Many people see graphic narrative simply as a form of entertainment; unfit to be analyzed by students at a world-renowned school like the University of British Columbia. This uneducated assumption would be just that, an uneducated assumption. Graphic narratives can aid in a scholars understanding of events as they provide a deeper meaning that requires intellectuals to think deeply and find meaning in symbols and the art, rather than just blatantly looking to the syntax in written novels to understand the deeper meaning.

After reading the graphic narrative, Persepolis, in UBC’s first year ASTU class, we went on to analyze an article by scholarly writer, Hillary Chute, which examines the effectiveness of graphic narratives in relation to retelling history and explaining trauma.

Chute makes her position clear by the first couple paragraphs of her article, “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis”, that she passionately supports the use of graphic narratives in regards to retelling events. In the second key paragraph of her literary piece, she specifically focuses on the simplistic style of art utilized by Marjane Satrapi. She describes the minimalist and childlike artwork throughout Persepolis as “[A] sophisticated, and historically cognizant, means of doing the work of seeing” (Chute 99). Here, Chute recognizes the complex meaning embedded in minimalistic artwork and how less detail can bring about a deeper understanding of events that cannot adequately be represented by language alone.

This idea of minimalist artwork has been incredibly influential throughout art history. It became an outlet to reflect on societal culture with an ironic twist in the late 1950’s when “Pop Art” or “Dada” became well known throughout America and Europe. This seemingly simple art was ridden with deeper meanings, and in most cases was a rebellious style of art that was used as a way of passively protesting laws or societal norms. This use of art as rebellion reflects the deeper meaning throughout Persepolis as the book is centered around the peoples rebellion of the social/religious norms and laws in Iran at the time.

Keith Haring (1958-1990), a modern artist and activist who started out with graffiti but became well known for his murals, has a similar style of art to the artwork in Persepolis. Though Keith Haring did not consistently use the strict black and white palette that is used by Marjane Satrapi in her graphic narrative, he utilizes simplistic figures and objects to portray a greater and more complex meaning, in his case usually to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS. In a biography of Haring by the A&E Television Networks, his art is described as, “deceptively simple” with “deeper themes of love, death, war and social harmony”. This is extremely similar to the opinion Chute has towards Satrapi’s basic art in Persepolis, “The visual emptiness…shows not the scarcity of memory, but rather its thickness, its depth;” (Chute 98).

Other than the simple lines and generally black and white color used in both Satrapi’s and Haring’s art work, they also share a stylistic trend of portraying masses as all identical and similar. This shows how they both see society as a collective group rather than individuals. In Persepolis, Marjane draws the masses as undistinguishable because, in a sense she is showing them as a united front for rebellion, creating a visual representation of the power in masses of people. Similarly, Keith Haring’s art portrays the crowds as identical as a way of calling out to society to make a change together, to show how unified we can be, and how we are all similar and equal.

Works Cited

Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36.1 & 2 (2008). Print.