Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, an Alternative Perspective on the Middle

Home , Ari Folman, A Girl in Black, Intimate Stories, Kathleen Christison, Marjane Satrapi, Ori Sivan

PERSEPOLIS AND WALTZ WITH BASHIR, AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON THE MIDDLE

EAST, A MIRROR FOR THE WEST

Kristyna Dzmuranova

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Stephen Charbonneau, School of Communication & Multimedia Studies, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in paI1iai fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

SORY COMMITTEE: ----y'--- -

~ant&:L Susan Reilly, Ph.D. ~ Director, School of Communication & Multimedia Studies

Heather Coltman, D.M.A. Interim Dean, The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of A11s and Letters 117Z-r~

.. 11

PERSEPOLIS AND WALTZ WITH BASHIR, AN ALTERNATIVEPERSPECTIVE ON THE MIDDLE EAST, A MIRROR FOR THE WEST I. Introduction...... 1 A. Delving into the Topic...... 1 B. Overview of the Examined Movies...... 5 1. Persepolis...... 5 2. Waltz with Bashir...... 6 C. Literature Review...... 8 1. Form and Generic Tendencies...... 8 2. Middle East and Third World Cinema...... 16 3. Representation and Stereotyping...... 18 4. Historiography and Postmodern Cinema...... 24 5. Methodology...... 30 II. Chapter One: Form and Generic Tendencies...... 38 A. Introduction to Genre...... 38 B. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir:Entering the Genre Debate...... 40 1. Animation...... 42 2. Autobiography/Memoir...... 50 3. Documentary...... 54 4. Teen Film...... 58 5. Essay Film...... 60 C. Conclusion of Chapter One...... 64 III. Chapter Two: Representation...... 66 A. Introduction to Representation...... 66 B. The Traditional Representation of the Middle East in Western Media...... 67 C. The Representation of the Middle East in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir...... 72 1. Characters in Persepolis...... 73 2. Characters in Waltz with Bashir...... 80 3. The Intersecting Message in Both Films...... 88 C. Conclusion of Chapter Two...... 94 IV. Chapter Three: Historiography and Postmodern Cinema...... 98

A. Introduction to Historiography and Postmodern Cinema...... 98 B. Historiography and Footprints of Postmodernism in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir ...... 101 C. Conclusion of Chapter Three...... 115 V. Conclusion...... 118 VI. Epilogue...... 128 Works Cited...... 131

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Delving into the Topic

Persepolis (2007) by Marjane Satrapi and Waltz with Bashir (2008)by Ari Folman are animated memoirs that recently won various cinematic prizes at internationally recognized festivals. Popular reviews praisedthem for the innovative ways in which both movies deal with the fabulous and controversial image of the Middle East. However, not everyone had a positive take on the films. Persepolis was labeled a simplified fairy tale1 and Waltz with Bashir was considered disjointed and boring by some viewers.2

Overall, though, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir have been evaluated positively. Lisa Nesselson in

Variety wrote that Persepolis proves that “animation can be an exciting medium for both adults and kids.”

One year later, Leslie Felperin in Variety stated that Waltz with Bashir “could dance nimbly round arthouse niches offshore” and claims that, although Waltz with Bashir is “less accessible” than Persepolis both movies are “mature-aud-skewed cartoons,” pointing out films’ ability to address audiences across generations.The filmsgained international attention through screenings at film festivals in various countries, were nominated for dozens of cinematic awards, and were granted many of them. Both movies were nominated for the Oscar, the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Cesar Award in

France. Waltz with Bashir was the first animated film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.3

In the Middle Eastern region, both films aroused political debate,and various countries handled the criticism differently. Iranian state-run Farabi Foundation sent a letter to the French Embassy in Teheran to protest against the screening of Persepolis at the Cannes Film Festival, reasoning that the film “has presented an unrealistic face of achievements and results of the glorious Islamic Revolution…” (Sharif).

Following the success of Persepolis in Europe and in the United States, President Ahmadinejad’s

1 AIP’s, jimr’s reviews on server metacritic.com, http://www.metacritic.com/movie/Persepolis/user- reviews 2 DroogD’s, MikeMike’s reviews on server metacritic.com, http://www.metacritic.com/movie/waltz-with- bashir/user-reviews 3 Awards for Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir in The Internet Movie Database on http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808417/awards and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185616/awards 1

government labeled the film as “anti-Iranian” and “Islamophobic.” Although DVD’s with Persepolis are

“strictly forbidden” in Iran, they are available in the country on theblack market. Moreover, the movie was legally screened a couple of times in small Iranian cultural centers, offering the limited audiences a censored version of the Oscar nominated film (AFP). Additionally, Persepolis was officially banned in

Lebanon. In Thailand, the film was removed from the list of screenings for the Bangkok International

Festival after the festival director “cave[d]in to pressure from” the Iranian Embassy (Reuters).

Regarding Waltz with Bashir, in Israel, the film was voted the third most popular “Israeli film of all time” (Leibowitz). In Lebanon, where the movie takes place, Israeli film production is banned. The film was, however, “privately” screened in one of Lebanon’s historical centers,and the center expects a quick spread of the pirated DVD copies (Anderman). The Arab reactions to the film are mixed; some appreciate seeing Israeli soldiers in a “personal light” for the first time; others object to the film’s lack of admitted responsibility for the massacre (Kliger).

Both movies are personal testimonies of their author’s unique life journeys. Persepolis depicts young Satrapi growing up in Iran during the Iranian Revolution. Waltz with Bashir portrays its author tracing his lost memories on the Lebanon War in 1982. Roy Armes, in Third World Film Making and the

West, argues that education, travelling, study of foreign languages and “acquaintance with Western thought and culture” are necessary to familiarize oneself with the West. Only then, according to Armes, can a person coming from the Third World understand his or her “Third World identity and the place of one’s country in the world system” (310). The authors of the examinedfilms, who both grew up in the Middle

East, share theserequirements. Satrapi currently lives in France and Folman has travelled the world giving interviews and participating in movie screenings.

The form of animation, although usually associated with child-focused cartoons or fantasy-based stories for teenagers, is a valuable medium with the potential to teach the teenage and adult audience about history and to promote intercultural tolerance and understanding. Folman values the form of animation for itsability to express everything exactly the way he wants it, with none of the limitations that would come with interpretations of actors and actresses and travel budget constraints (France 24 2008). Satrapi appreciates this form foremost because of its ability to wipe away the apparent differences among people

and to portray universal characters that anyone could identify with (IFC News 2007). This way, Satrapi strives to destroy the myth about Muslims as the culture of “the Other” (IFC News 2007). In addition to the animated form, both movies are notable for their special generic hybridization that cleverly combines conventions traditionally associated with various genres, although not completely adhering to any single one of them. This strategy frees the filmmakers from generic constraints and allows creating narratives that represent an alternative to the dominant media discourse about the Middle East and war in general. Both films feature characters that struggle with their own identity, drawing attentionto the issue of representation. The narratives illustrate the ridiculousness of stereotypes and mock their absurdity; thus, holding a mirror to the West. Consequently, a Western viewer might see the display of Western culture from a rare and valuable Oriental perspective. Furthermore, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, excel in a unique treatment of history that is different from the countless texts on the Middle East that load libraries and media databases with opinions from people of various political andcultural backgrounds. These films exceed in offering a fresh, deconstructive perspective about the Middle East by avoiding the hunt for historical information and objectivity. They believe that an objective truth is unattainable because history is an on-going, non-linear process that depends on where and who is narrating it, and to whom. Keeping this in mind, the films turn away from the absoluteness of history and focus rather on the personal memories of the central characters, Marji and Ari.

RobertA. Rosenstone in his book Visions of the Past justifies film as a medium with a potential to carry historical information. In Rosenstone’s opinion, film offers “a new kind of history… Film neither replaces written history nor supplements it. Film stands adjacent to written history, as it does to other forms of dealing with the past such as memory and the oral tradition” (76-77). Further, Rosenstone adds that film works within its specific boundaries; thus, it has to be judged by different standards (78).

This project will perform a close reading of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. The goal is to understand what these movies say about life in the Middle East in dialogue with the dominant portrayal in

Western media. The analysis will examine how these filmsengage with the skewed picture of the Middle

East and how they articulate something different. Both films promote a feeling of identification with the characters, rather than perpetuate usual media stereotyping. This depiction of people challenges the idea

about the Middle East as a culture of the “Other.” It helps the audiencerealize that people in the East consist of the same flesh and bloodas any other group. The feelings of identification and sympathy that both animations provoke are achieved by an innovative mixture of cinematic genres, by a reversed perspective (a view through the eye of an insider to the Middle East, rather than an outsider who evaluates the people in comparison to Western culture), and by a postmodern approach toward history that finds any objective truth unattainable and strives for a subjective elaboration of a personal experience.

In accord with the above stated goals, the thesis will address the following questions:

In what sense do the hybrid generic form and the significant aesthetic style function as crucial

expressive devices inthe analyzed movies?

Do the movies reinforce, cement or critique the paradigmof the Middle East as the culture of the

“Other”?

What is the historiographic value of the movies? Is there any historical information for the viewer?

If so, what kind of information is it?

These questions will be addressed in three separate chapters to illuminate the ways Persepolis and

Waltz with Bashir challenge the dominant image of the Middle Eastern region in the Western media and deconstruct the black-and-white worldview. Toanalyze two creative artistic expressions, Persepolis and

Waltz with Bashir,this project examines how the films create meaning in three ways: (1) in terms of form and genre, (2) in terms of representation and (3) in terms of historiography. This work utilizesa methodology of closetextual analysis of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. Both texts are examined in three contextual frames, in separate chapters. First, the analysis will focus on generic tendencies that are reflected in the hybrid films. It will explore the variety of genres that areutilized in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir and analyze the effectiveness and the consequences of the animated form. I will look at the coherence of the various genres, how they interrelate and which of them are dominant. I will argue that the unique combination of diverse generic tendencies together with the animated form gives rise to cinematic texts that are largely accessible to audiences with varying age and education while staying highly intellectual, uniquely expressive, entertaining and aesthetic.

In the second chapter, I will demonstrate that the representation of Middle Easterners in the analyzed movies counters the dominant media discourse and draws attention to representation itself. The central characters of both movies are torn somewhere in between their national and the Western classification. Throughout the narrative, they negotiate their roles in the world and struggle with their own identification, complicating the common stereotype of the polarized worldview. These complex contemplations are, to the viewer, served in an animated form that is highly expressive, thus easily understandable, and wrapped into an autobiographical storyline that endows the films with attractive authenticity, personification and intimacy, making the intellectual films more digestible. Following the chapter on representation (that shows how representation gives rise to stereotypes that shape people’s perceptions about others), I proceed to the last chapter on historiography where I demonstrate the consequences of misrepresentation on the macro level. By exhibiting how the public’s memory is shaped or created by media content, I highlight the necessity of producing cultural texts that express alternative ideas, such as Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. I examine Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir through a postmodern lens and show that the movies impersonate a unique, subjective insight into the past by keeping in mind that human memory is fluid, selective and malleable.

B. Overview of the Examined Movies

1. Persepolis

The very beginning of the movie takes place in Paris, at Orly airport. The viewer meets Marji for the first time. She has just traveled into the Western world, for the second time. She wears a coat,a fabric shoulder bag,and sits on a bench. She lights a cigarette and begins to think about the events that preceded her arrival. This way, the narrative of Persepolis begins to unroll.

The storyline of Persepolis centers on the female heroine, Marjane Satrapi, called Marji for short.

She grows up in Tehran shortly after the Iranian revolution. Her close family is politically involved in the underground; thus, Marji personally experiences the persecution of political enemies. The politics are important, but the center of the narrative is Marji and her coming of age. She is strongly influenced by her parents, grandmother, and uncle, who all attempt to instill their basic moral values.Marji listens to them;

however, she behaves too liberally. She wears Western clothes, buys Western music on the black market, and even points out the injustice of Iranian government at school.

When she turns 14, her parents, strongly pushed by Marji’s grandmother, send the young girl ona study abroad to the capital of Austria. Marji leaves with mixed feelings. In Vienna, she faces a huge culture shock. However, gradually, she starts to understand the new world and makes friends. Marji attempts to fit seamlessly into some established cliques at school, such as the hippies. (The author plays into the sentiment of the audience because most of us have done the same thing. Consequently, our identification with the character increases.) After a variety of experiments with “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll,” that Marji engaged in to fit in, she ends up in a hospital with a serious cold caused by her short period of homelessness. Marji recovers quickly; however, she decides to return to Iran. Back home, she is disappointed.

First, she is warmly welcomed by her family and friends, but soon she notices that her foreign experience put a different perspective on her view of her homeland. On top of that, her peers look at her differently and many perceive her as weird. Marji struggles to discover her real identity. After completing her college degree, she leaves the country again and she knows this time it might be for a longer period.

At the very end, the movie comes full circle. The viewer gets a sight of Marji wearing the same coat like in the beginningscene. Again, she stands at the Orly airport, with the same brown bag. However, this time, the frames are in color. Her facial expression reveals mixed feelings. Marji is not smiling; she does not seem to be excited, either. Her stride communicates determination. She takes a taxi and after the driver asks her where she is from, Marji answers, this time proudly, “Iran.”

2. Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir starts with Ari Folman, the director’s alter ego, in a pub with a friend, Boaz.

Boaz shares with Arihis nightmares about furious running dogs that have been disturbing his sleep for two years. Boaz believes that these dogs are his conscience from the Lebanon War, where his duty was to kill the dogs so that they would not warn Palestinian villagers, who Boaz was chasing with the Israeli troops.

Ari realizes that he does not have any flashbacks on the Lebanon War. He remembers nothing, although his friend reminds Ari that Ari was present at the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982.

Ari and Boaz part and that night Ari has his first flashback from the Lebanon war in twenty years.

It is a scene from the night of the massacre, at West Beirut. In black and yellow colors, in slow motion, he sees himself with two other soldiers floating on the ocean toward the cost of West Beirut, naked but armed.

The men put clothes on and walk into the refugee camps. The only thing they see are frightened women, the terrified elderly and crying children. They know the people must have witnessed a horror.

After visiting a friend,a psychologist, Ari decides to visit his old friend from the war, who currently lives in Holland, to ask what he remembers. The friend, Carmi, tells him about his fantasy. He dreams that after falling asleep on a war boat, a beautiful but giant woman comes to him. They make love and she saves him from the boat that has been attacked and is sinking. He floats on her huge body. Carmi also remembers some war scenes, such as mistakenly shooting at a car full of civilians. Ari shares his flashback from the night of the massacre with Carmi and asks him for more details; however, Carmi does not remember, saying that “The massacre’s not in my system.” Ari leaves without moving forward; however, on the way to the airport, his memory wakes up and he sees scenes from the war. He remembers his first day in service when he was nineteen; he remembers transporting dead and injured soldiers and the way he operated mechanically, without thinking about what he was doing. Ari looks up another man, who was with him at wartime, and listens to his traumatic memories. The man was the only one who survived a tank attack by sneaking out of the battle field and escaping by ocean. Later, Ari visits an expert on combat trauma and hopes that she will explain his gaps in memory. She tells him about the concept of “dissociative event,” a situation that someone is physically part of but mentally detached from. Then, he meets again with his friend who suffers from the nightmares with dogs and shares all his re-awoken memories. This way, the viewer learns about Ari’s family, about his girlfriend and about his moves with the troops.

Nevertheless, the piece of memory of the massacre on Sabra and Shatila is still missing. Ari talks to the psychiatrist again and is advised that he needs to know what exactly happened and what his part in the massacre was in order to find peace within himself. Thus, Ari looks up more people who were higher ranks in the army and asks them for more details. The information they supply him finally completes Ari’s mosaic of memories from the War.

He was a part of an Israeli group that was supposed to guard the refugee camps. While the massacre was going on, the Israelis were firing flares to help the attackers, the Christian Phalangists, orient themselves in the camps. When the mass killing finished and Ari walked into the camps, he saw the atrocities that occurred while he stood by. At the very end, Ari, as if he has just looked through a fog of vague memories, suddenly sees clearly. He remembers the reaction of women in the camps, the dead bodies lying everywhere in the dirt, and the screams of fright and horror. This effect of “looking through” is achieved by displaying pictures of real life scenes from the massacre at the very end of the otherwise animated movie.

C. Literature Review

1. Form and Generic Tendencies

In this chapter, I will examine the form of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. Ipay special attention to various generic regimes that are utilized in the analyzed movies and to the film’s notable stylistic traits. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir are clearly not genre films. They are openly hybridized, employing a combination of formal featuresfrom multiple generic categories. I demonstrate that the animated form of the movies functions as a bridge to access identification without sacrificing specificity.

As Satrapi says in one of her interviews, “There is something very abstract in the drawings that anybody can relate to” (IFC News 2007).

The animated form is the most visible expressive means of the cinematic authors of Persepolis and

Waltz with Bashir. The specifics utilized in thedecision to compose the movies in this form, unusual for non-fiction, will be examined with a variety of sources. I open my analysis with the review of Steve

Neale’s article, “Questions of Genre,” where the author engages in a detailed overview of ideas about what a genre is, how we classify films into generic categories, how genre arises and how the meaning of genre shifts with time. Additionally, I use Rick Altman’s text, Film/Genre, which deals with similar issues.

The next step isto contrast the traditional animation associated with child-oriented content, to the sophisticated use of animation for documentary purposes and current trends in digital animation. For this purpose, I will use Paul Wells’s Understanding Animation and Pat Power’s article, “Expressive Style in 3D

Computer Graphic Narrative Animation.” Power summarizes many theories dealing with animation and discusses extensively various techniques and trends in today’s animation. The text serves as a suitable source of information, since it directly addresses both Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. Power reminds the reader that “[t]raditionally, animation has been one of the most expressive of the visual arts” (109). He brings in another animation theorist, Kostaz Terzidis, who explains that the advantages of the expressive over the realistic consist in the fact that the expressive art contains “notions of incompleteness, imperfection, and subjectivity,” which invite the participation of the audience (Terzidis qtd. in Power 109).

Terzidis concludes that this way the expressive value has the potential to surpass explicitness (109).

Accordingly, an expert on Greek philosophy, Michael Davis, claims that mimesis should contain “a stylizing of reality in which the ordinary features of our world are brought into focus by a certain exaggeration…like the relationship of dancing to walking” (qtd. in Power 109). In Davis’s opinion, “the more ‘real’ the imitation the more fraudulent it becomes” (qtd. in Power 109). Examining the audience’s emotional responsiveness, Power summarizes Patrick Cavanagh’s research which indicated that human brains respond “more strongly to impressionistic than to naturalistic faces, and that expressive works distract conscious vision while engaging more directly with emotions,” thus proving an advantage of animated over realistic portrayal (115).

Consequently, the closer the animation resembles the realistic portrayal (for example by using advanced 3D computer graphics) the less options there are to utilize the expressive potential of animation.

To illustrate this point, Power refers to Satrapi who prefers pen-and-ink “hand technique” over the too glossed, thus cold, computer generated animation because the hand-drawn method is more expressive

(117).

As evidenced in the first section, animation represents the form; the choice of generic classification is better described as autobiography or memoir. Both works are clearly autobiographical self- narratives of their author’s personal experience in Iran and in the Lebanon War. To discuss the tendencies that Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir borrow from autobiography or memoir, various scholarly works will be reviewed.

First, to establish the difference between memoir and autobiography, I will sum up the research of

Laura Tretter. To define these two genres that are often used interchangeably, Tretter starts off quoting from the Oxford English Dictionary. According to this source, autobiography is, “’The writing of one’s own history; the story of one’s life written by himself’” and memoir is, “’A person’s written account of incidents in his own life, the persons whom he has known, and the transactions or movements in which he has been concerned; an autobiographical record’” (Tretter). Later, Tretter adds the explanations by publishers at Writer’s Digest, who explain that while “an autobiography focuses on the chronology of the writer’s entire life… a memoir covers one specific aspect of the writer’s life,” highlightingthe totality of an autobiography and partiality of a memoir.Other information that Tretter researched included the fact that autobiographies are predominantly chronological and written especially by famous people, while memoirs can jump “back and forth in time… highlighting the periods that relate to the specific theme of the work” and can be produced by anyone who desires to convey something. The examined movies are autobiographical works, in the sense that they practice “self-inscription” of their author’s memories (Renov

106). Both movies, however, do not include Satrapi’s and Folman’s life path from the beginning until the point of their production of the movies. In this sense, the films are selective. Additionally, the films are non-linear, postmodernand their authors represent average rather than famous people, all of which signifies the genre of memoir.

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir are hybrids that draw traditions from various cinematic and literary genre categories. Consequently, the analysis will not strictly determine which genresareand are not represented in the analyzed movies. Instead, the analysis will focus on how the movies use the dissimilar genres to create meaning. It does not matter whether the films are more of a memoir or autobiography in the narrowly definitional sense of these terms. What matters are the ways the movies reflect this generic variety and how they draw meaning from them. To explore this question will be the central objective of the analysis in the first chapter.

Amy Malek in her “Memoir as Iranian Exile Cultural Production: A Case Study of Marjane

Satrapi's Persepolis Series,” claims that especially in the West, this genre has been increasingly popular.

She reminds the reader of Vivian Gornick’s assertion thatthe reason for popularity of memoirs is “the

element of convincing truth,” the “non-fictional ‘I’” that narrates the story (360). In the context of Iranian literature, memoirs written by women are extremely popular, to Westerners, particularly since the curiosity awakened in the post-9/11 period (359-362). Another notable feature of memoirs is the fact that they increase identification. Malek uses Nancy Miller who claims that the identification results from a

“relational act” that arises between the author and the reader of a memoir; moreover, memoirs promote intercultural identification by approximating stories of people with different backgrounds (366-367).

Although Malek and Miller talk about written memoirs, the mechanism of identification with the protagonist operates similarly in film.Marji and Ari, the central characters of the analyzed movies, share their recent history related stories in an intimate, completely subjective manner. The focus on the personal life of the characters approximates the protagonists to the viewer and has the potential to pull the audience directlyinto the action, in contrast to overtly depersonalized news reporting that focuses on raw “facts” and does not have time to explore feelings and emotions of the immediate participants.

