Marjane Satrapi
The creator of ‘Persepolis’ contemplates Iran, the Oscars, and the ‘Axis of Evil’
Marjane Satrapi has seen revolution up close, and her life was never the same. Growing up in Tehran as the daughter of progressive parents, she witnessed the aftermath of the Shah’s downfall in 1979 and the rise of a fundamentalist government in Iran. Members of her own family were imprisoned and executed by the new regime, and what had been an increasingly modern society was soon overtaken by political repression. And then war with Iraq came.
A heavy load for a young girl, and that is the story Satrapi tells in her acclaimed graphic novel Persepolis (Pantheon) and in the animated film adaptation (co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud), which is currently up for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. As we’ve seen over the last two decades, it turns out that comics and animation are effective mediums for telling human stories set against a backdrop of war and despair, a lineage that already includes Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Joe Sacco’s Palestine, and Aleksandar Zograf’s Letters from Serbia. And not a superhero anywhere.
The acclaim (including a “special jury prize” at Cannes last year) for the telling of Satrapi’s personal tale is still a surprise to her. “This is amazing to us,” says Satrapi, who lives in Paris. “Vincent and I come from independent comics. I tasted success with the book, but for a long time I was used to working with no results. Nobody recognized your work.” Not anymore.
–Steve Appleford
CityBeat: How did you choose the title Persepolis?
Marjane Satrapi: To understand the situation today, it’s extremely important to have historical perspective. This was the name given by the Greeks to ancient capitol of Iran. In Greek, it means “City of Persia.” It’s a one-word title that’s easy to remember, and a beautiful one.
Will all your work be nonfiction?
Just the fact of remembering things, a lot of fiction comes in it. Of course, this is certainly not a documentary about my life. It’s based on my experiences, but the storytelling should not be denied either. In order to make a story, you have to make a story.
What led you to focus your personal story?
I am not politician, and I am not a historian, and I’m not a sociologist. That is the role I don’t want to play. First of all, I don’t have the knowledge for that. I can be sure about what I have seen and what I have experienced. I try not to put a judgmental point of view. Anybody can make up their own mind. Also, the story of one person is always universal. You start talking about a population or a nation, it becomes abstract.
How do you feel about the way Iran has been depicted in the West?
The image in the media – calling people terrorists, fanatical, etc. – is extremely condescending. It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of facism. That means, “Let’s go and exterminate all of them, and the good people can live together.” Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere. The stupid man is universal.
What do you think of the phrase “Axis of Evil”?
That was copied from the Second World War. The problem is that when you say that “axis” of something, those people are friends, you know. Iran and Iraq are enemies, and North Korea has nothing to do with us. [Laughs] Creating this Axis of Evil is just nonsense.
From an ethical and ideological point of view, if a fanatic in my country calls America “the great Satan,” it’s extremely sad that a big democracy would use the same terminology. A democracy should not use the same weapon as the fanatics.
Consider it also from a historical point of view: The people that made the terrorist attack of 9/11 – there was no Iranian, no Iraqi, and no North Korean between them. They were from Morocco, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, and those countries are America’s friends still. I don’t understand that.
In the film, your character – both as a child and as an older student – does speak out at times, without any real consequences.
Being outspoken always has consequences. In a dictatorship the consequences are much bigger. Either you have a personal [identity] because you consider yourself as a human being with the right to think, or you don’t. I have always considered that if the majority of people – what we call the consensus – if they were right, then we should live in paradise. But we don’t live in paradise. We live in a whole big shit. Which means the majority of people are not right! That means the consensus can just be thrown away.
Is there something about the mediums of comics and animation that is well suited for telling these kinds of stories?
Absolutely. For example, if we shot this movie with real people, in a geographical place with some type of human being, it becomes this story of a Middle Easterner that lives so far from us, they don’t look like us, etc., etc. There’s something about the abstraction of the drawing – which is the first language of the human being, before writing – something about that anybody can relate to. If you make a drawing or an animation, you don’t really know where it’s happening. We did not want to make an ethnic movie; we wanted to make something universal that anyone can relate to.
It seems like the film industry has opened its doors to people like yourself and Daniel Clowes and others. Does that surprise you?
It’s always a question of time. For my books, thank God that Art Spiegelman had made Maus before, so people are used to the fact that comics are not just superhero stories. When I came, people were more open-minded.
Will you do more films?
Yes! Of course! My collaboration with Vincent was extremely fruitful, and we enjoyed working with one another. We will continue making movies, not necessarily animation. Now we are here – why not continue?
In the book and film, your character is very resentful about having to wear a veil. How did you react to the banning of head scarves in French schools?
When they forced me to wear a veil, I really lived that as a very violent thing. For me, it was forcing people to do something they don’t want to do. Just as I don’t want people to push me to do something, I cannot push [other] people to not do something. I don’t have a problem with people wearing a veil; it became a problem when I have to wear it.
If people want to wear a veil, I’m not in their head, I’m not a religious person, but who am I to judge people? So I was very much against this kind of law. The only effect that it has is to give more power to any kind of extremism. It’s not good. For me, secularism is a question of tolerance. If we could just live together, that would be for the best. I’ve seen people who are secular but are real Nazis.
I can make a parallel with this war against terrorism. Instead of asking ourselves why terrorism exists, we just go and make a war with it. It doesn’t solve the problem. At the beginning of the war [in Iraq] I was an extremely antiwar person, and everybody said “Saddam is a mean person.” He is a mean person. But just because a mean guy goes, that doesn’t mean the situation gets better. You always have worse in your life – always. Every time you think you’re in hell, you have to say to ourselves that we could have a hell with a higher temperature and more evil.
In the film, your mother says “It can’t get any worse.”
It always can become worse!
Published: 02/13/2008
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
