Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Persepolis: Screening Report


Summary

Persepolis takes place during pre-revolutionary Iran in the 1970’s. 
Marjane grew up in a household campaigning perpetually against
the Shah. Marjane is fearless while speaking up for her admiration 
for western culture, resulting in countless calls home and encounters 
with morality police patrolling the streets. 

Marjane’s parents found their daughter was in social danger 
living in Iran and sent her abroad for school. Through her teenage
years and early twenties Marjanemoved from one house to another 
living the culture she always dreamed of. Iranian woman during this 
time was anything but simple and Persepolis is her journey.

Genre

Persepolis falls under multiple genres including animated drama and biography.

Transnationalism: Course Connections

In American Studies 3710, Transnationalism is a topic I believe 
we are trying to connect with all movies we are analyzing. 
Transnationalism is defined as “the global forces that link people across nations,” (Ezra and Rowden 1). These connections are strategically placed in 
films to reveal a message or make the audience feel a specific way.

In Persepolis the movie takes place in Iran, but the language 
spoken is French.Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian girl, who is sent 
abroad to become more cultured. Though these obvious relations to transnationalism is present throughout the entirety of the film, it takes the audience to certain locations of the world, andconnects them all back to Marjane’s true home in Iran.

Truly an Exceptional Film

I believe this film to be exceptional because it is a hand drawn 
full-length featurefilm consisting of 80,000 drawings and 130,000 
images. The crew of animation drawers found this specific animated movie 
to be difficult because of the lack of color used.

I found this movie to be exceptionally personal as well because
Marjane Satrapi was a part of the entire drawing process. Animation 
artists explained how Satrapi some days would act out scenes for
the drawers so the exact emotion could be portrayed for characters.

Politically Boundless Views

Persepolis is a movie filled with political disturbances. It raises 
multiple questions for people familiar and unfamiliar with the 
Iranian culture. This was a time of change with the Shah’s defeat in 
the Iranian Revolution in 1979. 

Marjane in Persepolis was considered a rebel with the rise in 
tyranny occurring in Iran. Marjane, along with all women of Iran, were
banned from wearing makeup, smoke cigarettes, party with boys, etc. The revolt against these new rules were tread lightly considering breaking the
laws resulted in jail time or death. 

The thought of my government prohibiting just females for certain 
laws is eye-opening and encourages me as a young person in my 
twenties to be more cultured.



4 comments:

  1. I agree that the animation of Persepolis is beautiful and truly elevates the film. I'm curious as to what you think of the color theory behind the film, since you mentioned the lack of color. As I watched I began to notice how Marjane's happy memories were usually predominantly white, while her unhappy memories where framed in black. One in particular were the two contrasting scenes with Marcus. While in love there is lots of snowfall and white backgrounds, whereas her memories of him post-breakup are spotlights on a black frame.

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  2. I believe that the lack of color made the film that much better. How do you think transnationalism would have played a role in this film if the setting was in America?

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  3. Due to the nature of this course I agree that most of our films will carry a message of atransnationalistic theme. This being said, for deeper thought sake, I pose another question. Our central character, Marjane, seems to portray that of a character identifying with interstitial placement . Do you draw these same parallels? And if so how, and how does a character of this nature connect back to the transnationalism in this course?

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  4. I agree that visually the film is very impressive, as hand drawn animation is very rare recently. Transnationalism plays a big role in this film as Marjane moves from place to place, do you feel that people that move around alot in their lives can truly have a home country?

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