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The Discovery of Marjane Satrapi and the Translation of Works from and about
the Middle East
Chapter · July 2018
DOI: 10.1017/9781316759981.025
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25
The Discovery of Marjane Satrapi and the
Translation of Works from and about
the Middle East
C h r i s R ey n s-CHIKUM A a n d Houssem ben Laz reg
Marjane Satrapi is one of the best known graphic novelists in the world today.
She rose to fame after publishing Persepolis, her first graphic novel, in which
she describes the history and context of a life lived in part in the turbulent
political context of the contemporary Middle East. This book was first
published in French in four volumes between 2000 and 2003, then in one single
350-page volume in 2007 by the French alternative publisher L’Association.
The first volume won the Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award in 2001, and
other volumes went on to win several other awards in France and beyond.
By 2009, over 1 million copies of the English translation had been sold, an
extraordinary number for a graphic novel. The author then became a spokesperson for the new generation of graphic novelists of “la nouvelle bande
dessinée” and as an “expert” on issues such as Iranian politics and the veil and
immigration in France.
After such success in its original language, the book was quickly translated
into English and published first in two volumes by Pantheon Books in 2003
and 2004, and in one single 340-page volume in 2007. (All quotations will come
from this single volume.) That same year, it was made into an animated film
which was also very successful and which certainly boosted the sales and
appreciation of the graphic novel. It was also translated into many languages
including Arabic (2001), Hebrew (2005), Turkish (2009) and Farsi (2011), the
four main languages of the Middle East.
The success of Persepolis within the rising movement of graphic narratives
on a world scale is owing to several factors: its richness and originality, the
rise of alternative presses, especially in France, the spread of the concept
of the “graphic novel” as a marketing tool starting in the United States and
spreading to other countries, and last but not least, the importance of the
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Middle East during the global “War on Terror” (after 9/11). Consequently, it is
now common to read graphic novels set in or about the region. In each case,
powerful visual and literary representations are emerging, and they provide
some of the best known accounts and representations of the region.
In the first section of this chapter we will show and explain why Persepolis
has become so famous through the richness and complexity of its content,
form and impact. In the second section, we will concentrate specifically on
the impact of Persepolis in the Middle East. Out of about twenty-five graphic
narratives produced by Middle Eastern artists living there or in exile or from
the diaspora, we have selected six to show the diverse aspects of graphic
narratives’ impact on ideology, gender, and aesthetics in various cultures. In
the third section, as a form of conclusion, we will address some questions
about the impact of graphic narratives about the Middle East when they
are published in the West and aimed at a Western audience, and show why
Persepolis is still a key graphic novel.
Graphic Novel?
Although, as shown by Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo, Persepolis could be
considered the second most important graphic novel after Maus (Beaty and
Woo 2016),1 despite some other famous or commercial titles, nothing in its
paratext says that it is a graphic novel. Satrapi herself seems to prefer the
word “bande dessinée.”2 Similarly, David B. ends his quite erudite preface on
the history of “Iran” in Persepolis writing: “Voilà, ça c’est la grande histoire.
Marjane a hérité de tout ça. Elle a réalisé le premier album de bandes dessinées
iranien.” (“This is the great history. Marjane has inherited all of it. She has
created the first Iranian graphic novel.”) (David B. 2000, n.p. [but 3]). However,
many indications such as the book format (smaller than the album and closer
to the novel format), the number of pages (about eighty for each of the four
volumes, instead of the more commercial forty-eight-page-color-album), and
the absence of pagination present Persepolis as an alternative bande dessinée.
Other factors less visible and more decisive inscribe this bande dessinée in the
global graphic novel movement, such as the publisher’s alternative publishing
policy, its rich hybrid aesthetics, and its transnational content.
1 It is often the only French-speaking graphic novel appearing in American newspapers and
journals.
