my life has been invaded by symbols

What if the girlfriends had matching varsity jackets?

I fucking hate Marjane Satrapi and I fucking hate Persepolis. Imagine writing a graphic novel "to combat Western stereotypes" about your homeland and then putting nothing but Western stereotypes in there. That thing about giving plastic "keys to heaven" to young soldiers to encourage martyrdom is insane level of bullshit. What else? Did they also fly to Iraq on a fucking carpet? Literally never happened, you will never find anything about it written in Farsi, it's all Israeli and diaspora bullshit. The concept of keys to heaven itself isn't even Islamic, for fuck's sake, it's Christian, how stupid do you need to be to fall for this? The fact that allegedly Satrapi learned it from her parents' SERVANT should already make you side eye her. Do you have a servant? I do not. The keys bullshit was disproved even by a guy who worked for BBC, and BBC isn't known for its great nuanced perspectives on the Middle East.

The claim of her being a native informant and therefore reliable is so laughable. She was an upper middle class Tehrani from a leftist secular family with access to Western culture and the funds to send her to Vienna. She went to an elite French school. Is this supposed to be a universal Iranian everygirl? Before the revolution, only, like, 3% of the population had college degrees. She's representative of less than 3% of the population bc not even other rich kids of that era universally love her. Would you consider a woman with Mar-a-lago face a universal American everywoman? Why not?

She called Shi'a rituals fake and insincere but never criticized US/Israel as an existential threat to her homeland, how US sanctions devastate ordinary Iranians, US military interventions and what Israel is doing both in Gaza and Lebanon. But do you know WHAT she criticized? French visa policy, because poor, poor children of Tehrani rich shits can't immigrate to Western Europe so easily.

Her book is such a typical post 9/11 jerkoff material for people with white savior fantasy, I just can't. Off course, everybody religious in Iran is grim and depressing and rude, the veil is oppressive and the Western culture and attire are so, so liberating. Everything about Islamic government is terror, misery and stagnation. She's like "Please, US, bomb my country, but do so in a cool, progressive and feminist way". Btw did you know that Iran now has more women with STEM degrees than US or any European country?

Satrapi's political position is pure delulu. She said she rejects East-West binary and thinks that the only conflict is the conflict between fanatics and everyone else. Did fanatics steal Iranian oil? Did fanatics hang signs "Entry of dogs and Iranians prohibited"? Did fanatics bring both Pahlavis to power with a coup?

Persepolis is nothing but flimsy ideological justification for US military intervention and agressive foreign policies in the Middle East. Even other Iranians living abroad think that it's bullshit, please consult Hamid Dabashi and Roksana Bahramitash. The ones not living abroad will be even less kind with their criticism.

Hello.....as you might've seen me post in the past days my country is going through one of the biggest tragedies it has ever experienced right now, having endured two consecutive earthquakes very recently and not being equipped to deal with the damage, my people need all the help possible.

So i made a little strawpage compiling helpful links that i've seen around in one place, they're a lot so have fun choosing. If you've ever liked anything i've made, please consider helping in any way you can whether economically or by sharing. I am unharmed but so many people are currently suffering and so many have lost everything and i don't like seeing people having to endure so much.