Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Second Persepolis Blog Prompt
I apologize for the delay in getting this up. I would like you all to consider Marjane's experience of traumatic events in her young childhood and throughout her teenage years. How do her representations of these events change? What is she clearly imagining? What is she actually witnessing? How do her depictions of traumatic events move from childish depictions to more realistic ones? Are there some events which she cannot record? What distinguishes these events, and how does she note the gap - the silence - that marks their absence in the text? Thanks. Try to write at least two or three paragraphs. You can take a week.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Persepolis Blog Prompt
Persepolis
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic narrative - a hybrid, verbal-visual form. It is also a memoir; Marji, the narrative's speaker and protagonist is constructed from Satrapi's memories of her own childhood. Thus, like all memoirs, Persepolis is a personal record of self-interpretation, as well as a documentary record bearing witness to the Iran of Satrapi's childhood. Persepolis, however, complicates the gesture of self-interpretation as documentation by rendering it both visually and verbally. While in some sense, a verbal-visual hybrid is more authentic to experience, the reader is offered a view of Satrapi from behind the fourth wall, rather than from Marji's own eyes. Experience and narrative are highly stylized, and there is ironic distance between the knowing narrator and Marji, the child. Why do you think Satrapi made these choices? Why write a graphic narrative rather than a purely verbal memoir? What can she represent through visual imagery that she cannot verbally? In Persepolis' introduction, Satrapi writes that Iran "has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth." And then finally, "One can forgive but one should never forget." What relationship do you see between Satrapi's choice to write a graphic novel, knowing that the commonly held image of events is "far from the truth," and not forgetting? I realize that these are complicated questions requiring lengthy answers. Please write at least three paragraphs, and please take until next Tuesday.
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic narrative - a hybrid, verbal-visual form. It is also a memoir; Marji, the narrative's speaker and protagonist is constructed from Satrapi's memories of her own childhood. Thus, like all memoirs, Persepolis is a personal record of self-interpretation, as well as a documentary record bearing witness to the Iran of Satrapi's childhood. Persepolis, however, complicates the gesture of self-interpretation as documentation by rendering it both visually and verbally. While in some sense, a verbal-visual hybrid is more authentic to experience, the reader is offered a view of Satrapi from behind the fourth wall, rather than from Marji's own eyes. Experience and narrative are highly stylized, and there is ironic distance between the knowing narrator and Marji, the child. Why do you think Satrapi made these choices? Why write a graphic narrative rather than a purely verbal memoir? What can she represent through visual imagery that she cannot verbally? In Persepolis' introduction, Satrapi writes that Iran "has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth." And then finally, "One can forgive but one should never forget." What relationship do you see between Satrapi's choice to write a graphic novel, knowing that the commonly held image of events is "far from the truth," and not forgetting? I realize that these are complicated questions requiring lengthy answers. Please write at least three paragraphs, and please take until next Tuesday.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)