Persepolis Review

"Persepolis" is a story of a young girl coming-of-age in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It is through the eyes of intelligent and outspoken nine-year-old, Marjane, who is a rebellious young Iranian heroine. The Iranian people’s hopes are dashed as fundamentalists take power - forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. Clever and fearless, Marji outsmarts the "social guardians" and discovers punk, ABBA and Iron Maiden. Yet when her uncle is senselessly executed and as bombs fall around Tehran in the Iran/Iraq war the daily fear that permeates life in Iran is obvious. “Persepolis” is frequently somber, and is a perfect expression of the imagination’s resistance to the literal-minded and the power-mad, who insist that the world can only be seen in black and white.

"Persepolis" was not what I expected. I have never read a comic book in my life and I really didn't care too, but once I started ready Persepolis I really got into it. I originally thought it was going to be a nice story with a "happy ending." But it wasn't at all what I expected. Satrapi's story focuses on how she remembers the Iranian revolution and then the first years after. It is very insightful and deep, which kept my attention.

I liked the movie, but I thought the comic was better. The movie left out some details, and took away from the imaging, which the comic allows. "If the movie version has been conventionally casted and acted, it would inevitably have seemed less magical as well as less real," states one critic. I, on the other hand, disagree. Although I think the simplistic drawing style worked for the comic I don't think it worked in the same sense in the movie. I believe that if the movie was conventionally casted and acted then it would have seemed more real and maybe more people could relate to Marji, since it would have been a real person acting rather then a cartoon.

Satrapi's drawing style is very simple, the figures very basic, the scenes rarely involving much detail. McCloud stated that, "by stripping down an imaging to its essential meaning an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can't." So basically by making the drawing simple, Satrapi can portray what is going on the the scene more effectively. Which I think since the drawings were simple you paid more attention, which made the reader more aware of changes in Marji's face and her emotion came across very effectively. The only negative about the simple drawing is sometimes I couldn't tell the characters apart.

Overall, I really liked the comic of "Persepolis." It was not what you would expect a comic to be, but in a good way. Reading Eisner and McCloud also helped understanding "Persepolis" better, because it pointed out things that comics portray that movies and text can't which was useful. For example, when McCloud mentioned that the position of comic panels shows a time change, where a movie can not portray the time jumps the same, which I think is another thing that took away from the movie. In conclusion, I enjoyed reading "Persepolis" and I am glad we saw the movie also.