Lunch With Marjane Satrapi

I was running late for class. After running up two flights of stairs with my lox and bagels in hand, I had finally made it to Professor Knight’s World Politics class for Global Scholars. It was like any ordinary Monday morning: everyone was chatty, excitedly discussing the readings, and still joking about how “metaphysical” the theory of constructivism is. The second the clock reached 10:20 AM, Professor Knight began making announcements. I was contemplating whether my lox and bagels would still be fresh after class when I heard Professor Knight say, “I know this event is happening the day before your midterm, but Marjane Satrapi is coming to speak at AU.”

I gasped. I squealed. I spun around in my chair and accidentally hit my friend sitting next to me. Professor Knight was about to explain who Marjane Satrapi was to the class, but noticing my near heart-attack when she mentioned Marjane’s name, Professor Knight allowed me to describe the life and works of my favorite author. I immediately began discussing how Marjane’s first book, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, impacted me as a daughter of a political refugee, the beauty of the story behind Chicken and Plums, etc. After my long-winded description of Marjane Satrapi, Professor Knight announced that we would have to submit in writing why we would want to meet and have lunch with Marjane Satrapi.

Right after class, I ran back to my room, turned on my laptop, and wrote a five paragraph essay in thirty minutes describing why I wanted to have the honor to meet and have lunch with Marjane Satrapi. Six days later, I was notified that I was chosen to attend Marjane Satrapi’s speaking engagement and attend lunch with her. I was over the moon. I began to look up other interviews she had done so I wouldn’t bore her with the same mundane questions.

It was a foggy, disgustingly humid morning when she came to speak at American University. Obviously, this didn’t affect my mood. I walked, practically skipped, to the front row of the auditorium in Ward Circle Building where she was speaking. At approximately 10:30, Marjane Satrapi walked in. She surprisingly resembled the drawings of herself in Persepolis. She dressed and behaved as the avant-garde, punk-goddess, Iranian-French artist I expected her to be. 

As she spoke, her humility, reflective personal introspection, and marvelous sarcastic wit when answering the questions the moderator asked engaged both the sense of humor and political energy held by all in attendance. Her humility was evident when she discussed the success of Persepolis. She discussed how she, as an artist, found it easier to discuss the Iranian Revolution from her own perspective. During interviews, her political views came to light as she discussed how she believes in the idea of political evolution as opposed to revolution because, “... Revolutions only breed bloodshed.” Thus, she unintentionally became the voice of a generation and was first labeled as an Iranian political expert by the media. She was able to shed this role because, as she said, “I am an artist, not a politician.” Although she isn’t a politician, she could definitely be a satirist. She compared George W. Bush to Ayatollah Khomeini by stating, “In America and the Iran the mixture of religion in power never gives a good result, just look at Bush and Ayatollah Khomeini.” She also threw in a jab at the 2000 election by saying, “...Wait, that’s when he [Bush] got elected twice. Okay.” Marjane Satrapi also established herself as an ally of the oppressed. You would probably assume by this sentiment that she is a feminist, especially when she referenced her friends wearing mini-skirts as a sign of a sexual revolution. This would be a false assumption. She is a self-proclaimed humanist. Her denial of calling herself a feminist was shocking to most of the audience and some wrote her off as a hypocrite. However, she still stated she was against the patriarchal establishment. What I found particularly interesting was her tying of the patriarchal establishment to the schema of dictatorship, especially in her homeland of Iran.

Between Marjane Satrapi’s speaking engagement and lunch, there was an interlude because of a tornado warning. Eventually, we were able to have lunch with her and she began the discussion in what I thought was an interesting fashion. She asked us to introduce ourselves. This immediately established a more personable setting than the auditorium, which enabled us to ask her more personal topics. Questions ranged from discussion of her upcoming movie (which she said is an example of her inner masochist), tackling the bourgeois, her artistic inspiration, and lost love. Marjane Satrapi stated that she hated the word “graphic novel” because not only was it a term to make the bourgeois feel better about reading a simple comic book, but it also makes her think of pornography. I was glad I was able to ask her about why she decided to use the female name, Iran, to represent her male protagonist character in Chicken and Plums. Interestingly enough, she explained how the male protagonist was actually representative of herself and the loss of love between he and Iran represented her relationship with her motherland. She then, in true Marjane style, bridged this idea of loss of pleasure she derived from the loss of her homeland to how our society in general forces us to deny pleasure. As an example of this denial of pleasure, she slammed women’s magazines. She stated, “I see all of these women’s magazines that claim feminism while they tell women to lose ten pounds of belly fat. I don’t want to lose ten f******* pounds of belly fat. I want to be reminded of all of the good sandwiches I’ve eaten. Life is short and we are all going to die. We should enjoy the now.”

By now you’ve probably realized that Marjane isn’t the one to hold back. I almost forgot to mention how she stated that religion is an opiate of the masses and her criticism of George W. Bush’s attempts to secure oil reserves under the guise of bringing “democracy” to the Middle East. One topic she wouldn’t touch upon was the story of her first love she met in Austria. When the topic was brought up, her feisty attitude was tempered by slight melancholy. The only thing she said about the matter was, “Human beings are not equal in front of death. A rich man can hire nurses to take care of him and massage him, but what about a poor man? He has nothing. We are only equal in front of a broken heart. No amount of money can fix that.”

The experience that the Global Scholars program provided me to meet and have a conversation with a rebellious intellectual that encapsulates the spirit of American University and a woman I would consider one of my inspirations, Marjane Satrapi. She enhanced my understanding of the obvious difficulties of Iran’s establishment of a stable governmental system post-revolution, indulged my desire to comprehend this political climate from an artist’s perspective.

Credit for this blog post goes to 1st year Global Scholar Mary Marston! Thanks, Mary!