Persepolis on Film

June 26, 2008

For the past two years in my Islam class I have assigned Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. She is hardly what would normally be called a "Muslim" writer, but in her ability to highlight the absurdities of growing up in post-revolution Iran.. and then a very different set of absurdities in her account of life as an immigrant to Europe.. she has written a book that is valuable for my class. I have definitely been curious to see how the book would be realized in the form of an animated feature.

Unfortunately this version of Persepolis would be useless to me in my class—beyond the natural curiosity to see how a work transfers from one medium to another. The content is gone.. at least the parts that matter most to me. I can think of three specific themes that I miss:

1) In Satrapi's graphic novel there are a number of references to the continued strength of pre-Islamic history. This history is actively suppressed by the current religious leadership in Iran, but it survives in the minds of many people. When Marjane talks at the beginning of the film about imagining herself as a prophet when a little girl we are not reminded of Zarathustra, the founder of the Zoroastrian faith.. a detail that gives context for the possibilities of the imagination for a young girl growing up in Iran. One reason I like to teach Persepolis is that is gives a view of the competing historical narratives that are alive in the midst of an Islamic country.

2) In the book there are various references to specifically Shi'a religious practices. The cult of martyrs is present in the film, but it never has the specificity of the book. The ritual chest beating that goes along with the celebration of Ashura in Iran is another place where I get to step in and say something about Islam as it looks in Iran. Martyrs and chest beating can be seen in the film, but they have no special focus or explanation that goes with them.

3) The experience of women who are required to wear a head scarf when they go out in public is a fascination for students. The usual assumption is that these women are super conservative.. but then when you read Persepolis you see how quickly those scarves and religious clothes are tossed aside in a private setting. In the book Satrapi comments directly on dress codes: she itemizes male and female religious clothing and at another point shows how a trained observer can tell a lot about the shape of the woman underneath the religious clothes. This kind of reflection on clothes is absent from the film.

Maybe there were good reasons for leaving this religious material out—what, with the Danish cartoon flap not too far in the past. Iran lodged a formal complaint over the screening of Persepolis at Cannes.. but as much as no one wants to get on the bad side of Iran, the more likely culprit for taking out the references that I enjoy must still be the lack of faith in viewers to understand (or want to understand) religious and cultural details. The choice was evidently made to side-step the complexity of Iranian identity and religious particularities in order to emphasize the "universal" features of the work.