I find it interesting that the assigned section covers Marjane’s identity crisis. I don’t know if it what was by design or coincidence but it was nice either way.
The first chapter of the section for the week was The Vegetable. I like how it started off with a very detailed look into the awkwardness of growing into an adult. The self consciousness of how you know they are staring at your foot that is bigger than the other one, or that random mole or blemish. It is an interesting look into the personal fable of all teenagers.
The more Marjane tries to fit in the more she ends up becoming the person everyone else wanted her to be. She cuts her hair to look more punk, and smokes joints because her friends do. There is even a point that she lies about heritage at a bar to just fit in.
She goes back and forth between moments of experimentation and returning to herself. After she gives up the punk look she goes through a brief period of returning to herself, but then she starts dating. It is no longer about pleasing everyone, but instead pleasing that one person. Marjane even goes as far as becoming a drug dealer for Jean Paul.
Finally when she returns home she finds out how far her life in Europe has taken her from what she was. In one scene her girl friends ask her about sex and when Marjane tells them she has had sex with multiple men they call her a whore. She goes from one extreme a sexual revaluation to the repressed ways of the fundamentalists. At this point I think it is when Marjane realizes that her attempts to be accepted in Europe made it so she no longer fit in at home.
I think it is sad to what lengths people will go to fit in. Peer pressure is a powerful thing, even more so when a person is in an experimental stage of their life. In trying to find where she would fit in during her years in Europe, Marjane loses sight of everything she was. The thing I found profound about this section is that this is where the influences of Marjane’s past mix with her present desire to be accepted, and are boiled down in the crucible of her adolescence to leave behind what will solidify into the person she becomes. It is a very personal journey and one she is lucky to survive despite her suicide attempt.
Also just to add about Marjane’s suicide attempt, I wonder if it was something did wholly on her own or was it because of a compounding effect of the drugs. Anti-depressants have a history of provoking suicidal thoughts, even more so for anyone still going through adolescences because of the constant fluctuation of hormones.

The concept of The Veil returns in book two of Persepolis.  This led me to thinking about the way the female body is characterized to political ends, and the danger of such characterizations.  Using the female body as a symbolic representation for the nation is a common trope in nationalist imagery.  For example, a national personification is the anthropomorphized image of a nation;  for the U.S., we usually think of Uncle Sam, but there is also Lady Liberty.  Outside of the U.S. there are figures like Brittania (the U.K.), Germania (pretty obvious), Helvetia (Switzerland), Mother Svea (Sweden), etc.   All women, with the exception of Sam.  These bodies are invoked as rallying images especially during times of war.  The implication of choosing this symbol in patriarchal societies is pretty obvious in this wartime context.  If you don’t stop the “Other,” he is going to rape what is essentially a psychological surrogate of the woman/women in the male citizen’s life.   This imagining of the female body obviously denies the woman agency, and is overtly attuned to play off of (and promote attitudes of) xenophobia and the fear of miscegenation.  These statements may seem extreme and hard to fathom in terms of a symbol as ubiquitous and apparently innocuous as Lady Liberty, but looking at the Iranian regime’s codes of dress reveals the same basic concept.  By making the female appear increasingly deindividualized and iconic, they are more and more denied individual agency and become another symbol of the national body.  Similarly, the increasing social prohibitions shown in the narrative place the female body higher on a nationalized pedestal.  The woman’s sexuality is no longer her own, but is something to be called sacred and exploited by the regime to incite nationalist sentiment and reinforce the oppressive patriarchy which is necessary for its continuation.

