Persepolis
Anyway, Persepolis. This is an animated film based on the graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi that recount her formative years in Iran during the Iranian Revolution and her subsequent schooling in Austria. Satrapi came from a progressive, upper middle class family with friends and relatives who had long suffered for the cause of democracy under the reign of the Shah and were thus initially enthusiastic about the revolution. Unfortunately, their dreams of freedom and justice were destroyed as the fundamentalists seized power and subsequently made Iran a more oppressive country than it had been under the monarchy.
Like a lot of revolutions, the Iranian Revolution was formed by a coalition between a variety of groups that stood in opposition to the Shah - communists, socialists, moderate Islamic groups promoting secular rule, and, of course, the Islamic hardliners lead by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Following the Shah's abdication, a secular provisional government was created in Iran that only lasted a little over a month. Khomeini, who had been living in exile in France, promptly returned to Iran and seized power, installing an Islamic Republic with sharia law following the results of a bogus national referendum. The lefties, being your typical self righteous, college educated hippies, considered the mullahs to be a bunch of bumpkins and thought they'd be easy enough to control. One of history's more foolish mistakes, eh? Amidst all the chaos, our buddy Saddam Hussein decides it's an excellent time to invade Iran and the Iran-Iraq War in which a million Iranians lose their lives begins. Another tragedy for Iran. Had this war not happened, it's likely that more moderate voices would have eventually won the day in Iran, but solidarity forced by a hostile invasion from Iraq pretty much cemented the fundie stranglehold on the government. Poor Iran. It’s just one tragic bad choice after another for that country.
This is the backdrop against which Satrapi's story unfolds. Her relatives and friends, imprisoned by the Shah and freed under the provisional government, are rounded up and systematically executed by the new government. The most touching scene in the film is when a young Marjane goes to a prison to say goodbye to her beloved Uncle Anoush, who faces execution at the hands of the fundies for being a communist.
Growing older, she becomes increasingly rebellious, buying banned western music on the black market and speaking out against her teachers and the pro-fundie propaganda they teach. This nonconformity, coupled with the horror of the war, forces her parents to send her to boarding school in Austria. There, Satrapi grapples with her Iranian identity while trying to fit in with her Western peers. Following a bad romance she ends up homeless on the streets of Vienna before returning to Iran, where she goes to college, enters into an unhappy marriage, divorces, and finally decides to abandon Iran once and for all.
This movie was of particular interest to me as the Iranian Revolution and its accompanying hostage crisis was the first geopolitical event to catch my attention. As a precocious little kid, I was riveted by the entire event and watched the news constantly to learn more. Furthermore, my family lived in Santa Barbara at the time, which was the destination of a lot of Iranian refugees. Both my sister and I had several Persian friends and I recall the tension in their homes whenever we visited resulting from the turmoil in their home country. It’s interesting to note how those events affected politics in the United States; the hostage crisis and Carter’s inept response to it helping to usher Ray Gun into the White House, thus paving the way to our current fascist regime. Like Charlie Wilson’s War, this movie offers a new and valuable perspective on events that inadvertently changed the United States for the worse.
Comments
Oh, I just wanted a little drama with Luft Waffe. I should have flung a handful of popcorn at her and blamed it on you.
Posted by: Huntington | January 14, 2008 07:57 AM
Fah Fahs and Waffas in the same theater? That was very risky, knowing the long standing ethnic clashes between those two clans. What am I talking about! Oh, well, though I have no idea who they are, something tells me I understand the tension. Tension -- not love -- is the universal language that needs no translation.
Posted by: Junk Thief | January 14, 2008 11:35 AM
Cool. I'm looking forward to "Persepolis" coming to town. I read another of Satrapi's books called "Embroideries." You may be interested in checking out another movie from about 5-6 years ago about Iranian expats in the US (NJ as a matter of fact), called "Maryam".
I agree about the hostage crisis being the first geopolitical event of major note in my life (actually, I also vividly remember earlier Jonestown headlines and also the burgeoning independence of "Zimbabwe/Rhodesia" as it was called at the time). I'm wondering if your junior high school experienced the phenomenon of kids bringing in Xeroxed flyers of a line-drawing Mickey Mouse flipping the bird with the caption, "Hey, Iran!" underneath? Ah, memories.
I've always found it interesting that the diaspora has, for the most part, labeled itself "Persian," as if they emigrated direct to Beverly Hills from the lands ruled by the Safavid Dynasty. I know, it's splitting hairs to look at this with a raised eyebrow, since Iran is a relatively recent term. However, I think I've only ever met one person, a bureaucrat from UCLA, who identified herself by saying, "I'm Irani."
Posted by: Joe | January 14, 2008 01:42 PM
Van der Fah Fah gave me grief about the use of the word "Persian", stating that he'd only known Iranians and lecturing me on the correct terminology. He's such a lesbian. Everyone I've ever met from Iran has described themselves as Persian. Of course, Iranian is a nationality, Persian an ethnic group. Iran isn't an ethnically homogeneous country, so I'm sure there are plenty of Iranians who aren't actually Persian. I've just never met any.
