Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

In her memoir, Marjane Satrapi explores what happens when a teenager in their formative years is transplanted to a culture in stark cultural opposition to one’s native environment. She portrays her attempt to find her identity as an Iranian in exile in Austria. However, Persepolis 2 traces Marjane’s inability to be whole in Iran or in Austria. In her native Iran she is rebellious, wild, and bold, which leaves her isolated but with a clear vision of herself as a counterculture rebel. In Austria she finds herself prudish, traditionalist, and conservative compared to her peers, and they label her as such despite her best efforts to appear rebellious. She is never quite at home, considering herself, instead, outside of both cultures, accepted by neither. Satrapi hence suggests that the experience of immigration, particularly in the context of dichotomous ideologies, renders people stuck with major obstacles to forming their identity.

Young Marjane struggles alone to understand Austrian culture and find her place in contrast to it. In Austria, she is shocked at the sexual promiscuity of Julie, her friend and roommate. She tries to assimilate into Austrian society through several misguided attempts to mimic or emulate peers. Without a guide to the culture, however, Marjane ends up copying the least useful aspects of what she perceives as Austrian counterculture. She chops off and spikes her hair, wears piercings and heavy makeup, and reads philosophy. This, however, neither ingratiates her to the counterculture kids nor the mainstream. She cannot be wholly Austrian, either mainstream or counterculture, because it is a foreign culture—one she superficially emulates rather than explores for the purpose of understanding.

When Marjane returns to Iran, her childhood friends shame her for having premarital sex and taking birth control. She isolates peers and friends with her honesty, pushing cultural adherents to the side. This pleases her immensely as she knows exactly how to appear counterculture in Iran. She knows which buttons can be pressed safely and how hard to press them, earning a reputation as a rebel through acceptable means of protest. She wears makeup, pushes the limits of how acceptable dress including the veil are worn, and behind closed doors, she expresses herself both verbally and with her fashion and art. While she is accepted as counterculture in Iran, she is unable to reconcile the freedoms that are lacking in her home culture and her desire to live a more open and liberated existence.

In one culture she is too conservative and too traditionally wholesome. In the other she is considered beyond saving: too rebellious and at risk of censorship or worse. Marjane, instead, exists on the fringes of both cultures, suggesting that identities remain in conflict as long as cultures do.

Marjane’s formative years are spent in two cultures: one that is open and expressive to the point of visual and stimulation overload and the other so repressive that it inspires sparks and fits of visual and artistic expression. Marjane comes of age in both cultures, attempting to express herself through fashion and art. The memoir conveys that artistic expression (be it drawing, clothing, or design) allows people to convey ideas that resist the status quo and that this form of expression is unfairly censored in Iran.

Art is central to both the form and the content of the memoir, and this is most evident when Marjane returns to Iran. Universities that closed during the revolution reopened after the war. Marjane is able to take advantage of the reopening by applying for and being accepted into a program for graphic art. Each day she sketches and studies art at university, learning to translate what she sees into artwork on the page. However, she is prohibited from freely expressing her creativity in Iranian culture. To truly learn to draw the human form, she and other artists go behind closed doors to study one another, applying their understanding to the page. Later, when Marjane takes a job as an illustrator, a peer is arrested for a comic depiction of a mullah. Another is arrested for portraying a beard. Satrapi shows that art, therefore, can be expressed under certain limitations in Iran, but the memoir pushes back against the fact that artists are not free to express themselves fully.

Marjane is prohibited from expressing herself physically in Iran. She is unable to touch Reza, her boyfriend, in public. They cannot stand beside one another or use the same staircase. They cannot meet in public without risk of reprisal. For Marjane, who came to adulthood in Austria, this is an unbearable situation. She yearns to touch Reza—to live with him and understand him as a person through their physical expression of love. When this is denied to her, Marjane believes that marriage is the only way to have what she wants under the Iranian regime. These details provide the background of Marjane’s decisions to express herself behind closed doors with illicit life drawing classes or to wear makeup in public.

This theme is metareferential since the graphic memoir itself is a form of art reflecting the artistic education that Satrapi descries in the memoir. She outlines learning the skills that would later allow her to create the Persepolis series. The metareferential nature of the graphic text prompts the reader to consider the expressive powers of art in their own contexts. This reinforces the memoir’s arguments that art allows people to express themselves in ways that threaten and are therefore censored by authorities.