Throughout this year a topic that has been reoccurring in my first year ASTU class is the discussion of different autobiographical forms and different ways in which the self can be constructed and represented. I have been especially interested in this area of scholarship, specifically with regards to social media, and its increasing relevance in the fields of autobiography and self-representation. Of particular interest to me is Instagram, an online platform where users upload photos of themselves to construct a “feed” (a collection of all of the user’s past photos) that is presented on their profile. In previous blogs I have discussed the self-representation that sites like Instagram foster and the resulting autobiographical potential that these sites contain. Recently our class studied Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis is a graphic narrative and through studying this memoir, my interest shifted to the autobiographical work that images specifically have the ability to do.
Persepolis recounts Satrapi’s experience growing up as a girl in Iran during the Iranian revolution. Satrapi’s narrative bears witness to many traumatic events right alongside her own coming of age. One specific scene that comprises an unimaginable traumatic massacre with Marji’s (Satrapi’s childhood self) first act of defiance against her parents (a normal childhood milestone) is described during a passage called “The Letter”. In this passage, Marji and her family’s live in servant Mehri, decide to take part in a public demonstration (against her parent’s wishes) protesting the Shah’s rule. As it turns out, Marji and Mehri choose to go to the demonstration on “Black Friday”(September 8th 1978). “Black Friday” was a dark point in Iranian history and a “massacre of thousands” as the Iranian military chose to open fire at the crowd of protestors (ifpnews). Satrapi tells of this experience through the use of comics.
From Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
Satrapi’s drawing of the massacre is very simplistic and unnatural “[it] show[s] her attempt to understand violence and death…as benefit[ting] a child’s understanding” (Chute 100). In result, Satrapi’s drawings add complexity and bring perspective to her narrative that would be impossible without visual elements, as readers get to experience (to a relative degree) Satrapi’s own depth of understanding.
The work that Satrapi does with graphic elements in her memoir, I argue, is comparable to the way in which users construct self-representations on Instagram. Instagram differs from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter in that it does not allow users to post only text, some sort of visual element (ie: a picture of video) must be published. Because of this, images are the primary way in which users tell of their experiences. Therefore, many users work with their images in various ways (filters, posting order, facial expressions etc) to construct a feed that tells a story of who they are, what they’ve experienced, and where they are at in their life now. A main feature on many Instagram’s users feeds is that of the selfie. “The selfie is both…the showing of the self as a character in action, and…the telling of the unseen things, feelings and actions (Barry qtd. In Eager and Dann 1837). Much like Satrapi makes use of her drawings to convey underlying feelings to her audience, Instagram users can use images such as selfies to alert their audiences to similar things. Outside, of this course and these topics, I aim to bring legitimacy to Instagram as an autobiographical and professional tool.
I argue that through the use of images to construct an autobiography, both graphic novels (Persepolis) and Instagram offer new avenues for self-representation and are similar in the way that they do so. Just like users can mold a collection of images to convey a message about themselves and their experiences on Instagram, Satrapi and other authors of graphic narratives represent their experiences through drawings that they create. I argue that images should be thought of as an integral and increasing part of autobiography, and beyond that, could be thought of as autobiographies on their own.
My work aspires to bring attention to visual, non-textual, elements of Persepolis and hopefully will allow readers to add depth to their understanding/interpretation of the narrative. As well, I hope to highlight the real ability of Images to be used as a tool of autobiography. I aim to contribute to the conversation surrounding autobiographical forms and to extend definitions of autobiography to include more than just text.
Works Cited
Chute, Hillary. “the Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1/2, 2008, pp. 92. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/233630750/fulltextPDF/90DCCE13671E4E6FPQ/1?accountid=14656. Date Accessed April 9. 2018
Eagar, Toni, and Stephen Dann. “Classifying the Narrated #selfie: Genre Typing Human-Branding Activity.” European Journal of Marketing, vol. 50, no. 9/10, 2016, pp. 1835-1857. doi:10.1108/EJM-07-2015-0509. Date Acessed April 9, 2018.
Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. Print
