One aspect that I felt we touched on during our discussion of the first part of Persepolis but didn’t necessarily dissect or analyze to the fullest, and is something I think is not only important to this book as a whole, but to our society in general today is the influence the media has on our thought processes and decision making. Personally I feel as though the media manipulates us and corrupts us in large part because they can. In particular I want to reference page 74 and the illustration at the bottom of the page that shows the family sitting on the couch watching television and a government official ranting about women and why they need to wear veils. There are many more instances where we see Marji and her family getting their information either through television or the newspaper, because frankly that is their only method of gathering info. For me, this shows that if you control the media you can control the people. People have nothing more to go on then what they see and hear, therefore making the statements that much more persuasive and believable even if they aren’t true. Furthermore, when things are portrayed throughout the media, it becomes public knowledge for all. This knowledge can lead to stereotypes and be truly detrimental to the stability of a society, which if already unstable, like we see in the novel, can turn ugly; and it does.
In today’s society I’m not surprised that we rely so heavily on the media because of the lifestyles we live and the fast paced society we are a part of. We want information quickly and because of that we are willing to accept whatever somebody else says and wants us to believe. I honestly believe that as a society we have lost our innocence. We are so easily duped into believing anything anyone else has to say and take it at face value without digging deeper, uncovering more facts that essentially lead to more truthful claims. To be perfectly honest, I would be lying to you and everyone else who reads this post if I didn’t say that I take what the media says to be true almost regularly because I don’t practice what I preach. Instead of investigating and digging deeper I usually take the easy way out and let the work of others, who for the most part are reporting to try and gain ratings and viewers, determine the way I think about an issue or topic.
Finally, Persepolis has definitely been an eye-opening read thus far because it raises issues that I have very little prior knowledge about and is something I can’t relate to on a personal level. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to go through a revolution like this and have a religion forced upon me. Not only that, but to see the effect it had on Marji’s family and friends is heart-breaking. It makes me value that much more what I have and how lucky I am to have lived in a country where I’m not controlled. Granted, we have a lot of issues here in America that we need to deal with, but after reading this, I’d say we have it better and have had it better than Marji, her family, and her country did. The long term effects are tremendous and I’m looking forward to seeing how Marji reacts when she returns home and has to see first hand the aftershock of the revolution.
Brian Pullyblank
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