My subject line refers to both the 2003 "graphic novel" (=big comic book) and the 2007 "animated film" (=cartoon). Marjane Satrapi authored both and directed the film with Vincent Parounnaud.

Like most critics, I liked both. The film, which I watched recently, preserves Satrapi's signature simple visual style but deepens and enlivens it with a variety of techniques. In story and character, it sticks very close to the first two volumes of the comic. Yet I came away from the film with a somewhat different feeling than the comic left me with.

The paper Persepolis is the story of a young Iranian girl growing up against the background of revolution, war and exile. Political themes are there--Satrapi doesn't want the reader to be in any doubt about her, and her family's, liberalism--but they never, as I recall, become the point of the story. Satrapi presents herself as a misfit regardless of the social and political background; she's at least as rebellious during her Vienna years as she ever is in Tehran. That stubborn personality who demands to be seen and respected seemed to me to constitute the story's real draw.

The film Satrapi is the same character, but her drive for self-expression seems to have become somewhat less central, and the political theme has moved to the fore. The emphasis of the story shifts from Satrapi vs. God and Herself to Satrapi vs.The Revolution. Whereas the comic book had been clearly but still somewhat offhandly negative about the Islamic Revolution, in the film it is unambiguously the villain. That is perhaps artistically understandable. Glowering bearded IRGC's with assault rifles chasing fleeing adolescents makes better theater than Satrapi's musings about her confused feelings (which seemed to come through so well in the comic).

But it struck me this time (i.e., in the movie) that Satrapi must make the Islamic Revolution the villain, because the denouement of the story is her decision to leave her country for good. She has portrayed her family as Iranian patriots and herself as defensive of her Iranian roots, regardless of the burdens of Iranian identity. To maintain her bona fides, she must make the viewer believe that she really had no choice, that she didn't so much leave Iran as was driven out by an alien and hostile system.

Of course, anybody has the right to try to find a better place to pursue happiness. What troubles me about Persepolis the film is that Satrapi seems to want you to see her as an heroic rebel against tyranny, as continuing the traditions of her grandfather (who spent many years in the shah's prisons), her beloved Uncle Anoush (who was executed by the Khoemeinists), and the many other Iranians she portrays who were imprisoned, tortured or executed for political reasons.

But Satrapi herself never paid such a price, never came close to it. She hated wearing the headscarf. She bought forbidden music, smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, and badmouthed the Revolution. She was uppity with her teachers. She had a few run-ins with the virtue police. She says that, in the early Nineties, Iranian young people "needed" to party as the sole way they could experience freedom. Well, it is easy to believe that any of us would have found the restrictions intolerable.

But there is no indication that Satrapi ever even considered any sort of political involvement, as hundreds of thousands of Iranian students did and still do. Many of them have been punished for it, which is itself a kind of service to one's country. Though Americans don't like to admit it, the Islamic Republic is, like Turkey and Pakistan, one of the few democracies in the Islamic world. It is a very imperfect democracy from our point of view. But the notion, encouraged here, that Iran is totally controlled by a handful of fanatical Khoemeinists is simply false. Iran has a kind of genuine domestic politics, especially at the local level, and it certainly has a genuine domestic debate about the country's direction. It is not a foregone conclusion that a talented, committed, liberal Iranian could have no effect on his country's future.

Satrapi's family was prominent and affluent. Although it isn't quite clear to me how they did it, her father and mother, though very opposed to the Khoemeinists, seemed to retain an above-average standard of living even in the years after the Revolution. (Her father rejected leaving the country because he didn't want to "drive taxis" in the West.) Satrapi had European languages and some European education (such as it was--she spent most of her time in Vienna hanging out with punks). And in the end, she had the option of simply leaving Iran to make her future in France.

Not that many other Iranians of her generation had cards like that to play. Perhaps as many as 600,000 died in the war. The Revolution killed, imprisoned or silenced hundreds of thousands of others. And the overwhelming majority of Iranians simply never had a foreign option. They would never have gotten visas to places like Austria and France. Satrapi could get them because of her well-to-do family and its European connections.

Am I being unfair? Is it morally acceptable or not for Satrapi to adopt the role of critic and rebel after forsaking her country because it has fallen under tyranny? Is she still eligible to be heard on the future of a nation whose destiny she no longer shares?

