McCloud and Satrapi Connections

To be honest, I have been waiting very patiently to read the two comic memoirs we were asked to purchase at the beginning of the semester. The cover art of both Persepolis and Arab in America had caught my attention in the bookstore from the very start, and I was wondering when and how these two text would tie in with our in-class discussions. However, as soon as we were asked to read Scott McCloud's The Vocabulary of Comics, I knew we had to be getting close to reading the comics. In McCloud's compelling text, which I have to say I could not get enough of, he states that he is going to "examine cartooning as a form of amplification through simplification. When we abstract an image through cartooning, we're not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details" (30). Also, McCloud declares a "universality of cartoon imagery. The more cartoony a face is, the more people it could be said to describe" (31). I took these statements into consideration when beginning my read through Persepolis...

Marjane Satrapi's use of provocative drawn symbols suggest the "specific details" that McCloud says we are not excluding through cartooning. For example, in The Bicycle section of the text, the comparison of "Marx and God" (13) would have been easily looked over if it was not for the panel of contrast between the two. Not only humorous, the correlation is able to function the way Satrapi wanted it to because of her predetermined drawn symbols. God's numerous appearances in the text complicate my own identification with Satrapi, but that is a totally different topic from what I want to discuss in this post. Moreover, there are many panels in the comic that are meant to make us feel uneasy: the flames in the Rex Cinema story (14-15) description which portray ghoulish and monster-like figures which only a comic could stress with such imagery. Satrapi wanted to capture the terror that the event created for a random bunch of movie goers.
 
This story of a childhood seemed to gradually deviate from that notion, especially in the pages where one of Satrapi's various narrators discusses the torture Ahmadi, a friend of a friend, suffered. The provocative images of Ahmadi being whipped and ironed really made my stomach churn. Satrapi's commentary on the iron's use in the story, for a second, pulls you back from the awful images until you turn the page and Ahmadi's body is "cut into pieces" (52). This was probably the most disturbing and shocking use of imagery in the entire comic. At first you accept that a child is telling you a story, and then you are thrown for loop when this type of symbol is presented. The detail of torture in this book somehow changed my mood completely, and even though there are is no blood and guts, and the comic is not in color, amplification through simplification sufficiently works here.

In reference to McCloud's "universality of cartoon imagery," Satrapi can be related to any young girl growing up in a confusing world, with only eavesdropping to rely on for answers (a way Marjane draws coming-of-age in this text). This girl could be said to describe many people, and with the addition of the veil, even more people are able to identify. People all over the world and of all ages are aware of Iran and it's history. In some way or another, all can benefit from identifying with Satrapi because in every country something like this has occurred or will.

Works Cited

• McCloud, Scott. “The Vocabulary of Comics.” In Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York:Harper Collins, 1994. 24-45.
• Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003.