Hey fellow bloggers, this week it is my turn to take on the role of one of the class bloggers!

I was pretty certain what the forecast of topics would look like for this week, as we recently unpacked Hillary Chute’s “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis”, as well as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.  Indeed, it was a downpour of Persepolis with a chance of Hillary Chute, as every single person’s blog this week had something to say about Satrapi’s graphic narrative depicting her childhood in Iran, and a large majority connected it to Chute’s scholarly essay.

The biggest theme this week had to be the style in which Satrapi draws in that Chute discussed quite thoroughly in her essay, which just about everyone touched on in their blogs.  Alex rephrases one of Chute’s points, “because all of the illustrations are in black and white, a lot of the violence depicted in Satrapi’s work becomes abstract due to how colourfully destructive violence normally is in the media”.  Gabriel writes about the normalization of violence as well by quoting Therese that also wrote about this subject.  Therese puts it a little differently, saying that the simplistic drawing style allows the readers to focus more on what Satrapi is saying, therefore intensifying the content.  Satrapi is really sending a message in her book about the normalization of violence, as she is completely opposed to it, which I think is in part due to the fact that she has witnessed this kind of traumatic violence first hand.

Joseph talked about black and white as well, but really put an abstract spin on it.  The black and white used by Satrapi sparked in Joseph a lot of creative thinking, where black and white represented good and evil, truth and lies.  Two different people might see their own views as the truth, but the other’s view as wrong, so there is no real black and white, just the grey in between.  How Joseph connected it back to our class was by stating that the genre of testimony resides in this grey area.  I would highly recommend taking a look at his blog for a something quite different, and to get more detail on this subject.

Clara’s blog was another of the very few that strayed from Chute’s essay.  Clara takes a personal outlook on culture, as she has two dominant cultures in her family.  In this era of constantly increasing globalization, there will be a need to deal with other cultures that may conflict with your own.  It is within the tradition of Clara’s Korean side of the family to take their shoes off upon entering a house, showing respect and cleanliness for most furniture is at ground level in Korea; while her French side of the family don’t usually take their shoes off, as in French culture (just as in most European or Western) furniture is typically raised above the ground, and they would find it offensive, for example, if a party host asked them to remove their shoes.  “How can we reconcile cultural differences?” Clara asks.  Her family’s answer to this question is by compromising.  For instance, her French grandmother will bring an “inside” pair of shoes to wear while in the house, to respect both cultures within the family.  This relates back to Persepolis, as the Islamic fundamentalists find it wrong for Marji to be wearing Nike sneakers, and Michael Jackson pins.  The Islamic state imposes their views onto the Iranian population with no compromise, thus sparking much conflict.

In conclusion, it seems that most agree with the idea that the monochromatic tone of Satrapi’s Persepolis conveys trauma even stronger since people view violence as normal.  Paolina asks: “what would have happened if Persepolis was a colored book?”.  Or think about what Kate says: “Would more complex drawings display trauma in a more effective way than the simplistic line drawings?”.  What about if Persepolis was written as a novel, without any visual representation?  Would the message of the story be stronger or weaker?  And my last question for this post: how can we as diverse people, live together while still preserving our own traditions?  Let these questions provoke some thought, and please let me know what you think!

Blogging off (I’m trade-marking that),

Ryan.