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Photo: Courtesy of @oursharedshelf
For her latest Our Shared Shelf book club choice, Emma Watson chats with author
Marjane Satrapi about her groundbreaking autobiographical graphic novel, Persepo
lis.
Emma Watson: In Persepolis you show the relative freedom that women experienced
in Iran in the 1970s compared to the strict laws that governed their behavior af
ter the revolution. Do you think life is any easier for women now than it was wh
en you were a child?
Marjane Satrapi: According to the law, we had much more freedom because women co
uld, for example, ask for a divorce. But when a woman is uneducated and is not a
ctually economically independent, you can have all the rights to divorce that yo
u want and it doesn t make a huge difference. At the end of the day, you know, if
you have three kids, no education, no job what do you do? You don t divorce; you hav
e to stay with the same asshole all your life!
Today the thing is that the laws are much more anti-women. However, at the same
time, it seems that repeating over and over to women you re worth half of men, you re
worth half of men has meant all these women actually go and study much more. So
that today two-thirds 70 percent! of students in Iran are girls.
And so they re playing a role in all of these domains. In the end, this means that
when these girls and women marry, they will be more educated than their own fat
her, their own husband, their own brother and then they cannot give them shit! Th
ey can no longer tell them You re worth half of men, you know?
So if women have the possibility of working for a living, they could actually ma
nage to get a divorce. First you have to have economic independence of women, an
d then we can talk about the freedom of women. If women are educated, they will
be economically independent and they will just accept less shit. That is the fir
st step toward democracy.
The enemy of democracy isn t one person. The enemy of democracy is patriarchal cul
ture. As with the family, where the father of the family decides and has the las
t word, so a dictator is the father of the nation.
If we have more educated women, then we have more educated societies. This is wi
thout any feminist prejudice it s fact.
I have to tell you that when I was a child, my mum used to tell me all the time:
Oh, you should never count on your face; count on your intelligence. I don t care
if you get married or not. I want you to study and to be economically independen
t.
Now, as a child I thought she was actually telling me: You are extremely ugly, yo
u are never going to make it. You shouldn t even try to be cute . . . the cause is
lost and no matter what, nobody is going to marry you so at least try to be bri
ght!
EW: That s how you interpreted it?!
MS: Yes, absolutely. I talked to her about it when I was 28 and she, of course,
told me I was very stupid to think like that.
EW: But I guess now, understanding the context and time in which she was telling
you that, it seems extraordinary that she was giving you this message. What do
you think made your mother so empowered? Where did this empowered line of women
from which you descended come from?
MS: This has a lot to do with geography you know, I come from the north of Iran. I
t s an area where we plant rice, where the women work beside each other, bent over
all day. So there is no division between genders.
My mother grew up in this place and she was very loved by her father and family.
But you look around and you see a society that does not say that men and women
are equal. That says it can t use women for causes other than making children or s
ex. Women are actually using half of their capacity or less; half of their talen
ts or less; half of their brains or less; half of their work or less. So this so
ciety works at half speed or less.
But she was a woman of the 1960s and 1970s, and she really didn t want me to learn
those ideas. I was brought up with the idea that you are a human being. They neve
r told me you are a girl or you are a boy. They told me anything that a human being c
an do, that is humanly possible, you can do.
And my parents were clear that the first thing you
ou study, you can do whatever you want. But if you
you shit! So the calculation was very easy because
do whatever I wanted, I had to be good at school.
EW: I had that when I grew up as well my mum was pretty laid-back about a lot of t
hings, but I had to do well in school.
MS: Also, I think that we blame lots of things on men and how nasty they are, bu
t there is also the role of women. In a patriarchal culture, who are the ones th
at raise the children? It s the women. It s they who say: You know, oh my girl, you h
ave to be pretty. My son, you have all the rights, et cetera. I have seen extreme
ly patriarchal women and feminist men, so I don t think it s a question of gender. I
t s a question of intelligence.