Cinematic autobiographies are discussed in “Memory’s Movies,” in Beyond Document: Essays on

Non-Fiction Film by Patricia Hampl. Hertheorizing on the meaning of a cinematic memoir and on this genre’s, perhaps surprising, struggle to attract larger audiences opens the section on autobiography.

Further, Hampl examines the significant feature of autobiographies, voice-over, and explains that this device represents the “thinking voice” and establishes the film’s first person stress (57), providing a springboard for the analysis of voice-over in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir.

Later, Michael Renov’s book, The Subject of Documentary, will be considered to support my analysis. Describing autobiography, Renov uses Philippe Lejeune’s definition from literary studies that, it is “a form of personal writing that is referential (that is imbued with history), mainly retrospective (though the temporality of the telling may be quite complex), and in which the author, the narrator, and the protagonist are identical” (xi). Renov reminds his readers of the fact asserted by many critics that this genre is “a crucial medium of resistance and counterdiscourse” (xvi), as proved by Rea Tajiri’s History and

Memory or by Emiko Omori’s Rabbit in the Moon (43). Additionally, the author claims that autobiography complicates people’s shared consciousness about history because itembraces “digression, reverie, the

revelation of public history though the private and associational” (110), a trend clearly presented in the analyzed movies.

This section will end, arguing that animated form challenges Siegfried Kracauer’s denial of historical features on the screen. Kracauer argues that everyone in the audience knows that what he or she sees is an imitation and not the past (qtd. in Rosenstone 25). The reason is that animation does not “imitate” the past that is gone in the present context, the case of real-live action films, but rather illustrates images that stayed stuck in people’s memory without further interference.Again, free from compromises with acting staffand environment, in animation, an author has absolute control over the final product.

Both movies could be(and in many popular reviews are) describedas animated memoirs; however, at the same time, they at least partially utilize some strategies from other generic categories: documentary, especially in the case of Waltz with Bashir, and teen-oriented film, inthe case of Persepolis.

The section on documentary starts by opening a discussion on objectivity and subjectivity, extracting information from André Bazin’s “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” This, for film theorists’ crucialtext, deals with the detailed examination of the contrast between photography and painting. He argues that paintings used to have two primeval ambitions: “aesthetic, namely the expression of spiritual reality” and “psychological, namely the duplication of the world outside” (6). According to the author, “photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness” (7). After the invention of photography, painting is supposed to concentrate on art only because photography and cinema “are discoveries that satisfy… …our obsession with realism” (168), implying that film and photography stand outside of the category of art. Thus, the aim of painters shifted. With the rise of photography, the artists stopped to strive for faithful portrayals of objects and could focus on other, abstract representations. At first, photography and cinema took a monopoly in realism and painters were left with remaining artistic expressions. However, soon the originally undoubtable realism was questioned and the debate has lasted until the present time.

Bazin engages in a close discussion of subjectivity versus objectivity in relation to photography and painting. He claims that photography stole credibility from painting because of photography’s seemingly higher authority. Bazin states that photography has a stronger psychological power to be

perceived as reality: “A very faithful drawing may actually tell us more about the model but despite the promptings of our critical intelligence it will never have the irrational power of the photograph to bear away our faith” (8). In other words, the author believes that painting may be more accurate because the painter subjectively captures something beyond the pure appearance of the object, let us say also his or her experience with the object. Consequently, one could say that painters have more potential to express their reality because they operate not only with the appearance but also with something that transcends the appearance, like the atmosphere. Painters do not capture everything explicitly; they just foreshadow what they mean and the viewers, using their fantasy, might get a more definite and real portrayal of the original object. Accordingly, while paintings are subjective, because of the painter’s subjective essence that he or she adds, photography and cinema have an objective nature since to take a picture requires less human intervention (7-8).

In another work, “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” Bazin warns that the illusory photographic/cinematic objectivity of everything that is on screen makes it easy to manipulate reality.

According to Bazin, in the present day film, “The image – its plastic composition and the way it is set in time, because it is founded on a much higher degree of realism – has at its disposal more means of manipulating reality and of modifying it from within” (53). He continues saying that “[t]he film-maker is no longer the competitor of the painter and the playwright; he is, at last, the equal of the novelist” (53).

Here, however, Bazin attacks a different aspect of painting than in “The Ontology of the Photographic

Image.” Bazin means that while a painter or a playwright face limitations determined by the canvas and by the stage, a novelist or a film director can easier overcome time and space or even give rein to fantasy and conjure the unreal, for example by editing. In other words, a filmmaker, holding the aura of objectivity, can easier manipulate reality than a painter because the painter is generally not believed to be objective.

Stevenson in “Godard & Bazin” discusses Godard’s work in terms of André Bazin’s and Charles

Sanders Peirce’s theories. She introduces Pierce’s theory of indexicality that corresponds with Bazin’s conclusions. Pierce called photographs an index because they “[are] an index of something in the world”

(Stevenson 33). Paintings do not have any physical connection between the object and the painting, they require lots of “manipulation by the artist” (33). Consequently, movies are indexical, they consist of

photographic images (33). Applying the same logic of photographs and paintings to movies, animated movies are not indexical because there is no physical connection between the object and the animated image. Bazin’s ideas about painting and photography will be transferred to the sphere of film and applied to animation and real-live action movies. I will argue that authors of animation, similarly to painters, operate with means that are beyond the visible surface of things. This way,animation might surpass real-live action films because of its potential to communicateanon-visible experience with the reality by various expressive tools.In other words, animationoperates with a specific poetic level of expression that transcends the real-looking, sober re-enactment of events and achieves greater intimacy and identification.

Later, I will review the media debate whether Waltz with Bashir is a documentaryor not and why.

Openingwith Dave Saunders’ recently released work, Documentary, and quoting the opinion of a filmmaker, Richard Lormand, and scholar, Pat Power, I will proceed to the analysis of Waltz with Bashir through a documentary framework, seeking realism in the film and trying to figure out what realism in film actually means. At the end, I will conclude that the film offers a valuable perspective of history from below rather than from above, typically associated with essay film. Additionally, Waltz with Bashir uses a subjective voice “to offer and in-depth, personal, and thought provoking reflection,” which is another characteristic of essay film, rather than an “authorial ‘voice’... [that] present[s] a factual report,” which would indicate the sphere of traditional documentary (Rascaroli35).

The following section briefly touches on teen-oriented films. Utilizing Wheeler Winston Dixon’s

“’Fighting and Violence and Everything, That’s Always Cool’: Teen Films in the 1990s,” I explain that this category encompasses movies with various generic features that are primarily addressed to teenagers (138).

Although the analyzed movies are far from the limitation on teenage audiences, they do not exclude young viewers from its broad address. Moreover, both movies center on the idea of coming of age and establishing the role of the main character’s self in the world, which is an attractive topic for people who are close to the similar stage of life. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir follow the main characters’ destinies in crucial transition periodsof their livesand in becomingadults.

Drawing on the four previous sections, which demonstrate that the analyzed movies utilize tendencies from various genres and combine them together without adhering to any single of them wholly,

the last section introduces essay film. Essay film is a recent cinematic trend that accommodates cultural texts notable for their generic hybridization. Itis a fluid trend of intellectual films that are significant for their generic blending and for a characteristic focus on subjectivity. To overview the existing film studies’ debateonessay film,I will, primarily, extract information from Laura Rascaroli’s article, “The Essay Film:

Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments.”

Rascaroli defines essay film as a “hybrid form that crosses boundaries and rests somewhere in between fiction and nonfiction cinema” (24). Further, the author includes other theorists, such as Louis

Giannetti who claims that essay film is a “personal investigation involving both passion and intellect of the author” (24). After bringing in various definitions, Rascarolisummarizes that two intersecting features of essay film are reflectivity and subjectivity (25). Additionally, an authorial, personal viewpoint is emphasized, together with the utilization of voice-over, as asserted by Phillip Lopate and Timothy Corrigan

(qtd. in Rascaroli31-32). According to a film historian Paul Arthur, thisfirst-person stress of essays, makes them suitable “to express oppositional positions, and are indeed often used by women directors and artists of color” (qtd. in Rascaroli34). Further, Rascaroli quotes Arthur, arguing that “a quality shared by all film essays is the inscription of a blatant, self-searching authorial presence” (35). Rascaroliexplains that the “authorial ‘voice’ approaches the subject matter not in order to present a factual report (the field of traditional documentary), but to offer an in-depth, personal, and thought-provoking reflection” (35). By adding that the enunciator in the movie “represents the author’s views” and that “[t]he narrator of the essay film voices personal opinions that can be related directly to the extra-textual author,” Rascaroliclearly demonstrates the emphasis on subjectivity in an essay film (35). The personal, subjective approach and the intimacy of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, together with their reflective strategy that creates a skeleton of the narrative, prove that the analyzed movies need to be examined in context of essay film.

André Bazin, in “In a New Never before Published Translation…,” struggles to classify Chris

Marker’s movie Letter from Siberia. Bazin claims that this movie does not fit any existing genre and he comes up (in 19584) with the comparison to an essay. He writes, “[Letter from Siberia] is an essay on the reality of Siberia past and present in the form of filmed report… an essay documented by film” (44).

4 The article was originally published October 30, 1958 in France-Observateur. 15

According to Bazin, the filmic essay can be understood similarly to the essay in literature, “an essay at once historical and political, written by a poet as well” (44). Bazin explains that the movie introduces a new concept a “horizontal montage,” where images refer to what is said, rather than emphasizing the relationship of shot to shot as in a traditional montage (44). Bazin highlights the combination of beauty and intelligence of this montage that “has been forged from ear to eye,” meaning the movement of meaning from what is said to what is seen (44). As an example, Bazin anatomizes a scene from Letter from Siberia and by offering three various commentaries, demonstrates that the subject positions of the author and viewer reflect the meaning of the image (45). Later in the article, Bazin admires Marker’s “firework display of technique” by combining documentary images with photos, engravings and animated cartoons. For this method, together with injections of humor into serious moments, Marker’s talent and intelligence earn

Bazin’s appreciation (45).

The features of the essay film, as described by Rascaroliand Bazin above, are clearly traceable in both analyzed movies.

I am going to argue that the exclusive combination of animated form with tendencies borrowed from genres of memoir, documentary and teen-oriented film provides an accessible gateway into the

Persepolis’s and Waltz with Bashir’s intellectually demanding content.The analyzed movies are highly intellectual – they deal with recent world impacting historical events and touch on existential issues that transcend the region of Middle East. However, “wrapped” into an animated form and endowed by a highly intimate dimension, the heavy issues of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir are surprisingly fresh, accessible and, moreover, entertaining.

2. Middle East and Third World Cinema

Before jumping into the chapter on representation of the Middle East, it is essential to review the development of the portrayal of people living in the Middle East in the Western media. The Middle Eastern region is significant for its immense ethnic variety. Nevertheless, the complexity of demographical classifications causes difficulties for an outsider to orient within the multicultural Middle Eastern context.

The term “people of the Middle East” is, in fact, an empty term because it encompasses atoo broad

spectrum of ethnicities to be understood as a particular entity. In terms of the Western discourse, however, the term is loaded with connotations that, together with the myth about the region of the Middle East, give rise to the stereotype of people living in this area. I am aware of the ethnical richness of this region and when I use the expression, “people living in the Middle East,” in this text, I keep in mind the discussion above. The political relationship between the West and the Middle East is logically mirrored in the way that media depict each other’s culture. To appreciate the challenging and alternative attitude that Persepolis and

Waltz with Bashir embody, one needs to be aware of the dominant image of a Middle Easterner in the

Western media that originated in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Edward Said in his “Introduction to Orientalism” argues that the Orient is “one of the deepest and most recurring images of the “Other” for

Europeans (68) whom the British and French had dominated and colonized since the beginning of the 19th century until World War II (70). According to Said this attitude “has helped to define Europe,” (68) by juxtaposing the images, ideas, personalities and experience of Orient in opposition to those of the “Western world” (68). However, Said emphasizes thatthese beliefs are pure social constructs based on “an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that had given it reality and presence in and for the West” (71). In Said’sview, these are the origins of Orient-Occident (Occident representing the

French, British and, sinceWWII,American) hegemony that the West holds over the East. The hegemony is understood in Gramsci’s terms as a society where “certain cultural forms predominate over others, just as certain ideas are more influential than others,” representing a “form of cultural leadership” (qtd. in Said

73). This mechanism gave a rise to the idea of “European superiority over Oriental backwardness” (73).

Said closes with his recent observation that since the 1950s, everyAmerican has been exposed to the idea that “’East’ has always signified danger and threat” (91). Further in the essay, Said accuses Western academics of blindly following the “demonology of ‘the mysterious Orient,’” which has resulted in perpetuation of negative stereotypes about the Orient in the media and film (91). Said concludes that these misrepresentations, together with a profound lack of identification with Arab culture in American academia, produce a “web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, [and] dehumanizing ideology” related to the Arab or Muslim world (92).

After Said, many scholars have pointed out the increasing danger of xenophobic attitudes toward the Orient. Politicians, artists and intellectuals all over the world haveaddressed these issues in their texts.

However, the examined movies, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, are significant engines of change in popular culture because of their undiscriminating accessibility and because of their promotion of identification with the people living in the fabled region of the Middle East. The films’ valuesconsist ofthe deconstruction of the mythsabout the Middle East by drawing attention to the issues of representation and to the process of individual negotiation of one’s own position in the world.

Roy Armes, in Third World Film Making and the West,argues that education, travelling, study of foreign languages and “acquaintance with Western thought and culture” are necessary to familiarize oneself with the West. Only then, according to Armes, can a person coming from the Third World understand his or her “Third World identity and the place of one’s country in the world system” (310). Without question, this recommendation is validboth ways. If a Westerner wants to understand a country outside of the West, he or she has to actively seek out information aboutit. Persepolis features a girl who undergoesthis experience and, as she demonstrates in the film, it is not easy to comprehend a fundamentally different culture. This way, the movie aspires to open the audience’s eyes and urges people to think about the possible misinterpretationsof the Middle East.

3. Representation and Stereotyping

Expanding on his groundbreaking “Orientalism,” Said later published a book, Covering Islam, where he carefully examines the way Western media built a discourse on the Middle East. This book will be included in the analysis for its valuable focus on the mechanism of how media create stereotypes that people, gradually, take for granted. Additionally, the book, Film History: Theory and Practice, by Robert

C. Allen and Douglas Gomery, will be reviewed. The authors of this work emphasize that media mirrors the already existing tendencies in the public’s mind. Allen’s and Gomery’s assertion, together with Said’s conclusions, demonstrate a vicious circle of stereotypes that are cemented and perpetuatedby the media.

Joanne Esch, in “Legitimizing the ‘War on Terror’: Political Myth in Official Level Rhetoric,” deals with the representation of the people living in the Middle East, with a focus on the Muslims in the

Western media, predominantly in the rhetoric of American politicians. In detail, Esch anatomizes the techniques of engraving stereotypes and myths in the public’s mind in order to justify economic actions and warfare. In her opinion, the predominant post-9/11 tactics were to make people believe in “American exceptionalism” and in the fight of “barbarism vs. civilization” (365). Esch summarizes various studies that trace the origins of this mythical representation in the epoch of English Puritans who were the first to project their hopes for a free country onto America (366). Later on, the myth of America as a country

“chosen by God for a special mission” was cemented throughout the centuries followed by the rhetoric of both World Wars and the Cold War (366-367). Regarding the other myth, “civilization vs. barbarism,”

Esch argues that emphasizing American goodness leads to the black-and-white oversimplification that

American equals good and non-American equals the “evil Other” (369). To the reader this might seem like a quick generalization; however, the author strongly believes that by frequent repetition of these distorted messages a huge mytharisesabout the Middle East. Esch encounters various well-known and widely read works that deal with the problem of “the Other” in Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, Barber’s Jihad vs. Mcworld and Said’s Orientalism. These three works illustrate how the polarization of “Us versus Them” leads into the myth of a “politically and culturally civilized western world… defined in opposition to a violent and barbaric eastern world” (370). In this thesis, I am going to argue that Persepolis and Waltz with

Bashir challenge this black-and-white, oversimplified worldview.

Examining the rhetorical presence of the myth, “civilization vs. barbarism,” Esch concludes that the “Other” has been repetitively portrayed as, by nature, of a different kind, rather than living under different political leadership (381). In her article, Eschanalyzes segmentsof George W. Bush’s rhetoric and concludes that his messages implied that all people living in the Middle East wereterrorists who hate

Americans,suggestingthat the public wouldmore likely agree with a military attack and wouldbe desensitized toward the sufferings of the civilians in the Middle East (381-382). Reacting tothis rhetoric, the authors, Satrapi and Folman, counter this ideology by sharing their intimate personal stories; thus, re- humanizing and re-sensitizing the Western audience.Although Marji as an Iranian and Ari as an Israeli face practically opposing stereotypes (while Iran is a member of so called “Axis of Evil,” Israel enjoys a

very positive reputation on the United States), both films capture characters whocontradict this naïve image and focus on aspects of humanityinstead of on pigeonholing.

Kai Hafez, in Mass Media, Politics & Society in the Middle East examines the opposite perspective by observing the media consumers in the Middle East. Hafez explains that, although Western media content is accessible in the countries of the Middle East, the idea that just access to this Western information will “wipe away authoritarian rule, or modernize traditionalist lifestyle” is naive (2). The factors that prevent people from identification with the Western media are: language barriers, cultural gaps, alienation effects and general skepticism and distrust of Western information (2). Generally, Western media and culture are considered “pornographic, violent, and unsocial in nature and engaged in an ‘imperialist’ crusade against the Islamic world” (14). Some of these elements are directly addressed in both analyzed films. Waltz with Bashir features a primitive incompetent military officer watching German porn and

Persepolis makes multiple remarks on Western fashion, interpersonal carelessness and immunity to the current world happenings. In her work, Hafez presents a rare but valuable Middle Eastern perspective on the issue that is almost completely ignored by the Western media. In Persepolis, this perspective is personified by Marji, who travels to Vienna, a symbol the Western world, and encounters a lot of strange behavior.

Esch and Hafez emphasize the promotion of hatred especially toward Muslims, the followers of

Islam religion. Nevertheless, many people in the West have little understanding of the complex issues in the Middle East and often do not differentiate among various religious classifications of the people living in the Middle East. Consequently, some Westerners tend to lump everyone together and think about Middle

Easterners as one united “Other” in opposition to the constructed idea of the advanced, educated and democratic “West.”

Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli, the authors of From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities,

European Cinema examine Europe’s changing relationship toward the Middle East. Drawing from David

Morley and Kevin Robins, the authorsargue that since Europe cannot determine its identity in opposition to communism anymore, the Europeans had to come up with “new Others.” (7). The new enemies that Europe currently perceives as “the Other” are America and the Islamic world (7); America for being intolerable

and anti-cultural and the Islamic world basically from habit, since “‘The Turk’ and ‘The Moor’ have always provided [Europe with] key figures of difference, or of thread…” (Morley and Robins qtd. in

Mazierska and Rascaroli 7).

Robert Stam and Louise Spence, in “Colonialism, Racism and Representation: An Introduction,” call for an equal objectivity of representation and emphasize that shallow and simplifiedrepresentations are too narrow and too black-and-white to be close to reality. The authors discuss the negative versus the positive image and warn that “[t]he insistence on ‘positive images,’ finally obscures that factthat ‘nice’ images might at times be as pernicious as overtly degrading ones, providing a bourgeois paternalism, a more persuasive racism” (3). Stam and Spence call the too positive portrayal a “bending-over-backwards- not-to-be-racist attitude” and claim that it implies a “lack of confidence in the group portrayed” (9).

According to the authors, if this “naïve integrationism” simply thrones “new heroes and heroines, this time drawn from the ranks of the oppressed” onto the positions of the former oppressors’ position, a couple of people might better their status; however, generally, nothing will be accomplished (9). Toward the end,

Stam and Spence praise the movie Battle of Algiers for the revolutionary idea to tell the story from the perspective of the colonized rather than of the colonizer. Contrastingly to the traditional portrayal of

Algerians in the cinema, in Battleof Algiers, are “treated with respect, dignified by close-ups, shown as speaking subjects rather than as manipulable objects” (13). Free from caricaturing of the colonizer (the

French), the movie “exposes the oppressive logic of colonialism and consistently fosters our complicity with the Algerians” (13). Consequently, the audience identifies with the colonized (13), rather that with the colonizer as traditionally. Stam and Spence claim that in the European context one can be respected only if he or she “look[s] and act[s] like Europeans” (16).

In conclusion, the authors point out that it is necessary to understand the “cultural and ideological assumptions” that the viewer brings to the cinema and explain that racism is difficult to purge (19-20).

According to the authors, racism is not “permanently inscribed in celluloid or in human mind;” people need to “learn how to decode and deconstruct racist images and sounds” (20). In other words, Stam and Spence emphasize the necessity to develop critical faculties in order to understand how racism operates. This way, people will be sensitized to the process of how cinema is shaping us. In many ways, both analyzed films

draw attention to stereotyping by displaying it in an exaggerated form, so that the viewer notices its absurdity. Perhaps the clearest example is Marji’s grandmother who, after watching the 1954 Japanese movie, Godzilla, says, “What a load of crap. The Japanese either gut themselves or make hideous monsters.

That’s all they ever seem to do.”

Michael Renov’s theory on stereotyping in his essay “Warring Images: Stereotype and American

Representations of the Japanese, 1941-1991” in The Subject of Documentary, defines “otherness” as “a categorical, hierarchical, and in [the Japanese] instance, raciallymotivated separation between self and contemporary media environment” (44). In his analysis, Renov examines various media content referring to the Japanese and concludes that it is necessary to have alternative media production that will counter “the streamlined and state-managed images that trade on stereotype, mold prevailing public images to their own ends, and move millions to violence against a perceived other” (44). Dealing with the representation of the

Japanese as a case study, Renov’s theories and conclusions transcend the context of Japan and can be applied generally on any “enemy of the state” or of the “enemy of the Western democracy.” Renov’s call for an alternative media that will counter the state-produced media contentprovides a better pathto objectivity, and is nothing else but a reminder of the primeval condition of a functioning democracy with journalism being its watchdog.

