{"id":2311,"date":"2008-01-28T19:31:48","date_gmt":"2008-01-29T01:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=2311"},"modified":"2008-01-28T19:31:48","modified_gmt":"2008-01-29T01:31:48","slug":"go-see-persepolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2008\/01\/28\/go-see-persepolis\/","title":{"rendered":"Go See Persepolis!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=left width=45% src=\"http:\/\/www.vertigofilms.es\/images\/peliculas\/persepolis.jpg\" alt=\"Persepolis\" \/>I didn\u2019t think Marjane Satrapi\u2019s coming-of-age-in-Iran memoir could be much improved by animating it, but having just seen the Oscar-nominated film Persepolis, I realize I was wrong. I described it to a friend interested in viewing it thus: a black-and-white, animated film in French with English subtitles about a young girl growing up in revolutionary Iran. That description sets up a number of obstacles to a mainstream American audience. But Persepolis is absolutely worth watching. About 10 minutes into the film, you forget it\u2019s black and white, you forget it\u2019s animated, and you forget it\u2019s in French. Satrapi\u2019s story is honest and authentic, personal and political, all at once. <\/p>\n<p>The type of story Marjane Satrapi\u2019s weaves about her life is too often told by Western storytellers who can\u2019t help but exoticize, trivialize, and patronize readers in the telling. So many things about her experience reminded me of my own: figuring out how to be a \u201cnormal\u201d kid in a fundamentalist culture, grappling with the alienation of being a foreigner, suffering the pain of separation from one\u2019s family at a young age. So, when I first came across part 1 of Satrapi\u2019s deeply moving graphic novel about her early years, I read it in one sitting. I read part 2 in the book store before I could even finish paying for it. <\/p>\n<p>The women in Persepolis, like the storyteller, are strong-willed, real women who struggle for their rights heroically. Satrapi\u2019s relationship with her smart-talking grandmother is central to the film. Her grandmother teaches her to believe in herself, scolds her when she is selfish, and reminds her to take a principled stand in all things. It\u2019s an image of Iranian women we rarely see in Western media. <\/p>\n<p>The simple lines of her pen convey volumes about family, society, war, and religion and are a testament to her artistry, both as a story teller, and a graphic artist. It would almost have been too easy to make a traditional film based on her books, complete with actors and location shoots. In translating her graphic novels into an animated film, she chooses to keep her story in a realm that is one step away from reality: just like our own memories. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn\u2019t think Marjane Satrapi\u2019s coming-of-age-in-Iran memoir could be much improved by animating it, but having just seen the Oscar-nominated film Persepolis, I realize I was wrong. I described it to a friend interested in viewing it thus: a black-and-white, animated film in French with English subtitles about a young girl growing up in revolutionary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}