The title of the second half of Persepolis is The Story of a Return. This means both a mental and physical journey for Marji as she still tries to understand and comprehend who she is and what she believes in. The return that I want to discuss in this blog entry is the chapter titled “The Return” where after four years of living abroad, Marji returns to her home country of Iran (pg. 92). I think we see Marji grow even more in this particular chapter because she is now looking at her origins through more realistic lenses. Before, in earlier sections, she has a whimsical and innocent view of the politics and current affairs of Iran. Starting the chapter off she says she immediatelythat she senses the “repressive air of her country”.   Marji is no longer the outspoken little girl that dreams she is a prophet. When she finally arrives home she is more reserved and quieter in her approach towards her parents as well as speaking about current topics in Iran. Even the picture panels have changed. The artwork seems to be more dark and somber (more use of black to cover the whole panel). Instead of bold heroes working to bring peace and justice to their country, the buildings/city is desolate, skulls add a feeling of dread and the constant look of shock/horror on Marji’s face prove her country is no longer the same. With all of these changes and additions to the setting, Satrapi makes it evident that Marji is growing up and viewing the world in a different light. On pages 95 and 96 Marji’s character looks very small and appears at the bottom of the panel. This shows that the problems of her country are looming over her and intimidating her. These could also be viewed as the problems of Iran are bigger than Marji can really comprehend. Even the large panel at the bottom of pg. 95 shows how the old country and old ways of thought (in the form of the traditionally dressed woman) hover over her. Through the chapter, Marji and her parents have discussions about the war and oppressive times that they have been suffering in this country while Marji jas been away in Vienna. Even she acknowledges that the country’s problems are bigger than her’s when she says “Next to my father’s distressing report, my Viennese misadventures seemed like little anecdotes of no importance.” She has grown much throughout the book but does a large part of it in her return home to her roots.

Throughout the narrative of Persepolis, the reader is always moving forward. The narrative transforms and ages much like Marji does, therefore creating a unique connection between the reader and Marji. There are first hand accounts of acid trips, sexual encounters, and all-out disasters that are privvy to us and not to her parents. Perhaps returning to her homeland imprisioned her more than empowered her, but the ending of Persepolis was like an object at rest. There was a halt to movement, flow, and reason of the novel. All the while this young strong women is testing the limits and finding herself in a culturally mixed up world you would expect a stronger ending to come out of  it. All development was halted, as Marji was sent off again. I’m not expecting a happy ending with butterflies and songs, but a stronger statement could have been made. Yes, this is a memoir, and yes, that makes it inherent to Marji’s own life. But, as we discussed in class last week Marji’s life was defined by her country’s history — and a tumultuous one at that. Marji was such a  turgid teenager living in Austria that I personally expected her return to Iran to be one of political discourse, with power and uprising against what was being done to her country. Never did I expect for her to leave, especially after her parents wanted her back home so badly. This isn’t a narrow-minded rant about feminism or about revolution. It is merely a comment on a narrative, whether it be real or not.

I was really taken aback by the quote we looked at in Tuesday’s class. I cannot imagine how anyone could say something so pretentious and just plain wrong. Then again people never fail to surprise.

Needless to say that I defiantly think the art of Persepolis is capable of standing on its own. As I looked through the pages picking panels that I found would look particularly good in a frame on some art exhibit wall I started to analyze the style Satrapi choose to use.

I am no stranger to black and white comics because I am a major fan of manga which is mostly black and white with some gray shading. It seems to me that there a few different reasons why Satrapi choose to black and white. First of all I just don’t think color would have been appropriate for something as serious as this. Color while pretty is just too cheerful, and it would have been more so considering the abstract art style would take on a child’s picture book look if it were rendered in color. The abstract pared down style is essential to Persepolis because like McCloud said the more abstract something is the more people can identify with it. Satrapi’s target audience are non-Iranians, so this style allows the reader to better identify with the main character and her life in Iran. More detailed illustrations while potentially more faithful to the story would only serve to alienate the audience.

I think the monochrome is also a play on irony. Many people will go into Persepolis with a very stilted media biased view of what Iran is like. The first thing that crossed my mind when I thought Iran before reading Persepolis was terrorism and the extremist fundamentalists. Persepolis breaks down this view built up by mass media and really makes it more personal. In short Satrapi lures the reader in with the black and white they are expecting, but then the only place they really find it is in the ink and paper.

I’m not sure whether to attribute it to my growing ability to comprehend comics or something profound in Persepolis, but I am  eerily in love with this novel so far. I say eerily because while I’ve never experienced any of the realities of regime changes and revolution, the search for ones beliefs and the ever fluid reactions of a child impressed by so many extreme notions stirs a response in me to where I feel myself conflicted by the people and atrocities presented. I like the way Iran’s bleak and seemingly black and white world is contrasted with a young girl coming of age into the well rounded and colorful person she seems meant to be.

