[everdrive]

I always enjoyed the first half of Persepolis. Told from Satrapi's perspective, it was a very relatable story about a young child who was swept up by the world events around her, and tried to rebel in very normal, child-like ways. It was very relatable in that abstract sense, even if most of us have not been through a violent revolution. (and even more violent subsequent war with a neighboring state)

The second half of Persepolis was much more difficult for me, and I never know how to feel about it. I think above all else Satrapi deserves a lot of credit for describing herself realistically rather than trying to paint herself as a good person. (not that she was a bad person, but that she didn't shy away from parts of the story that show her in a poor light) I have a lot of respect for her honesty in the second half of the story, however her time in exile in Europe seemed to be one of self-indulgence, meandering, and minor self-destruction. All of which are understandable for someone who has been through such a traumatic turn of events, however it was a bit sad that the young, rebellious child that was so likable did not seem to survive the conflict.

[fidotron]

> All of which are understandable for someone who has been through such a traumatic turn of events, however it was a bit sad that the young, rebellious child that was so likable did not seem to survive the conflict.

Great literature does not exist to be heartwarming but to speak fundamental truths, however uncomfortable they are. Persepolis cleaned up as you implicitly desire would cease to be the great work that it is.

[everdrive]

I never said I wanted it to be changed. Even if you dislike or disagree with my take, I want to make that really clear; I don't think we should modify art because we find it unpleasant.

[fidotron]

The problem is the version of events you'd prefer to see simply never happens, it's just pure fantasy. If this represented that it would be reduced to childish nonsense.

[everdrive]

I don't think it's childish nonsense to wish better things for people, or to express disappointment when people err.

[kranke155]

I think what OC is saying above is that the adult version of reality is often unsatisfying - and that often the ability of great artists is to show us this, knowing they will be judged, and get past it, because a true record of history is more important than an indulgent, sanitised one that makes for easy reading.

[fidotron]

> I think what OC is saying above is that the adult version of reality is often unsatisfying

I'd quibble with your choice of words there, although I agree with the overall point - ultimately adult reality is the only thing that satisfies, warts and all, everything else is a waste of energy.

This is even true by proxy in more fantastic works, where the point is to communicate aspects of adult reality in less direct ways.

There is a very clear cultural divide here on this between the americans and everyone else, which is kind of funny given Girard was working in the US when he famously formulated it so clearly to a mainly american audience.

[andrei_says_]

It was exactly the depression and confusion in the second part that made me feel her humanity and thus deepened mine.

It is an incredible book and I feel grateful for it.

[lopsotronic]

There's a parallel in Maus, where the PoV character runs increasingly into his Holocaust survivor's father's racism, even as he explores his father's threading the needle of 20th century Central Europe[1] . He calls his pa out on it, but for his pa the schwarzers aren't people, so there's no "there" there.

If Speigelman had a slightly deeper historical insight he might have drawn the connection between the byzantine precision of American race law and what Hitler had hoped to accomplish in his own "Wild West". Both end products of the secular wave of colonialism, with Hitler's being at least a hundred years too late, held back by the late stage of German nationhood.

Suffering is no guarantor of virtue. Extremes of violence can brutalize not just individuals but entire peoples. Which is why we should not look to victims as prima facie exemplars, but with empathy and deeper understanding.

[1] the "Bloodlands" of Tim Snyder

[vr46]

That's a interesting observation on Spiegelmann, although I don't know how that could have been incorporated into the story, without him actually challenging his father in that way. There is a reference somewhere that the animal metaphors were inspired by the racial caricatures in American vaudeville and theatre, so there was some recognition there, aside from the complications that animal metaphor itself added to things.

[lopsotronic]

Maus is a great work, and a breakthrough for its genre, but I've always found the animal metaphor troubling for reasons I could never quite pin down.

It was only recently that I realized the problem I have with it: it's a tacit nod towards the broad thesis of secular colonialism (and later of Nazism): h. sap is naturally separated into different scientific kinds. Each acting according to its nature, and of course some of which should never be mingled.

I'm enough of an adult to separate metaphor in a work of art from actual reality, but not everyone is, and that metaphor - if you take it seriously - will have a lot of nasty and all-too-familiar second-order effects. Many of which we would recognize in the harsh lessons of the last century.

Hitler's not a cat, and Spiegelmann's not a mouse. They're humans, making human decisions. Tomorrow I could be Hitler, or you could be Spiegelmann. It can happen to anyone.