And look at the female magazines, all the female magazines! I never read them be
cause they are really horrible and very superficial. How am I going to lose 10 po
unds before summertime? What if I don t want to lose 10 pounds? Because you know th
e little crease that I have I really love it. And what if I don t want to have perfe
ct skin, because I m 45 years old and of course I am aging?
But is that really the fault of men? I don t think so. That is our responsibility,
and when we blame it on men, we always put ourselves in the situation of the vi
ctim. And we are not victims. We are human beings. We have our brain. Nobody can
stop us from being gorgeous, intelligent, thoughtful. Okay, we cannot run in th
e same category in the Olympic Games because we don t have the same muscles. But I
see specific festivals like a female literary
festival and I ask, Why on earth does my nipple make me write differently? Or is
it my female condition? I read a lot of books written by men talking about women
who I cannot identify with.
We need to be a little bit smarter.
EW: That is really disturbing. What s coming through, and what I really identify w
ith, is that you really believe in human beings autonomy and their own innate pow
er and ability to govern their circumstances. And I think that s awesome.
MS: The only person who stops you from being free is ourselves. Nobody can take
your freedom. I mean, I have lived in a dictatorship. I know what I am talking a
bout.
EW: I was going to say it is so difficult for those who haven t experienced it to co
mment on or imagine what it is like to live in those conditions, but you have th
e right to say something like that because you really know; you ve lived it.
MS: I have lived in a dictatorship. There was a ban on everything! Was I less fr
ee in my mind? No, I wasn t. Did I become a stupid person? No, I didn t. Because no
matter how much they looked at me, they could not get into my mind. That belongs
to me. And that is under my control if I decide it is. And I can only decide th
at if I train it. If you don t use it, it shrinks, and if you use it, it grows. So
it is up to us.
We should not have the limit imposed on us. We should ask ourselves the real que
stions we face.
And I think that women can be and are very, very hard on one another. You know,
I turned 30, and in all the interviews I was asked, Do you have a child?
No.
And then again:
No.
Why don t you have a child?
Well, because I don t want to be anybody s mother.
But as a woman I have to justify myself all the time. And if I want to say,
t to dedicate my life to my work, I am called an ambitious bitch!
I wan
The story is that Eve had so much more guts, so she tried because she was curiou
s, and Adam followed her like he was a sheep. That was the reality, but it is de
scribed as the fault of Eve. So therefore a woman is bad we are bad. This is it. I
t is a problem of the image of women, no matter where you go.
In some countries, they try to cover women up. In other countries, you have to h
ave her naked. When we sell a car, orange juice, or whatever, we will show you a
pair of boobs. So it s a problem with the image of women.
I think that the situation for Western women, of course, is a hundred times bett
er, which is why I came and lived in the West. I can make decisions for myself h
ere. But at the same time, we are far from being equal. Women are still used. Li
ke you use something; we re an object.
EW: Yes, I agree girls and women have to be able to figure out ways to feel like
we re more empowered.
MS: When a man hits another man, the other man hits him back. This means when so
meone does something to you physically that you don t want, then you have the righ
t to defend yourself physically. That is just the basic right. But how many time
s have people said, Oh, you are such a savage! about me. I am not just a savage a sa
vage goes and beats people up for no reason. I defend myself. But how many times
do we really stand up?
And in all this imagery of women in films, how many leading roles do we have tha
t are women that are unrelated to the men? She s always a wife, a mother, a lover,
a grandmother. Can t she just be her?
We have a long way to go, but I think that is our own decision. We have to bring
up our kids telling them, You are first and foremost human beings. Your gender ma
tters only when you are in love and when you are with your lover, yes, your gend
er matters. You can be a woman or a man, whatever you want to be. The rest of th
e time, just behave like a human being. Full stop.
