“Life isn’t black and white. It’s a million gray areas, don’t you find?”
After reading the student blogs from this month, I found that an overwhelming number of my classmates wrote about Marjane Satrapi’s graphic narrative, “Persepolis.” As suggested by Amanda, although this book is illustrated in black and white, history and memories themselves are not distinct, thus leaving room for many grey areas.
MEMORY VS HISTORY
The way in which stories are told are highlighted in Meghan, Moha, and Joline’s blogs. All three of them focus on the idea of personal truths. As mentioned in our ASTU class, history and memory are often entangled with one another, yet many individuals believe that history is black and white because they are perceived as more factual or reliable. However, we can learn from Satrapi’s “Perseplis” and several of our classmates, that this is not the case. There is no clear cut line between history and memory. As Joline suggests, “the political story [in “Persepolis,” is] … based on [Marji’s] experience. There is this overlap between history and cultural memory, because what Marji experienced as a child is her version of the Islamic Revolution, and is therefore her history. We can further relate this concept to the reading we did by Maria Sturken. Sturken argues that “cultural memory can be distinct from history yet … it is essential to its construction.” Memory and history are not two separate entities, instead, they shape and give meaning to one another. For example, a history textbook cannot be formed without the memories of those who lived in the past. What we read in a textbook is someone else’s interpretation of the past, which explains why a textbook published in China on the Second World War will be different from one that is published in Japan.
RELIGION
Religion is not as “black and white” as many people perceive. Satrapi does a wonderful job in revealing to her audience that religion is personal, and perspectives change depending on the individual. Moha mentions her blog that“Marji has her own conception of religion which differs quite significantly from that of the regime.” Often, our understanding of a religion comes from surface level observations and stereotypes that do not leave much room for a greater interpretation. Suvi points out that stereotypes are a slippery slope that can lead us to labeling large groups of people as one thing. Consequently, this mentality can lead us to believing that a certain religion is corrupt or a “source of terrorism,” as Suvi describes, based on a few extremists.
OURSELVES
There are also grey areas within ourselves, or as Kirveena phrases it, “the darkness and light of one’s self [that shapes] our identity.” In “Persepolis,” the colours black and white are used to depict characters and their characteristics. Amanda suggests that “Satrapi uses black to represent sadness, suppression and violence [and] white to show pure, heroic objects.” However, the way in which we decide whether something is “good” or “bad” is all up to the individual’s interpretation of the scenario. For a fundamentalist, the actions they are committing are considered good or even holy in their own eyes. Therefore, if it was a fundamentalist who wrote “Persepolis,” the colours would reverse, and those in power would be the ones dressed in white. Whether something is good or bad is subjective. Humans are complex beings, and their characteristics cannot be classified as either fully black or fully white, yet we often classify people into these two distinct groups.
“No person is completely wicked, just as no person is perfect. We are all grey”
– Shinde Sweety
THE GREY AREA
Most if not all individuals tend to enjoy categorizing and separating things into groups. We perceive things as either black or white. However, as several of our classmates and Satrapi reveals, groups are all interconnected and overlap in various ways. Most things in life are not black or white, instead, they are grey.