2 See for instance The Guardian, June 16, 2011, and March 20, 2015.
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Most importantly, it was first published by L’Association, a French alternative publisher founded in 1990 by a group of artists, some of whom were
already famous far beyond a small circle of fans by 2000. This collective of
artists both through their editorials and their many bandes dessinées published
not only with L’Association but also with other publishers (independent or
mainstream), loudly and effectively advocated an alternative bande dessinée
(Caraco 2013). In general, L’Association does not use traditional labeling and
instead uses for example unsettling names for its collections such as the one
in which Persepolis was published, “Ciboulette” [chive]. Created early in 1992,
this collection popularized the graphic-novel format with David B.’s Epileptic
opening the path. His work is often cited by Satrapi, along with Maus, as a
source of inspiration. If the concept of graphic novel is not mentioned either
in the paratext of the English translation, in the English version of the French
animated film based on Persepolis (2007) it is mentioned as such in the closing
credits (“based on the graphic novels” [sic]). All this positioning of the new
genre as somehow closer to high literary culture, and this new labeling that
moved it from the BD field, certainly contributed to its greater success. A sign
of its quick tremendous success could be found in the fact that as soon as
2002, successful author David B.’s preface was replaced by Satrapi’s and used
in the single volume of the English translation that came out at the same
time as the animation in 2007. Benjamin Caraco even concluded his article
on L’Association by stating that “L’Association n’a-t-elle pas été permise et
entérinée par le succès commercial de Persepolis?” (“Wasn’t L’Association
enabled and confirmed by the commercial success of Persepolis?”) (Caraco
2013). However, although Satrapi’s work certainly benefited from and
reinforced this movement of legitimization and its success, it also questioned
it through its deep hybridity and crossover between traditional oppositions
such as alternative/commercial. Hence, what makes this graphic novel
famous besides its original aesthetics with its judicious and efficient use of
black and white, its various Persian and Western artistic infl uences, and its
rich content (about her-story within History) are the idea of a hybrid genre
and the central role of transculturality in any culture (Iranian and French),
which is even more pervasive in an increasingly global, transnational cultural
village.
Hybrid Genres
Bandes dessinées/comics/graphic novels are often defined as a hybrid genre
or even media (McCloud 1993; Smolderen 2014), and Persepolis is certainly a
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very good example of this in various ways. The fact that Satrapi’s book could
be found in many libraries and bookstores in diverse categories such as autobiography, children’s or young adults’ literature, graphic novel, Middle East
history, women’s studies, and has been studied also as graphic memoir, autobiographical comics, political autobiography, narrative of trauma, witnessing,
life writing, feminist text, nonfiction, and even as archeological excavation
and literature, reveals this richness and hybridity.
The most obvious and most cited category for Persepolis is certainly “autobiography.” And justly so. Satrapi’s book tells the story of Marjie, the young
Marjane, starting when she was nine in Iran, proceeding through her teens
partly spent in Vienna, and ending when she was back in Iran as a young
adult until she definitively decided to leave her country for Paris to go to an
art school. Therefore, what appears to be a Bildungsroman (a novel of formation) is also a Kunstlerroman (artist’s novel) since the story culminates “in the
assertion of Marjane’s chosen identity as an artist” (Miller 2011, 40), exemplified through the fact that the graphic narrative we are reading is the product
of that personal journey. As Rocío Davis states, “the reader is privileged to
participate in the performance of both memory and art, and the complex
interaction between them” (Davis 2005, 269). This interaction is also visible
between the self and the other. Hence Stacey Weber-Fève writes that, “One
may also effectively read Persepolis as a story about being true to oneself in
whatever ‘major’ or ‘minor’ forms that self is constructed through both vertical and horizontal cross-cultural encounters with ‘otherness’ ” (2011, 328).
This otherness is also interestingly staged in this autobiography through a
double point of view, the voice of the girl in the balloons and the voice of the
adult in the caption boxes.
Concomitantly, as a graphic novel of formation one cannot ignore its
didactic aspect both inside the story and in the manner it has been used. That
aspect is certainly a big part of its success since it is taught in so many universities in many different types of departments and faculties and in high schools,
in Europe, North America and beyond. Hence, Florianne Place-Verghnes
ironically called such a work “[une] arme d’éducation massive [. . .] contre
le prêt-à-penser.” (“An arm of massive education [. . .] against ready-made
thought”) (2010, 257). Hence, we see the child Marjane both receiving and
giving lessons on everything, including Iranian history, politics, philosophy,
and mythology, as a kind of surrogate for the average Western reader who
does not know anything about Iran and the Middle East. The forty footnotes
are also a proof of this didactic aspect (e.g., 44). Furthermore, as emphasized
by Place-Verghnes “la thématisation de la lecture est un point saillant de
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Persepolis, qui voit la protagoniste, enfant, faire son éducation à travers une
lecture englobant les écrits de Marx, Descartes et de l’histoire des enfants
palestiniens, de Castro et des révolutionnaires de son pays.” (“Thematizing
reading is a prominent point in Persepolis, presenting the child protagonist
educating herself through Marx’s, Descartes’, Castro’s texts, and through the
history of Palestinian children, and the texts written by the Revolutionaries
of her own country”) (2010, 12). Here it has to be emphasized that although
Satrapi said in several interviews that she was not brought up with a lot of
comics around her, in Persepolis she mentions that her favorite book was the
comic-book adaptation of Marx’s Dialectical Materialism (12).3 This is important
because Persepolis teaches not only about history but also about bande dessinée.