I have always believed that cultural connections are also reinforced by general genetic blueprint. Gene pools such as they are become readable to genetic scientists ergo I submit to you that predilection follows closely on the heels of such grouping.

One can escape the the entrapments and oppressions of a culture while still feeling a strong albeit indefinite connection to the people still living in that culture.

Hope springs eternal even if democracy does not.

Yes, and tiresome.

"Is it morally acceptable ...forsaking her country ..."

Is she 'eligible' to be heard?

Why are any of us 'eligible' to be heard?

Nice review and thanks.Beats my latest pbs cartoon cadaver staring click and clack the auto mechanics.This seems to be fill material at best?You probably have not seen it and if so you are lucky.

Iran is one of the oldest societies on earth.They even defeated the greeks.I regret Iraq is pillaged but saddam was intent on going nuke because of his fear of Iran.I hope we can deal with the iran nuke issue better than we did the Iraq one..

Uh - back in 1940 werent' we "intent on goin nuke" cause we feared the Germans were?

I guess what's sauce for the goose ain't always sauce for the gander, huh?

Still eligible? She is still Iranian. I believe she always will be. Iranian and eligible, that is.

A friend of my son is Iranian. I don't know that he was born in Iran, though his parents were. He is a grad student at Colombia. And he is Iranian. Proud of it, too.

A person can leave their birth country and leave their ancestry behind; I don't believe that's what Satrapi did. She would not have left under less harsh circumstances.

Thanks for the review... I'd forgotten the book. My daughter owns it; I read it while living in Korea. Now I'll need to find the video.

I can't help but agree Except that Iraq was not going nuclear.

You failed to point that out to the ignoramous that you were replying to.

Well - don't feel too bad about it - you're not really agreeing with me - you're agreeing with IOZ.

He's the one who taught me about American "exceptionalism" - I had really never seen the word before to describe the attitude that the rest of the world ain't entitled to the same feelings and actions as we have and perform.

So in his unfortunate absence from these parts, I just took the liberty of answering like he woulda done.

a fundamentalist state run by crazy-ass fundamentalists, I can understand a bit her point of view as well as yours.

I get frustrated by the liberals who flee my state

"Stay and fight! If we all leave, it will only get worse" I have to understand though, that life is short. Why should they live somewhere where they have to constantly struggle just to be themselves? Where they have to watch what they say, and watch their backs, and never make a difference to the god-worshippers.

Iran is a beautiful country, <link>

and I am sure that she was sorry she had to leave. It is only right that she should lament the reasons she had to leave, to criticize the culture that forced her out.

. . . is, often as not, a function of being able to compel others to listen. That's why artists are artists. That being what she is, I have to throw my support behind her pursuing the path that best aids her capacity to make art, at the expense of all else.

I'm an existentialist, so I kinda think that making any choices in the face of this big, absurd stretch of life is commendable, and more so if we can make those choices on some basis other than the sheer absurdity of it all, if we can press forward and function, in ANY small way, for the benefit of other beings. If making art--and if expressing, in that art, conflicts internal and external, personal and/or political--happens to be that way, well . . . Bully! Right?

If we denied the expatriate the right to criticize his or her nature of origin, we'd have bigger fish to fry than Satrapi, wouldn't we? Hemingway, Stein, Miller, and, truth be told, more than a few Fraysters. It could just as easily be pointed out that the expatriate has actually seen something that works better; we constantly self-flagellating libs who envy Europe and Asia for their cuisines, cinema, and socialized health-care are the ones who've never experienced European life; our romanticized notions might be more hypocritical than we can imagine. The expatriate, on the other hand, by untethering her fate from that of her nation of origin, could be said to speak from a place of greater knowledge.

I admire someone who stays behind to suffer anonymously as much as anyone. And it might be unfair of me to posit that some less affluent, less cosmopolitan writer or illustrator isn't or wasn't or won't be doing some equally compelling work in Iran proper; indeed, I imagine some are. There is a certain nobility to toiling in anonymity, I suppose, but I, for one, would rather ply my trade where others can see me. What I have to say--what I've observed, and what I believe it's made me--ought theoretically take care of itself. It certainly doesn't need anyone to measure its acceptability . . . or my "eligibility" to express it.

