The video of Persepolis shows how the characters reacted to living in Iran. Since we already know the situation in Iran, it was neat to see the video as more of a comic presentation. Seeing their facial reactions, especially Marji, really helped understand how she was feeling about the Shah’s. An example is how Marji was listening to her parents talk about how this guy was whipped in jail by cables and how he called those people torcheres. She would always back up and hide her head like she knew that was wrong, but yet still continues to follow that faith she had. The Lord had also told her that the Shah’s were ” chosen by him” but he would also tell her that torturing someone isn’t they way to go about things. She learned very quickly that the whole saying “Treat people the way you want to be treated” didn’t work out so well.
At the beginning, Marji is kind of alone. Perhaps she was confused on why the Shah’s were a bad group. She would even pace around the room acting like she was marching with them which shows that she had different views on the Shah group than her parents did. She was told about how her grandfather was put into jail because he was a communist and she did not really understand that, and why everyone had different views. The Lord had lead her to thinking the wrong things.
As the story goes on, things in Iran didn’t get much better. Marji gets harassed as she gets asked about her “punk shoes” and how she had Michael Jackson on her vest. Satrapi made is clear that Iran was not a place to be during this time.
Marji eventually gets sent away because she had been expelled from school due to her behavior. Her parents felt as if the best thing they could do was to ship her to Vietnam. Leaving your family is something that I would not be up and willing to do, but she did it in-spite of her parents recommendations. Why didn’t her parents go with her? We might not know fully, but what we do know is that they were involved in a lot in Iran and I believe they wanted to make it a better place. Thinking about it more in depth, they really did have hope that one day Iran would become a happier place.
Watching the actual film made me realize a lot more than when I had just read. The facial expressions show an amazing view on how the characters felt during certain situations. Being able to read and listen had made my viewpoints on Iran and the western culture a lot clearer. This film gets the audience thinking about the events that used to take place in other countries and how different things are today.
This short video from the film shows how Marji was attached to the Lord and how she had a different view on the Shah’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de8itLl61Fs
Works Cited:
English and Comparative Literary Studies. (2013, May 24). Retrieved October 2, 2020, from https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/first/en123/cwl-litcrit/persepolis2013/persepolishistoricalcontext/
Flowers, K. (2020, June 3). Library.SCOTCH: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: Context. Retrieved October 2, 2020, from https://library.scotch.wa.edu.au/english/year12/persepolis/context