Persepolis also teaches how to read a comic book and its richness, by
presenting an extraordinarily simple but varied and rich way of associating
pictures and texts, either through the interaction of both, or through pictures
without texts (309) and even texts without images (when for example the
scene is unspeakable, 142). In that sense, it also successfully goes against a
French tradition of graphic narrative that has sometimes been criticized for
putting more emphasis on art than narrative, culminating with the “direct
color comics,” (Groensteen 1993) and consequently limiting its commercial
success, especially if compared to American comics and Japanese manga. As
Jean-Christophe Menu re-emphasized in Plates-bandes, bandes dessinées have
been reviewed in newspapers much more often from a vague literary point
of view and rarely from an artistic perspective (Menu 2005, 23). Similarly, they
have been used in classes dealing with narrative (literature) or “ideas” (social
studies) and rarely in art courses. Hence, it has been recognized as a masterpiece almost exclusively within some literary circles.
However, Persepolis’s success beyond literary or artistic circles is certainly
due to an amazing balance between both narrative and art. This balance in
Persepolis can be seen right away in each chapter title which uses both text
and image. Persepolis’s art is obviously inspired by Persian aesthetics when
the book recounts Persian history or shows Persian art (26–28). This Persian
infl uence, whether it is monumental, fresco or miniature, is also present in
Satrapi’s own aesthetics. However, Satrapi reappropriates physical portrayals
from Persian arts (flat, with no depth, and minimal background) by reinjecting
emotions through emphatic postures and gestures and on faces through minimal traits. McCloud’s definition of cartooning “as a form of amplification
3 Most probably the book Satrapi refers to was Marx for Beginners by Appignanesi and Zárate
(New York, NY: Pantheon, 1979).
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through simplification” (1993, 30) can be found here as one of the key elements of a child’s memoir since adults remember some details but forget others
(see Fig. 25.1). One can see such efficiency in reappropriating hieratic highly
stylized art for example on the top frame of page 5 in the opposition between
a mass of women drawn as one black block with closed eyes shouting “the
veil” to a group of individualized women in white with open eyes shouting
“freedom.”
The use of black and white in Persepolis is thorough: with very few
exceptions, there is no shading, no gray zone, no hatching. Black and white is
typical of alternative bande dessinée in the West, including that of L’Association.
Putting aside the economic reason (it is obviously much cheaper to use black
and white despite technological innovations), it is chosen first of all because it
is a way to distinguish itself from commercial publications, which in the West
are generally in color. As explained by Jan Baetens, “color is associated with
mass culture” (2011, 114). However, if this type of “distinction” (Bourdieu)
was one idea defended often and mainly by Menu (the most vocal leader of
L’Association), that kind of opposition between low and high culture is not
the main reason to use black and white for most artists, including Satrapi.
In Persepolis, one can say that black and white was used first because these
pictures are the result of childhood memories which have lost their nuances.
Second, it was used because, like Maus and Schindler’s List, Persepolis deals
with historical trauma that is expressed in black and white to avoid glossy
colors that might trivialize the gravity of the events. Third, Satrapi is systematically presenting two opposing visions of the world but only in order to
subvert them both, since black is not systematically associated with either the
East or the West, traditional or modern, old or new.
On the other hand, Persepolis also reappropriates older Western arts such
as the Bayeux Tapestry (11), Christian painting (Pietà, 281), woodblock print
(Masereel’s expressionism), modern painting (Munch’s Scream; 218), and even
contemporary comics (Hulk, 186), bandes dessinées (Epileptic, Bretécher) and
graphic novels (Maus, Louis Riel). It also plays with the ways of representing
newer technologies and media from photography (5, 29; see also Groensteen
2013, 100–101) to modern design and pop-culture references (posters,
T-shirts, . . . ). Similarly, it is impossible to decide if Persepolis’s bold lines
should be traced to the Franco-Belgian ligne claire and/or the Persian arts
(actually, there is no direct reference to Islamic art). It is true that Marjie as a
child does not always understand the split between East–traditional–old and
West–modern[ist] and is even presented as torn between the two, showing a
sad face when she talks about it (6). However, after that moment, this story
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Figure 25.1 First page of Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
(Marjane Satrapi and L’Association, 2000. Courtesy of the publisher.
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shows her in the process of learning to negotiate these contradictions through
various phases including her rebellious attitude against her societies: first in
Iran where she wears “[her] 1983 Nikes on . . . and [her] Denim jacket with
the Michael Jackson button, and of course, [her] headscarf ” (131), then in
Vienna (Part 3), and finally through her decision to leave a country that officially represses such a conception of complex hybrid identity. To conclude,
this graphic Bildungsroman–Kunstlerroman is a hymn to negotiating hybridity
as intrinsic to a global world and to avoid stereotyping used by Western
and Eastern governments and private interests, with its dire and tragic
consequences in real life. As written by Davis, “the narrator-protagonist’s
emerging subjectivity in Persepolis is based upon a series of shifting affiliations
and growing awareness of the complexity of religious, ideological, gender,
class, and even literary issues” (2005, 269).