[quijoteuniv]

Article called the book «Persopolis» :(

[Shorel]

That "bad" part is where her story becomes more valuable. Literature has many idealistic heroes, which are also patronising, in a sense. Satrapi makes us self reflect, which is much better, and much more real. In contrast, I'm really tired of the catholic fiction, it's always the same. Like written by an AI, but from the year 1100.

[colechristensen]

Do all stories need to be of virtue and success?

It seems like you're disappointed it wasn't a modern "noble savage" myth, that it was realistic instead of a fairy tale about a person coming from a bad place to a good place and being happy, wholesome, and free.

This kind of mythology is a pretty big problem in the western world right now as is the kneejerk reaction to it.

[p-e-w]

That’s a rather uncharitable take on what the poster you’re responding to wrote.

I read Persepolis a few years ago, and it’s hard not to come away with a similar impression. The first part often does resemble a fairy tale of sorts, while the second part is a pretty dark story of teenage alienation. The contrast is jarring, and it goes well beyond “duh nobody’s perfect”.

Both parts are excellent in their own right, and quite unlike any other book I’ve read, but there is indeed something strange going on in part 2. Most readers will remember this, I think.

[colechristensen]

What's jarring to many people is it isn't the three act hero's journey of a noble savage. The "something" going on is that it isn't a copy of just about the only narrative in western mythos:

1. Departure - from a humble background the subject leaves amid struggle

2. Growth and Initiation - the subject discovers who they are building themselves into the hero they'll become

3. Heroic Return - the now hero makes a return to their beginnings to great success

Instead, Persepolis is a much more realistic story and each act is around three very different kinds of strife experienced by our hero and only in the very end a kind of coda where things go well.

My criticism of the criticism is that Persepolis is tremendously more realistic than the hero's journey and people are jarred by it because it doesn't represent their imagination of what real world struggle is like, the fact that it upsets people is one of those deep core societal issues because of the wrongness of the lens people see the world through.

[everdrive]

I think you make a fine analysis, but I would just offer that real life can be quite jarring and uncomfortable. So a story which paints a very real picture of life (rather than constructing a narrative) might just be unpleasant. I don't think her story is poorly written, and I think it is quite memorable.

For reference, I also really enjoyed the Catcher in the Rye, and there are some superficial similarities: a young person is scarred by events in their lives and succumbs to depression. (there are a myriad of differences between the two stories -- I'm not drawing an equivalence, just making one comparison)

Catcher in the Rye is probably best read as an angry teenager: you meet Holden Caufield and he's witty, cynical, funny, defiant, etc. You might fall in love with the character, but what you ultimately learn is that he's a miserable failure; he lost the battle with his depression and so many of the people he was cutting down were just normal, decent people trying to enjoy their lives.

Crucially, we never meet Holden when he is young, bright eyed, and innocent. The narrative structure shows us who he is right away, and we the reader learn that this is actually quite a bad thing throughout the course of the story.

Persepolis works a bit differently: we spend the first half of the book with innocent, bright-eyed Marjane and we fall in love with that character. The character we fall in love with is taken from us by the events of the story, by living unsupervised in exile, etc. It's nothing but sad. It's well-written, it's very memorable, but I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling unhappy about an unhappy turn of events.

[srean]

> So a story which paints a very real picture of life (rather than constructing a narrative) might just be unpleasant.

May be, but to someone going through similar life experiences an honest story might give their internal emotions some validation. Art can do wonders in that "I am not the only one" aspect.

Ethan Hawke talks about that aspect of art here https://youtu.be/WRS9Gek4V5Q?si=P2Hz1ZnXWlP93f2U

One of my favorite videos.

[p-e-w]

Persepolis absolutely DOES use the “hero’s journey” narrative archetype you’re claiming it avoids. The second part even ends by explicitly stating that she has grown into a different person, and is now ready to “face the world” when she leaves her family for the second time.

Indeed, the story is quite Western overall, which is perhaps unsurprising, given that the author had already been living in the West for over a decade when she wrote it.

[spwa4]

You mean Iran had been pushing itself west/modern and was quite western by 1979. So she was raised as a young girl into a western context, despite that people now want to deny this existed.

Even back then the mullahs and islam were looked upon as an external occupation force to some extent. Now 10x worse of course, but even back then. A lot of people seem to want to see some sort of alternative/sufficiently different state/society succeed, even if that means totally falsifying history.

[Xmd5a]

> western mythos

There is almost nothing more Western than this kind of self-criticism: blaming oneself for not having imagined a wider range of possibilities. By the time this reflex reaches your shore, any criticism you might address to it has already been pre-assimilated into its canon. Worse: you may not even be heard, because the whole discourse is already busy talking about the voices it has supposedly suppressed.

