Marjane Satrapi et Stephen Colbert

Hey, Marjane Satrapi s'est fait interviewer par Stephen Colbert. Les merveilles qu'on trouve sur youtube:

(D0 I need to translate?)

Persepolis: I want to see the movie

Well, tell me about hanting stories. I watched and re-watched the trailers of Persépolis and I am really getting obsessed about it. I might check what Marjane Strapi has written apart from that. Anyway, I thought I would put some of the trailers here. I will never listen to Eye of the Tiger the same way. For now on, it will be a feminist anthem to my ears. I hope we can find the movie with the original French voices. I know it was written by an Iranian expat, but there is something about the tone of the story which is very French and I think it might be lost with English voices. From what I could hear on youtube anyway. Which means I will have to buy the graphic novel in French now.

Saturday is another sunny day

Is it going to actually be summer for all summer? I sure hope so. It's sunny anyway. I am in the mood for some Pimm's, for walking outside, for reading outside (I am deep into Persepolis and the character's European experience, I expect to finish it today, then I'll read something more escapist), for listening to summery music (I think I might drive my wife crazy with Underneath the Mango Tree, which I will probably listen to a thousand times today, I wish I had some Harry Belafonte CD's, I can't find what I want on youtube).

Citons Brassens

Je viens de découvrir que Persépolis a d'abord été écrit en français! Arrrrgh! Je me sens un peu idiot. Enfin, en lisant Persépolis, j'ai en tête les paroles de Georges Brassens:

Il est possible au demeurant
Qu'on déloge le Shah d'Iran
(...)
Il y a peu de chances qu'on
Détrône le Roi des cons.

C''était prophétique et le reste est encore vrai.

Persepolis

I am reading Persepolis by Marjana Satrapi at the moment, it's a really great autobiographical graphic novel. It is also a reflexion on history. Persepolis tells the story of a girl growing up in Iran during the Islamist revolution. But through her eyes, it is the story of a people who cannot free itself from tyranny (the monarchy, then the ayatollahs) and ultimately cannot find peace. It is also about the corrosive nature of ideologies, as they turn people into unloving, violent zealots. Reading it, I am thinking the regimes in Iran (either monarchy or Islamist republic) look a lot like the one of Oceania in Orwell's 1984. Like Ingsoc, the regimes in Persepolis use double thinking, patriotism and religion to try to control every aspect of individual life, including sexuality and love. Unlike Ingsoc (so far anyway), it does not as far as penetrating the consciousness of the citizens. Not all of them anyway, as many people do criticize the regime, even revolt, sometimes openly. That said, to see that a country that was not short of free thinkers and smart, open-minded people got opressed so easily is shivering in itself. And it makes me think that we Westerners are not out of danger in that regard. I mentioned on this blog in the past our own brand of fundamentalism and they are also more than eager to control us, to impose their system of beliefs on us. We should show vigilance, but when I see nowadays that Big Brother is for the young generation a vulgar, trashy game show, I wonder if there is really hope. If the real Big Brother shows up, who will oppose any kind of resistance?