“Freedom always comes at a price” (Marjane Satrapi). Based on the Book Persepolis, Mariana Satrapi portraits a perspective of a growing child and her turbulent family towards the political climate during the Iranian Revolution and then experiencing Iran-Iraq war that happened afterward. This graphic narrative demonstrates her challenges from the new regime, such as being forced to wear a veil or exaggeration of heroism that is implied from propaganda, and how she deals with them while as portraying most Iranians as normal people like in any nation. The current trend of political climate these days are social issues like Niqab (face veil) and gender identity, and foreign issue policies like immigration. The book mentioned about these issues in a child’s perspective.
For example, at the beginning of the book, she mentioned the ‘black veil’ as the symbol of oppression towards freedom. Although women failed to overthrow the black veil policy during that time, there are changes against this subjugation slowly around the world, by banning these veils around the world, like France and other European countries.
Moreover, on issues like immigration, the book doesn’t demonstrate about people immigrating from a country to another, but it shows the complaints and antipathy towards the immigrants. The grumbles and moans towards the immigrants in the book (Persepolis page 92-93) are similar with the modern immigration issues, like the rise of unemployment and crime rates. From her memoir, she advocates towards the immigrants, while some people were discriminating towards the strangers, which can be somehow understandable since those people aren’t prosperous like Marji’s family.
According to the book, Marji’s family is wealthier than other people. Eventually, although the kid suffers the same pain that will lead through traumas in future, like losing her people who are beside her and realizing the brutality of war. From the episode of ‘The Shabbat’ (Persepolis P135-142), her town was bombed, and Baba Levy’s house was one of the victims of it. However, they suffered less from the revolution and Iran Iraq war since they had the financial advancement that can overcome this situation. For example, when the government was cracking down towards parties and alcohols (Persepolis P108-P110), Marji’s dad bribed the soldier a few bills to overlook them once.
During the 1970s to 1980s, there was the boom of the democracy movement, those different countries tried to overthrow their original governmental structure like the democratic movement that happened like countries overthrowing the colonial government. As society moves towards globalization and modernization, people would generally become the approach to new ideas, which would clash with the current ideas and sometimes the state.
The Iranian revolution in 1979 overthrowing the Shah can be portraited as “the Arab Spring”. From Persepolis, it provides a lesson today regarding what shouldn’t be done after overthrowing of the government. Based on the revolution, citizens had a common goal, which is to overthrow the original government. However, when they accomplished their goal of removing him from power, they had to create a new government. In a country in which political dissent had been suppressed for decades, the only faction that was organized and influential enough to take power quickly was the fundamentalist faction led by Khomeini, which created the new discontent towards the regime again. Based on CIA’s Factbook, the median age of Iranians are 26.8 years old, which means that these people haven’t experienced the revolution and they are opposed to the current government. Their dissatisfaction towards the government is expressed during the election protests that happened at Iran in summer and fall of 2009. Especially in the Green Movement, where people demanded more opened democratic system for a liberal society. This type of movement brought the motivation of the democratic movement from Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt that happened in 2011.
Furthermore, the memoir is published after the 9-11 terror, the event that let people have a social bias towards Muslims. Eventually, the book challenges the idea that all Muslims are terrorists. From the identification of Americans had towards people who lived in the Soviet Union, they thought they are all monsters and barbarians. However, when the U.S.S.R collapsed, people realized that Russians were ordinary people. Just like this situation, the book illustrates Iranians as normal people, which they enjoy western cultures, like fashion, music, and alcohol.
To sum up, Persepolis is a reflective book that doesn’t have any stereotypes towards Iranians and portrays them as normal people, which made people change the perspective of Islamophobia.
