Month: October 2015

In my previous blog post, I mentioned the value and importance of learning history as well as my personal change in perspective of historical events from the views of a child to who I am today. Once again in ASTU, we continued to discuss the various aspects Iranian author Marjane Satrapi wanted to draw upon through her graphic memoir, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, in which the concept of trauma stood out to me. In today’s discussion, Isabelle brought up a comment that made me want to look deeper into trauma and how it is portrayed from a child’s perspective. She voiced that she had witnessed a (live, I am assuming?) chicken killed as a child in relations to how Satrapi drew abstract and unrealistic depictions of the terrors occurring in Iran at that time. Specifically, how Satrapi portrayed traumatic incidents such as the dismemberment of her uncle as if a hallowed, disjointed mannequin, deaths as ghostly spirits or in some cases, nothing but a black emptiness. The manner in which Satrapi created these visuals are nothing like the real thing, which led me to question why and how she chose to represent trauma the way she did.

While discussing, we came to the conclusion that one of the possible reasons why Satrapi chose this style of simplistic and unusual art form was that it allowed a meaning of what we know of trauma and what we imagine trauma to be transcended through multiple levels, ultimately to a place where trauma cannot be fully represented in any form at all. That is to say, the abstract graphic form allows the reader to visually see what Marij (the protagonist) imagined as a child as well as in a sense, allow opportunity for the reader to imagine what really happened through the use of her narrative. I found this to be an engaging and interactive way of expressing and representing Satrapi’s personal experience with trauma, because it not only showed what she believed but also allowed me, the reader, to imagine through my own perspective what she was trying to convey.

When Isabelle mentioned the chicken, I was instantly reminded of my past experiences with deaths of animals. Growing up in China, I was aware of and allowed to witness the deaths of different animals (chickens, ducks, pigeons, fish, even a pig) for food. Keep in mind this was over 10 years ago, so at the time, I was around 6 or 7 years old when I saw these animals having their throat slit and watched them bleed to death. Although it may sound cruel and insensible to see these animals die and expose their act of death to a young child, this was very much a norm in some parts of China. I remember thinking that whole thing was very disgusting, and how sad it must have been for the animal to die. But at the same time, it seemed very ordinary, how animals must die to feed the human population. Looking back now, if I were to draw what I saw as a 6/7 year old, my visual representation would not be more than a scraggly shape of a chicken with X-crossed eyes and a spew of spiky blood coming from its neck.

At the age of 6/7, I clearly lacked the skills of drawing what I saw realistically. But at the same time, it was hard for me to even imagine drawing realistically (even if I could) because it was an act you do not particularly want to remember in exact details. It is hard to comprehend death of anything in any form of representation, because it is not something you usually desire to represent. I can imagine a sense of naiveness and childish innocence through Satrapi’s graphic representation, because that is how I would have drawn it myself. I also think that if Satrapi had drawn her traumatic incidents in a realistic manner, she is setting a tone for readers to believe that what she drew is the true depiction of trauma. To clarify that, I mean it in the way that readers would be more likely to associate what she presents (if it were drawn realistically in her graphic memoir) as what trauma might usually look like. That to me, is not as powerful as if a reader were to imagine the reality of trauma themselves, because everyone’s own interpretation of trauma is different. With that said, someone who actually witnessed a traumatic incident in person would not view it the same as a person who say, viewed trauma through TV or in Satrapi’s case, a graphic memoir.

The literature work that is the focus of our ASTU class this week is the graphic narrative Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This memoir documents Satrapi’s experiences of living through the Islamic revolution in Iran as a child and how events during the conflict affected her. What personally made Satrapi’s memoir stand out to me was how well she explained the historical context through the plot of the memoir. This not only gave me a general understanding of Iran’s history, but urged me to think of other similar events of war and corruption around the world. It also led me to question my own accountability of history and how my own perspectives of historical and current events had changed through time.

Prior to beginning her memoir, Marjane Satrapi included a brief introduction about the history of Iran – how it developed from the nomadic Aryans to the great Persian Empire and finally the formation of Iran itself. The history of Iran rang a familiar sound to me, particularly when Satrapi explained that the Islamic revolution was initiated with the support of USA. In both my high school history class and my current history class at UBC, it seems common that powerful countries such as the US often manipulates and twists the government of the country in focus for their own benefit. Similarly, the Shah of the Islamic republic came into power through a coup d’etat – the french term for a sudden upheaval of the (current) government. In supporting this coup, the US was able to gain access to the oil riches located in Iran, yet ignored the chaos that soon followed this new government.

This reminded me of several cases in Latin America where the American government would assist with a coup in order to establish a new [puppet] government, and often times the US would benefit by gaining some type of resource or trade agreement. For example, Chile and the 1973 coup of its democratically elected leader occurred because CIA covert troops assisted in the coup. But what does this mean, and why does it matter if it happened in the past?

In hindsight, my method of thinking about these important issues has developed in a way similar to Marji, the protagonist of the memoir, from naiveness to a more mature perspective. I feel like I did not care about past historical events such as Chile and Iran because I just assumed that it happened (and that was it) and which ever was the first logical version of history I heard about it, I would believe it to be true. I also assumed that “democratic” countries such as the US would never be largely at fault for anything because they were suppose to be the good guys, right? Much like Marji herself, I was quick to assume and judge both historical and current events because I could not see the same story from multiple events. As Satrapi reflects upon her child self, she remarks that “[she] realized [she] didn’t understand anything”. Likewise, I did not question why things had happened the way they did, nor did I look further into the issue. In this sense, I never really could relate to past historical events – I was just someone reading about it and then forgetting it. That is until I heard multiple perspectives of historical events, it was not just from the perspective of the victors anymore. I realized that history is constructed from the perspectives of victors, victims, allies, bystanders and attackers (and more). And it was up to me to chose for myself which history was the “right” one.

It is true history is subjective, and the fact that she had recalled her experiences as a child does not mean it is any less true than other historical accounts. That is to say, historical context may wield more insight and questions than the dry, boring material is it known to be.

Peijia Ding

Citation:

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York, NY: Pantheon, 2003. Print.