Persepolis Gender
Persepolis Film Review – Women’s Rights and Cultural Shifts Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war was shrouded in darkness; it represents a time of major oppression by the Islamic-based government and is marked a huge shift in culture for the Iranian people, protests, and general resentment of the government. The coming-of-age film, Persepolis, reveals the plight of a young girl trying to find herself whilst simultaneously living in fear and being prosecuted for her seemingly normal (at least to western culture) behavior. The major geographic theme of gender in Persepolis is paramount; although both genders see some form of repression of rights, women are far more affected by the ideology of the Islamic fundamentalist
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The brutality of the Iran-Iraq war, sparked by the Iranian revolution, was largely portrayed in the film as completely senseless—it was implied that both sides had basically lost any reason behind the war, and were fighting just to fight. Moreover, martyrdom was encouraged, and by the end of the war, casualties reached the millions. Although estimates vary, the Correlates of War Project estimated that 500,000 Iraqi and 750,000 Iranian people died as a result of the war (Kurzman 2013). An illustration of martyrdom speaks volumes to social class differences: a lower-class woman comes to Marji’s mother for help after her son is given the key to heaven; this brings light to the fact that young boys from the poorer class were often targets, indoctrinated by the religious government into the belief that dying for their country was the ultimate sacrifice and would ultimately bring them closer to God. We also see both the hostility toward Western culture by Islamic fundamentalists and the contrast of Marji’s yearning for Western culture by Marji; indulging in western culture is seen as sinful and as violation of the Islamic law. Later in the film, we see Marji feeling shamed by western culture: Marji lies about her ethnicity, telling a boy she meets that she is French, attributable to the Western stereotyping of Iran and the fear of being seen as a “savage” because she is Iranian. Overall, the culture of Iran during this period was shaped by an overbearing religious government that is accepted by some and refuted by others, and because of the violent persecution of people who oppose that government and brutal war between Iran and Iraq, the rest of the world began to stereotype the Iranian people as heartless savages who held their religious beliefs higher than their own
The brutality of the Iran-Iraq war, sparked by the Iranian revolution, was largely portrayed in the film as completely senseless—it was implied that both sides had basically lost any reason behind the war, and were fighting just to fight. Moreover, martyrdom was encouraged, and by the end of the war, casualties reached the millions. Although estimates vary, the Correlates of War Project estimated that 500,000 Iraqi and 750,000 Iranian people died as a result of the war (Kurzman 2013). An illustration of martyrdom speaks volumes to social class differences: a lower-class woman comes to Marji’s mother for help after her son is given the key to heaven; this brings light to the fact that young boys from the poorer class were often targets, indoctrinated by the religious government into the belief that dying for their country was the ultimate sacrifice and would ultimately bring them closer to God. We also see both the hostility toward Western culture by Islamic fundamentalists and the contrast of Marji’s yearning for Western culture by Marji; indulging in western culture is seen as sinful and as violation of the Islamic law. Later in the film, we see Marji feeling shamed by western culture: Marji lies about her ethnicity, telling a boy she meets that she is French, attributable to the Western stereotyping of Iran and the fear of being seen as a “savage” because she is Iranian. Overall, the culture of Iran during this period was shaped by an overbearing religious government that is accepted by some and refuted by others, and because of the violent persecution of people who oppose that government and brutal war between Iran and Iraq, the rest of the world began to stereotype the Iranian people as heartless savages who held their religious beliefs higher than their own