And some feminist movements don t help because they lack so much humor. In America
, you might see bad behavior, and they respond, Oh, it s such masculine behavior. Yo
u just think, Have you really never seen a nasty woman? It has nothing to do with
him being a guy. You know, Simone de Beauvoir said, You are not born a woman; you
become a woman. And so you are not born a man either you become a man, as society
teaches you how to behave.
The feminist movement for a long time has been there to cut the guy s penis off. A
nd this is not a good thing. We cannot make the same mistake as men did with the
gentlemen s clubs to exclude them. We have to be more intelligent and say, We will
make life together with you, we will collaborate, and let s be together.
. . . I need a new kind of feminism where we are brighter than the stupid men of
a century ago and we teach them the lessons. That is how good we can be. Let s co
nstruct this world together. Let s behave toward each other in a nice way, in a hu
manistic way, and maybe we can do something better.
EW: I love that and I completely agree with you about humor. It s everything. The
author who we read before Persepolis was English comedian Caitlin Moran, who wro
te a book called How to Be a Woman. You know, in some ways it s seen as quite cont
roversial and there are things that people are very offended by, but by god at the v
ery least it has some humor.
MS: And we should have it!
EW: And we need it.
And I also think there was something inconsistent in the argument, which was tha
t they should be emancipated. But if these girls had to be emancipated, how can
they be emancipated if they don t go to school? If you ban them from school becaus
e their family forces them to put on a veil, then you achieve the same result th
at their families wanted to not be educated and to marry a cousin from a small tow
n somewhere.
So instead of going to school and being emancipated, she is 20 and she already h
as five kids. Another big success! Instead of banning things, you have to have a
real dialogue, and if people really believe in something and they want to cover
themselves, let them do it. But my question is that: Why is it that 30 years ag
o we didn t have many veiled women, and why do we have it today? This is the quest
ion.
EW: Why has it gone up? Why is it increasing?
MS: Because, as in France, it s a question of identity. In France, even after thre
e generations, they call them the Arabs, yet when they go to the country of their
parents, they are called the French. They are respected nowhere, so where and how
do they find an identity? In religion.
So maybe we can offer them another identity, by letting them study, letting them
go to the school of the republic, and then they will have the chance to be eman
cipated. I don t think you can change anything by either revolutions or the law. T
he only thing that can change the world is the slow evolution of culture.
If the culture of a society does not change, you cannot change anything. The thi
nking seems to have been that because you go and throw bombs in Afghanistan and
put in Coca-Cola machines that it suddenly becomes a democracy. Bullshit!
But who cares about culture? Everybody wants to be elected in two years, which i
s very short to make change. I don t even think it s a question of conviction. It s no
t that our politicians were much better than before. It s just so fast that you ha
ve information, then you have new information, and then there is something else
on Twitter it all means there is no time for reflection! We need to take our time
to think. The brain of a human being needs some time to digest and to understand
. If we don t take this time we head directly into war. That is where we are going
.
EW: So therefore do you think that making art, interacting with culture, is the
most revolutionary, the most impactful thing that you can do as a human being? I
f you believe in the slow evolution of culture?
MS: You know, Emma, I come from Iran, and I never
nglish because I watch films. That s the only way
r taken one course of English. It s enabled me to
e, and then make an American movie about a serial
It means that being born in a certain place doesn t have to mean coming to think a
certain way, though this is still usually the case. Imagine if they put all the
money they put into arms, weapons, and wars into something that says: Any perso
n who is a student, who goes to school, needs to have traveled to one other coun
try in the world before the age of 18. Believe me, the world would be a much bet
ter place.
As soon as you know somebody from somewhere else, then it is much more difficult
to just consider them as the enemy because the person becomes real. It s not an abs
tract notion anymore. So I really think that cultural work is extremely, extreme
ly important.
Before the war even happened in my country, I watched a movie called The Deer Hu
nter. I was a child I don t know why my parents thought it was a good idea to show m
e this as a child, but in any case they did. I knew then that I was extremely an
ti-war, because I knew it was not even a question of the war itself, but rather
what would happen after the war. All the damage caused.
