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Marjane Satrapi’s Rebellious Art

The radical legacy of the cartoonist and filmmaker who created Persepolis.

Marjane Satrapi was a born troublemaker. This was surely due in no small part to her remarkable heritage, which was both aristocratic and radical—a combustible combination that seems to have gifted Satrapi with a confidence that powered her resilient scrappiness.

Satrapi, who became a celebrated cartoonist and filmmaker, died on Thursday at age 56. She’s best known for her internationally best-selling graphic memoir Persepolis, first serialized in four volumes in France from 2000 to 2003 and then translated into English in two volumes, published in 2003 and 2004. Satrapi also cowrote and codirected an animated adaptation in 2007, which was nominated for an Oscar.

Persepolis tells the story of Satrapi’s coming of age against the turmoil that follows the Iranian revolution of 1979. She was 10 years old when the country erupted, forcing the long-ruling Shah to flee and bringing Ayatollah Khomeini to power. The main thrust of the narrative is Satrapi’s increasing estrangement from the theocratic regime as she chafes against its restrictions on women. But the book is also about her family, which had been deeply intertwined with the national politics of Iran for more than a century. Her maternal great-grandfather, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, was shah of Iran from 1848 to 1896. Satrapi’s grandfather, although technically a prince, rebelled against this royal heritage and became a communist. He was frequently jailed by subsequent monarchist regimes, which came from a separate line.

Most of Satrapi’s family shared her grandfather’s politics. They were secular leftists who opposed both the dictatorship of the shah and the theocracy that was established by the 1979 revolution. Satrapi’s maternal uncle, Anushirvan Ebrahimi, had been exiled to the Soviet Union under the shah. He returned to Iran after the Islamic Revolution, and was arrested and executed by the new regime.

Satrapi’s father, Taji, was an engineer, her mother, Ebi, a dressmaker. Even as a child, Satrapi was alert to the ironies and contradictions of their status as well-to-do communists. She was embarrassed by her father’s Cadillac and the fact that her beloved maid wasn’t allowed to eat with the family.

Raised on stories of her heroic ancestors, Satrapi nursed dreams of not just being a revolutionary but even a world-changing prophet who would spread a true message of equality.

Any child with such grand ambitions is a poor fit for a dictatorship, especially if that child is a girl living in a tightening patriarchy. Satrapi repeatedly clashed with the authorities. She went to protests, sometimes against her parents’ wishes. She talked back to teachers and ran afoul of the Guardians of the Revolution who policed the streets for signs of impious behavior. She was a Persian punk with a taste for sneakers and pop music (Iron Maiden, Kim Wilde, and Michael Jackson).

The Iran-Iraq war made the country even less safe and intensified the crackdown on dissenting voices. Satrapi’s parents decided it was safer for her to finish her education elsewhere, so at age 14 she was sent to stay with family friends in Austria and study at a French school in Vienna. Although she kept up her good marks, she ran........

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