We are allowed to grow intellectually and emotionally with Persepolis, starting with the most simple foundations of love and spirituality. While some may have this impressed upon them more than others, I think it’s important to see Marja as personally devoted, without much encouragement from her elders. As she absorbs more and more ideas from her turbulent world, she changes her dreams; just as a youngster today changes future occupations weekly, Marja’s day dreaming carries the weight of ethincity, nationality, religion, and general humanity. However rather than become overwhelming, Satrapi’s black and white images give a simple yet effective tug at the emotions behinds such intellectual searching.

My favorite page by far is twenty five. It runs the gambit of emotions from the almost comical naivety of childhood to the sadness of parental loss to the feeling of impotence in a world so great. For the first time we see Marja in a balance of black and white, and with it the weight of the world truly impressing itself upon the young girl. Both the contrast of her grandfather with her wrinkly hands as well as her mothers face to her own, the page is a beautiful composition that illicits so much of what this book is about.

I’d also like to bring up the issue of an unreliable narrator. With this much history involved, there is certainly room for false memories, or if carefully researched, the issue of fitting personal history to more famous events. Do you think Satrapi give any hints to this difficulty and if so, why?

It was interesting for me to experience this story in it’s original graphic novel form since my first exposure to it was through the film version. The film was well done and took from the book almost exactly. However, the heaviness of the political history was somewhat lost. Marjane’s childhood isn’t given nearly as much attention as it is in the book. The relevance of these events is more powerful when we are given more detail, more information, more victims, and more personal involvement from her in tragedies that occur. I suppose that given the restraint of time the film maker chose what they believed to be the most important portion of her childhood, her uncle’s arrest and murder, and concentrated on that rather than on the many marches, the maid, her slight obsession with class difference, and her involvement with God.

I found myself really appreciating the concentration Satrapi put into each individual story that revolved around the revolution and her childhood. There is so much detail and care placed in the art and in the facts. As was said in an earlier post, she is giving us heavy information that could seem too intense for a graphical novel. I would say that the novel is equally about the revolution and Satrapi only we are given more of Satrapi’s memories and childhood humour because without it the book would perhaps be too serious to be taken seriously.

The art was changed slightly, too, but enough that I found it interesting to see the movie version of the characters on the cover. The differences are slight but noticeable enough. For example, her mother’s hair is more stylized to fit modern times, the shape of Marjan’s eyes are different, and the grandmother look younger and sassier. She is drawn to look older in the book than in the movie. There are small changes but for me it affects how I see these characters. The way they care for themselves, carry themselves, etc. is completely based on how they are drawn. This is true for any character in a comic book, of course. So seeing the change in the way the main characters are drawn makes them slightly different people in general for me.

Overall, the experience of reading this story has been a different on than the film. I am finding the book version more enjoyable and I am evening learning history more accurately than in the movie version. It’s one of the most stimulating reads I’ve had in a while.

I picked up the book persepolis, without being aware of any of its content or what the story is about. First I found the book agreeable and pleasing. The contents of the Persepolis in which it describes the history of Iranian revolution, was interesting especially it is told through a narrative of a kid who seems to form her allegiance and opinion rather quickly and strongly on the matter.

The subject of the story itself could be rather doom and heavy for a comic book material. However, through the naive and innocent and particularly opinionated child Marji’s narration, Persepolis succeeds to handle the heavy subject without being too serious and hard on the readers.

Yet, it would not be fair to say that Persepolis tells the story of Iranian Revolution only light heartedly.

In the part where they talk about how the prisoners were tortured, the novel achieves to emphasize the seriousness and makes the story even more horrible by having it told through Child’s eye. Readers are forced to sympathize and because it is being told through Child’s narratives, we feel worse about hearing these stories.

Black and White color scheme of the novel also seems to adds to the characteristics of the story. It is serious and heavy material therefore the colorfulness would not suit the story. Also, the simple drawing style of the novel and its color scheme seems to represent the Iranian tradition as well; their separation of female and male in public and the secretiveness they pursue with the exposure of the skin.