Satrapi’s Other Works
Somehow, ironically, the “masterpiece” that has done the most to reinforce
the legitimization of the “genre” in France and a lot outside France, as
emphasized by Beaty and Woo (2016), is really the only well-known graphic
novel produced by her. However, Satrapi also created four other graphic
narratives and several movies.
After publishing some minor works, her second major work was Broderies
(Embroideries; Satrapi 2005). This title refers to both the work traditionally
done by women whose stories are told here, but also, in Farsi slang, to the
surgery to reinstate a woman’s virginity. It also has a meta-level meaning,
referring to the work of art itself including the graphic narrative as a rich
text. This third meaning shows that this apparently simple story has more
layers when seen not only as a narrative but also as a “text.” Such a notion
of text has been revived more recently by critics of comics such as Thierry
Groensteen, presenting the work as enabling complex multilayered readings,
through linear and tabular braidings (tressage). It is these “braidings” that give
a specific, rich texture to Embroideries, although, ironically, through a much
less systematic use of the frames than in Persepolis.
Her third work, Poulet aux prunes (Chicken with Plums; Satrapi 2006), which
received the Best Album Award (the most prestigious French prize awarded
to comic books) at the Angoulême Festival in 2005, tells of the last eight days
of Satrapi’s uncle in 1958 in Tehran using many broken frames. The fourth
and last work at the time of writing (September 2017), Le Soupir (The Sigh;
Satrapi 2011) is a Grimm-like fairy tale of high quality but is much closer to an
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illustrated book than a graphic novel. This gradual disappearance of frames
in these four graphic novels seems to illustrate that Satrapi has left the world
of bande dessinée for other media.
It is not clear if Satrapi has completely given up making bande dessinée but
she has not produced any new work since 2004 and instead has turned her
creativity to filming. In the past twelve years, she has produced traditional
movies, one being adapted from her graphic narrative (Poulet aux prunes, 2011;
with famous French actors), others with original scripts such as La Bande
de Jotas (2013), The Voices (in English, 2014), and the adaptation of Romain
Puertolas’ bestseller The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in
an IKEA Wardrobe into a live-action comedy (2018).
However, only the filmic adaptation of Persepolis with Vincent Paronnaud
into an animated feature was a French and world, success. Like comics, animation is often perceived as an art for children only, but in this adaptation, as
in the original graphic novel, the topics dealt with are particularly harsh, such
as war and torture with some graphic descriptions (see the “iron scene,” 51).
The story is the same and the style is very similar with hand-drawn black-andwhite and two-dimensional pictures. However, there are some differences.
The first one is the use of color in the first scenes in the airport where,
through a flashback in black and white, she narrates the whole story. Also,
more faithful to the animation media where all the images are in succession
(as opposed to the comics where several ones are simultaneously on the
page), it is made more fl uid with no divisions in chapters and no intertitles.
Moreover, maybe because of the mass aspect of the film media, love is much
more central where young Marjane also educates herself about it. Similarly,
although humor is already present in the graphic novel, it is more apparent in
the animation. The impact of Persepolis in the animation industry and animation studies is certainly as big as the impact of Satrapi’s work in the world of
graphic novels. It was entirely a French production (funding and staff ) using
French voices that are world famous, such as Catherine Deneuve’s. The film
received the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival (2007) and was nominated
for an Oscar in 2008 for Best Animated Feature. However, it was censored in
various ways in some Islamic countries.4 As it is often the case, the animation
created even more interest in her graphic novel as shown by the use of the
pictures derived from the animation on the cover of the new single-volume
4 The Iranian government protested against the selection of the anime at the Cannes Festival
(Le Monde, May 23, 2007), but a censored version was shown in Iran; it was also censored at the
Cinémathèque of Tangers and threatened after its showing in a Tunis movie theatre; it also was
the subject of a brief controversy in the United States (see Gupta, 2013).
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English edition (2007). The impact of the graphic novel and its adaptation
goes beyond the book and the film industry and can be seen mainly in its
infl uence on the portrayal of gender in other arts in the Middle East.
Impact on Gender
Although it cannot be seen simply as feminist literature, many elements in
Persepolis make women’s issues central. First, it is the story of a young girl
growing up in a world dominated by patriarchy.5 The veil (the very first chapter
as well as the only chapter title repeated twice) plays a key role in affirming an
opposition to gender discrimination imposed by a patriarchal government (the
mullahs and their police).6 The fifth frame at the bottom of the first page shows
the girls playfully using the veil (3). A bit later, at the age of six Marjie says that
she wants to be a prophet, to which all the previous (male) prophets reply “a
woman?” (6). Similarly, we see her mother protesting in the street (6). Much
later, in the amusement park project she creates for her college course, one
woman is a warrior and skilled equestrian leading the way to the hippodrome,
showing that discrimination was not always part of Iranian culture (329). Many
more ideas, texts and images reveal these incidents of discrimination and the
way Satrapi challenges them. As Satrapi said in an interview: “a lot of people
can’t believe that a woman from my country could do such a thing – they
think we’re all idiots or maniacs and don’t know about anything except to hide
behind a veil” (quoted In Hajdu 2009, 300). This “feminist” challenge is also
obvious in the way she reappropriates art history from a female perspective
such as in the doubly subversive reference to the Pietà (153, 281).
