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A Leftist Childhood Stories, Wrongly Named Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi - 3/4/2008

Persepolis[1] was written and published in Paris in two volumes in 2000 and 2001. Therefore, the book can be called comic and caricaturing memoirs of Satrapi from her childhood limited to the Islamic revolution era and regime. In the separate sections, Satrapi tells the story of the major events of Islamic Revolution before and after its victory from a childish point of view heavily influenced by her parents’ political inclinations. The chosen name for book, Persepolis , is a clever advertisement choice and has nothing to do with the content of Satrapi’s work other than identifying itself with Iran . One can speculate the comic book with another name such as, The Story of a Childhood in the Islamic Revolution and Regime, might upset the Islamic Republic. Consequently, the book will be striped of a glorious historical name, its comic content would be harmed, and would be bad for its financial success. Satrapi’s traditional leftist approach to recreate the sequence of Islamic Revolution’s events as it was understood more than twenty years ago by comical pictures and writing suggest that she did not learn anything new in so many years. Of course, the praise and success of Satrapi’s book among professional comic story illustrators, writers, enthusiast, and academia as much as gives confidence to Satrapi it apprehend any book critic to question the integrity of her work. But I will attempt to criticize Miss Satrapi’s work anyway.

Satrapi’s book begins with the Islamic Republic forced veiling of female students and their resentment of the veil. Although complain from the Islamic Republic’s social restrictions, included but no limited, targeting women’s freedom of appearance without degrading Islamic coverage are the main theme of Satrapi’s book, she never mentions or praises the existence of social freedom and hard fought women’s rights in the both Shahs’ regime. The first section, other than dealing with the veil after the Islamic Republic established, contains some childish imaginations such as: conversation of Marjane with God, her intention of becoming a prophet, and her problems with her teacher.

She reveals the political influences of her parents’ on her, who were either a supporter or sympathizer of leftist guerrilla’s organizations, in the bicycle section; when she and her friends pretend to be guerrillas and were fighting for the revolution. She repeats the shallowest slogan of the communists “AFTER A LONG SLEEP OF 2500 YEARS, THE REVOLUTION FINALLY AWAKENED THE PEOPLE.”[2] Satrapi follows this quote by equating the Shahs of Iran with its invaders.

After toying with a little philosophy, she repeats one of the biggest lies of Islamic revolutionaries. The Savak with the Shah’s order, when doors were locked, burned down the Rex Cinema . And she adds the unheard lie that police was there to prevent people and fire department to rescue burning movie goers.[3] However, as an historical research fact that most of politicians of the time believed, the Shah’s biggest problem was not his conspiratorial criminal mind but his total weakness to fight for and defend what he believed was right. Furthermore, later in an Islamic court, a religious Muslim fanatic individual was found responsible for the crime, and he summarily tried and condemned to death without revealing the name of his marga who ordered the crime, and the whole court proceeding published in the major news papers. Still Satrapi repeats the great lies of revolutionaries to fool people for a little bit longer.

In the water section, the reader learns that Satrapi’s parents were committed anti-Shah protesters because they were descendent of the previous dynasty. At this point the reader gets a history of the Shah’s father according to Satrapi which she is in that as truthful and fair as her Rex Cinema account.[4] Satrapi probably is a descendent of Qajars and the prince she is talking about is Eraj Eskandary one of the leaders of the Tudeh party who lived most of his life in Russia . In the Persepolis section, she talks about 2500 years of Iran ’s kingdom festivities; while she continues the story of revolution and suffering of her poor grandmother.[5] Satrapi reveals more about her land owning family when she repots how her parents had taken away an eight years-old girl named Mehri from her peasant parent as their maid.

Mehri was ten years old when Satrapi was born in 1969, that is when I was coming back home from my two years military service with eighteen months of that as a trained grade school teacher called Sepah Danesh in the remote villages of Nanok and Dasabad in the county of Baft in the province of Kerman, where five of my students two of them girls out of seventeen went to middle school in another village called Tazarge. So, there was a nation-wide school system specially designed for remotest villages anywhere in Iran working continuously for eight years at that time, after the first rebellion of Khomeinist against fundamental reforms crushed, and up to the Islamic Revolution. The parents of our great comic writer take a girl away from her parents and make her to work for them for free and accuse her of being stupid too. Now a reader could imagine what kind of freedom Satrapi’s parents were fighting for. In 1969 the number of families who gave the rights to themselves to have child slave labor and ruin a person’s life out of thirty five million people of Iran was a few thousand left over feudals.

Satrapi’s letter writing for Mehri’s desired boy friend, and the man’s rejection of Mehri when he finds out she is a maid, is a side show to introduce the class differences, which explains why she should join demonstration against the Shah not Satrapi’s parents who ruined her life. She mentions the Black Friday in the Jaleh Circle when tens of religious demonstrators were killed but she reported the turning point clash as a well known propaganda.[6] The Shah’s departure and victory of the Islamic revolution pictured in the party section. Satrapi has no concern for the Shah’s last prime minister and other moderates who desperately tried up to the last minute to prevent absolute victory of Islamist. She continues with the persecution of the Shah’s Savak officials but she never mentions the summarily executions of hundreds of the Shah’s military personal and civilian officials.[7] From now on Satrapi introduces her parent’s communist friends and the tortures they suffered under the Shah’s regime. She reports the short lived freedom of the communists and the beginning of middle class exodus to escape from Islamic dictatorial regime, in the sheep section, which Satrapi’s great freedom fighters could not predict or imagine.

In the following sections, Satrapi speaks of the Iran-Iraq war and the harassment of people due to their Islamic social behavior shortcoming. Satrapi fails to mention the real reason for two years universities closing after the revolution which was the response of Islamist to political domination of Communist and Mojahadin in the universities. After establishment of the Islamic Republic, one of the major events missing in the Satrapi’s book is the American embassy take over by the Hazb Allah in Tehran which dragged on for more than a year. One can suspect since the hostage taking of the American embassy staff hardly could be sold as a comic story, with the comical pictures, bias writing and same positive tone as the Islamic Revolution portrayed, it was left out all together.

She repots the decline of women’s social statute and women’s demonstrations against the mandatory dress code of veil without mentioning the same rights protection in the Shah’s regime. Generally from now on, she complains about the rights that victory of revolution took away from people and made their situation so hopeless that they chose to leave their country and expose themselves to unimaginable hardship in a foreign country just for enjoying again the simple rights they had before Islamic revolution.

I find Satrapi’s version of the Islamic Revolution inaccurate, and I do not see anything funny about this supposedly comic book. There is no creative imagination in any section of this book only a rough report of a twisted realty. The illustrations communicate perfectly and expressions of faces are more capable than the writings; actually less opinionated writing could have saved this book from its obvious bias agenda.

The move Persepolis based on a book with the same title, of course inappropriately, written by an Iranian born comic writer and illustrator Marjane Satrapi is a candidate for Oscar. The reappearance of this book as movie with a considerable advertisement and the acceptance received in Europe and US reminded me of the surprise I fell in when I read Persepolis . Now with the Oscar candidacy we will see an inaccurate understanding of Islamic Revolution in Iran more as a norm world wide. I dusted my old book review of Persepolis writing which was done several years ago and polished it one more time with the hope to cheap away some of the leftist propaganda which miss represent Islamic Revolution.