A new year, a new semester, a new set of blog posts & comments! After reading several posts by your classmates, please add your comment to this post.
I’ve been thinking about Chute and some more about “Pen Pineapple Apple Pen“: what a great way to think about “productive disjuncture.” Yes? No? 🙂
See you next week!
I found it interesting that Maya noted that Chicago Public Schools in 2013 restricted students’ access to Persepolis because they believed the images were too graphic when there is little regulation against the graphic and violent content in popular films and video games for kids. Maya added that it is ironic that when graphic images tell the story of real life crises that only then are they inappropriate for kids.
I think that what Maya has explained well-proves Hilary Chute’s point that Karyn has discussed in her blog about how the simplicity of the way the images have been drawn in black and white have an emphasizing effect on the events, details and messages that Satrapi puts forward in Persepolis.
Maya and Karyn’s blogs reminded me of what my group discussed last week when we were assigned to analyze a section of Chute’s article. We talked about how Chute noted that the monochrome images emphasize the violence and the trauma that is being told since we are so desensitized to the violence that happens in everyday life in colour. Without colour and realistic images that we are used to and that distract us, the raw and horrifying reality that the images depict are revealed and realized.
Maya and Alex Chow’s blogs stood out to me as I read through this set of posts. I found that they could in fact link to one another, as Maya discusses attempts made to censor Persepolis for its radical political claims, and Alex discusses one of these very claims related to feminism. It surprises me that a book that is so well-made would be challenged to censorship in North America, a continent apparently characterized by high personal freedoms, including the freedom of speech. Maya made a good point in paralleling the extreme brutality shared in video games & movies and the simple representations of torture in Persepolis: why should the sharing of a real story that would contribute to global awareness and (hopefully) political action towards peace be censored, and yet the representation of brutality for the sake of brutality is readily available for young children to play with?
As i read through the first set of blog posts for the term, I found many posts discussing various aspects of graphic narratives and Persepolis (as did I). Amongst them, I found Merial and Elena’s discussions on the national identity of Marjan Satrapi in Persepolis particularly relevant and interesting. While Elena discusses the implications of the intertwining of Satrapi’s personal story with that of her country’s history, Merial links this act to Satrapi’s desire to reconnect with her national roots. While researching for my own blog on Satrapi’s views, I found that this desire was very much present in her interviews. From her interview with Emma Watson, she says:
“There are parts of me that will always be Iranian. These are things that I cannot change.”
And from another interview with Annie Tully:
“I am a foreigner in Iran. I don’t take the risk to go back to my country anymore, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling not to belong to any place anymore, at the same time it’s a hard feeling…
I can live fifty years in France and my affection will always be with Iran. I always say that if I were a man I might say that Iran is my mother and France is my wife. My mother, whether she’s crazy or not, I would die for her, no matter what she is my mother. She is me and I am her. My wife I can cheat on with another woman, I can leave her, I can also love her and make her children, I can do all of that but it’s not like with my mother. But nowhere is my home any more. I will never have any home any more. Having lived what I have lived, I can never see the future. It’s a big difference when someone has to leave their country.”
Links for both interviews can be found on my blog!
After reading through some of the blog posts, I thought that Elena’s post comparing Persepolis and I Am Malala was interesting. I liked reading about how the two authors used non personnel history to, as Elena claims, both inform readers and “contribute to the authors sense of self”. I haven’t really been thinking about it in terms of the history “creating” the author and think that it was a good point to discuss.
I also thought Alex’s blog about :feminist” vs. “Humanist” was really interesting. I liked how he incorporated several interviews and dug deeper into one of the main aspects of the text that Chute argues about (that it is a feminist text).
The following are my blog comments on the indicated people’s blogs (also posted on their blogs):
Eva Ruiz
I like how you have expanded further on Chutes analysis of Persepolis from what we discussed in class by talking about how there are three Satrapi’s in Persepolis: the “author,” “the narrator of the text,” and the “child protagonist.” I see that you have also incorporated what your group spoke about in class into your blog by including your group’s observation of the sunken chest and droopy eyes. Your blog is really quite informative and helpful because it not only expands on what we spoke about in class but also to other insights of Chutes. Your blog post has helped me to further understand Chutes insights and also what we ourselves can make of Persepolis.
Paige Furlan
Reading your blog made me more aware of the sudden interest and mass production of the supernatural in the comic books and graphic novels. The history you also share in your blog about the surge of the ‘supernatural’ being the main theme for comic books in the twenty-first century, but also the lack of female protagonists and female storylines. Also giving the example of how manga has increased the representation of female’s storylines and females as main characters have had an impact on the representation of females in graphic narratives and also as authors and writers themselves. It is all very interesting and not something I considered to be a big influence, but after reading your blog post I see that it is.
