The popular first-person game GTA has a 97/100 critic score. In many ways, that is one of the highest-rated games I’ve ever seen, and yet it compelled me to ask questions like why are my family banning me from playing it, or like why is it officially banned in certain countries? After seeing the gameplay, it becomes clear, this is diametrically opposed to Persepolis’ exemplification on minimalist representation of damage and violence.

Though I’ve never played it myself, utilizing internet resources such as YouTube to reference other people’s gameplay experience gives an empirically good sense, and GTA allows for nothing short of endless freedom of choice. It is not beyond GTA’s capacity for a player to rob, steal or shoot anybody at any time. In certain missions, you as the main character also drives a girl home for sex. GTA has been referenced as a source of some street murders, and has been banned by Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand and the UAE.

It was seen as something extreme, showcasing reality to its full potential, and the resulting factor is the downfall of high-level abstraction and a strong tendency to neutralize a person’s perspective, making extreme events seem “normal”. This is extremely problematic to young children, who does not have the full decision-making capacity of the brain at this point in their life. Being influenced by violence from a  very young age will make them think that violence is part of everyday life. If this becomes a collective youth problem, the quality of the entire society’s welfare would deteriorate, especially since these kids will grow up to become future adults who has to educate their kids. Taking this in context of Satrapi’s Persepolis, it wouldn’t have arouse much attention anyway if she were to make the violence fully graphic realism, thus when Satrapi toned-down this, it is intriguing to note whether people would feel any effect at all. Without the visual showcase of her traumatic past, will the young readers be able to interpret it for themselves? Things like GTA has literally feed players with extreme violence all the time, and that level of violence would’ve made Satrapi’s traumatic experience “obsolete” in those eyes.

Linking back, Satrapi adopted an entirely opposite technique. Chute remarked in her essay that “certain modes of representation depict historical trauma more effectively than does realism”. This is because realism in violence is able to do justice to the self-consciousness that traumatic representation demands (Chute, 102), hence no perspective can truly represent trauma. Satrapi never made this a second-hand account of her childhood or an accurate recollection of a part of history, it is a novel that actually reflects her younger self, Marji and Marjane. This is debatable since she wrote this when she was an adult and some experiences may have become “shady”. Traumatic experiences for a child can be so severe that one does not actually see anything at all. Satrapi portrays some visuals in Persepolis as a mere black page, showcasing how some violence and anger is beyond the human capacity to put down into pictures.

One can wonder whether she is insulting her own personal memory, or simply portraying it through the lens of a young girl, yet largely devoid of the traditional “innocence” associated with a person at such age. Persepolis and GTA are two very different types of entertainment, but the constant depiction of violence is mutually central. As for GTA, yes there are some evidence that suggests this game brought some violence to the world through inane users, but again it is also down to the individual’s part to play it through a safe and responsible lens, and knowing the distinction between gameplay and reality. At first, having Satrapi “neutralized” all the violence and traumatic experiences from the war might have robbed away the reader’s visual representation, but after making this connection I see the justification that Satrapi was trying to make for all of us to see.