Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Nebraska Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
symplok
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
IN MARJANE SATRAPl'S
PERSEPOLIS
Babak Elahi
abstract notion. But the 70 million people [of Iran] are human
beings, they are not an abstract notion. They are individuals
with life, love, hopes. Their life is worth the life of anybody
else in the whole world. (Wood 55)
America" produced "a cultural war against the Arabs and Islam:
appalling racist caricatures of Arabs and Muslims suggest that they are
all either terrorists or sheikhs, and that the region is a large arid slum, fit
only for profit or war" (301). Frameworks of acceptance, then, divide the
abstraction of identity into polarities of good and evil, and it is to this
kind of framing that Satrapi attempts to respond. While Satrapi wrote
her comic-book memoir, Persepolis, before George W. Bush coined the
phrase "axis of evil," she has expressed in a number of interviews1 as
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
symploke 313
people as " individuals with life, love, hopes." Since Satrapi works in the
graphic novel form, we might consider the ways in which frameworks of
acceptance work in relation to the literal pictorial framing of the comic
art panel. In what follows, I want to connect social science theories of
framing with sequential-art theories of framing, and to subject both of
these to critical theoretical models of ideological interpellation as a frame
structure in order to understand how Satrapi' s book reframes Iran and
reconstructs Iranian subjectivity. Satrapi uses the frame of the comic
Framing
Social scientists Alex Mintz and Steven B. Redd claim that political
leaders set foreign policy agendas through various forms of framing,
including what they call thematic and sequential framing. They give
examples such as Ronald Reagan's framing of the Soviet Union as the
"Evil Empire," George H. W. Bush's framing of Saddam Hussein as
Hitler, and the framing of the war in Afghanistan (by Laura Bush and
Donald Rumsfeld) as the liberation of the women of Afghanistan. We
may wish to add to Mintz and Redd's list something they do not
mention: George W. Bush's framing of Iraq, Iran, and Korea within the
rhetorical structure of "the axis of evil." Mintz and Redd call this
taken. Though Mintz and Redd don't mention them in their study,
we might recall phrases such as "WMD" and the "axis of evil" as
frames used to guide popular thinking and policy decisions with regard
to Iraq.
Another point I would add to Mintz and Redd's analysis is that this
process of framing takes an issue out of the flow of historical events,
framing them within thematic, structural, or other frames of political
neither does it try to conceal it. Unlike film, for example, in which
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
frames are made to vanish in the flow of projection, comic art uses the
seeing for the reader as Eisner has it. In this sense, then, pictorial
framing can be related to ideological framing - the filtering of
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
symplok 315
photograph, making us see the snapshot from her point of view. This
forces any reader - including any "Western" reader - to identify with
Marji, with her gaze upon herself. This kind of mirroring functions both
at the abstract ideological level and at the pictorial level in Persepolis. In
using a motif of more literal mirrors (which I shall discuss in the last
section of this essay), Satrapi forces her readers first to see Marjane (her
seeing her through the frame of the comic book narrative and its panels.
Most importantly, this identification is accomplished not by erasing the
mechanism of framing, but by exposing it through the use of picture
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
divided it into a sequence (much in the same way that Will Eisner's
comic-book artist uses panels to frame time):
for the convenience and clarity of my little theoretical theatre I
have had to present things in the form of a sequence, with a
the innumerable subjects of God's people, the Subject's interlocutorsinterpellators: his mirrors, his reflections" (179).
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
symplok 317
finger pointing to her chest, asking, "Me?" It is almost as if Satrapi were
the policeman is, certainly, literal. However, it also works as a synecdoche, standing in for the wider forms of repressive interpellation at
"State" may apply more directly to the Islamic Republic than to secular
However, Satrapi's Persepolis also explores other kinds of interpellation, those coming out of North American and Western Europe and
reaching into Iran outside of State sanction. Althusser's model has been
criticized by Stuart Hall (1985) and others as too narrowly focused on the
state and as not accounting adequately for civil (private and corporate)
ideological apparatuses. By focusing too narrowly on the state, Althusser
anecdote, she describes her infatuation with Kim Wilde as 1980s music
icon. One image in particular shows how the culture of capital also
interpellates subjectivity through a more fluid reflection. Marjane gazes
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
one panel as an ironic icon early in her two books {Persepolis 6). The
image divides the panel into two halves. On the left, Marjane's hair is
showing, free of hijab, before a backdrop decorated with gears and
wheels, a hammer, and a ruler. On the right, Marjane is appropriately
dressed in a chador, the backdrop decorated with ornate Persian designs.
