Research Paper: Cluster # 1

Hillary Chute is a Junior Fellow in Literature in the Harvard Society of Fellows and co-editor of the “Graphic Narrative” issue of Modern Fiction Studies. Her knowledge of graphic narratives gives a more technical perspective on Persepolis that other writers do not focus on as heavily. In The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Chute’s argues that graphic narratives like Satrapi's are all feminist works although many my contest that graphic novels are more of a male art form (Chute 93). She also claims that Persepolis is meant to memorialize the 1979 Iranian Revolution. This is seen in the statement “Persepolis is about the ethical verbal and visual practice of “not forgetting” and about the political confluence of the every day and the historical: through its visual and verbal witnessing, it contests dominant images and narratives of history, debunking those that are incomplete and those that do the work of elision” (Chute 94). Chute also mentions that memorization is also seen when Anoosh, Satrapi's Uncle that is in jail and about to be executed, asks for Satrapi to be his last visit. Chute argues that when Anoosh says “ Our family memory must not be lost. Even if it’s not easy for you, even if you don’t understand it all.” [while] Marji replies, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll never forget’” (2003a, 60) (Chute 97).  Chute also argues that the reason Satrapi chose to have a colorless comic is because it shows that “the ‘vacancy’ represents the practice of memory, for the author and possibly for the reader” (Chute 98). Chute argues that the medium of graphic novel causes a more childlike view and is accentuated by the fact that the narrative is meant to be in a child's perspective of trauma . This is seen as Chute describes a picture of the dead in Satrapi’s comic by mentioning “ In that mass death in Satrapi’s work looks almost architectural, her representations both suggest a child’s too-tidy conceptualization of “mass” death and tacitly suggest the disturbing, anonymous profusion of bodies in the Iranian landscape.” (Chute 100). The audience is people that are interested in studying graphic narratives like Persepolis. The reason that this is an article is because it is more accessible to scholars that are going to write about Persepolis. The source is very useful to my article because it is talking about how the graphic novel is constructed in the context of Persepolis and talks about overall themes in the narrative.

Leigh Gilmore is an English Professor at Brown University and Elizabeth Marshall is an associate professor at Simon Fraser University and her main field of study is children’s literature. Their expertise helps bring together the literature of the narrative and the aspects of the child in their narrative to effectively analyze Satrapi’s story. Gilmore and Marshall’s thesis in Girls in Crisis: Rescue and Transnational Feminist Autobiographical Resistance is that the text is a learning tool in order to teach the West about the middle east, and dispels this idea of the east as a “political enemy”, with the perspective of a girl. Gilmore and Marshall state that “ she leads a privileged childhood unfettered by gender-based violence or poverty until 1979; she grows up in a “progressive” family and needs saving from radical fundamentalists rather than her Muslim father. In this way, she complicates representations of Muslim men as violent and representations of life in Iran as repressed” (Gilmore & Marshall 680). This further teaches the west about the true reality of the middle east. It is also mentioned about Kim Wilde’s “We’re the Kids in America” in Persepolis is an example that “affirms ideologies associated with Western neoliberalism,such as an individual's right to freedom of expression and “choice”, which explains in part the popularity of the text and its use by conservatives and liberals alike” (Gilmore & Marshall 681). Gilmore and Marshall also bring up the episode titled “the Veil” stating that it is “representing Iranian women as diverse, she emphasizes the link between gender and state violence, and she captures the complexity of how controlling women is part of the Cultural Revolution and that some women support it” (Gilmore & Marshall 683). The intended audience is feminist readers and the composition of the text is used to compare stories of different girlhoods. The source is very useful for my project because it brings up the more overarching feminist themes that are very relevant to this idea of the misconception of the “other”.