"Eligible" was a bad choice. Charles Manson is "eligible" to publish his songs.

My point (which I inadvertently pissed on in the final paragraph) was that because of its political gravitas Persepolis the film seemed a letdown after Persepolis comic. When Satrapi was just a confused expat kid trying to find a life, I cheered for her. When she became a plucky embodiment of Enlightenment values in revolutionary Tehran, I found her a trifle pretentious.

I didn't have the comic to which to compare the film (which, in an odd burst of Serendipity, I saw just last night). Without that comparison, she seemed less to me, in the film, a plucky embodiment of Enlightenment values than a confused expat kid . . . or rather, a confused, smarter-than-average kid of my own generation (more or less--I was only 6 in 1978, when the film began, but that really only puts a handful of years twixt Satrapi and myself). Even if her circumstance differed pointedly from mine, what I came away with was a journey from youthful hero worship and idealism to adolescent rejection of bourgeois values, degenerating into late adolescent, early twenties depression, reinvigoration in ideology, and, finally, a determination to go where life leads one.

The political element might well have been more pronounced than in the graphic novel, but taken solely AS ITSELF, the film essentially did what you say the comic did; the politics struck me as secondary to the journey of someone who was, ultimately, rather ordinary (aside from being talented and smart, which is more ordinary than talented, smart folks like you and I would like to believe it is).

Ultimately, though, I'm not one to tell you your reading was wrong. I only mean to point out that it read differently over here.

You're being unfair, and kind of ignorant as well. A key difference between Marjane (whom I know) and the other political involved figures you mention is that Marjane is a woman. Another thing you miss is the nature of Marjane's current political engagment, which consists primarily in convincing Westerners that those veils mask an enormous diversity of people. When she speaks in the US, she focuses on convincing people that if democracy in Iran is to come, it will have to come without people bombing the place.

She's also making an important historical point, which is that the Iranian revolution came about because a coalition of groups opposed the Shah. It was not, initially, an Islamic revolution.

You totally underestimate the difficulty of leaving one's family. When she first left Iran, she wound up with racists in Austria. Exile is not an easy thing. Marjane's parents are still in Iran, subject to the whims of the same government as everybody else. There are very meaningful ways in which she does share that country's destiny.

Even if she didn't, your question, as posed, is pretty idiotic on its face. I think that would be true even if a person doesn't know anything about Iran. Is it okay to play cards that you have when other people don't? Please. I have to think you mean something more specific by that question, because otherwise it's so obvious. You might as well ask what right you have to write about Iran on an internet message board (you've never been to Iran, and not everybody in the world can get on the internet.) I somehow manage to teach Chinese history without "sharing that country's destiny", and people in the northern half of Boutetout County, Virginia manage to form opinions about the southern half. Among your fallacies -- treating the nation state as if it were the natural way of dividing the world.

In short, Marjane's story is part of world history. Her right to tell it comes of her living in the world (as does our right to discuss it). One of her main points is that people in Iran are not part of an evil empire, that there is diversity and humanity and stupidity there just like anywhere else. Of which she is but one small example which she can relate to us with unusual precision. And she has now innovated two incredible forms for the telling of that story.

You might check out her other work -- Embroideries (Iranian women talking about sex) and my favorite of hers, Chicken With Plums (which is about death).

the morality of influential expatriates and on notions of duty in general. And your "ignorant" sounds like the "You Can't Feel Her Pain" variety, as if that's the bar for objectivity or standing to comment; as if true "understanding" must include partial acceptance or validation, at least for those we approve and support for other reasons. Most of us, thankfully, are also "ignorant" of the pycho-social obstacles faced by child molesters.

The artist as woman must be considered here, which you've done. At least as important, in my opinion, is the theme indicated by the title---many "Iranians" are, inadvertantly and otherwise, Persians first and Muslims second. Persian culture is just about the only cultural force to have molded or altered Islam as well as being altered by it. Even as Iran alone keeps the Axis of Evil brand alive, Iran as Persia represents the best chance for a Muslim Renaissance and Reformation.