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starladySince I spend a good deal of my time griping about the invisibility of women in comics, it's high time that I put my money where my mouth is and become familiar with the work of female comic artists. I randomly grabbed Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return off the shelves in the library the other day--apparently Persepolis itself was at the same library, but I was too impatient to find it; it's coming to me by request.
I saw the movie version of Persepolis, which covers the material from both books, in Japan, with French language and Japanese subtitles, but after reading the book I was surprised at how much of its events I understood despite not really knowing French and not knowing many kanji in the subtitles--there was very little that I hadn't grasped, with the exception of the exact details of what happened to Satrapi's uncle (he was assassinated). I think that this won't be the case when I read the first book, since most of the political terminology eluded me when I saw the movie. After reading the book, it's clear that the move streamlined some things, but surprisingly little, really, and to be honest I think the movie ends on more of an positive note than the book does, which is saying something, because the movie is pretty bleak (the entirely black and white art of both book and movie do nothing to detract from this mood).
It seems appropriate to be reading this book in the twilight of the protests against the last Iranian election. A friend and I had a disagreement on Twitter about whether there was ever any real possibility of real change in Iran (he said no, while I said yes, because moderate candidates have been elected to the presidency before), and he brought up the example of Burma. Towards the end of Persepolis 2, people of Satrapi's acquaintance begin to install sattelite television dishes on their houses (only in the north of Tehran, of course; the southern part--where Ahamdinejad today has his base support in the capital--is repeatedly said to be very different), and it seems to me that whatever happens to Mir Hussein Moussavi, the sattelite dishes of the 1990s and the Twitter accounts and Bluetooth headsets and Internet hotspots of the 2000s represent an unstoppable movement along a continuum. What I'm perhaps not saying directly is that it seems to me that countries that do have interactions with the outside world, however furtive and haphazard, seem to have a much better chance of eventually gaining true popular sovereignty. There's not very much the U.S. Congress can actually do to influence these sorts of events (and certain Senators and representatives should stop grandstanding and appropriating the Iranians' struggle to bludgeon the President), and a lot of people would say in the case of Iran that the United States has already done more than enough. I don't think that previous U.S. actions such as the coup in 1953 (against a government that was itself installed single-handedly by a British colonel in the 1920s; see A Peace to End All Peace for the full details) mean that people in the States, or even elected officials, should not have or express opinions about what goes on in Iran today (this is self-serving, obviously, since I have opinions and intend to express them), but I do applaud President Obama for his pragmatic hands-off approach. The reality is that he has to deal with whoever is in power over there whether anyone involved likes it or not, and him coming out swinging for the protestors can only further damage relations between the two countries. I won't--cannot--say that engagement is the best strategy (because look at China, and what our engaging with it has done for human rights within its borders), but it seems to me that three decades of mutual isolation have clearly failed, and that it certainly seems that engagement, however distasteful it may be morally, is the only viable way to proceed henceforth. Satrapi doesn't pull any punches; it's very clear that Iran is (or at least was in the years depicted in the book) a repressive, murderous totalitarian theocracy, however much the revolution may have been the will of the people. As the fate of the election protestors makes clear, the will of the people is by no means everything, but it does mean quite a lot in the long run, and hopefully these past weeks have reawakened people to the fact that their lives have a political dimension, however much the regime may wish to distract them from it by focusing on dress codes and public morality. If people in Iran can keep that fact in their minds--as Satrapi in the book struggles to do in Iran, and eventually succeeds in doing by moving abroad--we may yet see Persepolis 3: The Story of a Return to a Revolution within our lifetimes. At least, we can hope.
I saw the movie version of Persepolis, which covers the material from both books, in Japan, with French language and Japanese subtitles, but after reading the book I was surprised at how much of its events I understood despite not really knowing French and not knowing many kanji in the subtitles--there was very little that I hadn't grasped, with the exception of the exact details of what happened to Satrapi's uncle (he was assassinated). I think that this won't be the case when I read the first book, since most of the political terminology eluded me when I saw the movie. After reading the book, it's clear that the move streamlined some things, but surprisingly little, really, and to be honest I think the movie ends on more of an positive note than the book does, which is saying something, because the movie is pretty bleak (the entirely black and white art of both book and movie do nothing to detract from this mood).
It seems appropriate to be reading this book in the twilight of the protests against the last Iranian election. A friend and I had a disagreement on Twitter about whether there was ever any real possibility of real change in Iran (he said no, while I said yes, because moderate candidates have been elected to the presidency before), and he brought up the example of Burma. Towards the end of Persepolis 2, people of Satrapi's acquaintance begin to install sattelite television dishes on their houses (only in the north of Tehran, of course; the southern part--where Ahamdinejad today has his base support in the capital--is repeatedly said to be very different), and it seems to me that whatever happens to Mir Hussein Moussavi, the sattelite dishes of the 1990s and the Twitter accounts and Bluetooth headsets and Internet hotspots of the 2000s represent an unstoppable movement along a continuum. What I'm perhaps not saying directly is that it seems to me that countries that do have interactions with the outside world, however furtive and haphazard, seem to have a much better chance of eventually gaining true popular sovereignty. There's not very much the U.S. Congress can actually do to influence these sorts of events (and certain Senators and representatives should stop grandstanding and appropriating the Iranians' struggle to bludgeon the President), and a lot of people would say in the case of Iran that the United States has already done more than enough. I don't think that previous U.S. actions such as the coup in 1953 (against a government that was itself installed single-handedly by a British colonel in the 1920s; see A Peace to End All Peace for the full details) mean that people in the States, or even elected officials, should not have or express opinions about what goes on in Iran today (this is self-serving, obviously, since I have opinions and intend to express them), but I do applaud President Obama for his pragmatic hands-off approach. The reality is that he has to deal with whoever is in power over there whether anyone involved likes it or not, and him coming out swinging for the protestors can only further damage relations between the two countries. I won't--cannot--say that engagement is the best strategy (because look at China, and what our engaging with it has done for human rights within its borders), but it seems to me that three decades of mutual isolation have clearly failed, and that it certainly seems that engagement, however distasteful it may be morally, is the only viable way to proceed henceforth. Satrapi doesn't pull any punches; it's very clear that Iran is (or at least was in the years depicted in the book) a repressive, murderous totalitarian theocracy, however much the revolution may have been the will of the people. As the fate of the election protestors makes clear, the will of the people is by no means everything, but it does mean quite a lot in the long run, and hopefully these past weeks have reawakened people to the fact that their lives have a political dimension, however much the regime may wish to distract them from it by focusing on dress codes and public morality. If people in Iran can keep that fact in their minds--as Satrapi in the book struggles to do in Iran, and eventually succeeds in doing by moving abroad--we may yet see Persepolis 3: The Story of a Return to a Revolution within our lifetimes. At least, we can hope.