Finally, since 2000, Satrapi has indisputably become the most famous
female bande dessinée artist and author in France and beyond. Outside of
France, especially in the United States, she is at the top of both lists, popular
and academic. That certainly explains, at least partly, why the infl uence of
Satrapi’s work is decisive also in the Middle East. For example, as our research
shows, many Middle Eastern comic artists and especially graphic novelists
are women.7
5 The title could be read as a pun: Persepolis, père c’est police, that is, father = police.
6 One cannot avoid thinking that this first chapter is aiming not only at the Iranian government
but also at the French one since from the late 1980s the French government started to interfere
with the issue of the veil in public space. The fourth frame of the first page is a reversal of what
was/is happening in France where girls have to take off their veil before entering the school.
7 Out of the twenty-five Middle Eastern graphic novels that we found available on the market,
seventeen were made by women.
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Works Infl uenced by Persepolis in the Middle East
Lebanon’s civil war may have ended over twenty years ago, but its
repercussions are still felt profoundly in all aspects of life in Lebanon and
its diaspora. The Lebanese cultural scene with its artists, filmmakers, and
writers has been trying to make sense of the brutal sectarian civil war from
1975 to 1990 that tore the country apart between, among others, Christian and
Muslim factions.
Published in 2007 by the French small publisher Cambourakis, Mourir,
partir, revenir: Le Jeu des hirondelles (A Game for Swallows: To Die, to Leave, to
Return) is probably the most famous graphic narrative in France, the Englishspeaking world and the Middle East after Persepolis. It was nominated at the
Festival d’Angoulême in 2008 and became an instant bestseller. It has also
often been compared to Persepolis, and some similarities are obvious (see
Fig. 25.2). Told from a child’s point of view, the author Zeina Abirached
evokes the Lebanese Civil War of the 1980s and particularly everyday life in
a divided Beirut. She traces the impact of the confl ict on the lives of the
population while highlighting the atmosphere of fear, anguish, and anxiety
that was reigning. The illustrations are very similar and highly stylized, and
printed on high-quality glossy paper. However, there are two main differences
with Persepolis. Le Jeu des hirondelles does not have any historical perspective
since it is the story of a family during one afternoon. It is also less narratively
successful, disjointed and fragmented, although this might be intended to
reflect the havoc described. Even though Abirached’s family is Christian, like
Satrapi’s in Persepolis, the point is not to defend or attack one side but to help
readers empathize, in this case, with a family suffering from war.
Lamia Ziadé’s Bye Bye Babylone: Beyrouth 1975–1979 (in English; Bye Bye
Babylon: Beirut 1975–1979) was published in France by mainstream publisher
Denoël in 2010 and in the United States by Interlink Graphic in 2012 (see
Fig. 25.3). Of the graphic novels following Persepolis, this is the one that is
the least indebted to it. Although the book tells the autobiographical story
of Lamia and her Christian family in the 1970s and very much from a child’s
point of view, its style is radically different. It juxtaposes full-page pictures
mostly in color (very bright ones in a pop-culture style) with short texts (several lines to a half page) without direct links with each picture. It alternatively
shows on the one hand pictures of the carefree consumerist youth (Bazooka
chewing gum, Nivea cream, luxurious hotels, and supermarkets . . . ) in the
Westernized Beirut, the Monaco of the Middle East, and on the other hand
drawings of various forms of violence (explosions, guns, buildings destroyed,
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Figure 25.2 Cover of Zeina Abirached’s Mourir, partir, revenir. Le jeu des hirondelles (A Game
for Swallows: to Die, to Leave, to Return)
© Éditions Cambourakis, 2007. Courtesy of the publisher.
dead bodies, . . . ), thus mixing an innocent perspective of the little Lamia
with horrific war scenes.
Baddawi, written by the Palestinian-American writer Leila Abdelrazaq,
tells the story of her father Ahmed who, like many Palestinians, struggled
to find his path and become educated in the midst of catastrophes while still
dreaming about going back to his homeland. The title itself is derived from
the word “Bedouin,” which means nomad. He was raised in the refugee camp
of Baddawi in northern Lebanon after the 1948 war that established the State
of Israel. He tries to find himself and his identity while growing up in a place
he cannot call home. Eventually, Ahmed leaves Lebanon in search of a new
life in the United States. In her book, Abdelrazaq starts by saying “the story
you are about to read isn’t only about my father [. . .] It is about five million
people, born into a life of exile and persecution, indefinitely suspended in
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Marjane Satrapi and Works from the Middle East
Figure 25.3 Cover of Lamia Ziadé, Bye Bye Babylon: Beirut 1975–1979.
