COMMENT - Persepolis dumbs down Iran, reveals even less
Written by BEHROUZ SABA
Sunday, 28 October 2007 16:17
Marjane Satrapi, the writer of Persepolis, the best-selling two-volume autobiographical graphic
novel about growing up under Iran's Islamic government, is a media darling in the West. But she
doesn't deserve it, says New America Media contributor Behrouz Saba, a Los Angeles-based
writer and a native of Iran who earned a Ph.D. in film history and criticism from the University of
Southern California.
Marjane Satrapi is hotter than a triangle of Iranian sangak bread fresh out of the oven. Persepo
lis, an animated feature based on her best-selling two-volume autobiographical graphic novel
about growing up under Iran's Islamic regime, is to close the New York Film Festival in October.
The film, co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud, has already won the Jury Prize at Cannes. Yet a
dispassionate evaluation makes it clear that it is not her accomplished artistry, which is winning
her such accolades--as she is manifestly bereft of it.
It is the patronizing political correctness of offering the spotlight to an Iranian woman who has
taken on the ayatollahs, albeit from the safe distance of Paris where she resides.
Her 'graphic novels' are of a barely passable dexterity, with the blandest writing this side of
Scooby-Doo. "And so to protect women from all the potential rapists, they decreed that
wearing the veil was obligatory," an exceptionally piquant passage reads.
I
t is not that she is using a 'minimalist style' in language and drawing for its directness; a lack of
nuance in thought along with nearly childish artistic execution make it clear that she is incapable
1 / 2
COMMENT - Persepolis dumbs down Iran, reveals even less
Written by BEHROUZ SABA
Sunday, 28 October 2007 16:17
of anything more ambitious.
Her books bring Islam, Iran and the condition of women in that country down to her own level of
understanding, which is that of an over-privileged young woman who found the Islamic
rev