Hello everyone, hope you’ve all had a good week so far.

This week’s blog will focus itself of a trend that has existed in the western world for quite some time and one I find very interesting. It’s the “normalization of violence.” I first heard this term while we were discussing Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood, the story of an Iranian girl during the Islamic Revolution which I described on my previous class blog.

This is something that has always intrigued me about western culture. Violence is something so intricate in our lives that we barely react to it at times. This is something I myself experienced while reading Persepolis. The book described many horrible things and yet, it wasn’t until I reflected on it that I realized the many crimes that were committed against the Iranian people. Sure there were moments where I went: “Oh sweet Lord have mercy, that’s horrible!” (I didn’t actually say this) but it wasn’t until I further analyzed the book that the horrors were made very, very clear. An example of this is found on pages 51-52 of the book: http://comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/torture-in-Persepolis.jpg. Now obviously this is a pretty extreme example and a quite noticeable one too but I didn’t fully realize the atrocities committed to this man until I sat there for a second and really dug in into what Satrapi was describing. But there is another one that perhaps may have been overlooked by the readers of this book, I know I did, and that involves Marji and her friends. Throughout the book, Marji and company were really violent in what they did. Examples include dressing up as communist revolutionaries with guns and ammunition straps, shouting “Down with the Shah!”, and attempting to beat up a boy named Ramin with nails. Their reason? His father had been a member of the secret police. While their actions could be excused of that of a couple of kids not knowing what they’re doing, it should still be noted how quick they were to resort to violence, since it was something that was ingrained in their lives from the very beginning.

Herein lies my point. In the west, we have grown accustomed to seeing these violent acts against people, there even exists an entire genre around this which is horror. However, I have also seen how many other more natural subjects be scorned and censored in media, for example nudity. Why is it that we can see a violent incident on the news with no censoring but the moment a breast comes out, we have to blur it out? While this is no longer becoming the case, with sexuality being “normalized” too (At least in cinema), I still think this trend to be a very peculiar one and something I wish you guys to also think about today.

And that’s all I got to say for today, hope you guys have a great week and I’ll see you later!