Sorry about the lack of substantial posting tonight; I’ve been busy. But to make up for it, I figured I could review the book I finished today that had me thinking about current events–Persepolis 2.
I read the first book awhile ago and was profoundly moved by it and surprised at how insightful it was into the various motivations of the different characters in Satrapi’s personal and political story of growing up in the wake of the Iranian revolution. In this story she moves to Austria for high school, fails miserably to get her shit together there, and returns to Iran in hopes that being home will help give her guidance. The personal story is interesting, and the amazing thing about it is it pulls you in so you don’t even realize how much you’re really absorbing of Satrapi’s ideas about politics and her insights into her culture until you finish the book. I won’t spoil the various autobiographical twists and turns but I will say that the book left me percolating on two major thoughts after I finished it.
First of all, Satrapi is amazingly insightful into how tyrants put on a huge show of conflicting with each other when a more accurate view of how they work is that they have symbiotic relationships with each other that help them gain power over their real enemies, which are ordinary people. The war with Iraq comes to an end in this book, and the toll of war weariness on everyday Iranians is obvious–the willingness to actively fight against the oppressive government has drained out of everyday people who might have been more willing to resist in the past. And what becomes obvious is that despite the outrageous casulty rate, the war with Iraq actually helped empower the tyrannical leaders of Iran. If people are fighting an outside force they don’t have the energy left to fight for justice on the inside.
The part that hit closest to home for me was how constantly the government officials in Iran would invoke the martyrs as an attempt to guilt people into obeying their authority. The martyrs are invoked to justify everything, up to and including telling people that they have no right to socialize with friends, as it’s wrong to have pleasure when the martyrs are dead. I was strongly reminded of how the phrase “9/11″ is used to shut down any and all debate about the direction of our country’s political landscape. And just as Osama bin Laden did Bush a favor by shoring up his authority over the American people, then Saddam Hussein did the Iranian mullahs a favor by massacring hundreds of thousands of people who could then be used to beat the still-living into submission.
Needless to say, the escalation of misogyny and fear of sex that attends growing political tyranny that Satrapi chronicles also set off alarm bells of recognition.
The other thing that really struck home to me and is relevant as we hold our breath waiting to see if BushCo is crazy enough to start yet another war on Iran is that it’s likely that this war they’re agitating for–the colonial takeover of Iran after such a takeover in Iraq–was probably planned all the way back until the start of the Iranian revolution. At one point in the book, Satrapi has her father cursing the West for deliberately escalating the conflict by arming both sides to the teeth. This, coupled with the heavy sense of nihilism that settles over the characters as everyone seems to forget why they were warring in the first place, gave me the definite impression that the real reason that the neocon-run U.S. government in the 80s was playing both sides of the conflict against each other was that they sincerely hoped that Iran and Iraq would do so much damage to each other that they’d clear a path for an easier U.S. invasion.
Once again, tyrants work together against the people, then, with the U.S. power-mongerers feeding the weapons caches of the Iranian and Iraqi power-mongerers, and all three groups win by gaining power over their own people. And it would’ve worked if it wasn’t for those darn Clintons!
This doesn’t bode well for Americans who cherish peace when thinking upon the BushCo desire to conquer Iran. The neocons have invested too much time and money into this long term plan to just give up because it didn’t work out the way they planned it, where both Iraq and Iran were to be easy targets. Clutching at straws, hollering for nuclear attacks, anything but admit they weren’t the clever Machavallians they thought they were–it’s come this far and they still haven’t seen reason, so why should they now?
Anyway, the book comes highly recommended. Satrapi is a deceptively simple artist who can convey quite a bit of emotion in a few bold lines. And she comes across as highly likeable in a cantankerous way, and I don’t think she succumbs to undue self-flattery, which is poison to a memoir.