As far as anti-Iranian sentiment, I don't actually recall any. No one my age cared one way or the other when the hostage crisis took place and by the time I got to junior high the whole thing was years in the past. My Aunt Camille, a senior in high school at the time, joked that she wanted to take me with her to class, as my knowledge on the topic was greater than hers or that of her cohorts. Also, I recall that my grandmother, who had just returned from living in France where she worked for some Persians, was quite upset at turning down their offer of a job in Tehran as, like me, she liked to be in the middle of global political catastrophes so she could see them with her own eyes. After the revolution, she kept applying for jobs at hospitals throughout the Middle East (she was an RN), but none of them would consider her because she was too old.
Posted by: The Angry Young Man | January 14, 2008 02:19 PM
Pleasant is important!!
"Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."
-Elwood Dowd (Jimmy Stewart, Harvey 1950)
Posted by: Bridey | January 14, 2008 02:41 PM
aaaaaw. i want to see that sooo bad. is no in ye olde portlandia yet.
Posted by: ken | January 14, 2008 03:31 PM
Wow - what insightful commentary. Where and what will you next be commenting on? I can barely wait to read about the next important geo-political issue to draw your attention.
You may like the book "The Septembers of Shiraz." It's a novel about a Jewish family in Iran after the revolution.
Posted by: Shane | January 14, 2008 03:43 PM
Shut up, Shane.
Posted by: The Angry Young Man | January 14, 2008 07:13 PM
(Ladron, Huntington=Van der Fah Fah, just allay what I sense to be some confusion)
The rest of you:
'The name "Persia" since 6th century BC until 1935 was the "official" name of Iran in the Western world, but Persian people inside their country since the Sassanid period have called it "Iran" meaning "the land of Aryans", the older version of which had been "Aryānām" (the genitive plural of the word Aryan, a cognate form of which is seen in "Airyanem Vaejah" ) as seen in ancient Persian texts.
'In 1935 Reza Shah asked foreign countries to use "Iran" in other languages as well. Some belive he made this decision to be more closer to Germany because "Iran" means "land of Aryans". Some other believed he changed "Persia" to "Iran" to present a new and modern face of the country in the world.
'A few years later some Persian scholars protested the government that changing the name of the country in Western languages has separated Iran/Persia from its past and civilization for them. Thus in 1959 Mohammad Reza Shah announced both "Persia" and "Iran" can be used interchangeably.' (Wikipedia, which I realize the Angry Young Man takes about as seriously as Britney Spears does being a parent.)
So you can all jump off the highest peak of the Zagros Mountains and give me a break!
Posted by: Huntington | January 14, 2008 07:33 PM
I'm glad to hear Persepolis is getting shown in more places. I think it's one of the most brilliant movies I've ever seen.
Regarding Persian as an ethnicity: I have a friend from Afghanistan whose family speaks Persian. Apparently much of the population traces back to the same group.
Also, I remember the hostage crisis when I was a kid. There was a girl in my class who was from Iran, and of course she got a lot of crap for it even though she was just a ten-year-old kid who obviously had nothing to do with it...
Posted by: C. L. Hanson | January 15, 2008 01:28 AM
C.L.: Kids are sick and twisted, in a 'Lord of the Flies' kind of way, even when they're only ten. Even worse when adults egg them on or don't call them on their shit; take a listen to this uplifting episode of This American Life:
http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1163
Fah Fah: You're not the only one who browses Wikipedia, ya know!
I think most "Iranian" expats who identify as "Persian" don't always mean it as a member of the "Persian" ethnic group. I think it's become a catchall -- and in some ways more palatable, at least in the US -- term for anyone from the geopolitical entity of Iran. I don't have firsthand proof, but I have a feeling that someone living in Los Angeles, whose parents emigrated from "Iran", but who came from a long line of ethnic Azeris in Iran, would identify more, in Los Angeles, as "Persian" than "Azeri". I guess my original point was about the popularity of the "Persian" mantle (though it existed long before the Revolution) as perhaps a way for "Iranians" to distance themselves a little bit more from the Islamic Republic after all hell broke loose in the early 1980s. Or maybe not... maybe "Persian" had been in use for so long that, 20th Century developments aside, people from that place just continued to use that term.
More interesting stuff (thanks to... yes, Wikipedia): I didn't realize that Tajik is more or less a variant of Persian/Farsi. "Dari" is the term for the Persian variant spoken in Afghanistan & Pakistan.
Posted by: Joe | January 15, 2008 10:58 AM
Joe, my impression has always been that Iranian expats who self-identify as Persian are 1979-era refugees who, if they didn't love the Shah, had to leave because of the Islamic revolution. That's why we tend to think of them as wealthy, and many are, although my sister's best friend in junior high came fro that category, and her dad owned a deli in Sonoma (and not an upscale one either).
The two self-identified Iranians I knew in law school fell more into the Satrapi vein: hated the Shah, lived through the revolution, supported its more idealistic side, and left for reasons only partially related to the repressive state of things there.
Posted by: Fah Fah | January 15, 2008 12:44 PM