That is the trick. It is often less interested in articulating what was actually suppressed than in endlessly reaffirming that something was suppressed. Self-criticism becomes a passion of the self: the subject punishes itself for not being the idealized Other, and in doing so expands its own range of motion.

Criticism becomes assimilation: it uproots you from the very world it claims to redeem. And the only way out of the double bind is to set off for distant shores, carrying the trial with you.

[watwut]

I kind of resent that "western" started to be used as synonym for "America". Specifically this particular schema along with insistence with happy ending is specific feature of American book writing and cinema. Non American literature is much more likely to go out of that schematic.

To whoever is downvoting this: it is not even a criticism. Just a description. When you discuss stories, Americans will frequently insist on the "hero story is the only one possible fun story" and simultaneously interpret bad ending as punishment for moral failure. French wont argue that all that often. And European literature is in general more likely not be that.

And second, using "western" as synonym for "american" wherever the author knows a lot about American and just assumes everything in Europe is exactly the same is something I noticed multiple times on HN.

[colechristensen]

I'm talking about something much broader than the saccharine happy ending motif of Disney movies.

I'm paraphrasing The Hero with a Thousand Faces which is a study of world mythology, not 20th century American storytelling. This hero story is found around the world but PARTICULARLY in descendants of the proto-indo-european culture, particularly ancient Greece and the western Roman empire.

It's not "happy endings" I'm talking about but the hero being taken out of their world, finding themselves and growing, and returning... a hero, the story of individual progress and success.

[watwut]

And I am saying that when I read western literature from Europe, a LOT of it was not hero journey thing.

I am saying that hero journey as you desribe it is absolutely NOT the only western narrative, if you include non american literature. And I am saying that when someone insist on that being the only narrative, they are typically american.

And someone else (who probably reads more american then me) told me even american literature actually contains other narratives too.

[projektfu]

American novels frequently don't follow these tropes. It's more of a Hollywood thing, part of telling a satisfying story in 100-160 minutes.

[p-e-w]

I’ve always wondered how much of the second part is truth and how much is fiction. That a teenage girl from Iran, living by herself in Central Europe with essentially no local connections, would become a drug dealer to her classmates, and on top of that somehow be let off the hook for it by the headmaster, stretches credibility a little bit.

[conductr]

Idk, I didn’t read this book. But I lived a similar version of that reality in a conservative southern US town. My home life was challenging. I sold drugs and generally was a rebellious troublesome teenager. All the officials in my school and local law enforcement gave me kind slaps on the wrist compared to what they could/should have. I had to assume they were trying to get me to a point of adulthood without having life ruining consequences weighing me down. I straightened up by around 17-18 but there were certainly a few times between 14-17 I could have been charged for adult felony crimes and was let off the hook, never even spent a night in a juvenile detention facility but I was made to flush a lot of drugs down some toilets a time or two. I think it used to be more common to let kids figure things out for themselves. I don’t think the similar levels of leniency would occur, it’s all zero tolerance.

[watwut]

> gave me kind slaps on the wrist compared to what they could/should have

I think that slaps on the writs that lead to adjusted member of society are waaay better then felony crimes charges that lead to life of in-out of prison with much harder way to integrate.

People who are treated like you was have overall much better results then people who have book thrown on them as youg.

I genuinely dislike troublesome teenagers, but I also think that your story is a success story of the "dont destroy them" approach.

[shermantanktop]

The lenience you enjoyed presumably resulted in problems or harm for others.

I got a few breaks as well as a kid too. I think teenage boys end up being a community investment and people are cleaning up broken windows, stolen cars, graffiti, and worse as we hope the kids grow up.

[actionfromafar]

And it probably saved a lot of problems or harm for others, further down the line. OP might have become a career criminal without that lenience.

[conductr]

Very true. I’d just say, it’s the leniency that’s the investment more so than the cleaning up part. Because the damage being done is almost a given. How elders respond to it shapes whether it becomes an asset or a liability.

[dkarl]

A foreign student who is afraid of returning to her home country sounds like an ideal low-level drug dealer. They are legally vulnerable because they are afraid of being expelled from the country, and they have access to lots of potential buyers in their fellow students. And someone who is new and is looking for friends is more easily approached and recruited.

[chmod775]

I've personally encountered some stories that were pretty much exactly that.

Vulnerable young people becoming low level drug dealers (often for lack of other options) isn't exactly a rare story.

[ginko]

I'm from Vienna (admittedly younger) but it seems believable. The place she picks up the drugs in the comic is "Café Camera" which is clearly a reference to "Camera Club" which was well-known for this in the 80s and 90s.