Punk Rock and Persepolis

Something that really stood out to me in the novel Persepolis is the use of punk rock as a symbol of resistance to the regime. I thought it was very interesting how Satrapi used punk rock and alternative culture icons such as Kim Wilde, Iron Maiden, Abba, and Led Zepplin as a way to express Marji’s rebellion against the regime. While it is common, but still interesting, to see Marji using these Western icons as symbols of her rebellion, it is more interesting to see her parents take after her. She cites that her parents were the ones that introduced her to Led Zepplin before she had even heard them at her party, and her dad often defended her music style. This showed just how much they valued the alternative views of Western culture and sought to bring those values over to their country of Iran, even though they were constantly prosecuted for doing so. In her culture, nearly everything that was Western was considered “punk” to Marji’s oppressors. When she is caught after buying by the “guardians of the revolution”, they accused her of wearing punk shoes, even though they were simple Nike sneakers, something that wouldn’t be considered punk at all in our culture. But because they were not tradition and from the West, they were labeled as punk and a threat to the guardians, who were portrayed, in both the book and the movie, as giant black blobs that moved around without arms or legs. An even stranger juxtaposition of this is Marji’s reaction of seeing her old idols after coming back from her time in Austria and Vienna. She is amused but also disheartened by her old punk idols, and even washes her drawing off the wall. Being in the culture that she had looked up on for so many years and being the punk that she had always tried to be in Iran had disillusioned her, after she saw how little impact and change punks truly created in Western cultures.