Reading through the blogs, I found Kwezi’s post relating the idea of depicting life narratives through graphic novels to the ever popular “Draw My Life” on Youtube, calling it “a modern day graphic novel”. I found this idea very interesting, as Kwezi analyzed all the various aspects of how the artist chooses to express him or herself, similar to the way we analyzed “Persepolis” in class. The idea that they are so similar also got me thinking about how both these pieces are received by the global audience. The video, “Short” currently has over four million view on Youtube that continues to grow today, especially being on a platform that is free and easily accessible. Although “Persepolis” is also a very popular graphic novel, I wonder how it compares to Youtube videos in terms of being able to influence as well as reach a greater audience. If that is the case, are these “modern day graphic [novels]” proving to be the dominant force in sharing life through a verbal visual field?
After reading some of the blog posts, I realized that identity was a topic that kept on arising. I found it really interesting people can be able to present themselves however they want even if they themselves are not like that. Thus, having the ability to fool others who do not know them. I read Nicole’s blog, however, on how Youtubers represent themselves on Youtube. She discusses how most Youtube videos used to be full of scripts and edits but there is also something called vlogging that shows their audience real events that are unplanned. From this, I started to question how much of their personal life is the vlogger not documenting to show their audience. The individuals, then, have an identity. Similarly to Marjane Satrapi, she also recalled her childhood and documented it into a graphic narrative. I found it interesting that Merial discusses the national identity of Satrapi, how one’s national identity and personal identity will be interconnected because one influences the other. I really enjoyed reading this blog post since it mentions about one’s background and culture.
I found that there was a lot of discussion about self-representation through comics in this set of blogs. In her blog Selena discussed Satrapi?s ability to ?make the hidden visible? through the use of the visual aspect of comics. She elaborates on this point to state that during the Islamic revolution the Iranian government attempted to suppress women, but Satrapi reclaims their identity by telling her story. This point related to Maddie?s blog about the fictional representation of self-narratives, and how the fictional Marvel characters can be used to represent marginalized groups. In both cases of Persepolis and Marvel comics the use of one character can be seen as a way to acknowledge a previously marginalized group. Overall I found the discussion about the comic as a way to represent the invisible and that this idea can be extrapolated to comics beyond those dealing with direct self representation to be an interesting concept.
I found Maya’s blog, that highlighted how the simplicity of Persepolis effectively represented trauma, very interesting. Including data on how school boards (in Chicago) worked on limiting access to Persepolis to students, as well as how it was included in the ‘Top Ten Most Challenged Books’ list; all because of how ‘traumatic’ the images and content were (which was quite ironic, since the visuals and content were unrealistic and child-like) strongly supports Maya’s argument of how simplicity is powerful – “images that fit along with these scenes, although extremely simple, captured the almost ?simple? of idea of torture itself”. Maya’s quote really made me look at the idea of trauma differently – a powerful way of expressing trauma is by normalising it and making it seem close to home. Persepolis did this and was highly successful in making readers feel uneasy and, therefore, worried that their children might be scared from what is evidently an innocent, naive depiction of trauma.
Many blogs decided to take a closer look at underlying themes in Satrapi’s Persepolis. Alex’s blog for instance examined the Feminist identity in Persepolis, interestingly he used interviews with Marjane Satrapi in order to provide insight into the views of the author. Satrapi seems to disagree with the idea of being a ‘Feminist’ per say and preferred the Humanist label. She argues that feminism as it stands puts too strong of a focus on the separation of the genders instead of the unification of them. This contrasts with Chutes claim of Persepolis falling into the Feminist category. The two authors may differ on their interpretations of the Feminist ideals and purpose however, as Persepolis could be argued to promote equality and understanding across the sexes.
After reading multiple of my classmates’ blogs, I couldn’t help but note that three of them in particular (Sam Z.’s, Kwezi’s, and Merial’s) happened to focus somewhat on the topic of the significance of visuals in terms of representation. I found Sam’s connection between Cockeyed and Persepolis quite intriguing because he points out how experiences are represented differently to everyone, depending on how the visual of an experience is represented. In the case of Cockeyed and Persepolis, their visual representation of trauma is limited due to factors in their life limiting how they experienced events. Knighton’s blindness and Satrapi’s childhood naivety are two reasons as to why their visual representation of experiences may have been limited. However, that is not to say that their experience of events is any less legitimate – rather, it is just that their visual experience connected to their own identity, as shown through their writing.
After reading a couple blogs I found Kwezi’s and Nicole’s blogs which both reflected about youtube and the different ways in which they acted as a form of self representation. Though these two blogs focuses on that fact they were very different which I found very enjoyable and interesting. Nicole’s blog focused on the self representation of a specific youtuber and how she represented herself differently for her two different types of videos. I especially found the fact that the difference in comments between her make up videos and vlogs were so different. Then Kwezi’s blog was interesting in that she chose to focus on the graphic narrative part of youtube and how there was a challenge that included drawing your life. This was very interesting in that I didn’t know about it but that there were also videos attached to the blog that I could then watch for more context. Overall, I very much enjoyed their blogs and how they approached self representation on youtube so differently.