The author of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, is dead, which seems like a good time to get out some thoughts about the series and its broader cultural impact. That basically goes:
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As a memoir of someone describing how their youth was disrupted by political turmoil it’s fine
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As a perspective on the Iranian Revolution it’s unhelpful except as an insight into how it looked to cosmopolitan upper-middle class Iranians who adopted the “stolen revolution” narrative. Bearded men with guns just kinda inexplicably show up halfway through the first book, and there isn’t much consideration of what motivated them beyond slavish obedience to clerics. By the point Satrapi drops that her Grandfather was a Qajar prince you should be able to deduce that it might not be the most representative perspective.
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As far as I know Satrapi and Persepolis weren’t themselves products of propaganda efforts by the Iranian diaspora and the foreign policy blob, though they obviously did aggressively promote them. I could be wrong on this
Idk, I wonder if people here have a different opinion.
Yes, yes, and yes.
That said, it is considered to be a ‘classic’ comic book because of its relationship to the Iranian revolution. We likely wouldn’t talk about it if it wasn’t about that movement specifically from the perspective of the spurned elite upper-class leftist.
It is the perfect vehicle to propagandize liberal freshman college students, and confuse them from the primary contradiction of our age. It is catnip to liberal “we have to hear from every demographic and perspective, except for actually poor illiterate people because they are stupid” professors.