© Editions Denoël, 2010. Courtesy of the publisher.
statelessness.”8 Like Persepolis, it is told from a child’s point of view (the
father’s when he was a kid) in the 1960s and 1970s. In black and white, and
with a Middle Eastern design marked by the use of Palestinian embroidery,
the style is also close to Persepolis. However, it was also infl uenced by other
works. On the cover page, Abdelrazak places her father Ahmed in a faceless
position with his hands held behind him. This is very reminiscent of the
famous Palestinian comic-strip character, Handala. Handala, a barefoot tenyear-old boy with ragged clothes, is the most famous of political cartoonist
Naji al-Ali’s characters. He is an iconic symbol of Palestinian identity and
defiance.
8 See www.lareviewof books.org/article/stitching-out-a-life-in-graphic-memoir-baddawi (accessed
March 6, 2018).
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Some artists, like Magdy El Shafee, resorted to the graphic novel to voice
their dissent against corruption and lack of political freedoms. Published by
the small Egyptian publishing house Dar el Malameh in 2008, Metro: A Story
of Cairo is often presented as the first graphic novel in Arabic. A first English
translation by Humphrey Davies was made available online through “Words
without Borders.” Another English translation by Chip Rossetti came out in
2012 by American publisher Metropolitan Books. The same year, the Comics
Shop, the first publisher specializing in publishing comics for adults in the
Arab world republished it in Arabic in Egypt. This 110-page story is a thriller
depicting the political and social problems that disturb daily life in Cairo. The
protagonist, Shehab, a young software designer, plans an “honest robbery”
to pay back the money he owes corrupt officials. It was quickly banned by
the Mubarak regime under the pretext of indecency (there was one scene
with a couple making love under a blanket), and all copies were confiscated.
The author claims a very diverse group of infl uences from Mickey Mouse to
Crumb to Charlie Hebdo but never mentions Satrapi.
In Iran, where there has been a strict continuous censorship policy, it is
very difficult to find modern forms of comics and graphic narratives since
1979. The few existing “Iranian” graphic narratives were published by exiled
Iranians. The most famous one, certainly in the West, is Nylon Road, published
first in German in Switzerland in 2008, then in English in 2009. It is certainly
very similar to Persepolis. It tells the story of the life of a young girl who traveled to Europe (in this case, Switzerland) after the Iranian Islamic Revolution.
However, her story goes far beyond her teenage years and up to her mature
age, showing her as an abused and religious young wife, a brokenhearted
mother, and a new immigrant. It is therefore broader than a coming-of-age
memoir. One interesting self-reflective technique used is when the author
represents a younger version of herself coming back to haunt the older one
who now has different opinions about life, and both compare the problems
one encounters in the West with the often more difficult problems Iranians
encounter in Iran. Using mainly variations of two colors (gray and brown),
she provides a lot of details about her emotions and the culturally specific
settings (Marni 2013).
Much more challenging is Zahra’s Paradise. It avoided censorship because
it was serialized online in 2010 following the contested 2009 presidential
elections. It was written by Iranian human-rights activist Amir Soltani (a
pseudonym to protect his family), drawn by an Arab artist called Khalil, and
edited by an anonymous Jewish-Iranian editor. It was then published in 2011
by American publisher First Second, which added a glossary, explanatory
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notes and various contextual documents. As for the style, this rather long
story (230 pages) is in black and white. It uses a reportage-journal technique, thus reminding us of both Joe Sacco through its drawing style and
Persepolis through its short titles and short chapters (“Evin,” “The Lecture,”
“The Necklace”). It is also very rich, owing to the use of an interesting match
between form and content. For instance, in Chapter 5, the various sizes and
locations of the frames mimic a taxi driving in through traffic (84–85) and
the chessboard-like frames (alternating boxes in black and boxes in white)
are used when talking about political chess games (86–87). Beyond numerous
political references, there are also many allusions to both Iranian culture
(poetry, “oriental” drawing styles) and transnational global culture (Zizou,
Bob Marley, Escher). This graphic novel tells the story of a mother, Zahra,
searching for her son, who disappeared during the protests that followed
Iran’s 2009 disputed elections. The title is ironic, referring also to the name
of a large cemetery in Teheran, where both supporters and opponents of the
various governments have been buried. It has been initially translated online,
then as a hard-copy book, into many languages including Farsi (Vote4zahra)
and Arabic (Dar al-tanweer).
The revolutionary spirit in Tunisia and other Arab countries, which could
be seen as a continuation of the Iranian Green Movement, led to the Arab
Spring. This Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and
protests in the Arab world. It began on December 17, 2010, in Tunisia after the
self-immolation of a street vendor, and spread throughout many neighboring
Arab countries. Some writers have tried to document and explain these
revolutions beyond the clichés and stereotypes.