This is one of the simplest and most straightforward instances of
framing within Satrapi's work. In it, we see a dichotomy between
tradition on the right, and science and technology on the left. But the
two sides of this dichotomy become more and more difficult to keep
apart, especially once Marjane goes to Europe in Persepolis 2 to find
traditions as rigid as those of Iran. The dichotomy creates a dilemma in
which the autobiographical persona must construct subjective wholeness
out of abstract divisions and fragments of self. She attempts to resolve
this dilemma in large part through her use of the mirror as a doubly
framing motif, bringing her face to face with the competing claims on
identity made not by "Western culture" and a monolithic "Islamic
ideology," but the competing claims presented by familial, educational,
religious, and sexual aspects of Marjane's life.
Mirrors
At the end of the first volume of Persepolis, Satrapi lays out the most
important psychological instance of a mirror frame when she describes
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
symplok 319
Marji's separation from her grandmother. The grandmother tells her to
be true to herself:
In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself
that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from
reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than
between Marji's bodily connection to the ample home of her grandmother's embrace and the narrow and fragmenting exile of adulthood is
Marjane tells her reflection "I will always be true to myself" (Persepolis
151). In this image, Marjane looks into her bathroom mirror, her
reflection half-obscured by the back of her head, her eye registering an
emotion between surprise and anxiety.
Althusser's discussion of the mirror-structure of ideological subject
formation bears the influence of Lacan' s discussion of how a basically
fragmentary subject is made whole through the child's response to her
own specular image within the frame of the mirror. The drama of the
mirror stage moves the individual subject from a sense of insufficiency to
that of anticipation. The sense of not being whole is replaced by a sense
concrete and clear, we might think of how art historian Anne Hollander
describes the function of the mirror in myth and painting. Hollander
writes that the mirror is "a glassy surface and empty frame [that] lie in
wait for the self-portrait that is to be re-created at each reciprocal view of
the artist and his captive subject," and that the "mirror is the personal
link between the human subject and its representation" (391). And,
Hollander explains, while the mirror is sometimes used for certain kinds
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
is agonistic and remains largely unresolved for Marjane as autobiographical persona. The first instance of the mirror as frame is not a
picture of Marjane herself, but a picture of her mother- with her hair
dyed blonde. She looks back into a bathroom mirror, her mouth in the
at her own reflection. The image of the mother as blonde and her
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
symplok 321
an exercise in art - mimicry of some kind - and a feeling of possible
damnation, between the performance of self and the subjection and
subjugation of self. Furthermore, in each one, the face reflected back is
partially hidden, as if to suggest the continuing fragmentation or incompleteness of self. And, finally, the last mirror image depicts mother and
childhood.
absent God, asking "Where are you?" Her reflection remains mute with
its back turned to us. This suggests, perhaps, a frag-mentation of the self
into the speaking subject in search of ontological grounding in a reflected
ideal and the silent or silenced other who turns her back on any such
possibility.
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
asks her mother, "Do you think I'm dressed nicely enough?" (68). This
suggests a tenuous sense of self marked by historical events and political
conflicts that threaten to destroy one of Marji's most important sources
of identity and agency - the mirror she finds in her uncle whose face she
frames with a sun-image - a classic Zoroastrian icon representing Ahura
threaten not only their relationship with each other, but also each ones
relationship with her self. Like her childhood anxiety about looking presentable enough for a visit to her uncle in prison, here too, she is concerned with how her own mother will perceive her: "I made myself as
beautiful as I could before going to meet her at the airport" (Persepolis 2
46). She thinks this as she looks back at a three-quarter image of herself
reflected in a hall mirror. At the end of her stay in Austria, just as she is
about to leave for Iran, Marjane reflects on the complexity of her own
desire for freedom and individual identity. But her desire to go home
and her need for the familiarity of national and familial belonging drive
her to readopt the hejab and to look in the mirror literally and figureatively, in another image that harks back to her mother's worried and
divided gaze into the mirror. Though we do see her full face in the
looking glass this time, it is a face that is, yet again, frowning, lined with
worry (specifically, curved lines under the eyes), and whose thoughts
betray a new uncertainty about her own motivations. Satrapi' s authorial
voice comes in to say: "so much for my individual and social liberties . . .
