 2011. pp. 170-181. Print.

Whitlock, Gillian. “Autographics: The Seeing ‘I’ of the Comics.”. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 52, Number 4, Winter 2006. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006. pp. 965-979. Print.