9 Responses to “A book review plus a paranoid post on foreign policy, all at once”
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First of all, Satrapi is amazingly insightful into how tyrants put on a huge show of conflicting with each other when a more accurate view of how they work is that they have symbiotic relationships with each other that help them gain power over their real enemies, which are ordinary people. […]
If people are fighting an outside force they don’t have the energy left to fight for justice on the inside.
Amanda, that is the most concise and perfect explaination of the Danish Mohammed Cartoon “Controversy” that I’ve ever seen.
Fortunately, Bush has so ruined the military it is in no shape to invade Iran.
Adding to what Left Wing Fox said,
Orwellian Government 101: Having problems keeping your population infantile and in a state of perpetual fear? It’s all about the Goldstein, every authoritarian state’s nebulous bad guy du jour. (We still don’t really know what Wile E. Bush’s foil of choice looks like … just, he’s out there and oddly, rose in prominence after the Chickenhawk in Chief got bored personally chasing down Osama, Mullah Omar, al Zarqawi, Saddam, the Road Runner …)
Persepolis 2 sounds like a good addition to my co-op’s “bookmobile” (we share mag, newspaper and book purchases and then yap about them in the salon … I mean communal areas like the laundry or back courtyard). I’m so swamped with work-related reading I just don’t have any eyeballs left for anything more substantial than news/mags. (I’ve even gone to audio books during travel so I can put the eyeballs in the overhead rack.)
Peanut, that’s exactly why I hope we see more intellectually stimulating comic books for adults who maybe are a little scared they’re for children. It’s a relief to read a comic book, because your eyes can linger over the drawings a bit instead of hurrying onto the next words.
Magis, do you really think that would stop Shrub? After all, he’s ruined everything else he’s touched and he always had someone to bail him out. He probably thinks that if he invades Iran, his “Heavenly Father” will send angels down to help.
Funny - we’re reading the same things. First Harry, now this. (And echidne had a dark design review… I think it was echidne…)
I really loved these books - and the spooky similarities between their and our authoritarian governments.
I’ve heard that Iraq was backed to start a war and break all the war toys the Iranians got when they had thier revolution - all those US planes and stuff.
I remember reading in 1989 or so that the greatest concern the US had in the middle east was the end of the Iran-Iraq war, precisely because that conflict soaked up so much money and effort that neither country could cause trouble abroad. Both regimes were militaristic and aggressive, and I think it’s reasonable to suppose that if they hadn’t pissed away their oil wealth fighting each other one or other of them might have caused enormous problems for the region and the US. On the other hand, if not for the war, there might have been considerably more room for internal dissent leading to reform. I think that this is one of the reasons that hatred of Israel has been kept at a fever pitch my middle eastern despots - it keeps people’s attention on external enemies. The whole cartoon controversy came right on the tail of a major disaster at Mecca and a ferry sinking off Egypt - the media in the region fed the controversy, neatly distracting people for the incompetence of their own governments.
I have been browsing Persepolis whenever the missus puts it down. She just finished it last night. Your review is just in time.
Satrapi’s observer seems to have just the right degree of detachment from whatever it is that motivates the people screwing up the world around her…most readable.
I have no solution to the problem but Statrapi’s observation that warmongering demagogues NEED each other to keep their subjects behind them is not news. By this analysis, Bush needed no ones help after Osama Bin Laden…I am grown so cynical about the neocons that i consider it possible they haven’t bagged OBL so they can have the bogeyman they need.
This is a great review, Amanda. I was so pissed off and horrified after I finished Persepolis 1. Satrapi is exactly one day older than me. During the Iran hostage crisis, she and her family were focusing on the extraordinary amount of shit their government was throwing at its own people, and here in Texas all I knew about Iran, as a 5th-grader, was yellow ribbons and Ayatollah toilet paper (seriously).
The part of Persepolis 2 that sticks with me every time I see the wingers going after uppity women is Satrapi’s observation that if you’re worried about your veil and your hem length and your sleeves, then you are too preoccupied to think about your freedom of speech and freedom of thought and human rights.