After reading the first part of Persepolis, the think that stood out to me the most was the bonds that Marji had with each of the people she knew. The bonds with her friends were like most children friendships: if you agree with each other then you friends. The bonds with her her family were of course stronger but the bond that stood out to me was her bond with her uncle Anoosh. This bond looked to me like the typical favorite niece with her favorite uncle bond but then I noticed that she was more interested in her uncle then her father. If you look at the cover of the book, when Marji is looking up at her family she’s looking at her uncle and not her father. Her uncle has had adventures and can tell cool stories while her father was a plain father that wasn’t cool. Marji even told her friends about the stories Anoosh told the show her friends how cool he was. This bond of theirs was so close that she was the last person he talked to in the prison.

I guess the bonds were prominent to me since I have some close bonds with own family. So far in the novel no matter how bad things got the family bonds kept everyone together. At this point in the novel I think Marji’s bonds are still tentative and I’m wondering what will happen to those bonds.. With the exception of Anoosh it does not look as if she takes any of the bond that she has seriously. My question to the responders is about the bonds in general. What do you think that about the bonds between Marji and her family or friends? Good? Bad? Happy? Finicky? Ironclad? Just naming a few things to get you started.

I was surprised to find so much history incorporated into Persepolis. I was expecting the book to be much more focused specifically on Marjane. Instead, I think I would describe this first half of the story as a historical commentary as seen through a young Iranian girl’s eyes rather than an autobiography.

I think that in itself says a lot about the political situation in her country at that time (and still ongoing) – even a young girl could not escape from the political turmoil. It is similar to a Holocaust survivor trying to relate his or her life without mentioning World War II and the horrors experienced therein.

After reading over the cover of the book, I know it specifically mentions the book as a memoir of her life in Iran during this time period, but I’ve always heard of Persepolis as simply a book about a girl with Iranian heritage growing up in France (I think that might be closer to part II). I’m glad I was mistaken because I find the book way more interesting so far.

I like the way that the story is told by Satrapi as an adult with the point of view of a child. She captures the innocence and confusion of a child growing up in such turmoil while still being able to make sense of everything and present her story maturely and humbly to her readers. I appreciate the blunt honesty used in referring to other nations such as the United States, and the love she conveys for a country that the world does not often get a chance to see in a good light.

   As I read the first few pages of The Complete Persepolis I felt alienated from the protagonist. I couldn’t relate to her conversations with God nor her desire to be a prophet. The first 15 pages I struggled to empathize with her pious yearnings and her saccharine, unquestioned devotion to religion. I also felt the artwork distanced me from any real connection to the characters. Afterall, when the characters are difficult to tell apart due to the complete lack of human detail (even the expression lines that appeared in American Born Chineselended some emotion and humanity to the cartoonish characters) it’s hard to react to the storyline. After finishing half of the book, I realized that the artwork served as a foil to the serious and provocative content within the book’s pages. When I reached page 33 I began to understand Marjane and remembered a time when I was a child and when good and bad seemed so obvious. Her childish sense of injustice and rage was similar to my own reaction as I read the story of her maid’s cruel rejection. Marjane has a deep sense of what the world should be versus her reality. Reading further, I recalled times in my own childhood when my conscience was easily (too easily) swayed by my parents or peers. Marjane wants to nail Ramin to a tree because his father admitted to killing people. She quickly recants, but only because her mother admonishes her violent plan and Ramin explains that his father killed communists who are evil. Further on when Marjane hears about the torture that one of her family’s friends endures while in prison, and her mother’s negative opinion of forgiveness, she once again changes her stance on the virtue of forgiveness. On page 52 her pathetic, naive sense of right and wrong is laughable; “I wasn’t completely wrong when I said he wasn’t on a trip.” Marjane even goes the extent of making up stories of her father’s torture, ironically lying to bring her family honor. Even while her Uncle Anoosh tells her the story of his imprisonment she can’t help but gleefully compare it to Laly’s father’s imprisonment.

In Marjane’s childish logic, she sees everyone as either wholly good or bad; hero or insignificant. Marjane can’t comprehend someone forfeiting a courageous end in order to save his own life. Satrapi is incredibly honest and blunt in her treatment of her childhood self. She clearly admits to her own naivete. However, that sense of guilelessness quickly dissipates as Marjane is faced with an increasingly violent reality.