Renov borrows various definitions of stereotypes from the Gulf Crisis TV Project Manufacturing the Enemy.

Astereotype is a protective device used to make it easy to behave toward people in socially

functional ways…

You call a people “barbarians”…or you call a group “criminals” if you want to suspend just laws

of decency and behave toward them in an otherwise criminal way.

This is a function for coping with threats, for it justifies both dismissing and brutalizing these

groups. (qtd. in Renov 47)

Tracing the origin of stereotypes, Renov distinguishes two factors, “projective device” and “social function” (47). Using the model of psychoanalysis, Renov explains projection as “an attribution of internal states to an externalized object; traits attached to the stereotyped other are said to originate within the

psyche of the self” (47). Thus, “[t]he other is… a screen or a mirror for one’s own internalized idealization, both good and bad” (47). In other words, Renov believes that the mechanism of stereotyping consists in the fact that someone projects his or her own, (good or bad) characteristics onto another. Regarding the “social function,” Renov warns against the misuse of stereotypes for “destructive social ends when ‘managed’ by a political party, nation-state, or subculture” (47). As Esch examined in her article, “Legitimizing the ‘War on Terror’…,” the stereotypes about the people living in the Middle East were or have been produced and perpetuated by political authorities.

In conclusion, Renov emphasizes the effort for an alternative view, next to the one produced by the state apparatus, which must derive fromindependent filmmakers who need to rely on public support, implying the necessity of the public’s awareness and demand for balanced information(67). The access into the media for representatives of racial, religious, ethnical and social minorities enables the understanding of these people. As Renov says in his essay on the Japanese, “Alternative cultural vehicles might have allowed the thousands of Japanese Americans interned to speak rather than be spoken for; certainly, more cross-cultural traffic in the days before the war would have narrowed the gulf that separated the Issei [meaning the first generation of immigrants] and Nisei [the second generation] from their neighbors” (68).

Additionally, I will include articles: “The Middle East in American Media,” by Dina Ibrahim that examines the media coverage of the Middle East in the 20th century and “The Arab in Recent Popular

Fiction,” by Kathleen Christison which deals with the power of film representation, particularly on an analysis of various religious groups in the Middle East. Christisondiscloses that the attitudes of the West to the Middle East are very much dependent on religious classification. The knowledge of these relationships is crucial for understanding the fundamentally divergent starting position of Persepolis and Waltz with

Bashir, since the first movie centers on Iran that is stigmatized by G. W. Bush’s label, i.e. a member of the

“Axis of Evil” and the latter movie focuses on Israeli soldierswho enjoy a great deal of support and sympathy among Americans.

The central characters in both animations are portrayed in a way that demystifies the image of an

Iranian woman, in case of Persepolis; and the image of an Israeli soldier, in case of Waltz with Bashir. The

films challenge the stereotypes that are being reinforced in the Western media by showing that people living inthe Middle East in an identifiable way. The movies show these people with doubts, desires and issues, during their coming of age period, that are very close to those living in the West. This way, the movies might approximate seemingly repugnant cultures of the “civilized” West and of the “fabulous“

East; thus, challenging the myth of the culture of the “Other.”

4. Historiography and Postmodern Cinema

The Middle East is a hot topic in today’s media, as well as in academia, and, recently, countless texts ofeverysource have tried to elucidate the region’s history and political establishment. The area is under a permanent microscope of Western journalists who (more or less successfully) mediate their immediate observations to their countries’ news agencies. The portrayal that the dominant and largely consumed media create is predominantly stereotypical; it lacks specificity and includes generalizations. As

Renov pointed out, alternative media are crucial means to fight stereotypical attitudes that are perpetuated with ideological aims (44). This chapter will show the way in which the movies take the history that is commonly known from the Western media and change the way we think about it. The examined movies are liberated from “objectivity,” “truth” and “clear message;” instead, they deconstruct the dominant discourse under the veil of personal and intimate animated memoirs that seethe with images of fantasy and dreams.

Offering a look into the experience of one average Iranian girl and one average Israeli soldier provides an actual historical testimony of someone from the crowd, the so called “history from below,” urging one to think about the experience of other people in the world.

Focusing on historiography, the chapter shows that the postmodern treatmentof history in the analyzed movies provides a unique, subjective insight into the past. A discussion about the idea of a single, non-problematic and objective depiction of history is challenged by presenting ambivalences in Marji’s and

Ari’s lives. Throughout the narratives of the analyzed movies, both characters seek their roles in the happenings around them, drawing attention to the struggle to negotiate one’s own position in the world.

This way, the movies imply that history is an ongoing process depending on who is looking at it, where one stands in the world and to whom one is saying it.

In Visions of the Past, Robert A. Rosenstone advocates “films that attempt to represent the past”

(1) as “a serious vehicle for thinking about our relationship to the past” (3). Persepolis, as well as Waltz with Bashir, fulfills this aspiration; thus, Rosenstone’s text is an essential source for the analysis of these movies. The author starts his legitimization of film by impeaching the monopoly of written history as the only serious medium containing valuable historical information: “If it is true that the word can do many things that images cannot, what about the reverse –don’t images carry ideas and information that cannot be handled by the word?” (5). Rosenstone emphasizes that written as well as filmic history does not reflect nor reconstruct the reality (11). History is a created, “ideological and cultural product of the Western World… a series of conventions for thinking about the past” (11). According to Rosenstone, written history is just one of many various means to convey the past, among others that are “showing, personalizing, and emotionalizing, and delivering it to a new audience” (11). Written text presents history in a linear way.

Film, on the other hand, affects multiple senses at the same time because it consists of images, sound tracks and language elements (15). This switch from traditional, written history to filmic history might, according to Rosenstone, completely change the way people think about the past (15). Rosenstone downplays the sensory experience of reading. Although the experience from reading is without question of a different kind than an experience from seeing a movie, while reading, people also see images. Their fantasy operates and createsimages in their minds. A well written description can even transmit smells, tastes and sounds.

In the chapter “History in Images,” Rosenstone reminds the reader that today visual media is the major source of historical information (22). Although comprising less analytical information because of film’s limited length, the movie outbalances this disadvantage by encompassing more visual information and emotional load (32). Rosenstone orders films that deal with the past into “three broad categories: history as drama, history as document, and history as experiment” (50) The description of history as experiment most closely fits the examined movies. As Rosenstone defines, history as experiment encompasses a variety of filmic forms, often independent movies and avant-garde (52). The connecting feature of these films is their “opposition to the mainstream Hollywood film” in terms of the subject matter and the construction of the world (53). They challenge the usual codes of representationin mainstream film and “refuse to see the screen as a transparent “window” into a “realistic” world (53). Often these films are

known by theorists but neglected by popular audiences, although, as Rosenstone argues, they “parallel-but

[are] very different from-the “serious” or scholarly written history (53). Rosenstone carefully examines the difference between theconstructionsof anhistorical world in mainstream versus in experimental film and argues that the experimental filmattacks some of the conventions of the mainstream film (61). The conventions of the mainstream film are: history as a story with a moral message that has “a beginning, middle and an end,” history as a story of selected individuals, history confidently presented as a closed and completed text, history emotionalized, personalized and dramatized, history as a “period look” creating false historicity, history as process – all-encompassing mixture of economy, politics, gender and other topics that are usually examined separately (55, 57, 59, 60). Experimental film might keep some of these characteristics but violates others at the same time; it might prefer analytical information, remain unemotional or distanced, create a historical world that is “expressionist, surrealist, disjunctive, postmodern…” (61). As Rosenstone concludes, the experimental film does not attempt to “show the past;” rather, it strives to “talk about how and what [the past] means to the filmmaker (or to us) today (61).

In his introduction to Visions of the Past, Rosenstone defines the postmodern history film as:

[A] work that, refusing the pretense that the screen can be unmediated window into the past,

foregrounds itself as a construction. Standing somewhere between dramatic history and

documentary, traditional historyand personal essay, the postmodern film utilizes the unique

capabilities of the media to create multiple meanings. (12)

Further, Rosenstone claims that postmodern artifacts, unlike documentaries, do not “attempt to recreate the past realistically. Instead they point to it and play with it, raising questions about the very evidence on which our knowledge of the past depends…” (12).

Looking at Persepolis, the relativity of history is caused by the child-like narrative, which produces doubts that some information that Marji states might be products of her vigorous fantasy or simply a childish exaggeration. The narrated history of Iran in the movie is Marji’s father’s subjective interpretation, moreover, an adjusted and simplified version for his daughter. The historical information is not conveyed in a documentary-like style, where an omniscient authority would “objectively” state what happened.

Regarding Waltz with Bashir, the form of blurred, black and yellow images, as in a dreamlike animation, together with the main character’s gaps of memory, contrast with the real life shots of reactions to the massacre at the end of the movie. This juxtaposition calls attention to the relativity of one’s memory; thus, to people’s “real” testimonies in general. Further, Rosenstone discusses fiction and history and emphasizes, “On the screen, history must be fictional in order to be true! (70),” saying that even the best historical movie is an attempt to look as faithfully similar to the reality in the past as possible, although it never depicts the reality. The reality is devoured by time, it does not exist anymore. While a historian can write exactly about what happened and what it looked like, a filmmaker has to come up with images for his or her film. However, in thisregard, animation is revolutionary. It makes it possible to portray everything one wants exactly the way he or she remembers. This way, animation might be truer than a movie with classical flesh-and-bone actors.

The chapter devoted to postmodern film in Visions of the Past, “Film and the Beginnings of

Postmodern History,” starts:

The notion of postmodern history seems like a contradiction in terms. The heart of

postmodernism, all theorists agree, is a struggle against History. With capital H. A denial of its

narratives, findings, and truth claims. A view of it as a great enemy, the oedipal father, the

metanarrative of metanarratives, the last and greatest of the white mythologies used to legitimate

Western hegemony, a false and outworn discourse that fosters nationalism, racism, ethnocentrism,

colonialism, sexism-and all the other evils of contemporary society. (Rosenstone 200)

Further, Rosenstone summarizes various theorists who promote “doing history with small h” (201). Linda

Hutcheon, Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, Pauline Rosenau, F.R. Ankersmith and Hans Keller encourage to problematize “the entire notion of historical knowledge,” to uproot the “concealed attitudes of historians towards history,” to break down “the conventions of historical time,” to oppose“integration, synthesis, and totality” and to play with the memory of [what happened to us in various phases of our lives] which expresses “in fragments and collage,” rather than “in coherent stories” (201). Linda Hutcheon emphasizes the interest in the experience of “the formerly excluded,” meaning ethnic and sexual minorities, women, losers and the “many,” meaning the common people rather than the members of elite (202). Persepolis and

Waltz with Bashir share their interest in the stories of common people, in the “many,” as described by

Hutcheon.

Explaining what the postmodern approach does to history, Rosenstone lists 11 points. The presence ofpractically all of them canbe detected in both analyzed movies.

1. Tell the past self-reflexively, in terms of what it means to the filmmaker historian

2. Recount it from multiplicity of viewpoints

3. Eschew traditional narrative, with its beginning, middle, and end—or, following Jean-Luc

Godard, insist these three elements need not necessarily be in that order

4. Forsake normal story development, or tell stories but refuse to take the telling seriously

5. Approach the past with humor, parody, and absurdist, surrealist, dadaesque, and other irreverent

attitudes

6. Intermix contradictory elements—past and present, drama and documentary—and indulge in

creative anachronism

7. Accept, even glory in, their own selectivity, partialism, partisanship, and rhetorical character

8. Refuse to focus or sum up the meaning of past events, but instead make sense of them in a partial

or open-ended, rather than totalized, manner

9. Alter and invent incident and character

10.Utilize fragmentary or poetic knowledge

11.Never forget that the present is the site of all past representation and knowing. (Rosenstone 206-

207)

Toward the end, Rosenstone reminds the readers of the fact that postmodern historical film is a growing tendency, rather than a genre, movement or trend (220).

William Guynn’s Writing History in Film draws on Rosenstone’s previous theory, presents objections to film as a medium suitable for historical information and presents many advantages that film has over the written history. In his study, Guynn attempts “to promote a cross-disciplinary understanding of what constitutes historical representation in film” (15). For this analysis, his work is valuable for its extensive work on media creating a public memory. Guynn, using an example of The Vietnam War, argues

that the today’s content of public memory regarding this event is predominantly based on the television coverage of The Vietnam War (166). Guynn warns that the media content consists of “highly selective and distilled images that, once “captured,” are manipulated and repeated (166). Guynn uses Anton Kaes’s study of the Third Reich, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film, to explain that public memory of events depends on what messages have been conventionalized as being the only “correct” ones i.e. “Thus history films increasingly replace not only historical experience but also historical imagination” (Kaes qtd. in Guynn 166). This demonstrates the power of media to influence and create public memory. In connection with the analyses of the media portrayal of the Middle East, one understands how important it is to have cultural texts that represent an alternative perspective, such as Persepolis or Waltz with Bashir, to outbalance the one-sided standpoint, as Renov noted in his The Subject of Documentary (44).

Later, Guynn atomizes the theory on memory. He uses Paul Ricoeur’s distinction between private memory, memory of one individual,and collective memory, memory shared by a group of people (168).

Private memory, in Plato’s view, is “the present representation of an absent thing” (qtd. in Guynn 168). “It is a reflexive activity” of remembering oneself (169). Remembering enables people to travel back in time; however, as Saint Augustine claims in his Confessions, memory is unaccountable, secretive and mysterious

(qtd. in Guynn 169). Guynn, examining many philosophers, derives that private memory and collective memory are connected (170), collective memory being created by socializing and interacting with other people (171), adding fragments into our incomplete mosaic of history. The knowledge of the past is an essential bond among people, something that unites as well as serves for enlightenment (172); thus, the collective memory is being fostered (173). The problem is that the desire to “preserve the past in the present leads to distortions and ‘misrepresentations’” (173). The reason for the lapses is the fact that memory attracts emotions, is soaked with nostalgia and moreover, “is often guided by self-interest…”

(173). Guynn closes by highlighting that the potential of ideological manipulation of memory is incompatible with historians’ striving for objectivity; thus, professional historians should be on guard with their knowledgeable critique (173).

Guynn concludes his Writing History in Film saying that “history has stepped back into the role of managing public memory” (173). Drawing on him and knowing that people learn mostly from the media,

one could derive that media has stepped into the role of managing public memory. Regarding the influence of film as a medium, it is notable to know that based on the 2009 Theatrical Market Statistics, an online published report of the Motion Picture Association in America, the total movie admission in the United

States combined with Canada reached 1.4 billion tickets in 2009. The average visits to a movie theatre by a person older than two years were 4.3 a year (6). This research demonstrates the pervasive potential of film and justifies a careful critique of the filmic content as well as of the political economy behind each film.

Although both analyzed movies deal with huge chunks of history that create many conflicts and disagreements among people, the authors of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir decided not to retell the history of their countries intheir perspective. Rather, Folman and Satrapi chose to convey their intimate experience with war, trauma, growing up in a restricted environment and dealing with one’s own conscience. All these themes reinforce identification with the depicted characters without compromising the historical context. The historical information,however, is presented as a subjective experience of someone who lived through the reality of the past, rather than as an “objective,” documentary-like statement of what happened, how it happened and why.

5. Methodology

This work is going to utilize a methodology of a close analysis of two movies, Persepolis and

Waltz with Bashir. Both texts are examined in three contextual frames, in separate chapters: form and generic tendencies, representation and historiography. Within these chapters, theanalysis will occur on three levels. First, I am going to engage in a detailed textual analysis of the filmsand examine the techniques that the movies utilize. Second, I will be paying attention to the interrelationshipsof the analyzed films to other films and cultural texts that Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir directly or indirectly react upon – intertextual analysis. Third, while examining the current context, I will consider the ideological implications – ideological analysis.

The author of S/Z, Roland Barthes, in his introduction to an analysis of Honoré de Balzac’s essay

Sarrasine, argues that meaning of a text is created through reading. The reader is a producer rather than a consumer of a text (4). In Barthes’s view, a reader approaches the text as a “plurality of other texts, of

codes which are infinite or, more precisely, lost (whose origin is lost)” (10). Summarily, texts do not have a singular meaning but a plural one (11). Reading a text means to negotiate its meaning with other texts, with the large web of texts that were written and read before (11).

In Truth and Method, Hans-Georg Gadamer discusses hermeneutics, “The classical discipline concerned with the art of understanding texts” (146). He traces the evolution of opinions on the anchorage of works of art in the context consistent with the artifact’s origin. While some theorists promoted examining of works of art strictly in the context of their origin, arguing that otherwise the pieces would lose something of their significance, Gadamer opposes that “the reconstruction of original circumstances… is a pointless undertaking…” because the reconstruction is just “a life brought back from the lost past, is not the original” (149). Then, Gadamer turns to Hegel who agrees the past is irreproducible and that the emphasis should be on the new meaning that the work of art creates in relationship with present (149-150). Using a metaphor, Hegel claims that,

[T]he girl who presents the plucked fruit [meaning a found piece of art from the past] is more

than Nature [meaning the artist] that presented it in the first place with all its conditions and

elements… she combines all these in a higher way in the light of self-consciousness in her eyes

and in her gestures…” (Hegel qtd. in Gadamer 150)

Gadamer closes, using Hegel’s quote that “the essential nature of the historical spirit does not consist in the restoration of the past, but in thoughtful mediation with contemporary life” (150). Applying these theories to the following analysis, one needs to understand that Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, might have a different meaning today than they had in the time of their origin. The meaning is an ethereal phenomenon; however, this analysis will examine the movies in today’s context.

Robert Kolker, in “The Film Text and Film Form,” studies film text and defines basic categories that are necessary to determine when analyzing film. Kolker starts off analyzing text, saying that it is a

“coherent, delimited, comprehensible structure of meaning…, …something that contains complex of events

(images, words, sounds) that are related to each other within a context, which can be a story or narrative”

(12). Kolker explains that all these parts work together to tell something (12). Talking specifically about film text, the author emphasizes the impossibility to determine its boundaries, since film is not simply a

physical object (12). Rather, film text is “the complex interaction of film and audience, structure, content, context, and culture” (15). In other words, film texts are “physical, narrative, economic, and cultural, and… include production, distribution, exhibition, and viewing” (12). A completed film text has to be “seen, read, heard by someone” (12). When analyzing the film text, Kolker emphasizes the necessity to understand that it is a “plural, complex, simultaneously static and changing event, produced by the filmmakers who put it together and the audience members who view it” (15). Analysis of a filmic form focuses on “the shot and the cut, and on the structure that comes into being when the film is assembled… the finished film” (15).

The narrative is created by a structure of images and editing (15). In “Cinema and Language,” Michel

Marie says that, “The term ‘text’ soon gave a rise to a whole new category of film study, namely, the textual analysis of film” (166). Marie includes Barthes’s claim that, while earlier the examination of “text” was understood as a gateway into the “truth,” the “message,” the “meaning,” the modern theory approaches the text to examine the “interlacing of codes, formulae, and signifiers,” implying the shift from the search for the “real message” to the strategies and techniques that are employed by the text (172). Focusing selectively on film, Barthes highlights that various “signifying practices (including pictorial, musical, and film activities) may engender textuality” (qtd. in Marie 172). Rather than finished and simple messages, filmic texts need to be understood as a result of the relationship of the text to the writer as well as to the reader (172). This way, intertext comes into play, since a production of every text was based on the knowledge of other text (Barthes qtd. in Marie 173).

Talking about limitations of textual analysis, Marie points out Raymond Bellour’s claim that films cannot be truly quoted and escape the conventions of the language that one uses when talking about film

(173). For this reason, textual analysis cannot help but “mimic, evoke, or describe,” implying the non- transferability of audio-visual track in words (173). Discussing textual analysis and its specifics in contrast to other approaches to film, Marie claims that this method pays close attention to detail, suchas pointing to features of mise-en-scène, shot composition and shot transitions, and demonstrates claims by referring to specific shots in the film (174). Textual analysis does not include much additional information, e.g. the oeuvre of a particular filmmaker; rather, it performs a “myopic reading on the level of image” (175). It concentrates on observing formal structures and stylistic figures of a particular film not to perform “an

interpretative reading,” but instead balances between hypothesizing and detailed commenting about film fragments (175). Since the boundaries of a filmic text are not sharp, as discussed above, textual analysis is careful, thorough and cautious which predetermines its extensive length (175-176). Marie continues that textual analysts approach textual systems “as potential and multiple,” which prevents them from defining the signified with absolute certainty (176). In other words, textual analysis carefully implies and sketches possibilities, rather than draws strict conclusions. Aware of the fact that filmic texts are broad cultural products dependent on viewer’s negotiation with the text, textual analysis anatomizes segments of the film to demonstrate its claims on particular examples. Toward thisend, Marie mentions that excessive lists of examples support the argument but slow down the flow of a textual analysis (179). On the other hand, a moderate use of examples weakens the argument (179). Relying again on Bellour’s words, the author shows that precision often leads to immenselength, repetition and awkwardness in reading because textual analyses “play with an absent object and, because they involve making that object more present,” which is impossible unless one flirts with a little bit of fiction (180).

Keeping this knowledge as well as these limitations in mind, this thesis will engage in a textual analysis of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir to illuminate how these unique films are constituted – aurally and visually. Since, no text is free from reflecting on other, equally standing texts, as indicated above, the analysis will be enriched by intertextual analysis that will consider related filmic texts that are either directly or indirectly reflected in the analyzed movies. In addition, the chapter on form and generic tendencieswill engage in a close intertextual analysis by examining generic conventions and elements that the movies employ drawing from a large number of generic categories. The analyzed movies are not clear genre films, they are unique and hybridized. As Steve Neale claims, in his “Questions on Genre,” that genre is a process that evolves based on new films that shift the understanding of a specific generic corpus. The analyzed movies are examples of movies that shift these meanings. In addition to their genericcombination of established genres, they draw on genres that have not been crystallized within the system of generic categories, e.g. comic books. Although the comic book is not a cinematic genre, it carries an intertextual meaning that Persepolis borrows and utilizes.