him, and, though she doesn't know what happens, she suspects they
punish him physically. Upon returning home, Marjane is reprimanded
by her grandmother, the same grandmother who had told her to be true
to herself. "My grandmother yelled at me for the first time in my life."
This is a lapse in her attempt to be true to that self, and again, this
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
symplok 323
uncertainty is depicted in a mirrored, framed reflection: Marji's face is
to work towards the ideal self, a self imagined for her by her grandmother, her uncle, her mother, and her father (137).
mirror. Reflected back is Marjane and her hairdresser, whose hair is dyed
blonde, whose wrinkles indicate her middle age, and who is leaning over
displaying ample cleavage. Marji, her hair in an overly adorned frame of
curls, looks back with surprise and shock into the mirror (161). The
whole process of matrimony seems disconnected from naturalized
notions of love, fidelity, and the formation of identities around a nuclear
family. Marjane wants to live with Reza before marrying him (158). But
the only way the two can live with each other is to be married first.
Furthermore, after their marriage, Marjane realizes that her identity is
not permanent, and in a two-panel sequence, she compares the woman
Reza married (Marjane smiling brightly with long hair, wearing make up
and a short dress with lace trim, sitting in front of a window overlooking
a garden with birds) with the woman he found himself living with
(Marjane frowning, smoking a cigarette, dressed in black pants and shirt,
sitting in front of a dark window at night) (164). Thus, the process of
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
is as if the mother's and the daughter's faces complete each other. In the
foreground, in the initial frame of the comic panel, we see the mother's
face - her hair dyed as in the first image of her we saw reflected in a
mirror. In the mirror - the secondary frame within the frame - we see
Marjane's face in profile. It is in this image that Marjane begins to find a
sense of self. A speech bubble shows Marjane saying, "My sweet little
mom! Trust me, I know what I'm doing" (163). But, as I have said, this
journey is incomplete, and we are left with a sense that Marjane is still in
the process of becoming a complete subject - perhaps like all of us rather than already being a complete subject, whether recruited ideologically by the state or existing in some pure and essential sense of self.
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
symplok 325
face, deer-crossing signs, ideographs, even written words, etc. At the
other end of the scale would be realistic illustrations or photographic
realism. Satrapi's art clearly falls closer to the iconic than the realistic
end of the scale. Her figures are simple line drawings with very little
attempt to produce verisimilitude through detail. She works through a
paradox between a narrative that makes Iranian history and experience
less abstract and a pictorial style that presents her characters as iconic (or
more abstract than photographs or film, for example). In this way, she
frames her own experience as a gift of identification for her reader, like
the picture frame that Lucia's father gives to Marjane as a gift. Satrapi's
Persepolis, while reframing her own autobiography within geopolitical
References
Althusser, Louis. "Ideological State Apparatuses/' Lenin and Philosophy and
Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review P, 1971.
Bahrampour, Tara. 'Tempering Rage by Drawing Comics/' New York Times (21
May 2003).
Baker, Martin. Comics: Ideology, Power and the Critics. Manchester: Manchester
UP, 1989.
Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage." Ecrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan.
New York: Norton, 1977.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper
Collins, 1993.
2004.
Wood, Summer. "Scenes from the Axis of Evil: The Tragicomic Art of Marjane
Satrapl." Bitch 22 (Fall): 55-58, 94-95.
This content downloaded from 131.188.96.185 on Fri, 10 Jun 2016 08:33:33 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms