Persepolis

The reading of Persepolis and the review of Hilary Chute on Persepolis expressed the emotional maturation of Marjane Satrapi, the author of Persepolis, in a graphic novel that will show her life in Iran in how her life changed in 1 year from 1979 to 1980. It opens up on how wearing a veil will be required for every girl to wear at school and then the girls and boys will be seperated from each other in school. The actual graphic of this scene though kind of confused me when I saw it because it showed the girls using the veils for different reasons such as a jump rope and to ride on another kids back like a horse. I think its showing the confusion of wearing a veil to school and starting to notice the first difference in their lives in effect from the revolution. The reading then takes a different turn and confuses me when the girl shows that she was born with religion but then claims herself as a "the last prophet". I learned more about what the girl was concerned about, such as family holidays and good health, but it still made me wonder where this reading was taking me. The girls parents will be found protesting the veil and the girls mother will be caught in a picture protesting and will be published in magazines. The mother will cover up by dying her hair, this shows a sense of power that the government holds and paranoia, that by protesting, their lifes are on the line. "The Bicycle" had a weird way of simply stating that a revolution was happening in Iran because it showed the girl dressed up in military clothes with a weapon and idolizing Castro, Guevera and Trotsky. Then the girl says that God looks like Marx and then we find the girl talking to God. This just made me confused because I had no idea what exactly was going on, I just saw the main message that there was a revolution going on in Iran. It leads to then a local current event on a movie theater that got burned down with people inside and the police standing outside, the girl over hears her parents and she feels motivated to participate at a protest with them.  "The Water Cell" explains a story told by the father to the daughter on how the girls grand father was a prince, he was tortured and but inside a water cell and it depressed the girl in how horrible he was treated. She then sits in a bath for a long time to see how her grand father would have felt. "Kim Wilde" showed how the girls parents went to Turkey to bring her back modern gifts such as a denim jacket, posters and nike shoes. They had to sneek them in and when they give the gifts to the girl, it first of all makes her very happy and wants to go out and buy some tapes from the black market. The "Gaurdians of the Revolution" find the girl on the street wearing a denim jacket, nike shoes and a Michael Jackson pin on her jacket. The gaurdians wanted to take her away but Marji just ends up crying and lying about how her parents were dead and she needed to be home on time. The message of "Kim Wilde" shows the few rights that women have and how the new modern era is not accepted in their culture. 

Hilary Chute Review of Persepolis
Hilary Chute does a complete review on the whole graphic novel on Persepolis and focuses more on parts that I didn't get to read. Chute gets into depth on the meaning of Persepolis on how dramatic the actual story is and its success. Chute observes on how there are constantly dead bodies through out the story and how majority of the drawings seemed to show more black. Black seemed to have represent the depression of the time in Iran during the revolution and war. Chute also does a review on the movie of Persepolis and its success as a low budget and experience movie. Chute then does a comparisson of the two. Chute also states the controversy that the movie made in Iran by having the President call the film "ant-Iranian" in how it doesn't show the true meaning of the "glorious" revolution.   

The Chute review seemed to be more complicated for me actually talk about because majority of the article I couldn't relate to since I havent read the whole graphic novel and I haven't seen the movie. It was more interesting for me to read the acutal graphic novel that was provided for me. I enjoyed the reading and learned more about the history of Iran and see that they were headed to a more modern direction until 1980. I can't actually relate the reading to myself since I never really had a experience like that. I could kind of relate to the part when Marji finds out that her grand father was a prince when my father explained to me that my grand father was more than just a war veteran, but he was actually a very important under cover FBI agent after the military. I had that same reaction of picturing my grand father as a amazing hero as Marji had. I found the reading to teach me also about the very little rights that women have in these countries. If I could ask questions to Satrapi I would ask:

• What experiences did you have with friends, I notice in the reading that you never seem to be with friends that believed in the same way as you.
  
• How do you feel by having the President of Iran state your novel to be "Anti-Iranian"?
• Did you kept wearing your denim jacket and shoes after your experience with the Gaurdians?