In Film History: Theory and Practice, Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery analyze the genre, the intertextual element with the “most scholarly attention” (85). Every genre evokes certain expectations and prompts a specific meaning (85-86). In case these generic conventions are violated, the filmmaker risks disappointing the audience (86). Another function of genre, as Allen and Gomery say, is orientation of the viewer. Movie reviewers often liken films together, saying that if you liked that movie, you will love this new one as well; thus, using the filmic intertext in advertising (90). The analyzed movies, however, challenge this idea about expectations because their generic classification is problematic. They are animated in form and autobiographical in storytelling. Additionally, Waltz with Bashir draws on some documentary conventions and Persepolis with some tendencies that are traditionally associated with teen films or comic books (which are not established filmic classifications). Disrespecting these standard ways makes both movies unique. They exceed at challenging traditional patterns which makes them distinctive and worthy of a detailed examination.

According to Barthes, everyone can watch the movies, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, and create their own, personal meaning. Nevertheless, this analysis will negotiate the meaning in light of existing academic work; thus, engage in an intertextual analysis. In Film History: Theory and Practice,

Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery analyze the intertextual background of Hollywood films. Although they refer specifically to Hollywood production, I believe that their schema of intertext can be applied to any kind of film because, as Barthes argued in “S/Z,” no text is free from relationships and reactions to other texts (11). In Allen’s and Gomery’s opinion, the intertext of movies consists of three components:

“filmic, nonfilmic, and extra-filmic” (84-85). Filmic intertext means the use of elements from other films or the relationships of the film to other films (85). Nonfilmic intertext includes “the use of conventions or codes from other art forms or systems of representation” (85). Extra-filmic intertext encompasses

“nonaesthetic practices” that are used in the film, such as politics or biology (85). Respecting this analysis of intertext, the authors conclude that the meaning of any text “is a complex process” (85).

Regarding the extra-filmic components, one of them is the relationship to the current political context. The topic of the analyzed movies, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, is urgent in today’s political context more than ever before. The bias and prejudice against the Middle East has been increasing, fed by

the rhetoric of Western media. The islamophobia in the world has reached its historical peak (Traynor) and examples of an open xenophobia toward Muslims, or people resembling those individuals that we believe we know, based on TV imagery, takes place on a daily basis. The increasing trend to associate every

Muslim with terrorism, as reported by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (Islamophobia' Fuels

Terrorism: Report), has come so far that some believers in Allah need to hide or even deny their identity to prevent personal attacks (Jabbar). Juan Cole, in Engaging the Muslim World, claims that “Islamofascism” started with George Bush’s rhetoric relating to the war in Iraq in 2005 (qtd. in Sanger). The author of this historical study asserts that Bush’s rhetoric of this time and his careless, lavish usage of words, such as

“Axis of Evil” originated into today’s habit of equaling every Muslim to a terrorist. Step by step, as he claims, this rhetoric initiated “the twin dynamic of ‘Islam Anxiety' in the United States and 'American

Anxiety' in the Arab world (Cole qtd. in Sanger). Deepa Kumar (2010) adds that Bush’s direct negative rhetoric and his overuse of simplified generalizations related to the Muslim people caused a huge part of the public to take these misconceptions for granted and be governed by this created stereotype. As already described above, many Westerners tend to lump all Middle Easterners together and think about them as one united “Other” in opposition to the constructed idea of the advanced, educated and democratic “West.”

Therefore, the “fear of Muslims” should rather be articulated as a “fear from Middle Easterners.” Both authors, Satrapi and Folman, aim their texts at the global audience to alter the dominant image of the

Middle East in today’s context.

Gadamer argues for interpretation of works of art in the present context because the context or origin is nonreturnable. Even in the present context, however, the way we look at art reflects the surrounding world, the current conditions, events and climate. It is impossible to free the interpretation from preformed ideology.

Thinking about which movies are seen, Allen and Gomery emphasize “agenda setting” in cinema.

By choosing “what to think about” the film critics function as gatekeepers who decide which movies will get attention and which willnot (90). The discussion of ideology permeates the whole book. Defining ideology as a “complex coherent, and logical systems of images, ideas, beliefs, and actions by which and through which people live their everyday lives,” Allen and Gomery emphasize the role of cinema in the

process of creating ideology by representation albeit misrepresentation on the screen (126). Considering that Hollywood movies are diametrically misrepresenting society by depicting some with “disproportionate frequency” and others rarely or not at all, mainstream movie production reflects stereotypes that prevail in society (158-159). What is the ideology within Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir that operates? Are the movies in accord with the dominant ideology or do they challenge it? These are the questions this analysis is going to answer.

Later on, Allen and Gomery summarize the Marxist theory of superstructureand apply it to film, saying that “[s]pecific forms of ‘social consciousness’ have been developed [as] political, religious, ethical, and aesthetic, which Marxism has designated as ideology” (135). In terms of film, they function to

“legitimatize the power of the ‘ruling’ class” by reaffirming “the dominant ideas and beliefs of a society, those ideas and beliefs of the ‘ruling’ class” (135). Film, as a medium with a crucial rhetorical potential to address large masses, can be abused to build up attitudes that might result in justification of hostile international relationships, colonization or warfare, often, hiding resource-hunger or other economic reasons behind the veil of “spreading democracy” or “fighting the terrorists,” myths that Persepolis attacks.

In Ideology, Terry Eagleton concludes that an understanding of ideology ranges from a wide comprehension, as “social determination of thought” to a narrow one, “the deployment of false ideas in the direct interest of a ruling class” (221). According to Eagleton, one needs to grasp ideology broadly, in its pejorative, as well as in its neutral, sense; the pejorative being “ways in which signs, meanings and values help to reproduce a dominant social power,” the neutral being “any significant conjuncture between discourse and political interests” (221). Describing ideology as a “performative, rhetorical, pseudo- propositional discourse” (221), Eagleton summarizes that dominant ideologies tend to rely on specific devices: “unification, spurious identification, naturalization, deception, self-deception, universalization and rationalization” (222). The author emphasizes the fragility of ideology in “active political struggle,” claiming that when people confront the “power of the state…their political consciousness may be definitively, irreversibly altered” (224). Moreover, this transformation might occur overnight (223). In

Eagleton’s opinion, this is the value of ideology, “helping to illuminate the processes by which such liberation from death-dealing beliefs may be practically affected” (224).

In Aesthetics of Film, the collective authors claim that, in the 1970s, the debate on ideology in cinema was a hot topic (235). Listing the filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin and Dziga

Vertov, the authors explain that some movie creators started to engrave and project their “political or ideological concerns” into their movies, using the potential of enunciation in film (234-235).

Michael Calvin McGee, in “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link between Rhetoric and Ideology,” deals with ideology and argues that it “isalways false” (454) reasoning that “’truth’ in politics, no matter how firmly we believe, is always an illusion” (454). McGee uses a classical description of ideology, writing that ideology gives an illusion of truth especially by persuasive rhetorical means. Later,the author proposes his understanding of ideology as “a political language, preserved in rhetorical documents, with the capacity to dictate decision and control public belief and behavior” (454). McGee claims that words are “the basic structural elements, the building blocks, of ideology” because they carry “a unique ideological commitment” (455). He introducesthe term “ideograph” to describe thepolitical language that expresses ideology by using ideographs for “technical terminology of political philosophy” (454). McGee argues that ideology is built out of ideographs; each of them being loaded with a specific charge of agenda. Altogether, ideographs, intermixed withinsimple language, operate in a society’s discourse and sustain ideology. The ideographs in political rhetoric need to be detected to discover the original motives behind them (454).

The analyzed movies Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, without question, have some political implications. The ideology that the movies are reacting upon, as well as the myths that these movies display and attempt to purge need to be examined. Are Satrapi and Folman challenging the representation of the

Middle East by sharing their personal stories? How are Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir engaging in the criticism of the black-and-white worldview? What are the aesthetic means the movies utilize? The following analysis will trace the answers on these questions.

II. CHAPTER ONE: FORM AND GENERIC TENDENCIES

A. Introduction to Genre

Genre is a multidisciplinary term in the arts that constantly evolves. As Steve Neale quotes Ralph

Cohen, in his “Questions of Genre,” the term emerged right at the appearance of “popular, mass-produced generic fiction” (63). While prior to this shift, generic systems were applied solely to high culture and products of popular culture were not considered literature and consequently believed not to be worth any generic classification (Threadgold qtd. in Neale 63). Later, however, when new technologies and avenues of distribution emerged and when more people become literate and demanded products of popular culture in their leisure time, these popular products started to be largely generic-specific to better accommodate the needs of the consumer by ordering and repeating the successful patterns (63). “True literature,” on the other hand, started to escape generic and any other constraints and begun to promote self-expression, originality and autonomy (63).

Cinematic genre is a subject of hot debate among film theorists. Neale reviews a large amount of key works on genre and engages in a discussion with these crucial scholarly works. Using Hollywood cinema as a framework, as “the most powerful national cinema in the world,” Neale claims that the broad points that he identifies are applicable to other cinemas across the globe (46). Neale establishes genre by explaining that besides “bodies of work” and “groups of films,” a genre, equally importantly, consists of

“specific systems of expectation and hypothesis” that accompany the viewer on his or her way to the movies and shape the way the viewer decodes the film while watching it (46). The expectations and hypotheses associated with each genre endow the audience with “recognition and understanding” and they enable the viewer to anticipate some events, actions, costumes, ways of speaking and behavior over others

(46). Neale uses the term “verisimilitude” that relates to each genre to highlight the probability, likeness and appropriateness. Drawing on Tzvetan Todorov, Neale emphasizes “two broad types of verisimilitude”: the generic one and the social or cultural one (47). The first is understood as “rules of the genre,” meaning

the necessary elements that a film needs to include in order to be labeled as a certain genre (Todorov qtd. in

Neale). The second concept refers to public opinion, meaning the relation “between the discourse and what readers [or viewers] believe is true” (47). Examples of social and cultural verisimilitude are features that seem authentic, as if they are real: maps, archival documents or newspaper headlines (47). Neale emphasizes that for critics who operate “under an ideology of realism” the social and “cultural verisimilitude is a necessary condition of ‘serious’ film, television or literature” (47-48).

Delving deeply into the core of the film industry’s interest in genre, Neale uses John Ellis’s

“medium theories” to state that the film industry creates a “narrative image” prior to each film to spread the message about what the movie is like (48). Other public discourses, such as the reviews in the media, as well as the interpersonal evaluations and recommendations of movies among people, contribute to the film’s narrative image (49). Genres are crucial features in the narrative image (49). According to Neale, generic labels in reviews, together with hyperbolic descriptions on movie posters, transmit the generic information and establish expectations and anticipations (49). Additionally, by providing these labels and expectations that “characterize the genre as a whole,” they, together with the films, “define and circulate… what one might call ‘generic images’ (Lukow and Ricci qtd. in Neale 49). Here, Neale diverges from Rick

Altman. Altman disagreesthat industrial and media discourses participate in (re-and) defining genre (50).

Holding a discussion with Altman,who according to Neale devaluates the industrial and journalistic discourse, Neale points out that “genres exist always in excess of a corpus of works…, [they] comprise expectations and audience knowledge as well as films…” and that “these expectations and the knowledge they entail are public in status” (51). Additionally, Neale argues that the treatment of genre by the film industry and in the media historically reveal the understanding of genre by the industry and by the audience at that particular time (52). Charles Musser analyzes the generic conceptions of Western movies in time

(52-55), indicating that the understanding shifts prove that genres “do not exist by themselves; they are named and placed within hierarchies or systems of genres, and each is defined by reference to the system and its members” and additionally that “each era has its own system of genres” (Musser qtd. in Neale 55).

Further, Neale highlights that genres are processes that are “dominated by repetition” but also

“marked fundamentally by difference, variation and change,” challenging the traditional understanding of genre as something static (56). According to the author, “the process-like nature of genres” is shaped by the 39

audience’s expectations, by the generic corpus and by the interaction with them (56). New genre films include some elements of other movies from the same genre corpus and exclude others. At the same time, many movies extend the generic repertoire “by adding a new element or by transgressing one of the old ones” (56). This way, the generic corpus keeps expanding (56). The expectations of new films are shaped by memories of previous movies that fit under the same generic label and,since the corpus grows, the

“horizon of expectation” expands simultaneously (Jauss qtd. in Neale 56).

Besides the process of expanding and shifting one single genre, in some cases, more genres wed or borrow some features from each other and form so-called hybrids (Neale 57). Using observations of other theorists, Neale claims that today one rarely encounters a film that does not combine elements of various genres together and that in time, new genres have emerged rightly by a repeated combination of some specific genres together (57-58).

At the end of his extensive article, Neale admits that every artist is always influenced by “aesthetic conventions and rules, “institutional constraints” and ideology (63); however, when analyzing any artistic product, one should not forget to pay “attention to aesthetics” (65). Neale disagrees with Rick Altman that films are simply “vehicles for ‘capitalist’ (or the ‘dominant’) ideology and that “form is always, and only, a wrapping for the cultural or ideological content” (65).

The examination of form will be the objective of the following text. Paying special attention to generic tendencies, this chapter guides the reader through a rich databank of genericconventions that are reflectedin Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir.The chapter elucidates that the analyzed movies flirt with various genres; however, at the end, free themselves from any generic restrictions and enjoy aesthetic freedom of expression that is more than suitable for their postmodern substance. After the analysis of the form, the “wrapping” of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, to use Neale’s metaphor, the project will move on to the investigation of the substance, in the chapter on representation, and, finally, to the study historiography.

B. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir:Entering the Genre Debate

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir lie outside the common critique of genre films, “If you’ve seen one you’ve seen ‘emall” (Altman 25). The analyzed movies are hybrids of various genres; they intermix 40

elements and conventions from multiple genres and challenge audience’s expectations. The term “animated memoir” or “animated documentary” might to some, who associate the animated form exclusively with children-oriented cartoons, seem as an oxymoron. Nevertheless, the authors of Persepolis and Waltz with

Bashir indeed created works that deservedly fulfill these labels and combine an expressive quality of an animation with a documentary dimension that is traditionally associated with real-life cinematic presentation (Power 117). Unlike genre films that follow one basic pattern, share style and atmosphere and are, for the most part, predictable, Persepolis’s and Waltz with Bashir’s hybrid mixture of genres is freed from the usual conventionsand expectations, endowing the films with aunique creative liberty. The animated form serves as a rich palette for complex artistic expressions; theautobiographical basis endows the films with attractive authenticity, personification and intimacy; the documentary faithfulness provides the movies’ urgency and informational value; and, finally, the teen-film element broadens the addressability of audience and offers a multilayered meaning. All this is achieved while staying coherent and comprehensible.

When producing a trailer or when writing a review, the authorsemphasizedthe animated quality of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir the most. However, is animation that Cholodenko describes as a “step- child of cinema” (9), the dominant generic description that pointedly represents the movies? This chapter engages in critical analysis of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir in terms of genre.

The pivotal tendencies that are reflected in the analyzed movies, animation, memoir/autobiography, documentary, teen-film and essay film, are discussed in separate sections, starting with animation and autobiography where both movies quarry the most elements, moving on to documentary tendencies that are reflected in Waltz with Bashir. These tendencies continue witha discussion of teen film. Finally, I introduce the category of essay film that encompasses hybridized cinematic works like Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. These sections are opened or intercalatedwith brief, genre-specific literature reviews that clarify the actual analysis of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir.

1. Animation

Paul Wells starts his Understanding Animation saying that the word “animation” has a Latin origin in the word “animare” that means “to give life to” (Wells 10). Cholodenko, in The Illusion of Life, adds “endowing with movement” (15) and emphasizes that animations are not simply moving drawings but rather, “drawings that move as they already exist in the director’s mind” (17). According to Cholodenko,

“the illusion of life” that is inhered in animation is the reason why people are fascinated with animation

(20). Originally, animation “is a film made by hand, frame-by-frame, providing an illusion of movement”

(Wells 10). With technological advancements, however, the techniques of animated creation keep evolving.

Animation is not “the art of movements that are drawn,” “the creation of movement on paper” anymore, as

Norman McLaren claims (qtd. in Wells 10). Further, the author discusses many prevalent characteristics of traditional animation from its early years, such as anthropomorphism, meaning “endowment of creatures with human attributes, abilities and qualities” (Wells 15), predilection for fantasy worlds (16), openness to transgressivenness hidden behind the veil of an “innocent” form (19), presence of events that could not happen in a real life (19) and overall a comedic style (20).

Persepolis is a “pen-and-ink” animation based on the eponymous graphic novel by Marjane

Satrapi that preceded the film. The simplicity of drawings, together with a black-and-white style that is only occasionally colored gives the movie an original, plain, comic book-like look that contrasts with the complexity of the narrative. Waltz with Bashir employs a different technique. It is a unique innovation done by Yoni Godman from the Israeli Bridgit Folman Film Gang studio that utilizes real life shooting as a template for the film’s illustrations (Zumberg). Although the movie’s final look suggests that it was achieved by rotoscoping, a technique where animators copy projected real-life film, frame by frame, Waltz with Bashir utilizes so called “cut-out animation” that uses real actors as models for animated movie characters (Stewart 58). Anatomizing the technique in his “Screen Memory in Waltz with Bashir,” Garrett

Stewart explains that the created models of characters are later divided in little pieces and inserted into special computer software that harmonizes the action by “sectored rhythms of human movement” (58). In

Stewart’s opinion, the limited “level of kinetic detail” in Waltz with Bashir stylistically fits the narrative where dream-and guilt-troubled bodies “wade through a lurid quagmire of deflected memory” (58).

Nevertheless, although obviously animated in form, the analyzed movies do not contain classical elements of traditional animation: anthropomorphism, predilection for fantasy worlds, transgressive behavior and overall comedic style, as described in Wells (15-20). Presence of events that could not happen in a real life together with an overall comedic tone can be detected in Persepolis. However, even here, the unrealistic scenes, such as the image of a school backyard where all females look exactly the same when veiled, or the scene where huge flowers slowly escape from Marji’s grandmother’s bra, are Marji’s childish fancies rather than the creation of fantasy worlds. The comical tone clearly infiltrates the whole narrative, corresponding to its graphic novel origin. Although “comic book” is not a film genre, the movie Persepolis, which is originally based on a previously published graphic novel, draws on this literary tradition and maintains a comic book look, bringing this influence into play.

Rick Altman, in his Film/Genre, claims that genres “reside in a particular topic or structure or in a corpus of films that share a specific topic and structure” (23). The author emphasizes that common topic and common structure is necessary for two films to be ordered in the same genre. It follows that, in case of

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, animation is not a genre but simply a technique for the movies. As discussed above, the movies do not feature characteristics that have been traditionally associated with classical animated movies, e.g. Walt Disney’s productions. Nevertheless, the films borrow the animated technique for its distinct expressive potential and apply it tonarratives that combine elements from multiple generic corpuses. As an alternativeto live-action movie, Satrapi and Folman chose the form of animation as a means of their artistic expression and managed to revive their memories without any limitations, restrictions or misrepresentations that would come up with live-action movies, proving Power’s assertion from “Animated Expressions…” that “[t]raditionally, animation has been one of the most expressive of the visual arts” (109). Folman says that for him there was “no other way” to tell his story because animation gives him a “complete freedom to do whatever [he] like[s], whatever [he] imagine[s]” (France 24 2008).

For Satrapi, the choice of animation was so that people can identify with the characters easier. She says,

“As soon as you put the action in a certain geographical place, certain type of people, etc., then again that will become the story of people that are far from us, we cannot relate to them, they are not like us” (IFC

News 2007). Satrapi emphasizes the abstraction of her drawings “that anybody can relate to” because her characters do not look like any specific group of people:they are very intentionally simple, so that anyone 43

can put him-or herself in the characters’ shoes (IFC News 2007). Whether drawing the characters or the setting of Persepolis, Satrapi intended to maintain neutrality to evoke a feeling that this story could take place anywhere in the world to anyone in the audience; she wanted her story to be universal, meaning to be about human lives, rather than about Iranians(IFC News 2007). Interestingly, both authors agree that real- live action would be an obstacle to their narratives. Folman explains that animation actually supports his film’s realism, since everything graphically corresponds with images in his memory. In this sense,

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir are more than historical recollections created and enacted in present time and attempting to only resemble the lost reality. Accordingly, Satrapistretches real-life action’s excessive specificity that draws attention to differences rather than to similarities. Since Persepolis’s overarching goal is to promote intercultural tolerance and identification especially between the West and the Middle

East, excessive specificity would weaken this goal.

Further, Power argues that “expressive arts need to be experienced emotionally if they are to be properly understood” (113). In Persepolis, the expressiveness is achieved especially by the rendering of facial expressions, deriving a benefit from Patrick Cavanagh’s discovery of strong emotional impact of impressionistic faces (qtd. in Power 115). Examining audience’s responsiveness, Power sums up

Cavanagh’s research that proved that human brains respond “more strongly to impressionistic than to naturalistic faces, and that expressive works distract conscious vision while engaging more directly with emotions,” thus proving an advantage of animated over realistic portrayal (115). When still a child, Marji’s non-proportionally big head and huge eyes reinforce the childish cuteness (when smiling ear to ear and winking with big eyes), innocence (when sincerely wondering what she did wrong) and naivety (when exaggerated every principle she learns and taken it for a general rule) of the heroine. This way, Marji’s appealing countenance outbalances her occasional stubbornness and her tiny episodes of misconduct, such as “teaching a lesson,” meaning punishing a young boy for the deeds of his father, envying a friend whose father was in jail thus a hero. This scene profits heavily from the high potential of emotional expressivity in animation. When Marji and her friends plot how to punish the kid for his father’s wrongdoings, mean grins distort their otherwise cute faces and one knows that these children are about to commit a bad deed. Later in the movie, Marji witnesses two women fighting for the last box of food in a grocery store. To emphasize the passion, madness and desperation of people, the movie subtracts details and shows only silhouettes of 44

these two fighting women in a cartoon-like style. The bigger one is beating the smaller one on the head with the box; thus, pushing her into the ground. Again, the expressivity won over a faithful, reality- resembling portrayal, to convey more than what would be possible to observe in a real-life movie. Facial expressions, in Persepolis, reliably mirror mindsets of portrayed people. As if everyone’s face was a window into every particular character’s soul, wrinkles indicate worries, grins bad intentions and broad smiles pleasure.

