The texture of retracting in Marjane Satrapi’s “persepolis”(Hillary Chute 2008), published by the feminist press at city university of New Yorks is the topic I would choose for today’s blog. To be honest, I realized there is so much thing that need to be analyzed in depth after I finished skimming through the article. Obviously, it is an article that gives a deep analysis on the book persepolis in various perspective that is totally new for me, such as politic, traumatic experience, violence, pictorial features and memory.

First of all, I would start with the part that impressed me the most, the pictorial feature. Actually,  pictorial feature also has several subbranches, including the usage of colors and the style of the comic. Evidently, the colors are black and white and it differ persepolis from not only the today’s color-rich comic but also the traditional persian miniatures. Apart from what I discussed in the previous blog, there is something new. One statement by Chute caught my attention, ” The minimalist play of black and white is part of Satrapi’s stated aim, as with avant-garde tradition, to present event with a pointed degree of abstraction in order to call attention to the horror of history…” ( Chute 2008). With all due respect, I seriously doubt that. Chute mentioned the use of black and white can ultimately call attention to the horror of history. Even though I know little about avant-garde tradition, I can not actually have the same realization, because in my eyes, avant-grade tradition means the opposite of conservative and I can not find some relationship in between. In addition, in the end of the sentence, Chute mentioned “endemic images”, only then can I understand. Personally, I believe that history can only stay unadulterated when it is inherited in its own medium, like Chinese history should be told in Chinese. So, endemic images, as another kind of medium, is making a perfect sense.

Sequently, the perspective of traumatic experience and violence is another interesting topic to me.  It is not hard to discover that dead body or piece of it are consistently appearing in the book, and fatal punishment, executions, torture are somehow becoming significant role in persepolis. However, I can only feel its reality rather than something horrific. Then there is a terminology “ostensibly transparent representational model”, which can literally explain the reason why i have that feeling. Moreover, by drawing those image in the perspective of a child, Satrapi was actually demonstrating that model. Personally, depicting in a child’s eye is, in some way, more effective. However, according to Chute, there is no perspective can fully represent trauma, just like we can not thoroughly describe something abstract, like the word–horror. This is the part I share the same feeling.