As we spoke about in the last class, Satrapi's comic imagery supports the humor. She uses stereotypes and exaggerated imagery to describe new contexts and her feeling of Otherness. The mustachioed Germans of the Tirol (p.17), the Mother Superior's Assistant "Approach!" (p.24), the hairy hippie of the sexual revolution (p.34) , herself as Frankenstein, (p.35) the punks that look like trees (p.37), "the homosexuals" chorus/welcoming committee (p.47) the cafe camera dealers (p.68) herself as Aerobics Instructor , p.121) the chador covered Life Art model! (p.145). The humor in these images are stories of survival.
What becomes unbearable is described on 118, after Marj's feeling of medicated wellness does nothing to alleviate her feeling of unbelonging; "I was a westerner In Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living." Depression and loss of identity are a chicken and egg problem. And when humor fails, the narrator makes a suicide attempt with the prescribed medication.
"It's my hand! Shit! I'm still alive" Marji says when she wakes, sense of humor intact.
When Marji's marriage fails I had to wonder if it was because there was no humor in it. Her dad is allowed the last laugh.
On that note, there is a lot of explaining in 2. I love the page where Marji's father is "giving his permission" for his daughter to marry, but only if she can get divorced. It's a text heavy page, and reveals a lot. It's the kind of telling that I'm glad we only get at the end, in the context of explaining Marji and her family to someone else. (p.159).
I am so thankful for the excess explanations in 2, I agree, they were so telling. Marjane does definitely humorize tough situations, especially when she is abroad.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Satrapi's sense of humor was one of my favorite parts of both the Persepolis stories. It was a very effective method of including every kind of reader (although I will say that when I read this in high school I missed a lot of what I laughed about now). Her occasionally light and humorous perspective on things like being an outsider completely made me forget that there was no color, because the story just doesn't seem to need it because of all the other ways Satrapi involves the reader.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate the connection between humor, stereotypes, and survival that you make in this post in connection to the second installment. It is clear that she, too, at one point found it difficult to follow her own mantra, hence the suicide attempt, and I'm curious of how you categorize the situation as a "loss of identity," which ultimately implies that Marjane felt as if she had an identity to begin with. Would you say that that identity was one of solid ground, or a mixed and fractured identity? Great post!
ReplyDeleteLucille
I think one of the reasons that Marji survives to write this memoir is the certainty of identity with which she began. She was a prophet! Adolescence shuffles that in the best of circumstances, but war, cultural oppression, limiting horizons, changes in family, changes in friends, changes in school are a mixture of traumatic additions and subtractions. Are we the sum of everything we know? Do you only lose your way when you don't know who you are? When roots are pulled (and we survive) how are we different? Marji didn't assimilate in Austria. Mixed and fractured, yeah. There is such a thing as "too many" identities, too, there are many others that she rejects, family substitutes and then the folly of searching for herself in partners, all conspire towards the loss, or the feeling of loss. The theme of Amazing Grace.
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