In Waltz with Bashir, expressiveness of animation serves a different purpose. While in Persepolis, exaggerated animated grimaces of characters transmit and amplify particular moods of the depicted people and entertain the viewer, in Waltz with Bashir, animation significantly shapes the environment that surrounds the characters. For example the dominant dream-like, foggy atmosphere, in Waltz with Bashir, accommodates Ari’s little pieces of memories that randomly start to emerge and that, at the end, combine in a coherent story of his past. Here, as well as in Persepolis, the artistic expressions of animation help the author to visualize his or her feelings and emotions. In the scene of unfolding Ari’s dreams, the weight of atmosphere expands exponentially by using slow motion and by the black and yellow colorcast. In this scene that is crucial to the movie, one understands that Ari did not move that slowly; similarly, he did not see in black and yellow only. In fact, he most likely moved as usual and he viewed the world in full color.

In his mind, however, his memory is stuck in this distorted way. Why? The reason for the slow mode is perhaps the fact that this memory is so strong that every second feels like it lasted for hours because of the profundity of the moment. The reason why the scene’s color is limited to black and yellow may possibly signify the emotions that were played in Ari’s head when he was experiencing the situation. The aggressive combination of black with yellow is not pleasant to the eyes. The yellow in the movie shines and flashes and makes one want to shut out the visual inundation. Perhaps, Ari wanted to turn a blind eye to what he saw as well. At least his memory totally shut its sight to what he witnessed and, temporarily, prevented him from remembering anything in the future. The black enables a strong contrast with the yellow and evokes a nightmarish look. Beside the use and manipulation of color, everything else is, in Waltz with Bashir, depicted in a realistic measure. In contrast to Persepolis, in this movie, all characters are proportionate to real people. The advanced computer technique, which uses real flesh-and-bone actors as templates, succeeded to make the characters in the film move in a way that resembles human motion. However, in 45

Waltz with Bashir, the motion is slightly slowed down to evoke the ethereal atmosphere of a narrative that is based on memory. Since the memories are mostly unhappy, traumatic and make the characters feel uneasy, the slow motion highlights the uneasiness and dizziness that still comes back when Ari, Carmi or

Ronny think about their war experience. Again, this illustrates that in critical breaking points, when emotions get into the way of rational thinking, one feels that actual split of second lastslonger because one’s head works so hard that the heaviness of a little moment transcribes as a crucial event.

It is notable that in both films, moral qualities mirror the overall character’s appearance. While nice people with whom the viewer is supposed to sympathize and identify are good-looking, Marji, Ari,

Marji’s parents, young innocent men fighting the Lebanon War; the “bad guys,” on the other hand, the regime supporting teachers in Persepolis, the members of secret police in Persepolis, the high officers in

Waltz with Bashir, who live in luxury, overeat and watch porn, are portrayed as ugly. This symbolic portrayal culminates in the depiction of Marcus, Marji’s Vienna boyfriend who breaks her heart by cheating on her. At the beginning of the relationship, Marcus looks angelic, his curly, thick blond hair creates a halo when the couple dances in the moonlight and Marji is obsessed with him. After breaking up with him, however, in Marji’s memory, Marcus is depicted as a haggish freak with acne, misaligned teeth, eating his own dried mucus. Although humans generally tend to wear rose-colored glasses when falling in love and later comfort themselves by remembering their ex-partners in a bad light, in Persepolis, the animation allows the observer’s eyes to comprehend Marji’s feelings that would in reality be invisible. The animated form enables a high level hyperbole that results in depicting the characters in a way that functions as caricature. In caricature, personality gets often visualized and transmitted into the character’s appearance in an exaggerated manner. Additionally, in Persepolis, young children who are in the process of development learn their morals by the method of trial-and error. Therefore, their faces are generally innocent and cute. When intending to perform an anti-social behavior, such as chasing a young boy for his father’s wrongdoing, their faces suddenly get a sly grin. Although, in reality, people are not as black-and- white, and their personal qualities might not correspond to their physical ones, the authors of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir utilize the potential of expressiveness in their animations to convey more, to project the soul directly onto the body. Although the trend of positive characters being better looking than negative ones is often traceable in live-action films as well, the extent with which this is happening in Persepolis 46

exceeds traditional live-action. In classical live-action, one hardly sees two women turning into a silhouette or a caricature with exaggerated features; similarly, one scarcely encounters a real actor that quickly changes grimaces from incredibly adorable and innocent to mean and revengeful with Marji’s brilliance.

These cartoonish and entertaining images in Persepolis and the surreal atmosphere of Waltz with

Bashir might, at the first sight, appeal to a young audience that is generally more open to innovation and somehow commonly closer to the animated form that other, more conservative audience members might find as an obstacle for their potential interest in the movies’ narrative. Wheeler Winston Dixon, in

“’Fighting and Violence and Everything, That’s Always Cool’: Teen Films in the 1990s,” argues that since the 1990’s, nothing matters more than whether a film will “appeal to teens” (128). Traditionally, experts believe that a filmmaker succeeds when he or she make his or her movie “appeal to the widest audience”

(Davis qtd. in Dixon 128). Since, today, the dominant audiences are teenagers; this group is the most desirable to address (128). Similarly with Persepolis, this movie might be shown to children and to adults at the same time and everyone will have a different experience from the screening based on their age, historical knowledge and personal subject position. While some might evaluate Persepolis as a cool and funny animation about a girl in Iran, others might penetrate into the deeper spheres of the film’s meaning.

This obvious attractiveness of Persepolis for very young audiences is not present in Waltz with Bashir. The latter movie, although appealing to youth for its visual aspects, does not contain any child-like content as in

Persepolis.

Paul Wells, in Understanding Animation, highlights Sergei Eisenstein’s assertion that animation gives filmmakers a greater “personal and ideological freedom” because it, according to his words,

“succeeded in demonstrating liberation from social constraint and the fulfillment of personal desire” (22).

Although Eisenstein praised “the language of animation” in early Disney’s movies, he acknowledges that later Disney production entered the path of a profit-oriented mass business (22-23). In other words,

Eisenstein noticed the potential of animated form to escape the ideological dictate that heavily restricted live-action movies. Nevertheless, at the same time, he saw that, unfortunately, the major animated productiondid not exhaust its expressive potentialyielding to the temptation of profit. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, however, fulfill their potential to escape the dominant ideological trend and wed the “personal

and ideological freedom” that Eisenstein attributed to animation with traditional attractiveness of current autobiographical narrative and eye-taking artistic charm that is accessible to broad audiences.

When discussing realism, Wells comes up with a term “animation with documentary tendency,” that encompasses films that aspire to depict a “naturalistic representation” and which “engag[e] with social reality” (28). Examining the animated 1918 film The Sinking of the Lusitania, Wells concludes that the film utilizes a “quasi-newsreel ‘feel’” that is “powerful and emotionally affecting” (28). Wells comments that movies which “be[g] the question of why it was necessary to animate the work and not merely see it in live-action”might have chosen the form of animation to direct the audience’s attention in a particular direction that could otherwise stay unnoticed (28). This is the case in the analyzed movies. Besides the comedic aspect, in Persepolis, animation serves as an expressive device that enables to draw the viewer’s attention to small nuances that would maybe stay unnoticed in live-action. It allows the author to stay faithful to memories about her childhood and to visually shape them according to the image in her mind, keeping the childish perspective of a little girl who looks up, literally and figuratively, to everything around her. Moreover, the animation allows addressing how themes of memory are etched in everyone’s mind. The visual augmentation of elements with greater urgency diminishes less meaningful elements in the narrative, creating an image that mirrors the personal mindset of the central character, Marji, rather than reality

(because people’s perception as well as memory is naturally selective). Marji’s limited attention is illustrated in a scene where she first meets her future husband. The only thing both of them can see, in that moment, is each other. Everything else around them freezes and they literally float to each other. This scene utilizes the metaphor of people’s blindness when in love, their inability to see clearly.

Marji fights with her inner conscience by fancying God who talks to her and gives her wise live- advice for handling the complex world around her. Again, her memories, stripped of unnecessary details, consist of simple images in her head most likely do not correspond to reality in a literal way. Marji imagines herself hanging by her ears having been nailed to the wall, after her mother chided her for wanting to rip one boy’s eyes off as apunishment for his father’s cooperation with Shah’s secret police.

Another time, when listening to her uncle’s story about being forced to flee the country, Marji imagines him wandering through impenetrable woods, encountering wolves, passing ravens, floundering through snow, thus sandwiching all possible discomforts and sources of fear that her infantile fantasy can produce. 48

These images, selectively chosen scenes, are embedded in Marji’s mind because of their special significance.

In Waltz with Bashir,animation similarly functions as an ideal form to capture memories intermixed with dreams, an atmosphere where the line between reality and illusion is blurred. Additionally, it functions as a means to contrast Ari’s personal story and his memories that are animated with the actual impact of the massacre in Sabra and Shatila that was documented in real time and that is, in the movies, presented as real-live action. At the very end of the movie, when animation is all of the sudden interrupted with real life footage of reactions of women who witnessed the massacre, Folman’s personal story shrinks on behalf of a larger issue that affects everyone, the war. When being asked why he chose to show the viewer the actual images of the massacre, Folman answers that hedid not want the viewer to leave the movie theatre in a pleasant atmosphere of a “cool” animation with good music. Rather, he wanted people to realize that behind those pretty drawings were actual people, women and children who were slaughtered

(France 242008). The real images create a strong contrast to the previous animation and represent an awakening from the author’s personal dream-like fantasy world into the image of real war consequences.

The scene comes without any warning, it lasts for a few seconds but is incredibly powerful.

Before concluding, I want to point out that, in today’s digital age, the earlier demarcation between animation and real-live action film becomes blurred. Digital images can be easily altered by professionals as well as amateurs which raises concerns among people because these alterations are difficult to be detected. While media professionals panic, because of increasing anti-ethical alteration in photojournalism, artists and interested members of the public welcome user-friendly software that enable them to manipulate anyone’s image or video sequence. Filmmakers and film enthusiasts, obviously, take advantage of every accessible improvement as well. Thus, today, not only action movies but films across the whole generic spectrum, utilize techniques that manipulate the final product according to desired preferences, stepping over the previously clear border between real-live action and animation. In the past, photographs and videos used to be considered as absolute truths and their magical aura of objectivity generated immense power of these images that served as evidence. However, in today’s digital era, the magical aura has vanished and public is aware of the fact that what they see in real-live action, either in the newspaper, on

TV and in the movie theatre, does not have to correspond to anything real and factual anymore. 49

This section illuminated the animated form that Persepolis shares with Waltz with Bashir. It anatomized specific advantages that animation holds over real-live cinema and showed how the authors of the analyzed movies capitalize on the animated form to illustrate their intimate stories in their personal way. Both movies, however, are first and foremost autobiographical works. They narrate the non-fiction episodes of the authors: in the case of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s two decades of coming of age in Iran are compressed and, in the case of Waltz with Bashir, the movie features Ari Folman’s experience in the

Lebanon War with occasional references to the present or to the past.

2. Autobiography/Memoir

In “Memory’s Movies,” an essay in Beyond Document: Essays on Non-Fiction Film, Patricia

Hampl theorizes on cinematic memoirs by examining their historical evolution. Hampl seems to freely interchange the word “memoir” and “autobiography,” saying that memoirs are autobiographical works at the borderline of fiction and documentary (53, 63). She notices that although popular as prose, memoirs struggle to attract a larger viewership despite the “preoccupation with the individual” in today’s culture

(54). As a rationale, the author mentions the funds that one needs to produce an autobiographical movie in comparison to the costs of writing a book (54). Hampl says that memoirs represent a “cottage industry” and have a “marginal status” among nonfiction films (54). The mistrust and repulsion toward self display, that are typical for Americans, grant the genre “a certain autonomy born of its poverty” that, according to

Hampl, follows from unlimited freedom of self-displaythat is not altered by other people who might be involved in the process of filmmaking (55).

Discussing voice-over, Hampl explains that voice-over that is generally criticized as telling instead of showing fulfils a different function in memoirs. “[I]t isan instrument,” it establishes the movie’s first person stress and represents “a thinking voice” that ponders and contemplates and, this way moves the narrative forward (57). This voice represents a specific perspective, “cleaves more to its angle of vision, its take on things, than to the clean arc of plot that rules the novel and feature film,” creating intimacy which actually illuminates “essential impersonality” (63-64). Applying Hampl’s words to Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, the personal stories of Marji and Ari are introductory springboards for the audience to explore

and understand the life of people in the Middle East in certain period of time. When watching these movies, one uses Marji’s and Ari’s stories as media into the life of Iranians of Marji’s coming of age period and

Israeli soldiers of the Lebanon War. As Hampl explains “the narrator is more eye than I,” (64) implying that the main author’s alter ego’s character is an “eye,” a view, into a complexity of events, rather than simply the centre of focus.

Using Philippe Lejeune’s definition, autobiography refers to personal works that are referential, meaning “imbued with history,” retrospective and that feature the main protagonist, the narrator and the author in one person (qtd. in Renov xi). Tracing the origin of the word “autobiography,” Michael Renov, in

The Subject of Documentary, discovers three components: “a self, a life, and a writing practice” (xii).

Renov emphasizes that autobiographies are usually devoted to a limited period of life (xii) and that they assume “self-inscription” (xiii), since, in autobiography, the author constructs his or her life “through ‘text’ construction” (xiii). Renov underlines the fact that this construction, based on self-inscription, logically produces transformations of reality (xiii). In other words, in memoirs, since the author presents his or her subjective version of his or her own life, it is very likely that this version will be more or less altered from the reality, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Every self-narrator inscribes a bit of his or her self-projection into their work, as nicely demonstrated by the character of a psychologist in Waltz with Bashir, who presented research that proved that a person’s memory is dynamic, it “fills in the empty spaces.” Additionally, as the psychologist explains, the memory “blocks us from going into dark areas we want to get closed,” implying that people tend to unconsciously displace unpleasant experiences that might consequently be suppressed from their memory. Ari confirms this theory when saying, “To tell you the truth, it [the massacre in Sabra and Shatila] is not in my system. No, there’s nothing.” Similarly, Carmi, Ari’s friend who experienced the war with Ari claims “I don’t know. I can’t remember anything to do with the massacre... The massacre’s not in my system.” The personal referentiality and reflectivity of the past creates the backbone of the narrative of both analyzed movies. Satrapi and Folman are authors, narrators as well as central characters of the animated bodies of Marji and Ari, fulfilling one of the basic characteristics of an autobiography. Waltz with Bashir skillfullyelaborates on the notion of self-inscription, amplifying the value of Ari’s own memory by intermixing dream with reality and by having doubts about his own past experiences. That is the reason 51

why Ari questions his flashbacks from Beirut, “Are you saying that my flashbacks of the massacre never happened?” When Ari is encouraged to trace his past, he asks, “Isn’t that dangerous? Maybe I’ll discover things I don’t want to know about myself.” The very end of the movie that features real footage of the reactions to the massacre serves as an awakening of the viewer from the previous foggy,subjective memories to the reality that took place in Beirut and that cannot be forgotten. In Persepolis, Marji does not deconstruct her own memory to the extent of Waltz with Bashir. Although she does not admit any gaps of memory, the members of audience understand the subjectivity and the simplification of Marji’s life because of the style of Persepolis’s narrative where humor takes precedence over factuality. When Marji’s father gives Marji a lecture on Iranian history, the viewer peeps into Marji’s mind and sees what images her childish fantasyproduce. This strategy is not necessary misleading but it is likely to be selective and imprecise.

Later in his text, Renov argues that autobiography is a valuable counterbalance to dominant narrative of history which precision has lately been questioned by many scholars who pointed out the biased position of those who write history (Renov 109-110). The author refers to literary autobiography and says that it requires “a double and mutually defining inscription—of history and the self—that refuses the categorical and totalizing” (110). It embraces “digression, reverie, the revelation of public history though the private and associational” (110), meaning a tendency of autobiography to complicate the shared consciousness about history by complementing it and branching out the narrative, incorporating fantasies and intimacies. Additionally, autobiography functions as an example of history from below rather than history from above; it is dominated by members of the oppressed groups and minorities who, as Renov points out, utilize autobiography to share their stories (xvi-xvii). Although the perspective an autobiography takes might be of someone “little,” someone from the crowd, it still relies on self-inscription, thus keeping a “transgressive” status “as a formal mutation, a hybrid genre... definable neither as fiction nor non- fiction—not even a mixture of the two” (Renza qtd. in Renov 110). This way, new autobiography, whether written or cinematic, portrays a self-conscious “transcription of the artist’s life,” as of someone included in the history (110). Renov closes his discussion of autobiography disagreeing with those who predict an extinction of this genre. In his opinion, autobiography successfully survives in filmic form and transforms

“the ways we think about and represent ourselves for ourselves and for others (111). 52

The analyzed movies are good examples of history from below, history from someone included in events but, at the same time, someone aware of their “littleness.” The soldiers who are featured in Waltz with Bashir are not heroes and proud combatants. When Ari addresses Ronnie to help him remember,

Ronnie shares his memories on how he survived as the only one after an attack by hiding. He closes saying that “It’s as if I didn’t do enough. I wasn’t the hero type who carries weapons and saves everyone’s life.

That’s not me. I’m not the type,” and his face reveals embarrassment because of the admitted fear.

Similarly, Ari’s friend Carmi who hoped to prove his masculinity in war and “that [he] was the best fighter and some big hero,” failed because he feared the enemy, collapsed and fell asleep. In this scene, the film elaborates the expressivity of color. Utilizing this symbolism, the movie selects peaceful blue and white for

Carmi’s escape into his hallucination. When dreaming about a giant woman who saved him from the battle boat, Carmi sees exclusively in blue and white, as if escaping with the woman in a white vapor of hope and protection. At the end of his fantasy, when Carmi startsto wake up from his dream and glimpses the reality of war, the air raid and fire on the boat, the peaceful color cast suddenly changes to danger-and trauma- evoking, aggressive yellow and red. In Waltz with Bashir, the audience sees all men who have been in the

Lebanon War with him have experienced trauma. Since they survived, they feel guilty for not having saved their friends. Sometimes, they admit behaving cowardly or they simply want to forget and move on. For all of them, however, the war was a life-changing experience. An example of this is Carmi’s reaction to Ari’s question about why Carmi did not become a scientist as everyone expected: “By 20, that future was over”

Most of them were simply too young to even comprehend what was going on.

Robert Rosenstone, in Visions of the Past, mentions an extremely negative take on “nonfiction” in cinema loudly advocated by a film and history theoretician, Siegfried Kracauer. Kracauer opposed historical features on the screen, saying that everyone knows that what he or she sees is an imitation and not the past (qtd. in Rosenstone 25). His objection to films might be uprooted by the form of animation, since in animation the author does not choose setting, actors and actresses, and other elements based on what is available or based on what seems to be similar. In animation, authors may faithfully depict exactly what they remember, their version of past reality, their subjective memory. In other words, animation enables the author to literally draw or have someone drawprecisely the images that are stuck in the author’s mind and keep everything strictly under his or her control. The author is free of interpretations of 53

his cast that would bring their own interpretations into the movie. Additionally, the author does not have to compromise the setting of the movie by finding an environment that resembles the original location.

This section analyzed the movies’ autobiographical elements. As discussed above, autobiography is significant for complicating the public conscience about history and for intermixing fiction with non- fiction (Renov 110). Although both movies follow the autobiographical patterns and their narrative of coming of age fairly predestinates them to do so, Waltz with Bashir borrows some tendencies from documentary. The debate regarding the footprints of documentary in Waltz with Bashir is the subject of the following section in order to elucidate another element of the diverse generic spectrum of the analyzed hybrid cinematic works.

3. Documentary

Documentary method ideally seeks the truth. Traditionally, it aims to approximate the viewer to phenomena such as accuracy, objectivity and truth. In “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” André

Bazin engages in a close discussion of subjectivity versusobjectivity in relation to photography and painting. His theory is relevant to film as well. Bazin claims that photography stole credibility from painting because of photography’s seemingly higher authority. In Bazin’s opinion, photography has a stronger psychological power to be perceived as reality: “A very faithful drawing may actually tell us more about the model but despite the promptings of our critical intelligence it will never have the irrational power of the photograph to bear away our faith” (8). Applying these ideas to film, one needs to insert “real- live movie” for “photography” and “animation” for “painting” and one concludes that real-live cinema is more likely to be perceived as reality than animation. Bazin believes that painting (i.e. animation) may be more accurate because the painter (i.e. the author of animation) subjectively captures something beyond the pure appearance of the object, let us say also his or her experience with the object. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir exploit this possibility in animation and isolate the urgent from the meaningless, exaggerate to direct the viewer’s point and visualize the emotions and internal states of the characters in the way the characters see the world around them. Following Bazin’s ideas, one could say that painters (authors of animations) have more potential to express their reality because they operate not only with appearance but

also with something that transcends the appearance, like the atmosphere. Painters, and similarly authors of animation, do not capture everything literally, the way it is in reality; they just foreshadow what they mean and the viewers, using their fantasy, might get a more definite and real portrayal ofthe original object, a portrayal that mirrors not only the pure surface of the character but also his or her interior, the state of mind. Bazin’s theory on the visual arts provides a nice avenue into the discussion of documentary tendencies in the analyzed animations.

Dave Saunders, in his recently released work Documentary, states that Waltz with Bashir is

“maybe the first ever full-length animated documentary” (167). According to filmmaker Richard Lormand,

Waltz with Bashir "[is] basically the first animated documentary ever" (qtd. in Zumberg). In agreement with Lormand’s positive evaluation of “[a]pplying animation to a documentary format” (qtd. in Zumberg), similarly, Pat Power, in “Animated Expressions,” says that “It is intriguing that such expressive animation should come as documentary, traditionally the archetypal realist form” (117), implying that animation can never be realistic. However, couldn’t it? Further, the author praises the capturing of “emotional rather than visual realism,” similarly to Bazin’s application on film as described above (118).

