Today in our Scholars First Year Seminar class we studied the graphic novel Persepolis. It was awesome to explore a new medium of modern literature. We discussed not only what the graphic novel said and how it said it, but we talked about the purpose of graphic novels. One of my classmates mentioned that it opens the reading experience up to a whole different audience. I have to agree. Despite my addiction, some people just don’t like reading. It’s tragic. Comic books and graphic novels can open the door to reluctant readers and show them an entirely different world. Books like Harry Potter and the infamous Twilight Saga work the same way for teenagers, showing them that reading can be fun! (However cheesy that may sound).
I wasn’t always so enthusiastic about graphic novels though. For a long time I really despised graphic novels and comic books. At first I thought that it was because I liked using my own imagination to conjure images from the strict text, but then I realized my dislike came from an inability to truly read the medium. I was bad at it. I would skip the pictures, maybe glancing at a particular color or image if it caught my eye, but my eyes largely followed the words, as they had been trained to do with traditional novels. It took the realization that the art was just as, if not more, important than the words themselves for me to truly begin to learn to read graphic novels. Once I knew to savor each image and each word, I found myself loving graphic novels and even comic books. Today I stand an intense fan of the genre and am eagerly awaiting the Watchmen movie!
Persepolis seems to embody modern literature and art, utilizing and combining different creative outlets. As someone in the class noted, the art and the drawings are universal. Marjane Satrapi, the author, was born and raised in Iran but later moved to France. Persepolis was originally written in French and while the translation may be faulty,the graphics remain the same, exactly how she intended them to be. We could say that they are more true to her original concept than the written word in this case.
Satrapi also opens up the debate on Iran, especially its place in the modern world. So many people assume that the minority is the majority and that all Iranians are like the extremists of the hostage crisis that began in 1979. Satrapi urges her readers to think differently though. She paints a unique, intimate, autobiographical portrait of her childhood in Iran, one not so different from an American’s or Westerner’s.
As our Professor, Dr. Lenz, asked us, both in our study of Persepolis and the original Japanese version of “Shall We Dance?”: how can we study or learn about another culture? Is it possible? Are we ever capable of fully understanding another society? Another person, even? In the case of Persepolis, does the visual aspect make this understanding easier or more accessible?