Nancy K. Miller is a writer and professor of English and Literature in CUNY Graduate Center and specializes in autobiography and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist/Queer Theory which is very important for the analysis of Satrapi's narrative because both gender and the retelling of Satrapi’s life are very important aspects of the artifact. In Out of the Family: Generations of Women in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Miller claims that women’s values and ideas in Satrapi’s narrative are affected by the environment around them. Miller notes “In facing panels, the mother protests outside in the streets and the daughter, from the safety of her room, contemplates the photograph of her mother in the magazine with pride (Satrapi 5)” (Miller 17). This proves that Miller believes that Marjane’s views are affected by her mother because she feels pride for what her mother has done. Miller also mentions that although Marjane lives in a very liberal and feminist household she is still blocked from hearing the whole story that the parents have. Miller mentions this in “the dangerous content of the conversation between the two women (whose heads in one panel are missing) as they speculate about the father’s return is marked by code in the dialogue balloon that the little girl doesn't understand (the women literally and figuratively speak over her head). The physical bonds among the women of three generations waiting in the kitchen from a strand of female identification; the scene of the women drawn against one another in the confines of domestic space produces a pause of intimate history within the broader strokes of national upheaval.” (Miller 17). Miller also suggests that “The last words of Persepolis express an intense desire for freedom, and a freedom inseparable from the condition of women generally-- the women who as a group still must fight for equal rights along with political freedom from a repressive regime” (Miller 24). Miller also notes that “Persepolis, from the third generation, both read the past and move us into the future. Whatever conflicts involved in the young woman’s coming of age, the story she tells moves past the stuck places of mother--daughter violence, which characterized so much 1970s feminism ”(Miller 25). Lastly Miller claims that the last chapter of Satrapi’s narrative where Marjane is at the airport about to leave for Vienna, and her mother falls into her father's arms that this is a “posture that evokes the iconography of the pieta, Marjane’s father carries his prostrated wife in his arms, literally supporting the weight of her suffering. Although we are not given many details about the mother’s life beyond her dissidence, her feminism, and her desire for her daughter’s freedom ….as readers we are offered clues…. Rather than an independent storyline about the cost of maternal sacrifice. The tableau of the end of volume 1 registers the mother’s pain as part of the cost of the daughter’s freedom, but her suffering is not oppositional.” (Miller 27) The intended audience is people interested in feminism and readers of Nancy K. Miller. The reason they text was composed like this is because it is telling the story of one girl but giving the inputs of other women in the novel that are not seen as the main focus. The source is very useful because it talks about feminism throughout generations in the narrative and also talks about things that many people do not realize are bring the west and the east together like both of them feeling that education is very important for either women or men.

Theresa M. Tensuan is an assistant Professor of English at Haverford College and has experience writing about comics and graphic narratives which are very important to my research project due to the fact that Persepolis is both a comic and a graphic narrative. In Comic Visions And Revisions In The Work Of Lynda Barry and Marjane Satrapi Tensuan argues that the medium of graphic narrative in Satrapi’s text is used to change others views about Iranian and Middle Eastern people. This is evident when Tensuan says “ ‘ Third world women’ as victims, ‘ regressive Muslims fundamentalists’ who oppose a challenge to democracy-- exists as epistemological effects of the colonial past … [and] are dislocated and used a ‘scripts’ (Tensuan 41-42) to explain contemporary crises, relations, and tensions independent of the imperialist practices, corporate investments, and histories of violence that have shaped contemporary political landscapes. Against such scripts, Satrapi casts herself as a young girl whose favorite comic book carries the title Dialectical Materialism and features graphic confrontations between Descartes and Marx, but whose board game of choice is Monopoly” (Tensuan 952). Tensuan also mentions that in the narrative “ the transition from childhood to adulthood becomes a transformational moment overdetermined by narratives of development that set gendered roles, define class distinctions, articulate racial demarcations, inscribe religious differences, and establish parameters around sexual exploration” (Tensuan 952).  Tensuan also argues that “Satrapi’s Persepolis literally as well as figuratively question the social codes and communal assumptions that engender limited and limiting roles and establish specific parameters in which these roles can be enacted” (Tensuan 954).Tensuan brings up Cave’s claim that the comics in the narrative are a mix of “Persian friezes and children’s doodles” (Cave 1) to proves that there is “ a direct relationship with an idealized Persian culture uncluttered and unaffected by Western cultural or commercial influences and forces” (Tensuan 956). Tensuan suggests that Americans are not so different from Iranians in the fact that in Persepolis's one comic page (fig.3 of the article) it shows Iran as the first to colonize and the British as the most recent colonizers (Tensuan 957-958). She also argues that Taji Satrapi is “an emblematic representation of individual resistance, communal movements, and democratic progress.” due to her act of protest (Tensuan 57). Also mentioning that “ One could see Taji Satrapi’s stance as part of a particular syntax of political activity based on memories of the student demonstrations of political activity based on memories of the student demonstrations and workers’ strike of 1968, while English readers might invoke histories of the suffragist movement of the 1920s, assimilating her figure into familiar histories and placing her in specific teleology of democratic progress” (Tensuan 958). Tensuan also argues that “‘We’re the Kids in America’ provides Marji with an opportunity to channel her frustrations on the dance floor, but the song’s exuberant celebration of youth freedom creates a complicated contrapuntal rhythm in a political context in which American imperialism helped open the avenue in through which the clerics could come to power. Narratives of political and economic opportunism create a bad fit with mythologies of democratic openness and justice for all; Persepolis explores the critical context in which one can counter official claims on political truths” (Tensuan 961). The intended audience of this work are people interested in the analysis of women’s comic narratives. The composition of this text was used to talk extensively about both Lynda Barry and Marjane Satrapi’s work without juxtaposing them. I think that this article was useful because it has brought about many points that tie into my argument very well.

Work Cited