According to Saunders, non-fiction in animated form is expectedly “underexploited” practice that yields a special “rhetorical and artistic practice” (168). As he explains, the “obviously ‘unreal’ humanly mediated basis” of animation is the seeming “paucity of cartoon material” (168). However, Saunders uses

Paul Ward who stated that animation is “the perfect way in which to communicate that there is more to our collective experience of things than meets the eye” (qtd. in Saunders 168), implying that animation enables one to convey information that is beyond the visible experience of humans with objects. This claim is in accord with André Bazin’s conclusions regarding photography and painting in “The Ontology of the

Photographic Image” and with Pat Power’s claims in “Animated Expressions.”

Ward claims that animated form challenges documentary standards because “you cannot have an animated film that is anything less than completely ‘created’” (qtd. in Saunders 168). Additionally,

Saunders argues that an animator “carries lighter baggage in the way of expectation,” regarding a truthful reconstruction of events exactly the way the events happened (170). Saunders concludes that cartoon enables “greater ‘poetic license,’” at the expense of “automatic authority” (170). Drawing on Paul Wells’ claims from Animation and America that animation is: 55

[A] mode of expression which both re-defines the material world and captures the oscillation

between interior and exterior states, thus engaging with matters both of (aesthetic, spiritual and

intellectual) consciousness and the reception of a pragmatic (socio-cultural) ‘reality.’ (Wells 7)

Saunders closes that the artistic freedom of representation, the reality, as described above, suits the visual expressions in Waltz with Bashir where dreams, hallucinations and vague memories intermix with reality (175). Saunders claims that the narrow, one-sided perspective at the Lebanon War, together with the lack of representation of the “higher ranks” in the narrative, is “critical flanks” of Folman’s work (180).

Consequently, toward the end of his analysis, Saunders admits that Waltz with Bashir might not be a “truly social documentary” but rather a “personal mediation” (180). The narrative is obviously concerned with the stories of very young soldiers and the way they coped with war. In accord with the recent criticism of traditional understanding of history, as described in Renov, Waltz with Bashir offers a valuable perspective of history from below rather than from above that is typically associatedwith essay film. Similarly, Waltz with Bashir uses a subjective voice “to offer and in-depth, personal, and thought provoking reflection,” which is another characteristic of essay film, rather than an “authorial ‘voice’... [that] present[s] a factual report,” which would indicate the sphere of traditional documentary (Rascaroli35).

Waltz with Bashir, however utilizes some strategies that are commonly associated with documentary. During his personal investigation, the central character conducts numerous interviews to detect his role in the Israeli army during the massacre at Sabra and Shatila camps. Additionally, in accord with traditional documentary elements, Waltz with Bashir includes the full names of interviewees in print in a corner of the screen. On the other hand, the interviews in the film do not evoke the main interviewer’s effort to find out the objective truth about the massacre. That is not what Ari is after. His investigation is limited to discovering his role in the massacre and clarifying his potential guilt. Consequently, Ari does not acquire information from an independent source, neither does he consider more perspectives about the atrocious event, in accord with ideal documentary practice. In Waltz with Bashir, the interviews serve as an entry into the narrative. The multiple stories that are conveyed through an interview have little connection with one another. All of them share the experience of the Lebanon War; all witnesses, however, have different stories. These diverse segments of experience would hardly be coherent in a narrative without the main character’s exploration as the main spine of the storyline. In addition, in most cases, the interviewees 56

are Ari’s friends, whether from the Lebanon War or contemporary. The stress on Ari and his close circle of friends emphasizes a personal, subjective focus over a documentary-like, objective one. The first conversation of Ari with Boaz, right at the beginning of the film, serves as a doorway into the movie. It discloses the central topic ofthe film, the issue of how former soldiers deal with their past in the Lebanon

War, and it gives urgency to Ari’s investigation. The interviews in the film function as pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle about the Israeli soldiers’ heritage of the 1982 massacre. The conversations enable the protagonists to share information that would otherwise need to be explained by a voice-over. During his journey to his lost memories, Ari encounters many soldiers who help him to put his own picture together.

Stories of these soldiers are enacted in the movie and they create the spine of the narrative. Step by step, the stories reveal Ari’s submerged past. This technique is a clever author’s strategy because it makes the film more dramatic and fluent, rather than descriptive. If the conversations were not to be accompanied with a visual portrayal of what the soldiers remember, the movie would be much less intimate and disclosing. This way, by visualizing the (mostly traumatic) experiences of the former soldiers, the movie succeeds in showing the real images of war, stir emotions in the viewer and promote sympathy and identification.

In some respect, the movie is self-referential. Ari wonders why Boaz asks him, a filmmaker, for advice on how to get rid of his nightmare about the Lebanon War. Boaz explains that films can function as therapy. Afterwards, the friends part and Ari promises that he will “think of something.” Boaz leaves and

Ari stands wrapped up in his thoughts. His long gaze at Boaz, who is worried, suggests Folman’s determination to change the fact that Ari’s memories on the Lebanon War are “not stored in [his] system.”

Later, when Ari visits his friend Carmi in Holland, he asks for permission to make sketches of Carmi and his son, suggesting that he is starting to acquire visual data for his movie.

The real-life scenes at the very end of the movie are pieces of original footage that could indeed be used in a documentary. Nevertheless, in case of Waltz with Bashir, this coverage appears shocking in contrast withthe previous animated form of the film. Blending real footage with fiction led to criticism of the movie JFK by Oliver Stone because the movie combined director “blended real historical footage with

‘fake’ footage that he had filmed so it would look as ifit were part of the archival record” (Dixon 66). As

Dixon explains, because of the combination of the “real” with the “fake” the public felt cheated (67). The movie’s storyline presented a conspiracy theory regarding the assassination of President Kennedy (66). The 57

film’s publicity helped to reopen the Lee Harvey Oswald criminal case (66). Stone, in JFK, disrespected the line between “historical fact and mythic invention,” opening a debate on ethics (66-67). The audience’s reaction proved that the viewer desires a clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction (67). In Waltz with Bashir, animated film is combined with real archival footage. However, the author does not mix his personal perspective with the original footage. Because of the use of animation, the audience can clearly distinguish between a subjective memory of one Israeli soldier and immediate reactions of the witnesses of the massacre. Moreover, the movie does not aspire to be a documentary. It clearly focuses on the exclusively Israeli perspective of the massacre, more specifically, on the traumatic heritage that Ari and other men who shared the war experience with him bear on their backs. Waltz with Bashir examines Ari’s personal memory on what happened in the Lebanon War and gradually reveals an episode in his own way in an autobiographical manner.

This section examined the movie Waltz with Bashir in the light of documentary. It showed that, although the film borrows a couple of techniques from traditional documentary, it complicates rather than clarifies historical happenings. Rather than communicate a clear message or bear coherent information, in accord with a documentary tradition, Waltz with Bashir, and Persepolis as well, are rather non-linear, open- ended and fluid works that take the things we know about the featured events and turn them on their head.

Additionally, both films have multivalent meanings that play with the viewer’s mind. The meaning changes with time, and one might feel differently every time one sees the movie again, implying the lack of explicitness and certainty. Similarly, the films are open for wide audiences and it is not easy to determine who the main targeted audience is, if there is any at all. Do Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir borrow something from the category of teen films? The following section of this chapter discusses the movies’ element of teen film and traces its aspects in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir.

4. Teen Film

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir in some aspects externalize some characteristics of teen films.

As Wheeler Winston Dixon claims in “’Fighting and Violence and Everything, That’s Always Cool’: Teen

Films in the 1990s,” teen film might be understood rather as addressing a specific audience, rather than as a

genre (138). Its characteristics include: featuring teens in central roles, offering “action, escape, violence, drama, the simulacrum of personal involvement without actual presence or risk,” mirroring of “hopes and dreams of young people who are just starting out their lives, breaking away from family and friends, exploring sexual and emotional frontiers…” (138-139). These elements are present in the analyzed movies.

Marji as well as Ari, the main heroes, are both in the process of coming of age. The narrative of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir directly centers on this period of the characters’ lives and in both cases traces the origins of Marji’s and Ari’s present troubles by discovering their past.

In Persepolis, at the beginning of the movie, Marji, a young woman in her 20s, just after finishing college, sits in Orly, the Parisian airport, broody, perhaps depressed judging by her hunched posture. This image starts the movie, followed by Marji’s memories on her growing up, and as well ends the film in a cloud of doubt as to what will follow. In case of Waltz with Bashir, the story starts by showing a middle aged man who decides to trace his lost memories. The presence serves as a springboard to discover the past. Although Persepolis covers a much larger period of Marji’s growing up, starting when she was a child, both personal histories of the main characters are focused on the process of growing up rather than on the political events that were going on. Whether inIran during the Revolution of in Lebanon during the

War, Marji and Ari remember their adventures with their peers, the relationships to other people, struggling with love and fighting with families. Additionally, both central characters were obsessed withstyle, a characteristic very typical for teenagersor youth. Marji was concerned about what she was wearing and she mimicked facial expressions and even the gait of her favorite music stars. This tendency is shown, most extremely, inthe example of youth groups in Vienna. Switching her “life-style” from a hippie to a hardcore rocker, Marji tries to make friends and fit in but realizes that there is no substance behind the style and that differences consist in clothing only. Similarly, Ari’s friends from the Lebanon War were grooming their hair in between combat actions, checking themselves in a mirror as if getting ready for a date, while bombswere falling acouple of yards away from them. Those young people,who were not drafted, did not worry much aboutwhat was going on – the substance. Instead, they hung out in nightclubs and were worried about their appearance and their way of behavior – style.These things were occupying their minds rather than the political context that they were part of. Only whenolder, they realize that they will never get rid of the war trauma that they have been trying to repress throughout their whole life. At theend, Marji 59

cannot bear the lack of freedom in totalitarian Iran where changing political circumstances rarely bring any long-lasting improvement. Therefore, she decides to leave her country in a shady hope to find a better life.

Although the audience does not learn what happens to Ari after he sews together the whole mosaic of his memories, one assumes that his life will never be the same, when laden with the weight of responsibility and conscience. This way, the stories of Marji and Ari, might strategically appeal to teenage as well as older audience. While the younger viewer enjoys the coming of age period that enables identification, the older audience appreciates the emphasis on the early experiences influencing and shaping one’s personality and perhaps the nostalgia of their own memories.

Both movies deal with topics that generally appeal to teen audiences and, moreover, the appeal is augmented by the choice of the animated form that tends to be associated with younger audiences; nevertheless, neither Persepolis, nor Waltz with Bashir are teen films in sense of excluding other audience members from the potential viewership. The films might appeal to a teenage viewer, but not exclusively.

The polyvalence of meanings and layering of the story do not exclude any potential viewer, teenage or older, but rather invite them to experience the narrative in his or her own way.

The previous analysis of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir in four established generic categories demonstrated that these unique cinematic works borrow techniques from various genres and combine them together, without adhering to any single one of them wholly. Hybridization, meaning a combination of elements and tendencies from multiple traditional genres, is a trend, in connection with intellectual movies, associated with essay film. This term indicates a tendency, an expressive option that is open to various artistic techniques of expression, rather than a formally established genre. In detail, the essay film and

Persepolis’s and Waltz with Bashir’s negotiation with this tendency will be examined in the following section.

5. Essay Film

Laura Rascaroli, in “The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments,” elucidates the, in her words, “under-theorized” cinematic category of essay film (27). Admitting its tendency to blur the line between fiction and non-fiction, Rascaroliexplains essay film’s derivation from the literary essay

(25). While reviewing crucial key personas who theorized on literary essay and agreed on the ambiguity of its meaning, she summarizes: essay is “indeterminate, open, and, ultimately, indefinable (Adorno and

Lukács qtd. in Rascaroli 25), “does not obey any rules” (Starobinski qtd. in Rascaroli 25), “is a ‘nongenre’”

(Snyder qtd. in Rascaroli 25), is “notable for its tendency towards complication” (Renov qtd. in Rascaroli

25). Essay film’s inspiration in the literary essay and its openness to a broad spectrum of topics, according to Astruc, introduces “authorial cinema” and the gradual birth of the cinematic language that enables the author to express him-or herself as in an essay or in a novel (qtd. in Rascaroli 28).

Further, Rascaroli discusses the relationship of essay film with documentary. Reviewing pioneering works on essay film, Rascaroli quotes Hans Richter who wrote that essay film is the new form of documentary (27). It is an intellectual and emotional cinema that extracts material from various spheres of human experience, enabling the essay film to operate with more levels of expression than traditional documentary (27). Rascaroli adds Nora Alter’s distinction between the two, saying that, “Unlike documentary film, which presents facts and information, the essay film produces complex thought that at times is not grounded in reality but can be contradictory, irrational, and fantastic” (27). Free from chronological sequencing and the focus on external phenomena, essay film opens its doorway to

“imagination, with all its artistic potentiality” (Alter qtd. in Rascaroli). Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir are intellectual films in which unique artistic way of expression takes precedence over austere historical information. In accord with the previous descriptions of essay film, both analyzed movies operate with emotions and they complicate a sober reality of their past by intermixing it with intimate fantasies, dreams and peeks into imagination. Additionally, Waltz with Bashir opposes traditional chronological sequencing and discloses its storyline by adding pieces into a collage of experience of various former soldiers in the

Lebanon War.

Rascaroli lists the following characteristics commonly attributed to essay films: reflectivity, subjectivity, authorial and personal viewpoint, blurred lines between fiction and nonfiction, personal investigation, utilization of voice-over and expression of oppositional positions (33-35). Both movies are clearly personal, subjective and reflective, offering an authorial voice. Both central characters, Marji and

Ari, step by step reveal intimate subjective reflections of their past, Marji shares the period of coming of age in Iran and Ari his life-changing experience in the Lebanon War. 61

The analyzed movies obscure the line between fiction and nonfiction. Both works are clearly based on memories of their authors. These memories, however, are somehow impeached. In Persepolis, the doubts about the film’s faithfulness to reality stem from Marji’s wild fantasy and occasional exaggeration that subverts the film’s otherwise clear chronological storyline. In case of Waltz with Bashir, the focal topic of Ari’s loss memory draws attention to the inscrutability of human remembering. Additionally, the movie’s intermixing of reality with dreams and fantasies creates a collage of various experiences that disrespects the strict line between fiction and non-fiction.

Waltz with Bashir is a personal investigation of one’s own identity. In Ari’s second conversation with his friend, a psychologist, the friend urges Ari to keep searching for his past to find peace of mind

“Your only solution is to find out what really happened in Sabra and Shatila. Seek out people. Find out what really happened, ask who was there. Get details and more details. That way... Then maybe you can find out where you were exactly and what role you played.” Following his friend’s instructions, Ari keeps searching for his lost memories until he has the complete picture. The complete picture is Ari’s personal foot-print in the Lebanon War, rather than a reconstruction of what exactly happened. Ari’s role in the massacre was crucial finding for his conscience, implying that power of personal responsibility haunts the sleep of human beings way longer than any political responsibility would. In other words, Waltz with

Bashir does not focus on the politics involved in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, it centers on Ari’s personal role and potential guilt.

In Persepolis, Marji is permanently being lost. She feels displaced and uncomfortable, constantly negotiating her role but never really finding it. Her story is a personal investigation of her own identity, who she is and where she belongs. Voice-over is strongly utilized in Persepolis. In a comedic tone, the speaker of Marji guides the viewer through shadowed corners of her life and encapsulates less interesting periods to bridge the scenes of the movie. In Waltz with Bashir, voice-over is utilized as well. Similarly to

Persepolis, the main function is to clarify pieces of memories from the past and to enable the viewer to follow Ari’s thinking process.

Rascaroli uses Paul Arthur’s theories on essay film who emphasized “the inscription of blatant, self-searching authorial presence” as a shared quality of essay films. Instead of documentary-like strategy to “present a factual report,” essay films “offer an in-depth, personal,and thought-provoking reflection” 62

(35). For this purpose, the author of an essay film “creates an enunciator who is very close to the real, extra-textual author” (35). The enunciator, in the form of voice-over or direct physical appearance within the film, is the real author’s spokesperson and embodies his or her views (35). In the analyzed movies the extra-textual author of Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi. Her views are in the film represented by Marji. In case of Waltz with Bashir, the author is Ari Folman, guiding the viewer through his personal story via his cinematic alter ego, Ari. Throughout the narratives, both Marji and Ari share what is going on in their mind, which images occupy their imagination and what their thoughts are. Additionally, they keepmaking notes, transitions and clarifications throughout the narrative to smoothly guide the audience through the storyline. The oppositional position, another characteristic of essay film, that these texts express are altered representations of people living in the Middle East that are examined in detail in the following chapter on representation.

André Bazin, in “In a New Never before Published Translation…,” struggles to classify Chris

Marker’s movie Letter from Siberia within any established genre categories of that time. Finally, he comes up with the comparison to a literary essay, “[Letter from Siberia] is an essay on the reality of Siberia past and present in the form of filmed report… an essay documented by film” (44). Bazin claims that the filmic essay, similarly to the essay in literature, is “an essay at once historical and political, written by a poet as well” (44), implying extracting material for essay film from various spheres of human experience, as discussed above. In sum, Bazin’s characteristic of essay film is that an essay film can have a historical, political as well as poetical and comical level; additionally, as generically unclassifiable, it can include playful filmic techniques. Persepolis fits Bazin’s characteristic excellently, because of its historical quality

(Marji’s dad gives his daughter a simplified version of Iranian’s history, offering a comfortable bridge into the narrative to a less informed viewer), political quality (Marji’s family constantly provides a strongly opinionated commentary on occurring political events; additionally, the movie has clear political as well as women rights-concerned implications), poetical quality (the animated artistic externalization of Satrapi’s own memories) and comical quality (the overall tone that effervesces/bubbles over with jokes, hyperbolas, exaggeration and sarcasm).

The weaker quality of comedy in Waltz with Bashir, mainly because of the density of war atmosphere that permeates the whole narrative, the stronger the poeticism of the film. Folman managed to 63

create an animated surrealist world that in its distinctive style outstandingly accommodates the narrative of fumbling in one’s mind. Similarly to Persepolis, the movie has clear political and historical inferences

(referring to the Lebanon War and presenting an Israeli perspective of views at the Sabra and Shatila massacres).

C. Conclusion of Chapter One

The animated form of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir is a device that allows the films’ authors to engage in advanced artisticexpressions of meaning. It functions as a bridge for access to identification without sacrificing specificity. In terms of emotions, specificity is deepened by engaging in “emotional realism” that takes precedence over traditional “visual realism” of non-fiction works. The unique combination of animated form with autobiography endows the authors with great freedom to extract from their imagination and project their memories directly onto the film screen, without compromising their views by the interpretations of flesh-and-bone performers and setting limitation when shooting in real-live action.

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir challenge the ideas that, first, film can never truthfully represent history because everyone understands that the screen offers just an imitation, as asserted by Siegfried

Kracauer, and second, that animation is always “completely created,” as stated by Paul Ward. However, is not animation a way to simply draw one’s memories without any interference of actors, setting, technicians and other staff members? Do not traditional, live-action documentaries create or distort reality in any way?

The analyzed movies are intimate, personal, author-oriented works that feature reflectivity and subjectivity, in accord with common tendencies of essay films. The structure of essay film is “a constant interpellation;” it is up to every single audience member to actively (intellectually as well as emotionally) negotiate the meaning of a film essay (Rascaroli 36). In contrast to documentary, essay film does not answer questions. Vice versa. Essay film raises new questions and the viewer needs to engage in thinking about the work and answer the opened questions him-or herself (Rascaroli 36). Persepolis and Waltz with

Bashir do not care about historical information. Both movies take place around crucial historical happenings; however, the movies assume the viewer to already know the context when watching these films. In reaction to the public’s consciousness about the events that the cinematic works encounter, 64

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir provide a different take on events that the audience already knows.

Utilizing sophisticated artistic means of animated expression, together with autobiographical approach that adds to the films’ authenticity and personification, the movies stretch the traditional perspective about the

Middle East, while staying poetic, aesthetic and entertaining.

The following chapter on representation will, in detail, analyze this stretch. First, the chapter overviews the traditional portrayal of people living in the Middle East that dominates the Western media and, afterwards, the chapter will follow with contrasting the conventional media representation with the depiction of Middle Easterners in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir.

III. CHAPTER TWO: REPRESENTATION

A. Introduction to Representation

This chapter analyzes the representation of people living in the Middle East in Persepolis and

Waltz with Bashir and compares the portrayal that follows from these two movies with the traditional discourse on Middle Easterners. The main point of this chapter is to demonstrate that the two analyzed films constitute an alternative perspective about people who live in the fabled Middle East. Instead of perpetuating the myth that the Western ideology creates and the Western media promptly disseminates,

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir confront the idea of the polarized world that is dominated by the democratic West, on the one side, and “constantly threatened” by the terrorists, on the other side. The films oppose the black-and-white worldview and turn Western traditional assumptions on the head by presenting identifiable and reasonable characters that very much share everyday worries, pleasures and passions with people living in the West. Moreover, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir provide a mirror for Western culture thatgenerallytends to elevate itself over everyone who lives outside ofthe West.

Both films center on the coming of age phase of individual subjects who experience major historical events. The main characters, Marji and Ari, feel somehow a part of and somehow outside of happenings around them. Throughout the narrative, Marji negotiates her rolein Iran in Persepolis and Ari negotiates his role in the Lebanon War in Waltz with Bashir. The central characters are present to many historically significant events; however, they feel distanced from them. What was their role, part or guilt, then and howto deal with it? This way, the movies are self-conscious about representation and they complicate the way one needs to understand representation. In other words, the films are not only countering the traditional Western discourse on the Middle Eastbut rather drawing attention to representation itself.

B. The Traditional Representation of the Middle East5 in Western Media

Expanding on his previous works on “Orientalism,” Edward Said composed Covering Islam, an examination of the way Western media create a discourse about the Middle East. In this work, Said attempts to demystify the dominant distorted idea of Islam and to focus on the actual people who live in the

Islamic world (lix). According to Said, today, Islam functions as a “scapegoat for everything that we do not happen to like about the world’s new political, social, and economic patterns” (lv). Adding that, conveniently, the scapegoat works for everyone across the Western political spectrum, Said implies a nonrandom agenda behind this agreement. Right wing-oriented, left wing-oriented and center-oriented publics easily unite against this far-away, “barbarian” Middle Eastern region and blame it for all problems.

