Persepolis

Persepolis is unlike any comic in my life, in that Satrapi is utilizing a medium in a completely different way that you don't often see in America. I really enjoyed reading it, partially because it was so different from the usual comics I read, and also because she touched on themes and subjects that I was able to relate to.

Of all the works we've read, I think this is the easiest to connect to all the things McCloud mentions in his books. At first glance, the style seems simplistic and cartoony, a bit like Peanuts or any of the Sunday morning funnies. But since this is told from the POV of a child it only makes sense that it not be too photo realistic because then it would be difficult for the readers to identify with the main protagonist, in this case, Satrapi herself. Also, by stripping away these characters and making them look as simple as possible, we don't associate the charaacters as Arabs, Iranians, Iraqis, white, black, or any other ethnicity whatsoever. We just see human beings and it's why it's so easy to sympathize with these stripped out and black and white.
characters.

Satrapi also uses a lot of the universal symbols McCloud talks about such as the lightning coming out of character eyes, you automatically know that they're angry at someone.

I also thought it was a great story and liked the episodic format of it. I obviosuly haven't seen the film yet (and I hope we can see it in theatres very soon) but I wonder how it translates into cinema. The comic's story format reminded me of a Japanese animated film from Studio Ghibli (Hayao Miyazaki's company) called "My Neighbors the Yamadas" by his colleague Isao Takahata, which also had a similiar story format of showing the family's life in various short episodic stories, but having one overall story going on.

I know last year when we met for the first time I told you briefly about my own family's history livng in Pakistan and coming to America. I was born in New York and visited Pakistan twice in my life, but some of its culture and values still persist in my extended family and I could really identify with some of the things Satrap mentions. Her maid, Mehri, for instance, was given to her family at the age of 8 because her parents could no longer afford to keep her. My grandparents, when they lived in Pakistan, found a boy who had run away from home because his parents were cruel and so adopted him into their household as a housekeeper, and he continues to live in their home to this day in the city. My grandparents are kind people and have a lot of respect towards people of different classes and so give him freedoms which would be deemed unthinkable in other households.
I think more than anyone I know, my other will probably get the most out of reading this book, because whenever we do have family gatherings, etc. I usually almost always hear stories of her living in Pakistan and during the whole India/Pakistan conflict, where there was fear of being bombed and losing everything you have.

But like my mother/family has a lot of, Satrapi infuses much humor into the book to balance some of the serious subjects, which are always enjoyable. I love that scene when she's accosted by the Guardians about wearing a Michael Jackson button and she says, "No it's Malcolm X, the leader of the black muslims in America" and in a thought caption to the audience says "Bakc when Michale Jackson was still black." A little pop culture nod to the audience, giving another emotion besides fear into the situation.

Going back to style and simplification, most of the layouts of the scenes are pretty basic and much of the backgrounds of the panels are just white or black screens. I think this was really effective in getting the readers attention straight to the words or the subject in the panel instead of letting our eyes wander. For character designs, as McCloud discusses heavily in "Making Comics" many of the characters look very alike, and i thought it was a reflection of the idea of the Iranian people being sheep and following what was told to them by the government, the title in fact of one chapter.

Aditionally, I think comics or cartoons was the only way Satrapi could tell this story because of all the horrible things that happe in it. We see people being lashed, shot, cut in piece, and various other horrific things. If this was made into a life action film, I don't think many people could take it. It's like something Roger Ebert said about anothe Isao Takahata film "Grave of the Fireflies" which you've probably seen. Basically Ebert said that "Fireflies" that you couldn't, or at least it would be very diffiuclt, to make it as a live action film. The things these 2 children go through, and seeing someone starve to death on screen is a hard experience, but animation can alleviate some of it, or at least make it more bearable for an audience.

So I think you can assume that overall I got a lot out of reading "Persepolis." On a sidenote, I'm actually going to be reading the sequel for another course, and doing a presentation later on, so it will be interesting to see how reading the first one adds to my reading expereince and my presentation to my class.