You know, that film changed my life. It did. I read a book, it changes my life.
I listen to music, it changes my life. Everything that happens to do with the br
ain has the power to change your life.
You know why these fundamentalists are so powerful? Because they play with the e
motions of people pressing on the buttons of their emotions. They have people yell
ing, shouting, and wanting to kill themselves.
But if you ask people to think, it is something different. As soon as you think,
you realize it is really much more complicated than it seems to be. You realize
it is much more difficult to become
hyper to yell, to shout, and to kill yourself if you think about it. So if everybo
dy were to make this little effort just to think, I truly believe it would cool
people down.
I think culture is important, but at the same time you could see that during the
1930s you had a lot of intellectuals in Germany, but many of them became Nazis.
And why was that? They were humiliated and extremely poor.
So there needs to be a little base of life for everyone, and then on top of that
you have culture and maybe then we can go in a better direction. However, that wi
ll obviously never happen. We are too stupid for that.
So I think it s extremely important that we try to change our lives around ourselv
es. When I was 30 years old, I said, I m going to change this world, and after 10 ye
ars, the world was changing me. I became a cynical person who did not believe in
anything anymore. And so I said, I am losing even myself, and then decided Okay, f
rom now on I m going to change myself, and if I change myself, I have changed a li
ttle bit of this world. I will try to be a better person. I don t always succeed in
that because the nasty side of me is big, but I try . . . I try.
EW: I love what you were saying about teaching people to be independent thinkers
, because often you get the message in school that you have to learn what s in you
r book by heart and be able to regurgitate it. And actually the most important t
hing I learned in school was how to think, how to decide for myself, how to have
an opinion, how to go away and find the answers for things and compare and cont
rast different answers that people were giving me. So I loved what you said abou
t independent thinking.
I m also interested in how you self-identify. When someone says, Where are you from
? or Are you French? where do you sit with all of those types of questions?
MS: There are parts of me that will always be Iranian. These are things that I c
annot change. You know, my hospitality will always be Iranian. I ve been brought u
p this way. The doors of my house are always open.
I can never become angry with an old person it s impossible. This is a very cultural
thing; in my culture, no matter what bullshit an old person says, I will always
respect and be extremely patient with them. So these are the parts of my cultur
e that I like.
There are the parts of my culture that are extremely traditional: Men have to do
certain things and women have to be virgins and all of that fuck that. I never be
EW: Yeah, that s good. When did you know that you wanted to write your memoir as a
graphic novel? When did the idea come to you that you were going to do that?
MS: I found myself saying the same bullshit over and over and facing so many pre
judices. It got to the point where I simply thought, I have to put it in a book,
because while I like to talk, constantly repeating myself was so tiring. I real
ly didn t believe anybody would ever read it, but if people asked me questions aft
er I had written it, I could say, There is a book; you can read it.
I never thought, never in my life, that anybody would be interested. I didn t thin
k it was interesting at all it was just for me. So it became a success, but I neve
r imagined it. But I didn t have any other choice than to write it you know how huma
n beings are: The less they know, the more convinced they are. Ignorance gives y
ou this confidence in yourself. As some people were ignorant about how it was, b
ut so confident in their perception, meant I wanted to give them just another po
int of view. And it became this unplanned, surprise success.
EW: Often comic books are perceived to be for men or within a man s world, and I m int
erested in your experience with that. Are people surprised that you, as a woman,
wrote a comic book?
MS: Yes, it is! It is a very male thing because the comic arrived at the same ti
me as cinema. It began with the man coming home, sitting on his couch, reading h
is newspaper and enjoying the strip at the bottom of the page. So that was the b
eginning of the comic book. The woman on the other hand was supposed to cook, pl
ay the piano, sew. So this was leisure designed for men and naturally there were
many more men who were interested in it.
