The Radical Cigarette

In Persepolis II, illicit substances (including cigarettes and alcohol) oscillate between being self-destructive habits and revolutionary/radical signifiers that subvert exterior pressures/laws/customs. For young people, rebelling with substance use seems less an act of pure defiance and more as a gesture to which someone might react allowing their voice to be heard. It is important to consider that while in Austria substance use was generally apparent, in Iran substance use is veiled, allotting it "disproportionate importance."

Satrapi smokes her first cigarette at age 11 (Persepolis I) in an act of defiance against her mother, "I sealed my act of rebellion against my mother's dictatorship by smoking the cigarette" going on to say, "it was awful but this was not the moment to give in. With this first cigarette I kissed childhood goodbye" (117). Although by smoking she only harms herself and no one else, smoking signifies adulthood, a place where one is meant to have more personal agency. In Iran, however, agency is denied in many ways to women and though I don't know for certain, I imagine that for a woman to chose to smoke is a form of discrete resistance, much like "the little details" Satrapi refers to on page 148. Satrapi willfully forces herself to endure the first cigarette, associating with this act the meaning of personal defiance. Here she believes to some extent that secretly smoking a cigarette might somehow subvert her mother, whose behavior she has momentarily paralleled to that of a dictator.  Smoking a cigarette is thus seen as an act of rebellion against her mother but also as political act of resistance against a culture that seeks to mute, immobilize, and veil her.

As she grows older and moves between countries and cultures, Satrapi's relationship with the substances varies. At first, in Austria, substances are a means of assimilation. She pretends to smoke a joint and get high on page 38, participating out of "solidarity." Here, Satrapi's perception of substance use is altered; smoking a joint is not revolutionary but an act of assimilation and perhaps submission. Satrapi expels the smoke, an act of social defiance in and of itself, but the innate need to assimilate and the performance of assimilation cause her to feel shame. Almost in an effort to quiet this shame, Satrapi continues to expose herself to substances. This continual exposure coupled with the realization that substances can bring relief/escape/power/attention, Satrapi begins to use substances frequently even becoming a sort of "drug dealer," a position that brings her popularity and recognition amongst her peers. Substances thus become commodities with which Satrapi can buy friendship, love, and comfort. Affections, when bought and sold, are fleeting to say the least, so when Satrapi ends her career as a drug dealer and her money runs out, the affections follow suit leading her into transience and a place of immense depression.

When Satrapi returns to Iran, she expects her depression to lift but unfortunately it worsens first, particularly when Satrapi encounters a new kind of substance: psychotropic medication. While at first it alleviates the symptoms the root of her depression remains. On page 118 in the second frame, Satrapi identifies the root of the depression, "My calamity could be summarized in one sentence: I was nothing." An inverse illustration of her shadow follows but instead of being black, which would suggest a physical form, hers is depicted as white, suggesting a lack of physical existence. The illustration of the void is emphasized when she defines her nothingness by saying "I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the west. I had no identity. I didn't even know why I was living anymore." Satrapi's relationship with substances then explodes in self-destruction as she uses the medication and alcohol to attempt suicide. The suicide attempt shifts Satrapi's relationship with substances yet again as she states, "I inferred from this that I was not made to die...from now on, I'm taking myself in hand." As opposed to taking a pill in hand as a form of symptom relief, she decides to "take myself in hand," suggesting a shift towards agency and empowerment (and aerobics).

After her suicide attempt, Satrapi continues to use alcohol and cigarettes but in a manner that appears to be in line with her initial impetus to smoke when she was 11. On page 157, following the death of a friend due to a raid on a party, Satrapi and friends are pictured discussing and deciding upon an appropriate suit of action. One friend succinctly and astutely says, "that's exactly what they want! to stop us from living! nothing bothers them more than to see us happy." This is followed with "that same night, Ali had a big party at his house," which is above a frame in which Satrapi is pictured drinking with an explosive halo of light surrounding her, as though the revolutionary intention for drinking condoned the behavior, even sanctified it. Satrapi seems to grapple with the contradictions inherent in this moment and in substance use generally, when, almost as an afterthought, she writes "I never drank so much in my life."