Scripted by French citizen Éric Borg (born in Tunisia) and drawn by
Romanian artist Alex Talamba, Sidi Bouazid Kids was published by the major
Belgo-European publisher Casterman (2012). It tells the story of the beginning
of the Tunisian revolution through the eyes of Foued, who was implicated
in it. It also sheds light on the gory brutality of the repressive regime, the
rampant corruption of the Ben Ali’s wife’s family, and France’s military and
political support of the dictator. It also shows the key role new technologies
played in the Tunisian revolution through Facebook, Twitter and cellphones.
It ends with a sense of skepticism because the revolution could be hijacked
by Islamists symbolized by the old man who hangs the portrait of the leader
of Ennhada party on the wall.9 In this case, connections to Persepolis are not
visible and not acknowledged anywhere.
9 On the very same topic, see also The Tunisian Awakening (Hussein 2012).
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One of the most famous graphic narratives in recent years has been
L’Arabe du futur: une jeunesse au Moyen Orient 1978–1984 by Franco-Syrian Riad
Sattouf. It was released in 2014 with the French publisher Allary Editions
(Sattouf 2015 [2014]). It received the Fauve d’Or for the best graphic novel
at the Festival d’Angoulême in 2015 and was immediately acclaimed as a
bestseller. It was followed by a second volume, with the same title but as
a continuation of the first volume (1984–85) (Sattouf 2016 [2015]). A third
volume has just come out in 2017 (in French). Before, Sattouf worked for
ten years for Charlie Hebdo and quit only several months before the tragic
massacre of January 7, 2015.10 The first volume was translated into English
by Sam Taylor as The Arab of the Future and published by American publisher Metropolitan books in 2015. It has also been translated into numerous
languages.
The story, as the title indicates, is the autobiographical story of young
Sattouf in the Middle East, that is, in Syria and Libya,11 although small parts
of it are also taking place in France. The title “Arab of the Future” refers to
his father’s belief in the Arab of the future who will break the shackles of religious dogma and overcome the legacy of colonialism by modernizing education. However, the story shows that instead of moving forward, his father
and the system he is aspiring to reverted to tradition with its harsh aspects
(corporal punishment for kids and for adults, sexism, etc.) and tribal ways of
thinking and acting. Although born in Paris (his mother was French), Sattouf
moved first to Gaddafi ’s Libya, where his father had a job as a professor of
history, and then to a small village next to Homs, in Syria, where his father
worked for a university of the Hafez al-Assad regime.
The style is very different from Persepolis. Light colors are used to represent
the country where the scenes happen: yellow for Libya, blue for France, and
reddish hues and green for Syria (which are the colors of the Syrian flag). The
drawings are not stylized and are closer to caricature, with the faces being
very expressive. But, more importantly, what is different is first the complete lack of empathy for the other characters than the “I.” Second, it is seen
through a kid’s perspective without any adult intervention.
The critical reception of the book was not always very positive. It has
been argued that the success of the book is due to the marketing skill of
the author, who addresses the European as a superior race. Similarly, Adam
10 See www.npr.org/2015/11/09/455303187/arab-of-the-future-chronicles-the-challenges-of-across-cultural-childhood. (accessed March 6, 2018).
11 Let’s notice that it is subtitled “. . . in the Middle East” and that it takes place in Syria and Libya.
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Shatz, a Jewish-American contributing editor to the London Review of Books,
wrote: “Sattouf ’s bleak and unflattering depiction of a traditional Muslim
society comes at a time when the defense of laïcité, the French model of secularism, has increasingly assumed anti-Muslim undertones” especially after the
far-right National Front managed to gain a high voter turnover in the 2014
European Parliament elections (2015).
Academic and intellectual reception has been slightly critical, emphasizing among other issues that it reinforces stereotypes about “Arabs” and/
or “Muslims” and a certain Orientalism. For Sattouf, it seems that as the kid
still admires his father in spite of his brutality, Arabs admire their dictators
despite the brutality of their regimes. Furthermore, in light of the massacres
and beheadings committed by the warring factions of the civil war in Syria,
the text tends to describe Arabs as violent and barbarians by nature in some
scenes. For example, when the children were playing with toys, Riad’s
playmates did not refrain from cutting the Israeli enemy’s head off (121).
Most of the time, the humor targets the Arab-Muslim people and the system.
The situations described seem to have been selected for their weirdness and
cruelty and to make the (French-Western) readers laugh at the expense of
the Other. It is not that bad things did not exist in these dictatorships, but this
graphic novel lacks many positive aspects or perspectives, empathy and/or
contextual explanations. Therefore, it tends to reinforce stereotyping rather
than understanding.
