Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Vintage Books, 2008
Book Review by K.S.Loganathan, my dad, Consultant for Tire and Rubber and author.
Synopsis
Persepolis is a bildungsroman, an autobiography, a black-and-white graphic novel, doubling as a screenplay for an animated feature film, all rolled into one.
The young Iranian protagonist, Marjane Satrapi, is a relative of Reza Khan, an army officer who seized control in 1921 and elected himself as hereditary Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty. The book covers the period from her birth in 1970 to 1994, including the Shah’s overthrow, internecine conflicts, the war with Saddam’s Iraq, and the rise of the modern, elected, theocratic state.
Marjani’s grandparents and uncles suffered repression under the Shah, but her parents continued to reside in Tehran to enable her study in a French school so that she can leave a stifling and religious Iran for an open and secular Europe. Had she been born a son, government regulations would have disallowed leaving the country to do military service instead. Marjane prosecutes her studies in Vienna before returning to Iran, having a brief marriage, and earning a visual communications degree in Tehran. She migrated to France in 1994.
Marjane’s parents come across as moderates, very concerned with their daughter’s welfare in a country veering toward fundamentalism. Her mother advises her, “Our country has always known war and martyrs. So, like my father said: When a big wave comes, lower your head and let it pass”. Her mother also tells her “Even if you become a cabaret dancer, better that you dance at the Lido than in a hole in the wall.” Her father allows her to have her own experiences, in marrying and divorcing an Iranian co-student, who both, he and his wife considered unsuitable. Marjane is most attached to her grandmother, though, and her emotional connection with the country of her birth is severed with her grandmother’s passing in 1995.
My Views
The stand-alone title of the book, Persepolis, is the capital erected by King Darius I on the Rahmat Mountains near Shiraz in 522 BC. Darius’ regime extended from the Indus to the Nile and the Danube. Alexander destroyed the uncompleted Persian capital, Persepolis, in 330 BC. Persepolis is the Iranian Camelot.
In reading the book, I could not but recall Boris Pasternak’s ‘Doctor Zhivago,’ the epic tale of the Russian poet/doctor set in Russia during World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. Directed by David Lean, the book becomes a sumptuous, sprawling and unforgettable epic film.
Persepolis could have been an epic book/film of that ilk, but a black-and-white graphic novel/animated feature film telling a highly personal story from a child’s eye point of view falls far short of expectations. I am reminded of Marshall McLuhan who proclaimed years ago that “the medium is the message.” In graphic art, sardonic humor or satire is needed to convert a biography into a caricature, something that is lacking in Satrapi’s work.
The tale of the migrant’s predicament needs a proper medium and must be told empathetically, preferably by another person. I am reminded of the comic books that appeared in the 1950s during the Korean War, dealing with cultural displacement and economic exploitation from a propaganda standpoint and failing to make an impact.
Switch on the television and tune into CNN to see the plight of middle-eastern migrants arriving in Europe. The pictures are heart-rending. It is difficult to beat the printed word and film or television as the preferred media to tell the migrant’s tale.