Again, I tell you there are women who say, Oh, I cannot do it because they do not
believe in themselves, having been told that they cannot do it. My story was dif
ferent. I ended up in a shared studio in Paris because I could not pay the rent
on a studio myself. I also couldn t work at home, because if I m at home I just do t
he laundry, which seems to be an obsession! In the studio, there was a man who a
ctually told me to write them down. I always thought that comics were really work
for monks, because it is obsessional work frame after frame. I didn t think of myse
lf as an obsessive person, but I discovered in this process that I actually am a
nd it suited me for a long time. That s how I then suddenly discovered cinema and
was like, Whoa! I like to be alone, but not for too long so to work with others? I
t s extremely exciting. I need to see and be with other people.
EW: Well in a way comic books are like the perfect training school for film, bec
ause that s what you are doing . . . It s perfect.
MS: You re totally right.
EW: I have a question from an Iranian woman who is part of the book club, who wa
nts to know what your hope is for the women and people of Iran and what you thin
k is achievable?
MS: I think lots of things might be achievable because 70 percent of our student
s are women, which gives me hope. I hear more and more that women girls are refusing
to marry. Who have decided that you cannot lead a life under the control of you
r father and then under the control of your husband decisions that didn t exist 20 y
ears ago. So as this mentality and culture changes, then we can have real hope.
And it is changing. On a historical scale it s nothing, but in our lifetime it s som
ething. I would really prefer change for good now, rather than having all this r
evolution where spilled blood just brings more spilled blood. So I have a lot of
hope, yes. I think it s going be fine.
If I can be not too nasty a human being, then I think that is good. Not bad, at
least. And I try, you know, I just try. I am very involved with these women s issu
es, because I wonder why we don t believe in ourselves a little bit more. Why do w
e think that we have to get married to be happy? Why do we think that if we don t
have a boyfriend it s the end of our world? It isn t, believe me. It isn t. Why do we
have to always define ourselves by somebody else? Why can t we just be us?
EW: Someone once told me, as we were talking about, that depression was anger wi
thout enthusiasm. And
MS: I went through a big depression! And do you know what happened? I have to te
ll you the funniest story. I was so depressed, and when I am depressed I cannot
breathe. Breath just doesn t come to me. So one night I was all alone, and this br
eathing rhythm comes. That was just before Persepolis, and I called the ambulanc
e and just say, I cannot breathe. So they come and put me in aluminum paper like a
roasted chicken . . .
EW: Oh, God!
MS: And they put me in this blanket and stretcher and start to carry me down the
stairs, which go in circles. I end up falling down, all the way down the stairs
, and I broke my head. I needed four stitches! That made me come out of my depre
ssion actually. Because I had so much pain there that my breath came back and I
decided: Now you have to do something. And then I wrote Persepolis.
EW: That s so interesting.
MS: If I had not had the four stitches in my head I would have never written it!
EW: And do you think it was just that sometimes you need to be pushed to the edg
e or . . . ?
MS: We have to accept that we cannot be happy all the time. It s okay to be sad. I
t s okay to cry. It s okay to be depressed. Sometimes I am depressed in my pajamas and
I put on sad music and start crying. And then I look at myself crying in the mi
rror, so it makes me cry even more because I m so sad for myself. And it goes on,
but at that moment you have to allow yourself to be sad. We are not robots.
When we are alive, we are alive, so I try to do the best. I get depressed very o
ften, but it s okay. Before, when I was younger, I would worry: Oh, my God! I am sa
d. Now I m like, Ah, okay, I am sad. And so it disappears faster because I am not sca
red of it anymore.
EW: That s great. That s really great. And that s a perfect ending. This was the most
wonderful conversation. You have given me new oomph and I really appreciate that
.
MS: I hope that I did not talk too much and I was not too boring for you!
EW: No! You were the opposite of boring. I feel completely energized and empower
ed as a result of having spoken to you.