As Said claims, mass media is the dominant source of information about Islam, film playing an exclusive role because it visually approximates a distanced culture (47). Judging nations based on the representation of citizens of a certain nation in the media is illustrated in Persepolis when Marji and her grandmother watch the Japanese 1954 movie, Godzilla. After leaving the movie theatre, the grandmother vents herself to Marji, “What a load of crap. The Japanese either gut themselves or make hideous monsters.

That’s all they ever seem to do.” In this scene, the movie elucidates how stereotypes are produced. Marji’s grandmother is an experienced, wise and educated woman. She has never been to Japan, hardly has she ever talked to any Japanese person; although, she judges these people after seeing perhaps a couple of movies, demonstrating the powerof film to engender stereotypes and prejudices based on the misrepresentation of a group of people, especially those who are far from one’s immediate experience.

Altogether, Western media create “a certain picture of Islam” and a “set of feelings about the picture” that reflects the interests of the society within the media operates (47). This way, Persepolis illustrates the way

5 Middle East refers to the geographical area within which both narratives, the narrative of Persepolis and the narrative of Waltz with Bashir, are located. This section deals primarily with the representation of people living in the Middle East. Since many scholars focus specifically on the representation of Islam or Muslims (referring to the religious belonging), or on the representation of Arabs (referring to the people speaking Arabic, excluding Iranians and Israelis), this chapter includes their observations because the author of this thesis believes that the majority of people living in the West perceive the Middle East as one homogenous region. Consequently, all these studies are relevant to the analysis of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir because they contribute to the overall image of the Middle East in the West. The author of this is aware of the national, religious and language diversity and complexity of the region. 67

media, in this film, create an image that is afterward by most people taken for a fact, exactly as Said expresses in his CoveringIslam (48).

In The Subject of Documentary, specifically in the chapter “Warring Images: Stereotype and

American Representations of the Japanese, 1941-1991,” Michael Renov argues that “autobiographical filmmaking could become an act of political resistance” (43). Renov draws this conclusion after examining a couple of films that succeeded in going against the grain by questioning the stereotypical discourse of the state that “rob[s] racialized ‘others’ of their uniqueness and individuality to further wartime aims” (43).

Defining the “otherness,” Renov says that it is a “categorical, hierarchical, and, in this [meaning Japanese] instance, racially motivated separation between self and outsider” (44). In his view, the media-created stereotype needs to be countervailed by alternative media that is capable of counterbalancing the state- generated imagery that wages people to distain the artificially created “Other” (44). The analysis of

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir examines the ways in which these movies represent a challenge to the traditional, by the Western media-created image of people living in the Middle East.

In Film History: Theory and Practice, by Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery, the authors argue that Hollywood films do not present any “cross-section of contemporary society;” rather, the movies misrepresent society by overrepresenting some and underrepresenting others (158). Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir are films about representation and about its effects. Animation is a way the movies seek to affect their audiences. Using an example of Molly Haskell’s From Reverence to Rape, a study of general inferiority of females in film, Allen and Gomery demonstrate that stereotypes that occur on the screen originate from stereotypes that prevail in the society (159). Likewise, Allen’s and Gomery’s assertions about media mirroring the tendencies in the audience’s minds, together with Said’s theory on media shaping the audience’s perception by presenting a biased image, create a vicious cycle of stereotypes. It is like the “chicken or egg question.” Perhaps, what came first does not matter. What matters is that the process goes both ways: the media mirrors the audience’s attitudes; thus, by watching the media, the audience is reassured of their own attitudes. The attitudes are cemented and the magic wheel of stereotyping might keep spinning forever, unless an alternative attitude is presented and heard.

Further, Said emphasizes that media are “profit-seeking corporations” that favor some images over others within their specific political context (51). Consequently, “there is a qualitative and quantitative 68

tendency to favor certain views and certain representations of reality over others” (49). The “prevailing hostile image of Islam” represents a serious danger for today’s world (67). It creates opposing superpowers that give rise to an essential conflict. As Said says, “the conflict between ‘Islam’ and the ‘West’ is very real” and while the hostility toward Islam has largely united the West, on the other side, the opposition to the West has considerably unified the world of Islam (65).

Sinking deeper into his analysis of Western media products concerning Islam, Said notes that a review of prime-time TV shows indicates that nearly all of them include content that is racist and insults

Muslims (73). The consistency of the distorted portrayal, the frivolity to lump together all distinctive branches of Islam, together with the absence of any counterbalancing image of Islam in the Western media, causes that this misrepresentation is taken for a fact (73,77). Thus, “one Muslim is therefore seen to be typical of all Muslims and of Islam in general” (73). Said reviews a 1995 PBS documentary, Jihad in

America, which misrepresents the Islamic population and leaves out any historical context that would weaken the author’s argument. Said claims that the film’s author, Steven Emerson, does not have any background in the Middle East; however, his dubious expertise appeals to the consumers of sensationalism under the attractive label of “counter-terrorism” (76). In its core, the movie “agitate[s] against Islam as a sinister breeder of cruel, insensate, killers, plotters, and lustfully violent men,” because the film repeatedly depicts the hostile imams who “[rage] against the West and Jews… threatening genocide and unending warfare against the West” (Said 77). On the example of Jihad in America , Said demonstrates how mass media products like this have the potential to create a pernicious equation “that Islam equals jihad equals terrorism,” thus reinforcing “a feeling of cultural fear and hatred against Islam and Muslims” (76-78).

In the 2009 article, “The Middle East in American Media,” Dina Ibrahim examines the media coverage of the Middle East in the twentieth century,12 years after Said published his Covering Islam.

Ibrahim incorporates various previous studies on the representation of people in the Middle East in the media and analyzes overall tendencies and bias in these studies. Summarizing previous studies, Ibrahim talks about an effort to “deromanticize the Arab image” that begun in the 1930s by emphasizing stories centered on military, politics and economy rather than on culture and education (512). Further, Ibrahim refers to research that indicated a strong misrepresentation. In the 1950s, while Arabs in the media were generally described as “backward, dishonest, un-reliable, undemocratic, and with low standards of 69

education and living,” the favored Israelis, “revered by the elite American press in 1956 and 1967,” were promoted as “having high education and living standards, and as democratic and Western” (513).

Additionally, Arabs were ordinarily labeled as the “aggressors against peace-loving Israelis” (513). Later in the analysis, Ibrahim lists the shifting trends of the journalistic bias towards the people living in the Middle

East by siding mostly with the Israelis. The favoring, however, consists in a negative portrayal of the opponents of Israel in the political climate of that time, not necessarily a positive portrayal of Israelis.

After presenting the research on the media image of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Ibrahim moves on to examine the studies on the media coverage of the Lebanon War in 1980s, the period of focus in Waltz with

Bashir. She finds out that, overall, after Israel attacked Lebanon, Israel was obviously portrayed as the aggressor; nevertheless, at the same time, the attack has been vociferously justified in the American media

(517). The amount of information on Israel was greater because of the country’s “close cultural, ideological and political ties to the US” (Barranco and Shyles qtd. in Ibrahim 516). Ibrahim mentions a notable phenomenon of public opinion’s diversion from the media coverage that happened in the Israeli case in the late 1980s when Israel was, in American media, criticized for its Palestinian policy. Ibrahim argues that the reason for the American public’s cognitive dissonance with the media coverage could be caused by “extra- media factors,” particularly by the politicians’ Israel-supportive rhetoric and by the overall “Judeo-

Christian tradition, common values and political institutions” that defined the positive public bias toward

Israel and ,additionally, anincreasing questioning of media subjectivity of that time (517).

Examining larger documentary projects, Ibrahim concludes that these have not helped to uproot the negative media portrayal of the Middle Easterners because they were “overwhelmingly negative and stereotypical” (518). Works on Saudi Arabia showed a fundamental ethnocentrism by visual, editorial, as well as narrative aspects of the documentaries when showing women solely wearing veils, commentary labeling the country as “still tribal” (518). Some exceptional works demonstrate an insightful attitude toward the culture of Saudi Arabia by respecting the country’s culture rather than evaluating and comparing, offering a wider spectrum of the Saudi population and interviewing local people in everyday situations (518).

Mapping the situation after 1990, Ibrahim states that Islam has become “the contemporary global thread that replaced the Communism as the enemy of the West” (518). The research on reporting touching 70

on Islam indicated that the journalistic products were very general, confusing distinctive Islamic branches, with little evidence supporting arguments and an overall “high level of negative tone” (518). Drawing knowledge from many studies, Ibrahim states that the main newspapers’ coverage of the Arab world neglects the suffering of civilians as well as any Arab point of view. In the late 1990s, the media engaged in a strong pro-war rhetoric that resulted in harassing of Arab-American communities (Khouri qtd. in

Ibrahim).

In her article, Ibrahim traces the origins and reasons for the anti-Arab sentiment in American media. She draws on Ghareeb and Said to state that this rationale lies within cultural, predominantly

Islamic difference and “unorganized Arab media strategy” (521-522). Israel as a democracy of the Western type has an advantage over the other Arab countries because of the country’s greater likeness of cultural identification. In addition, Israeli reputation benefits from having a sophisticated public relations system

(521).

Discussing the influence of popular culture on public opinion, Ibrahim includes Jack Shaheen’s conclusions regarding his textual analysis of Hollywood entertainment. His study indicated that the TV and film stereotype of Arabs fall within three categories: “the belly dancer, billionaire and bomber” (qtd. in

Ibrahim 523).

Inthe final part of the article, Ibrahim recommends broadening of the qualitative analysis of Arab portrayals (522). She emphasizes the necessity of “even-handed reporting” to improve the deformed reputation of American press in the Arab world. Altogether, the article suggests that the portrayal of Arabs has always been distorted and unbalanced, misrepresenting the Arab community in the eye of the Western public, which, among others, leads to violence against Arabs in the US.

In “The Arab in Recent PopularFiction,” Kathleen Christison starts her analysis by quoting John

Cooley, and ABC News correspondent who claims that “Arabs are probably still the only group in the U.S. that anyone dares to portray in pejorative terms” (397). In this period that Christison labels as the “age of heightened sensitivity to racial and ethnic prejudice in America,” she refers to the increased monitoring of the media portrayal of Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Arabs and Muslims who are stereotypically portrayed as

“indolent, prone to violence, deceptive, dirty, and given to excess, whether of a sexual, financial or rhetorical nature” (397). The author reminds the reader about Edward Said’s notion from his Orientalism 71

that caricaturists of Arabs took over the same imagery that used to be employed to mock Jews (qtd. in

Christison 397).

Christison accentuates the power of film and novels to have a great “quantitative impact” on how people see the Middle Easterners because of a deeper, dramatic, portrayal and, additionally, because of the feeling that this imagery lacks news value that is not desired by the audience (397-398). Her extensive analysis of fiction reveals that Arabs have been repetitively depicted as faceless, “with no individuality, driven by hatred and desire for revenge or driven by nothing at all…,” (399). On the other hand, the US sentimentally attaches “compassionate, long-suffering, hard-working…” images to Israelis (399).

Christison summarizes that additionally, Muslims specifically are misrepresented in fiction as having a tendency to extremism. Arab women are attributed as having “excessive voluptuousness” and Arab men

“an exaggerated sex drive,” copying the older scheme that used to be spread to scare people from Jewish and Black men (399).

Christison’s analysis indicates that recent fiction has been increasingly complex and is more likely to say “something favorable” about Arabs; nevertheless, her statistical research reveals that these books reach smaller audiences than novels that retain stereotypical misrepresentations of the Arab world.

The following analysis of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir examines the ways in which these movies challenge the dominant, Western media-created image of people living in the Middle East, as described above.

C. The Representation of the Middle East in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir

This section engages in a detailed analysis of the representation of people living in the Middle

East (1) on the level of the movie’s highlighted texts themselves, (2) their intertexts, meaning the relationship of the analyzed movies with the traditional representation of the Middle East in the Western media and, lastly, (3) on the level of ideology. Ideological references permeate the whole body of both films, e.g. Persepolis, as if nonchalantly,mentions the long-lasting interest of the West in the Middle

Eastern oil and, consequently, the constant interference with the region’s politics and Waltz with Bashir draws attention to the rhetorical load of words “terrorist” or “hero” that are misused in the context of war.

First, the movies are examined individually, the first section is on the representation in Persepolis and the 72

second section is on the representation in Waltz with Bashir. Finally, the third sectionelucidates the points of concurrence, the similar strategies and techniques that both movies utilize to construct a specific meaning. The goal of this analysis is to examine how the two analyzed movies constitute an alternative viewpoint regarding the people who live in the Middle East in response to the dominant media portrayal reviewed above. Rather than directly attacking the traditional discourse on the Middle East or attempting to counterbalance the distorted image by presenting an inversion, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir elevate the debate on “truthful” representation to the sphere of thinking about representation itself and questioning any clear-cut representation of individuals in time. By featuring characters that find themselves floundering somewhere in between the definite categories of Western versus Middle Eastern paradigm, the films imply that it is impossible to apply individual characteristics to the whole nation or, vice versa, national profiles to all individuals. Similarly – and that is a huge stretch in both movies – one cannot automatically assume that the characteristics of a leader or of the elite are representative of the characteristics of the common people.

More importantly, to overcome stereotyping, one needs to keep in mind that individuals all over the world are unique.

1. Characters in Persepolis

The mechanism of overcoming myths about the Middle East in Persepolis is the following: on an example of female veiling in Iran or on the portrayal of the life of nuns in Europe, Satrapi’s alter ego Marji encounters a phenomenon. Then, she questions it from a different perspective (the perspective of a foreigner). This way,the habit or behavior seems odd and comical. Thus, the myth is displayed, ridiculed and finally destroyed. This deliberate mechanism attempts to wake the audience from their ignorance toward stereotypes and enlighten them by the use of humor and wit.

Multiple times throughout the narrative, the storyline of Persepolis takes the viewer to the airport, but not accidentally. An airport is a significant place noted for the diversity of people who pass each other while coming from different countries, living invarious time and geographic zones and adhering to distinctive dress codes. An airport is a symbolical place for Marji, because the central heroine is a perpetual outsider who tries to figure out in what place she stands. Somehow, all this is acceptable atthe airport.

Everyone is out of place in a sterile environment of departures, arrivals, transitions and stops. It is the 73

magic of the most international airports that, suddenly, one does not wonder when seeing a woman in a sari, another person in a traditional African dress and Western-looking businessman in a suit with an iPod sitting in between them. One is having breakfast, the other one dinner and the third one sleeps because it is

3:00 a.m. in his or her home country. At the airport, one encounters people with varying cultural backgrounds and, often, differences arouse curiosity and judgment.

The opening scene of Persepolis meets Marji in the bathroom of the Orly airport in Paris. She needs to adjust her appearance to conform to her home country’s dress code. She puts on a veil and a shapeless long coat that hides her feminine shape. The image of Marji contrasts with another woman at the bathroom who is putting on makeup. This other woman represents the “Western female.” However, she noticeably resembles a prostitute; she wears a dress with a décolletage revealing a huge cleavage and her skirt is split on the side up to her thigh. This contrasting portrayal represents two extremes of female sexist ideology. This caricature epitomizes the Madonna/whore dichotomy. Both women give each other a look implying incomprehension of each other’s outfits and holding an ideological attitude, confirming Kai’s claim that many Muslims consider everyday Western clothing as unnecessarily sexual and provocative. In otherwords, while the West pities Muslim women for having to cover their feminine features, some of these Muslim women pity the Western women for having to show off and market their bodies. The frivolous appearance, looking through Marji’s Middle Eastern lens, of non-Muslims is not the only phenomenon that is being called attention to in Persepolis. Later, when Marji discourages her future husband from leaving the country, she reasons that “in the west nobody cares if you die on the street,” referring to the paucity of interpersonal commitment among people living in the global West that Marji closely experienced when living in Austria.

Later in the movie, another comment on Western fashion is presented. One of Marji’s friends from

Teheran starves herself to conform to the model of thinness dictated in the hard obtained Vogue magazine.

This way, Persepolis ridicules the, often unreal and unhealthy, female body image that some Western media promote. Besides the fashion magazines, the movie attacks action movies asrepresenting a waste of time and lack of creative energy. Marji’s husband is portrayed in front a TV screen watching something resembling Terminator. He is totally focused on the action hero’s motorbike and gun instead of responding to his wife who is desperately trying to find her car keys. The living room is messy and the couple does not 74

look into each other’s eyes. At the end of the scene, after telling her husband off, Marji discovers her car keys in her own pocket. The husband does not notice this because he is focused on his movie. The wife does not say anything and leaves, still presenting an angry face that reveals that she is fed up with her husband no matter whether he is guilty or not. Here, the movie does not condemn the Western media; rather, it reminds us that people, their relationships and worries in various countries, resemble each other more than is often believed. In other words, the described scene is not simply about action movies but more about the uselessness of passively sitting in front of the TV screen and staring atwhatever is on while being absent to the world around. Additionally, it is about romantic relationships, where pleasant feelings sometimes simply evaporate and couples keep arguing and getting on each other’s nerves. This is a larger phenomenon that extends beyond the borders of Iran; thus, it enables the audience to relate to the characters in Persepolis and identify with them.

At the same time, the movie mocks the strict Iranian female dress code as the polar opposite to the

Western freedom to wear scanty dresses with exposed cleavages. The topic of clothing is addressed multiple times. The author emphasizes the anonymity and sameness of females, the discomfort of wearing a burqa all the time and the decreased mobility that is associated with wearing it. For illustration, the movie portrays an Iranian art class. Students are practicing to depict the sitting model’s anatomy; however, the model is wearing a burqa. As Marji says, “This is crazy. It’s the same from every angle. An anatomy class?

All you can see is her big nose.”

Besides these witty portions of cultural gaps, the whole narrative of Persepolis is very accessible and identifiable. Reminding the viewer on the fact that Iran was modern under the Shah, beforethe Iranian

Revolution in 1979, Marji describes her childhood in Teheran (late 1970s) in a way that resembles growing up anywhere in the West at that time: “I led a peaceful and uneventful life… as a little girl. I loved fries with ketchup, Bruce Lee was my hero, I wore sneakers…” All these pieces of information reinforce the identification of the viewer with Iranians because they play into the nostalgia of the viewer’s own coming of age. Instead of perpetuating the black-and-white idea of the world divided on “Us versus Them,” the myth of a “politically and culturally civilized western world… defined in opposition to a violent and barbaric eastern world,” as described in Esch’s article, “Legitimizing the ‘War on Terror’” (370),

Persepolis offers a different portrayal of the living environment and characters resembling the Western 75

world. This way, the movie subverts the polarization of “European superiority” and “Oriental backwardness” described by Said in his “Introduction to Orientalism” (73).

Persepolis demonstrates blind fundamentalism. Marji tries to make sense of what is going on around her. She learns how to be a good person by method of trial and error. She seeks revenge for the victims of the Shah’s secret police by beating up a policeman’s son; however, her mom is mad at her and in one of her fantasies her god explains to her that one cannot punish children for their parents’ deeds.

Interestingly, the God Marji imagines in her mind resembles the Judeo-Christian god of Western culture. It is a male,old but wise, omniscient, with long white hair and beard, teaching her the object lesson of the day. He conforms to the widely spread image of how people have been anthropomorphizing god for generation. When Marji needs to put an image of her god in her mind, she creates his the same way a

Western child would. Enlightened, Marji approaches the boy again and states that she forgives him for what his dad committed. He yells at her, “He only ever killed communists and communists are evil,” performing the blind dogmatism that is excusable in case of a kid, but unfortunately behind every ideology.

This little boy in Persepolis is one example of how people see the world through ideological prisms. He perpetrated the same generalization that Western media often utilizes when equating Muslims (or everyone who lives in the Middle East) with terrorists, as described in Covering Islam (Said 77)

After the Iranian Revolution, a news anchor announced that in the first post-Revolutionary elections, “99.9% of people voted democratically for the Islamist Republic.” The matter of election manipulation was a common practice in the Communist countries that belonged to the Eastern Bloc. By employing this reference, the film relates to those generations who experienced a similar issue, psychologically approximating the reality of Iran and increasing the potential of identification of people who live there with today’s Western viewer. Similarly, later in the movie, when Marji enters school, Iran is at war with Iraq. The grocery stores are empty which again plays into nostalgia of audiences from former

Communist countries who remember similar conditions. Men are killed and sirens announce bomb raids.

Meanwhile, Marji and her peers listen to the Bee Gees and Abba, check out boys and wear “punk is not dead” jeans jackets while their parents still go to prohibited secret parties to relax, to talk to their friends and to gather information on what is going on. This way, people live in ideological cracks and try to keep their routines as much as they can to maintain their mental health. This way, what could seem as a paradox 76

at first sight turns into a lifestyle that no matter what conditions one is living in, civilians try to keep their routines as much as they can to maintain their mental health. Again, Bee Gees, Abba, punk and jeans are essential elements for the Western viewer’s identification with Iranians, because the audience might remember similar passions in his/her coming of age.

Marji’s fervent temper and her dangerous directness repeatedly cause problems at school and that makes her parents decide to send her abroad. Leaving, Marji is significantly influenced by her grandmother. This older woman always has advice for her; grandma wants Marji to always “keep [her] dignity and be true to [her]self.” She personifies a moral code for Marji throughout her whole life and the memory of grandma’s words often shapes the young lady’s behavior when far from home.

The portrayal of Marji’s stay in central Europe is a fresh reverse perspective of the self/Other dichotomy for the Western viewer: an Iranian is observing Europeans and perceives them as odd in many respects. This section of Persepolis is a parade of cultural gaps. In the first image, nervous and lonely Marji sits at the European airport, her head still covered with the scarf, and on the other side of the bench is a young teenager with a frowning face, strenuously striving to break the record on his Gameboy. Later on,

Marji’s Vienna roommate is depicted in a white tank shirt blow-drying her hair while her armpit hair dances in the air flow –i.e. it’s too much of a good thing – implying that some body parts better stay covered and that some things do not necessarily need to be shared with everyone. Again, Persepolis shakes thetraditional belief of the West as more reasonable and advanced that the Middle East.

