Persepolis Young Women

Being a young woman in the United States, means growing, finding yourself, and being free during that process. Not all young women have the same sort of freedom that Westerns have. The United States is a secular country, which is a country that have no religions or beliefs embedded in it’s laws. The countries that these films are based, Iran and Israel, are Islamic nations. An Islamic nation is governed by Islamic laws and cultural practices with a primarily Muslim community. After watching the films Persepolis, Zero Motivation, and Circumstance, the Islamic nations and societies can prevent young women from expressing and being themselves by the conservative laws and practices which repress them. The first film watched was Persepolis. Persepolis showed the affects of an Islamic government on a girl throughout her young life. The thing that was especially helpful was that the film is based on the director, Marjane Satrapi’s life. The film starts off with Marjane (she goes my Marji) in the airport reflecting on her life. She reflects on her childhood in Tehran. She was inspired by her uncle Anoush how had recently been released from almost ten years in prison. He inspired Marji by telling her a story of how he was rebelling against the Iranian government. Soon afterwards there was an election for a new leader of Iran. After the election, Iranian society became much more restrained and uncle Anoush got arrested again. The Iran-Iraq war begins and life for Marji becomes worse. Uncle Anoush dies and Marji starts having doubts about her religion. As she grows up she become more rebellious and shows it by listening to Western music, wearing a blue jean jacket, and debating with her teacher about the Iranian government. Her parents decide to send her to Vienna, Austria because they are afraid that she is too outspoke and will get in trouble. She first stayed at a family friend’s house then, for a while she stays at a Catholic hostile but was later kicked out, this lead to her house hopping at friends houses, then she lived in a professor’s house. While in Vienna, Marji finds herself feeling lost with her identity. After a bad break up that she had with her boyfriend she was accused of stealing from the professor she was staying with and was kicked out. She was then forced to live on the streets for a few months until she decided to go home after almost dying. When she finally get back home she becomes depressed and tries to commit suicide by overdosing on medication. She has a dream of God and Karl Marx, which helps her come out of her depression. She begins to go to university and attend parties. She begins a new relationship but realizes that the society of Iran has gotten more repressed after being caught holding hands and getting in trouble with the religious police. She decides to marry her boyfriend in order to avoid getting into to trouble again. Marji’s friend died at a party when trying to run away from the religious police and later she decides to divorce her husband. Her family …show more content…
Elahi states “Satrapi depicts her young self as performing identity through bricolage, appropriation, borrowing, and mixture of European and North American styles” which shows the beginning stages of her rebellious attitude towards the strict moral codes in Iran. Elahi suggests that Satrapi “mimics” Western culture and tries to find a balance in the identity of Western and Islamic world views, as he calls it (318). “She attempts to resolve this dilemma in large part through her use of the mirror as a doubly framing motif, bringing her face to face with the competing claims on identity made not by “Western culture” and a monolithic “Islamic ideology,” but the competing claims presented by familial, educational, religious, and sexual aspects of Marjane’s life” Elahi states (318). Elahi’s position is that Satrapi was influenced by Western culture and tries to balance it with her Iranian culture, but her ideology is not successful. She was unable to make both cultures work with one another, so eventually her and her family felt it was best to leave