For the last few classes, my astu class has been talking about the graphic narrative Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Before I read this graphic narrative, I just thought it was some comic book and did not really take it seriously. I had this image that ” comic books ” were books for kids, or that was meant to be humorous. But, as a kept reading Persepolis, my perspective on this graphic narrative changed. I found the images very powerful and an interesting way to express one’s feelings.
Recently, my astu class also read an essay by Hilary Chute, titled, The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. In her essay, she talks about some techniques Satrapi uses to emphasize her feelings in the graphic narrative. She says ” In Persepolis, while many of the backgrounds of panels are spare, a significant number of them are also entirely black” (Chute, 98). This brings me back to my thought of how powerful an image is. As I thought about it more and more, the image of trauma started to change for me. I would think that the image of trauma would be someone crying or someone who is scared, but as I thought about it even more, there is no image for trauma. Satrapi’s way of showing trauma is with a black image, because there is no way to describe trauma in a picture or words. In Chute’s essay, she talks about the ” visual emptiness of the simple, ungraded blackness in the frames” (Chute, 98), and how effective the black background is, with no image.
In the image above (Satrapi, 142), it is seen that one of the frames completely blacked out. It is seen how Marji covers her eyes, and then on the next frame it is completely black. This is the image that truly had me thinking on how powerful images really were. I thought about how if this were to be a conventional narrative, the feelings wouldn’t have been really felt. It could only be described to a person, but in the graphic narrative it can be felt. It gives me chills how powerful a black frame is, because the thought of having no images to describe a feeling such as trauma is very haunting.
http://itinerantprofessor.blogspot.ca/2008/05/persepolis-book-review.html