So far I am enjoying this book immensely, especially in comparison to our previous text. The work starts with an introduction to a piece of Chinese folklore called the Monkey King. This immediately caught my eye for two reasons, the first is because I am fascinated by folklore in general, and the second is that I realized I had seen incarnations of this “character” before in popular culture, so I wanted to learn more about it. The monkey king apparently originates from a novel written in the 16^th century called The Journey to the West, and it is considered something of a national treasure. Indeed this story has been told many times in different ways over the last few hundred years, and some of them I have managed to absorb even on a casual basis. He is known in the west as the Monkey King, but in China he goes by Sun Wukong, and in Japan he goes by Son Goku. The flying nimbus, the magical red staff, and the tail are no coincidences; the main character of the famous DragonBall is the Monkey King himself, told with heavy creative license of course. I can’t say I see a great deal of paralell beyond the superficial but my experience with both subjects is limited. Perhaps someone more familiar with the imagery could point out more deeply running themes. Goku seems to be more human than monkey and any mischief he shows in the early series stems mostly out of the fact that he is a child, rather than being a deity of mischief.

Another little factoid was that in the 2008 film The Forbidden Kingdom Jet Li plays the monkey king, and a few aspects of his character are shown throughout the film. Also the nerd in me would like to point out that you can play as the Monkey King in little big planet, and an incarnation of him in Marvel vs Capcom 2.

I find it interesting that we see the Monkey King in popular culture, considering how steeped in popular culture the work American Born Chinese is. Has anyone else seen a a version of the Monkey King out and about?

(I am unclear on whether we are supposed to have read the whole book, so I am going to, for purposes of this blog, only respond to the first half so as not to spoil anyone.)

It may be a little obvious, but all of the main characters are basically looking for a place to belong. Jin is mostly lost in his quest for Amelia. The Monkey King is looking to be ‘the great sage,’ when he is quite plainly a monkey. “Danny” is pretty much fully integrated into where he feels he belongs, but is thwarted in that attempt by his cousin; and even “Chin-kee” is trying to fit in, even if it doesn’t mean changing who he is at all (That may be a stretch. I get uncomfortable even trying to think about how to address Chin-kee, to tell you the truth).
The real catch is that none of them are very good at it. Which I suppose is the very catalyst for the story, the thing for them to overcome. An important lesson early on, for the Monkey king, is when he flies beyond the veil of reality, and relieves himself on a golden pillar, only to discover that he has peed on the hand of his creator. What the Monkey King wants is impossible, because there is simply a way things are; and he is not the great sage, he is just a monkey. Maybe a monkey that is an awesome martial artist, but, really, he’s basically just a monkey.

…

Don’t tell him I said that.

I’ll start of saying I really like American Born Chinese. I love the animation, I love the way the story is told, and I love that it has a poignant message without the grittiness of some of the other novels we’ve read. (I’ve enjoyed all those as well, but there is a lightness to ABC’s heaviness that I really enjoy whereas the others were very aware of their heaviness)

What stood out to me was the Christian imagery in the Monkey King’s story. I first noticed it with the appearance of the emissaries of Tze-Yo-Tzuh. This was on page 67 in ABC. They happen to be a lion, an ox, a human and an eagle. In Revelations 4:6-7 it talks about 4 beasts that surround the throne of God and give glory to His name. I thought it was cool that Yang chose to use such blatant (at least blatant for me) references to the throne room of Heaven. I couldn’t really understand why he would use such a Christian reference when the rest of the Monkey King’s universe is much removed from a Biblical reality.

Yang squeezes in  Christian imagery again on page 215. This time he doesn’t say it in the dialogue he shows us a traditionally Christian Christmas scene, but with a twist. The Monkey King says he became an emissary of Tze-Yo-Tzuh by completing his test of virtue. The panel suggests that he was among the wise men who visited Joseph, Mary and infant Jesus in the Nativity story. There is a small nod at Biblical verse because the Monkey King says he had to make his journey west to complete his test of virtue. This is funny because the Wise Men are known to have come from the east (Matthew 2:2)

I wonder why Yang has chosen to add such a heavy dose of Christian religious imagery into the novel. There are other religions with virtuous pillars that Yang addresses but he chooses to focus so much on images specific to Christianity i.e. the Nativiy.

If anyone has any insights as to why he does this it”d be great to hear!