Feminism/Silent Sacrifices vs. Celebrated Martyrdom/ Masculinity

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Percepolis

Finally, a graphic memoir that really moved me :)

It was so easy to fall in love with Marji. First, because of her childhood relationship to God. As a child, her faith was so strong, casual, yet, powerful, transformative and intimate (as if God were an extension of her body, like an extra limb). Her faith comes in stark contrast to the Islamic fundamentalists’ relationship with God, which is forced and formal. It was just crazy to see how Marji’s intimate and genuine relationship with God, gets cut off so suddenly when the Islamic Revolution and violence begins. She loses her faith overnight. Marji’s faith gets rocky around p 17 where she was waiting for God to talk to in bed, but he never comes. Then, after seeing more violence, she yells at her faith, literally yells at God, on p70. And then BOOM God is gone from the rest of the book. She used to rest with God, but the explosion of violence takes people’s live and takes that resting place away from her. The violence and revolution make her lose faith, when the fundamentalists were actually supposed to be bringing people even closer to God. Its so ironic, no? The intimacy Marji had with her God was so organic that seems it could never be systematically brought to the masses through a fundamentalist movement.

Another part of Marji’s childhood that made me fall even more in love with her character, was the way she would link politics and the revolution to her everyday life. For example, on p51 she stares at the iron in her house after finding out torturers would use an iron to torture their prisoners. In the panel, her eyes are huge from the shock of realizing her family has a torturous weapon in their own house. She makes so many similar connections through the book that helped me get a glance into her own head (as a young and very intelligent woman starting to connect the world around her amidst a revolution). Again, after sneaking out with friends, Marji lies to her upset Mother. When her Mother yells at her she calls her mother a: “Dictator! You are the Guardian of the Revolution of this House!” on p113. The way we see Marji grow and connect the Revolution to parts of her private life were so genuine. Another example is at the very beginning of the book, on p6, where she decides she wanted to be a prophet because 1) their maid couldn’t eat with them, 2) her father had a Cadillac and 3) her grandmother’s knees ached. All these inside looks into the inner workings of her mind were so genuine and even charismatic. I was totally in awe of her mind’s workings.

There’s so much more I want to say about this memoir!

My favorite graphics in this memoir are on p39, p70-71 and p102. On p39, Marji and Mehri come back from the “Black Friday” protests and they both get slapped by Marji’s mom. The image is the last one on p39 where the two are sitting on the bed, sulking together with hand prints on their right cheeks. I just love this image because their expressions and the hand prints just made me remember that feeling of shame a child feels after getting slapped and yelled at. This really showed me how the author uses images to convey emotions that would be limited if only text were available. P70-71 were such intense pages for me. This is where Marji shouts at God and tells him to “get out!” after her beloved uncle is executed. The image of her laying alone in the darkness and expansiveness in the universe on p71 conveys her deep loneliness. The expansive area of black and her tiny body (the way the author used space) really made my stomach and heart sink when I saw this page. You can tell from her expression and the overwhelming amount of black, negative space, that this image is a turning point in the memoir. The author does a lot with black/white in her artwork. In many images, the black background almost functions like the zoom button on a camera –making the reader focus in on the image and its intensity…even communicating a sense of intensity in the panel to the reader. She also enlarges certain images on pages as a way to bring more attention to particular scenes. And she often communicates different levels of intensity by changing the shape of the speech bubbles (round for normal speech, jaggedy for yelling etc.). I found the way she conveys emotion through facial expressions to be really helpful when reading the memoir.

Other things I noticed (but cant write about cause my blog will get too long): Passing of stories through generations/silence, blended nationalism and religious fundamentalism in the revolution (one almost equated the other)

Feminism/Silent Sacrifices vs. Celebrated Martyrdom/ Masculinity

Ahh, strong POC womyn!!! Strong non-christian/catholic womyn. This is why I really loved this graphic memoir. Yes…marji, her grandmother, her mother, their friend whose son went to war, the sacrifices these women make that go so unseen.

Many young men in the revolution were celebrated as martyrs. Their pictures published in the papers and their lives celebrated. But I also noticed that the women sacrificed a lot in this memoir, but what they sacrificed was never given public dignity the way men were. But, I feel like Marji’s memoir sheds light on these women’s strengths and the regular violence that they were subject to as well. I kept asking these question while reading: In which ways were womyn s/heroes during the war? Was their s/heroism invisible in the newspapers? And also, what did the fundamentalists dictate that a womans role should be? (Child bearing of more martys?) I’m just curious and didn’t really get a fully fleshed out answer to the last question.

I read a contrast between martyrdom and feminism in the memoir. I’m not sure if I can fully explain this, but I will try.

The martyrs were the revolution’s jewels or gems. The heroes who sacrificed for the Revolution. But the women could never be martyrs because only young men were sent to fight. But throughout the book I saw so many places where women made sacrifices as well.

Sacrifices womyn were making:

On p100 Mrs. Nasrine looks miserable about the military recruitment of her 14 year old son. She knows that the recruiters lie to the young boys, trying to get then to join the military with promises of food, women and houses made of gold and diamonds. She also knows that the key they have given her son to heaven is a lie, but her son is still excited to go to war (and totally immature). Her son is excited to go to war, but his mother is really suffering from worry. Somewhere in this book the author compares losing a loved one to death itself, but somehow the sacrifices mothers made were never seen as martyrdom. I wonder if these women/parents lost boys in the war, who would take care of them when they are older?

In the Cultural Revolution women were also trained to fight against each other. This shows up in two parts of the book. First on p93 Marji and her family overhear two women in the market gossiping about refugees and southern women, calling them whores and sluts. While they drive home they are disappointed and talk about how these women were spitting upon their own. Then again, on p132 we are introduced to the Women’s branch of the Guardians of the Revolution. These women were encouraged to regulate each others’ clothing and even call other women whores when they weren’t dressed conservatively. I have seen women commit violence towards other women a lot in my own life and I just think its really twisted for women to abuse other women in a heteropatriarchal society.

Also, sexual dangers for women seemed regular and almost expected/tolerated by force – ex: p 105 Guardians of the Revolution calling Tinoosh’s wife a slut and then when the Guards threatened to rape marji’s mom….

On p145 Marji’s mom exposes the added consequences of being a women during Revolution. She explains what really happened to Niloufar – that she wasn’t just executed but raped – yet, these additional consequences of being a woman during the Revolution are invisible-ized. And because sexual violence/rape/abuse is the way it is, it often involves a lot of silence. This is why I saw this stark contrast between the CELEBRATION of martyrs//the silent or silenced sacrifices of womyn.

And Marji realizes this after learning about Niloufar’s rape. On p146, Marji says: “Niloufar was a real martyr, and her blood certainly did not feed our society’s viens”.

Such a feminist memoir J loved it.