Cultural relativists as far back as Sextus Empiricus or Michel Montaigne, or as recent as William Graham Sumner or Gilbert Harman, often make compelling arguments that there are no objective standards for judging other societies/beliefs. Yet Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis achieves in 153 pages what cultural relativists deny as possible and what most political pundits can never fully articulate: an informed and justifiable criticism of an existing cultural paradigm. Satrapi's method is deceptively simple: by using her own life stories as the premise, Satrapi builds an argument for criticizing culture.
Satrapi's autobiographicalized[1] self and society act both with wisdom and foolishness both before and after the revolution. The Iranian revolution meant to replace an unpopular government with one more responsive to the people's will. Until reading this book, I was unaware of any particular details of Iran during their revolution - mostly because I am a Westerner and generally not privy to accounts of day-to-day life in the Mid-East. On that basis, the cultural relativists may be right that I have no foundation on which to critically analyze the current state of Iran. Thankfully, however, Satrapi can criticize - using both an insider's and outsider's perspective. Satrapi undermines the denial of standards posited by cultural relativists by showing the reader that standards of comparison do indeed exist: standards related to varying degrees of freedom of expression, of decision, and from coercion. Satrapi's criticism is much more subtle than "old way good, new way bad." Instead, she draws for the reader situation after situation where real people are swept along with the flash flood of a revolution. Satrapi, having come of age in the midst of such a flood, is able to compare her pre- and post-revolution home and draw for the reader how the people she knew dealt with that change and what they thought of it.
Satrapi's art maintains a consistent, iconic style throughout the book. This allows the reader to identify more fully with the story's characters and makes for a gripping narrative flow. This iconic style is also important in reaching an audience unaccustomed to graphic novels and the myriad ways in which their authors approach narrative (Art Spiegelman's Maus is a prime example of an iconic style's appeal). What really makes Persepolis an artistic tour-de-force, however, are the more experimental panels that Satrapi intersperses into the basic narrative frame she establishes. These larger, and more visually stunning, panels interrupt the narrative, slowing (in some instances stopping) the reader in his or her tracks, drawing him or her into the intricacies of the panel. This interspersion is a type of reader manipulation especially featured in comix. There are an abundance of examples of this technique in Persepolis - panels 15.2, 29.4 are but a few. Panels 10.5, 11.1, and 11.2, in particular, defy, yet wholly contain, prosaic description, poetic symbolism, dramatic interaction, and cinematic imagery.
Satrapi seems to suggest in this work that the way to bring peoples together is to allow an exchange of their cultural ideas. At times, it may appear that the unrestrained steamroller of Western culture threatens anything in its path. But is that really the case? Satrapi seems to hint that a people left free to first experience, then to choose, whether to accept or reject another culture's offerings are always better off than a people punished for experiencing other cultures. She presents with compassion her life in that earlier Iran and draws it for the reader through the filter of her current life in Western culture. She doesn't champion one culture while condemning another. She shows, through autobiography, what works and doesn't work when it comes to governing groups of human beings.
[1] - This phrase refers to the separation of the author as an entity from the literary self they create for a reader through autobiography.