Of course, as shown in a short book review by librarian Martha Cornog, it
is possible to see positive aspects in Sattouf ’s account. Hence, she writes: “this
snapshot of Middle Eastern countries in perpetual unease bears witness to
the complexities of cultural confl ict as well as the resilience of people just trying
to live, perhaps coping by accepting misinformation simply to keep up hope”
(Cornog 2015, our emphasis). That shows that there are, if not many, at least
several ways of reading texts. But the “terrorist” context in Europe right now
(2016), which is probably there to stay for several years at least, is not going to
make reading of Middle Eastern graphic novels more open, or it will require
more courageous positioning by publishers and critics.
It is important to note that none of these skeptical or negative critiques have
ever been written about Persepolis. This is neither because of Satrapi’s presentation of her protagonist as a positive and successful heroine, or because
of her mockery of Iranians, but rather because she provides a comprehensive historical and political context for her story. It goes without saying that
Satrapi laughs also at Europeans notably through the protagonist’s experience in Austria.
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Conclusion
Both graphic narrative and the Middle East are changing fast. Therefore this
conclusion can only be very provisional but we can start drawing some concluding remarks from the above examples. If we look at graphic narratives we
discuss in this chapter, we can see first that many of them have been created
by women (more than half ). Second, most of them are not in the main
Middle Eastern languages but in English or French. Third, we can see that
various infl uences are obvious, from Persepolis to the ligne claire of the FrancoBelgian school (in particular for Lebanon) to the strong American presence.
We should add that in the most recent generation, there is also a vigorous
manga infl uence (Gueydan-Turek 2013). However, if these infl uences, due
to either colonial and postcolonial connections or to globalization, or both,
are reappropriated and mixed with local infl uences, it is not always clear for
which audiences they are intended.
On the one hand, as stated in their “Introduction” to their book Popular
Culture in the Middle East and North Africa subtitled “Popular Culture – A Site
of Resistance,” Walid El Hamamsy and Mounira Soliman write, “The status
of popular culture as a lower form of culture production is most clearly
pronounced in the Middle East and North Africa” (2013, 1). According to
them, this popular culture includes cartoons and graphic novels (4). On the
other hand, like others in the world, artists from the Middle East can use
popular culture as a site of resistance (and maybe even more because of
the lower, marginal position of “comics”). Hence, Hamamsy and Soliman,
after mentioning the difficult political situations of most of the Middle East
countries, write: “clearly, such oppressive political turbulence combined with
people’s lack of a voice representative of their needs either locally or globally
naturally led to a reemergence of popular cultural production, the seeds of
which had always been there but which had never crystallized and manifested
itself as explicitly as in the current moment” (6). The authors see popular
culture as “a form of culture resistance against different forms of global and
local domination” (7).
However, one can argue that to some extent both popular culture and
new technologies are also used and help the various powers already in place
(global Western companies, local national governments). Hence, we can see
that many of these graphic narratives are coming mostly from the Western
side, produced by Western and Westernized artists and published by Western
publishers. Furthermore, there are fewer graphic narratives in Arabic and/or
other non-Western languages and/or coming from a Muslim background that
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are easily obtained. Finally, the Westernized versions profit from a developed
distribution system and the better means of acquisition of Westerners.
The Western audiences are most likely to be the cosmopolitan elite of the
Middle East, Middle Easterners living outside the Middle East, and overwhelmingly Westerners. Obviously, one cannot dismiss the fact that most of these
“Western” people of various religions and political affiliations are looking
to be informed or enlightened about the complexity, variety and richness of
the situations there. However, the message received by these “enlightened”
audiences when removed from the real everyday context, risks erasing what
seems to be the basic message, namely tolerance or engagement with progressive forces. This very same positive message could reinforce stereotypes about
the Middle East especially through aestheticization itself (obvious in some
works such as Abirached’s). As shown by Gilliam Whitlock in Soft Weapons
(2007), warning messages in the form of newspapers, magazines or academic
articles and life narratives in their various forms (memoirs, testimonies, autobiographies, reportages . . . ), like fiction, can easily be co-opted into propaganda, and a lot of these life narratives have been packaged, promoted, and
enlisted in Western controversies. Most of these publications cited here were
and are subject to the same co-optation, and readers will have to struggle
against the neoimperial forces as much as they oppose dictators’ propaganda.
Publishers are not always the deciding factor as shown by the publication of
two very different graphic narratives, L’Arabe du futur and Coquelicot d’Irak,
both published by L’Association and both obviously in several ways indebted
to Persepolis, but the first one is much more problematic and controversial
than the second.
As shown in this chapter, Persepolis successfully avoided these controversies and is quite unanimously recognized as a masterpiece because it successfully challenges the stereotypes about the Middle East and about bande
dessinée while presenting a balanced version of history (between East and
West; History and her-story), displaying a balance of art and narrative, and
judiciously negotiating a middle way between alternative and commercial
publications.
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