Persepolis

The first time I was exposed to Persepolis was when I heard that it had been nominated for best feature animation. Which is a big deal for a European animation to be in the running for best-animated film, especially when you look around and see American animations always flooding the category.  When I read the comic I automatically saw how such a story could win an Oscar. Persepolis brings the conflicts in Iran to a much more personable level and gives a point of view that too many western countries ignore. People too easily, talk about invading Iran and dropping nukes on Iran, but every citizen of the country is a human who lives and speaks and thinks, in the same manner that anyone else does.  Persepolis brings the human factor to the conflicts in Iran that we only hear about in the news. The stories that we do hear about on the news talk about important subjects and presents to us the “facts”, and to do so, in an unbiased manner, the news stays away from personal stories.  

The way Persepolis is written I find is very similar to Maus. Everything is matter of fact and everything happens in a linear fashion, with the exception of jumping back and forth from the past and present day in Maus. Persepolis seems even more personal then Maus. It is probably because the author is sharing directly to the reader her personal memoir, while Maus is the story of the author’s father. In Persepolis we dive right into Marjane Satrapi’s mind and into her dreams, we see her conflicts not only with her parents, but also her religious conflicts with god. This is a layer of complexity and humanity that makes the book as successful of a tale as it is.