Persepolis

Politics and sentiment don’t mix. Those are words that we tell ourselves to try and form a distinction between the two but inevitably, they end up coming together in the end. Its the same thing as saying that you shouldn’t mix politics and religion. As for me, I agree. Those things should be kept separate. Politics and sentiment is something that should be kept separate as well but more often than not that is not the case.

You could almost break it down to the age old argument that women should show emotions and that men shouldn’t. It basically comes down to that. The women in Marji’s family show their emotions because they believe that it isn’t a weakness. The men or more specifically her father, say that you shouldn’t show emotion and that to do is an act of weakness. The funny thing is that all throughout the movie we see signs of her father’s emotions. When she leaves the first time he is crying. The funny thing here is that he is the one crying and the mom is stoically looking on. Also when she calls home Europe, when he is talking on the phone you can hear the worry in his voice and the concern for his daughter. But I think that this particular trait is something that all father’s have. They try to be tough and with sons I believe that they do a better job of holding together that tough persona. But with daughters, I believe its a little harder to do so. Not having kids myself I can only speculate but I think I’m closer to the truth than most fathers care to admit. I’ve seen evidence of this first hand though from the guys I work with and even from some of my own friends that have started their families.

As for what Marji believes, I think that she wants to believe that they don’t exist but her experiences with her family has led her to believe otherwise. Just like how she wants be a prophet at first and then she wants to be a communist, Marji’s aspirations are influenced by the decisions of those around her. I also think that her mother and grandmother would agree with my thoughts on this as well seeing as how they are both older and wiser than both me and Marji. Having seen the best and worst of people, I think that their thoughts on the matter are probably not too far from my own.

It could be that I’m wrong in my assumption that they don’t believe that the two shouldn’t mix but based on the book and the movie, it could be that they think that the two should work together because if you try to hold one away from the other, the one that is held back comes back stronger than before and ends up doing more harm than good. You could almost use the argument that it would be better to have the emotion there and not need it than to need the emotion and not have it.