Although not comprehending the Austrian sense of humor, Marji was smitten with the choice of goods in stores and “going to supermarket was [her] favorite pastime.” At school, Marji, stigmatized by her

“otherness” because of her Middle Eastern look, predictably made friends with other minority students, according to her own words “I was the centre of attention for all the outsiders.” First, she made friends with punkers, then with hippies and anarchists who, to Marji’s disappointment, although asserting to be politically interested “mainly drink beer and eat sausages.” The fact that Marji was from Iran, lived through a war and even saw some dead people made her “cool” in eyes of these students. For the majority, however, Marji was a savage “They think we’re all violent, bloodthirsty fanatics,” thus confirming the presence of the myth “barbarism vs. civilization” as described in Esch’s article “Legitimizing the War on

Terror” and Said’s assertion from Covering Islam that the Western media creates an image of the Middle 77

East that in some cases equates Islam with jihad and with terrorism (77). The nuns Marji originally stayed with asserted that Iranians do not have any manners.When Marji confronted them, asking whether it is true that all nuns were prostitutes first. Immediately, was kicked off the boarding-house.

Marji never managed to completely meld with European youth, no matter how hard she wanted to.

She did not share the subculture’s enthusiasm for listening to the unbearable rattle that was coming from performers who yelled and spit at the audience with a raised middle finger during hardcore concerts that she attended with her punk friends. She did not understand Austrians’ gusto for drinking beer and their strange way of singing, yodeling. This way, Persepolis implies that the feeling of a cultural gap is mutual: it is as hard to get used to the Western way of life for a young and quite open-minded girl from Iran, as itis to get used to life in Iran for the a person from the West. However, the film makes it clear that although having dissimilar habits, humans in the West and in the Middle East have their downsides and upsides, honest and moral, as well as less honorable, people.

After Marji returns to post-revolutionary Teheran because she failed to find happiness in Austria, everyone is excited to talk to her. She is perceived as someone “exoticized” for people in her home country.

People ask questions and consider her to be a star just because she was abroad for a while. Marji does not understand this because, in fact, she did not succeed much there. Suddenly, everyone judges her and gives her advice on what to do. Marji realizes that she “was a stranger in Austria and now [she’s] one in [her] own country.” She is Oriental by origin (and everyone was treating her based on her origin in the West); however, she is westernized when she returns to Iran. She is caught in between of these two representations and she feels tornapart. First, Marji was too liberal-minded; thus, her parents sent her to Austria. In

Europe, on the other hand, she was not comfortable because she strongly perceived her real roots and missed home. After she returns, Marji has a special insight into theworld; however, at the same time, a permanent identity crisis. She is diagnosed with depression and attempts to commit suicide.

After that, Marji picks herself up, starts to go out, socialize and enroll in college. In her art classes, when studying silhouette, all students ended up with the same picture because the object who was sitting in front of the class was wearing a burqa and a veil. Later, during the university lecture about the dress code,

Marji raises a question of fairness of men’s and women’s clothing customs and argues that men’s tight clothes have logically the same effect on women as a shorter headscarf that arouses men. 78

Marji represents a neutral rather than an exceptional individual; she is portrayed with many lapses and human failures. Occasionally, she disappoints her relatives or even the audience members of the movie.

The presence of virtuous, as well as deceitful deeds of the female character makes her more believable in the eyes of the audience; thus, she is more identifiable as well. Marji’s role in Persepolis is essential to the promotion of intercultural tolerance. Marji returns from her study abroad travels, enriched by a unique cultural experience and having more sober and realistic ideas about the West than many of her Iranian friends. This way, Persepolis furtively implies that it is complicated to judge the “Other” without actually getting to know them and warns against hasty internalization of unverified judgments.

Following the pattern to contradict stereotypes, Persepolis reacts to the myth of America’s

“exceptional grievance,” as described by Esch. Persepolis presents an alternative perspective. Rather than focus on the American victims, the movie centers on the opposite side of the coin and portrays the sufferings of Iranians who are hit by unstable governments on a daily basis in all aspects of their lives. The state controls the personal freedom of its citizens, ranging from the limits of movement to clothing habits and censorship. This way, Persepolis offers a perspective of the common people in the “War of Terror,” who have, throughout the Iranian history, repeatedly become victims of some power elite’s business interests.

At the end of the movie, Marji decides to leave Iran for the second time. After divorcing her husband, she goes to France. Her mother assures her that the current situation in Iran is not for her. The voiceover says “I never saw my grandmother again. She dies shortly after. Freedom always has a price.”

The ending, amplified by the last sentence on freedom, stimulates thoughts on emigration, value ladders and decision making. It shows that by choosing one path, one abandons the others. The price Marji has to pay is the lack of proximity to her family. She chose the way that her parents were not willing to undergo because they valued their quite secure position in Iran. They feared being considered inferior and being looked down upon for coming from Iran. Marji, however, is willing to take the risk. Her open-mindedness keeps her steadily seeking who she is and where she belongs. Encountering various people, she is trying on different ways of seeing but none of them works for her one hundred percent. Marji is most likely not a typical representative of Iran, nor is the movie trying to make her look like that. By her story, however, the

movie poses questions: Is there any possible representation of a prototypical Iranian at all? Who is it? How do you find him or her? Is that possible?

The main character of Waltz with Bashir, Ari, faces an identity crisis as well; nor can he can find peace of mind because of his lost memories about the Lebanon War. Drawing attention to issues of the selectivity and malleability of human memory and to the necessity to justify one’s own deeds in order to deal with the past and focus on the present, Ari’s investigative story discloses multiple personal destinies, showing that emotions, dreams, fantasies and wishes participate in shaping personal memories. Similarly, to Marji, Ari experiences major historical events that he is physically a part of, but mentally he is distanced.

2. Characters in Waltz with Bashir

Ari, the central character of Waltz with Bashir, is the director Folman’s alter-ego. In his 40s, Ari decides to retrieve his lost memories about the Lebanon War, especially on the massacre of Beirut refugee camps for Palestinians: Sabra and Shatila. His own memory does not exist; thus, he needs to seekother people who shared this war experience with him and hope that their stories will remind him. The initial impulse for the whole investigation is his friend’s Boaz’s plea to create a movie as therapy for his nightmares.

Ari begins to collect materialto re-fabricate his deeply submerged remembrance and,step by step, he discovers that all men who have been in the Lebanon War with him carry a heavy load of trauma on their backs. Either, they feel guilty for not being brave enough to save the lives of their friends, they admit behaving cowardly or, they wish to forget the War forever. The War was a life-changing experience. By attributing these characteristics to the Israeli soldiers, the movie removes the soldiers’ aura of heroism and presents them in amore realistic light, as vulnerable, sensitive, sometimes coward and identifiable humans who occasionally commit errors; thus, undermining the traditional simplification in American media that avoids criticism of Israelis and presents them as peace-loving, in contrast to others in the Arab world

(Ibrahim 513-518).

The first story that the viewer on Waltz with Bashir learns about is Boaz’s. Boaz was too frightened to shoot people in the War; thus, he was appointed to “silence” the dogs when the troops were approaching towns and the barking dogs menaced the success of the attack. Altogether, Boaz shot 26 dogs 80

and until now, he remembers “every single one of them.” Each night the dogs chase him in his sleep. Boaz hopes to be helped by Ari because, as he says about films, “That’s a kind of psychotherapy, too, isn’t it?”

Driven by his personal desire to discover lost memories, Ari decides to visit his other friend,

Carmi, who currently lives in Holland. Resigned from his promising research career, Carmi seemsto attempt to get rid of everything that could remind him about his growing up in Lebanon and the War.

Throughout the whole visit, Carmi’s eyes reveal his discomfort. He does not like to mentally regress and recapitulate his past. His young experience wasunpalatable;he escaped the environment that was connected to his unpleasant memories and he does not want to be reminded of that. To Ari’s question about why Carmi did not become a scientist as everyone expected, Carmi reacts with discomfort. He acts like he wonders why anyone ever believed in his smarts. “Who did?” asks Carmi and adds, “By the time I was twenty, it was over. I could not become anything,” shares Carmi about his war trauma with Ari. Later in the scene, when Carmi shares his masculinity issues with Ari, one understands the origin of his shadowed memories. Ari remembers what Carmi was like at 18; “At 18, you seemed pretty bright to me. I never took you for a fighter.” Carmi explains that “while everyone else was screwing like rabbits… [he was] the only nerd good at chess and math but with masculinity problems.” As he continues, “So I had to prove to everyone that I was the best fighter and some big hero,” explaining that the War was, for Carmi, a chance to prove his masculinity. The possible status of a war hero was a tempting path for him. His plan did not succeed, in the action, “I puked like a pig,” admits Carmi and adds that he tends to fall asleep and hallucinate when being scared and that happened to him during the Lebanon War as well. Then one day, on a military boat, Carmi was dreaming about a giant woman who saved him from being killed on the boat.

Carmi’s narration reveals that, during the War, he used to escape into fantasies. That was his protective mechanism. The fear and the pressure of the actual war were too powerful for Carmi to deal with; he was disappointed in himself for not becoming a hero. When Ari asks Carmi what he remembers about the massacre at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, Carmi answers “That’s not stored in my system,” he looks aside, implying that he does not want to talk about the massacre anymore. Ari leaves because it is obvious to him that there is nothing more that Carmi will share with him.

The next person Ari encounters is Ronny Dayag, as the label in the right corner of the screen reveals. According to Ari’s recent flashback about his first day in the War, Ronny was there with him. 81

Ronny admits being in the same area; however, he does not recognize Ari’s picture from that time. Ronny starts to talk about his war experience. He talks fluently and seems to remember clearly what happened.

Ronny starts to narrate his story, “Crossing the border at Rosh Hanikra felt like an excursion. We took photos, we told jokes. We had time to fool around before going into action,” revealing an aspect of war that is rarely featured in war movies, documentaries or in war news coverage. Ronny talks about appreciating the beauty of the Lebanon scenery when slowly driving through country side in the tank. Through Folman’s animation of Ronny’s memories, the audience gets the perspective of soldiers making the best out of any situation. The animation features what got stuck in Ronny’s mind: the beautiful landscape of Lebanon rural areas juxtaposed against the monstrosity of tanks that were their means of transportation and images of happy moments in between war actions. The viewer sees the soldiers taking pictures, hugging each other on a tank, singing songs and swaying in the rhythm of popular songs. When arriving into a city, Ronny remembers his uncertainty and lack of immediate reaction when his commander was killed and Ronny was next in charge. After an explosion in his tank, everyone tried to escape the violated massive machine in order to save their lives. Ronny managed to escapeunder gun-firing and hide behind a stone. After a while, the shooting subsided and the other tanks of Ronny’s troop turned away to retrieve. They retreated, leaving

Ronny hiding behind the stone, “I felt abandoned by our forces,” says Ronny and talks about what was going on in his mind. He remembers thinking about his mother and helping her at home. In this life- threatening moment, Ronny’s mind fixates on his mother and his peaceful childhood, as opposed to fear and the immediate danger in war. This momentprovides the viewer with a rare nostalgic regression where the soldier mentally escapes into his childhood in order to find peace. While the enemy was chatting at the beach believing that all the enemy soldiers were killed, Ronny was waiting for the darkness to escape by sea. He swam south along the shore and reunited with his regiment. However, the soldiers regarded him

“[l]ike someone who didn’t help rescue his friends” and taxed himself with escaping “the battlefield just to save [his] own skin.” This approach made him feel anxiety, prohibited him from staying in touch with the families of the killed soldiers and even from visiting their graves. As he explains, “I wanted to forget. I didn’t want to relive those moments,” admitting that, when visiting the graves of his killed comrades, he felt guilty. As if I didn’t do enough. I didn’t do enough.” Ronny still seems to be really upset about this past. “I wasn’t the hero type who carries weapons and saves everyone’s life. That’s not me. I’m not the 82

type,” closes Ronny’s story that, together with Carmi’s experience, illustrates the difficulty of dealing with a soldier’s own war past that was far from heroic as the most people expected it to be.

Adding Ronny’s narration as a piece of puzzle into Ari’s fragmentary memory, Ari classifies his experience. Reacting to Ronny’s complaint of his lack of heroism, Ari presents some soldiers who perceived themselves as the personification of heroism, juxtaposing the opposed extremes of the spectrum.

Interestingly, however, these embodied heroes are less likeable and identifiable than the previous, fear admitting individuals, a significant deviation from traditional war narratives that center on and worship heroes. In Waltz with Bashir, these “action heroes” carry their weapons with themselves at all times, fastened as a guitar of a rock star, they surf the waves when waiting to be called into the action, they practice shooting aiming at cars of civilians, they lie in the sun and sunbathe, check themselves in a mirror brushing their military style (meaning almost none) hair. This obsession with appearance of “heroes” is notably emphasized, implying an effort to diminish their masculinity with a trait that is traditionally associated with females. Ari was a member of a troop with soldiers like that, he himself “had a hut of banana leaves” and he practiced shooting, aiming at empty bottles. His “hut-mate” Frenkel personified the real “hero.” His magical “ruse of war” was patchouli, an extremely aromatic fragrance popular at that time.

Ari decides to visit Frenkel. Today, Frenkel is a teacher of martial arts, conforming to the idea that a real hero needs to be a fighter, as Ronny asserted. He still uses patchouli, although not being in an immediate danger of life as in the Lebanon War. He explains that his trick consisted in being smelled by others, thus asserting his presence. The smell was so strong that, even though Frenkel “walk[ed] too fast. Like a rabbit,” his men did never miss him.

This episode is accompanied by a ruffian-like song with lyrics that parallel the traditional understanding of heroism. However, when presented together with the images, the whole appears as a dumb, useless, pubescent-like behavior that causes more harm than good. The fragments of lyrics are: “I almost went home in a coffin…” (implying an omnipresent danger; however, the fully armed soldier in the movie destroys a car of a civilian who stopped to urinate behind a tree), “If I came close to the death I couldn’t say…” (juxtaposed with war images where soldiers are killed at any time in any situation), “At the pull of a trigger – We can send strangers -Straight to hell – Sure we kill some innocent –along the way…”

(singing while a soldier keeps missing his target and destroys many apartments by accident and a civilian 83

riding a horse). In contrast with what is going on in the pictures, the song seems like a silly and naïve ode on war by someone who never really experienced what real war is like. This way, Waltz with Bashir, presents the gap between the dominant war discourse that people know from the media and from famous war movies (e.g. The Last of the Mohicans, Black Hawk Down, Troy) and the actual experience of war that is depicted in the film. Moreover, the traditionaldiscourse of heroism is criticized by presenting the

“heroes” of the Lebanon War, Frenkel and some high-ranked commanders, as somehow twisted and desensitized of human feeling.

Frenkel remembers his daily routine, waiting at the coast for orders to “go after some terrorists.”

Following with a scene where a fully armed troop kills a young boy, around 11 years old, carrying a RPG implies that the meaning of “terrorist” in war is broad. At the end of the meeting, Frenkel assures Ari that

“[f]rom training camp, you were with me wherever I went.” Thus, Ari learns that he was witness to all these actions, even to the killing of the young boy. When their troop was detached to Beirut after the newly elected president, a Christian, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated,Frenkel remembers his heroic act that gave the name to the movie Waltz with Bashir. Frenkel took his friend’s weapon and dauntlessly left the line that protected him from the fire of bullets. Ari remembers Frenkel stepping up, in front of the line and shooting in all directions. He looked like he was “dancing, as if in a trance.” The label, Waltz with Bashir has its origin in this heroic scene. When Frenkel was shooting while moving as if waltzing, huge posters of the killed president, who immediately became a martyr, were hanging everywhere on the streets surrounding the shooting action. The power of the scene was highlighted by a classical piece of waltz music that accompanies this act. The camera focuses on Frenkel’s feet that waltz, matching the rhythm of the accompanying music and on his face that seems to be lead by agony. At the end, the scene ends by a close-up on Bashir Gemayel’s gigantic poster.

The recollections that involve immediate time regarding the massacre are mixed. Carmi and Ari share a memory on the omnipresent posters of assassinated president Gemayel. In Carmi’s view, the

Christian Phalangists were “erotically” obsessed with him, featuring his picture everywhere they could, on buildings, clothes, jewelry and weapons. The images of Gemayel are present in Ari’s Beirut beach nightmare as well. The solid memories on what was happening during the massacre are, nevertheless, missing from Ari’s as well as Carmi’s conscious mind. 84

Encouraged to seek out people who were in Beirut during the massacre, Ari approaches Dror

Harazi. Consonant with the content, Dror was one of the higher ranking individuals in the Israeli army. He remembers standing by the Phalangists entering the camps as well as bringing out the civilians from the camps the following morning. When overseeing the camps from a distance, Dror witnessed the killing of an old man. One of the Phalangist soldiers, who went in to “purge the camps from terrorists,” shot the man in his stomach. In retrospect, Dror admits he wonders why he did not realize earlier that a massacre was taking place. However, he continues explaining that, “I realized something was happening only when my men told me.” As soon as he was informed that civilians were being shot in the camps, “that people were lined up against the wall and shot,” he informed his commanding officer. The topics of human futility and the phenomenon of no one’s responsibility is an overarching motive in Waltz with Bashir. When Dror reported the news that was going on as they were speaking to his officer, the officer answered that everything was under control. In terms of Dror’s professional responsibility, that was everything he could do, as he says, “We reported it,” and “[a]s far as I was concerned, the army was handling it.” Based on the acquaintance with various soldiers, throughout the film, one sees that the line between a victim of distressed conditions and a perpetuator of atrocities in blurred. Where does a soldier who witnesses wrongdoing and stands by belong? Does simple reportingto a higher commander wash out all responsibility? Waltz with Bashir shows that every person deals with this differently. For example Dror, excuses his personal responsibility by handing the decision to someone else, while others, Carmi or Ari, develop a traumatic blindness that urges them to escape into fantasy or oblivion.

The TV correspondent, Ron Ben-Yishai, who was bravely covering the Lebanon War, had a similar experience. Ari remembers Ron “walking upright, dodging bullets like Superman.” During one of his investigations, soldiers told him that a massacre was taking place in the Sabra and Shatila camps and that the refugees are being slaughtered. Later, Ron decided to report multiple soldiers’ testimonies about the massacre to the former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel “Arik” Sharon. Sharon, after hearing that “I’ve heard there’s a massacre going on, Arik. They are slaughtering Palestinians. We have to put a stop to it,”

Sharon reacted with a question whether Ron saw it himself. Since he did not, Sharon ended the conversation with “Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Happy New Year.”

Ari’s lost memory keeps returning throughout the narrative. After talking to his friend Boaz, at the beginning of the movie, he begins to wonder what his role in the war was. Gradually, throughout the narrative, Ari begins to remember more and more because the interviews with his friends and other people who took a part in the Lebanon War lead to Ari’s own personal storyline. After talking to Carmi, Ari has his first flashback from the battlefield. He remembers the first day at the front, “Barely 19, I haven’t even started shaving.” Ari remembers shooting everywhere not knowing what was there, blood and wounded and suffering soldiers, confusion of soldiers who did notknow what to do, incompetent men in charge giving ethically questionable orders, presence of dead bodies. The voiceover comments, “We unload [dead and wounded bodies of soldiers] mechanically, as if we’re not even present,” suggesting an automatic operating mode of their minds that denudes one from his or her humanness.

When talking to Prof. Zahava Solomon, a post trauma expert, Ari realizes that he perfectly remembers his off duty days. Step by step, the days in duty start to clear up as well. Regarding the period of time closely before the massacre, Ari remembers being preoccupied thinking about his girlfriend who broke up with him. This lack of attention to the political happening evidences Ari’s distance to the actual war that he was physically involved in. In his mind, however, Ari was obsessed with thought on his ex-girlfriend, day and night, fancying his own death as a revenge to the girl who left him for another man, so that “[s]he would be ridden with guilt for the rest of her life.”

When trying to approximate his role in the massacre, Ari reaches a deadlock. He decides to visit his friend, a psychologist to have him explain the dream-like scene that started the quest for his lost past and that keeps repeating in his dreams after he starts his investigation. In this scene, three soldiers, including Ari and Carmi, emerge from the water on one of the Beirut beaches; they are naked but fully armed. Putting on clothes, they enter the city of Beirut and advance to the center of the massacre. This same scene appears in the movie three times, always longer, paralleling Ari’s gradually opening access into his own deeply repressed memory, which implies the temporality of one’s memory. As Ari gets stronger and as he talks to other people who have similar experiences and to a psychologist who gives him confidence, Ari’s memory opens up because he is able to handle it, implying the subconscious protective mechanism of human memory that is discussed in detail in the following chapter.

The topic of Ari’s personal guilt is analyzed in detail at the end of the film. Finally, Ari’s repeating dream-like fantasy comes to fruition at the end. Ari discovers that he was present at the massacre in Sabra and Shatila. As he emphasizes to his friend, a psychologist, he was in “the second or third circle” of soldiers while the atrocities were going on, “The first one [circle] had the most [information],” implying an effort to diminish his share of guilt for the massacre. At the end, the viewer finally sees Ari at the time of the massacre. The friend insists that Ari must admit whether he fired the flares that “must have helped them (the Christian Phalangists) do what they were doing.” Ari is not comfortable, “Is that important?” Ari rationalizes, “Does it make any difference if I fired them or if I just saw the flares that helped people shoot others?” His friend explains that Ari felt guilt for the massacre because, in his 19-year old mind, the murderers shared the guilt with all other soldiers who stood by. According to the psychologist, since Ari was firing the flares, he felt guilty and, “[u]nwillingly, [he] took on the role of the Nazi [whom Ari’s parents were persecuted by during the World War II]” and in order to protect his mental health, his head temporarily erased any memories on the massacre. The psychologist closes by emphasizing to Ari that

“You were firing the flares, but you didn’t carry out the massacre,” relieving to Ari’s burden of guilt.

By conducting the interviews that piece by piece reveal personal testimonies by multiple soldiers who took a part in the Lebanon War, the movie, Waltz with Bashir, discloses the personal trauma these soldiers carry. Their experience is conveyed from a remote standpoint, two decades after the massacre happened. This perspective is enriched by all the interviewed men who had decades to think about the war.

They matured in their thinking regarding what they had to deal with what they witnessed as young soldiers in Beirut in 1982.

Many of them feel uneasy talking about their memories. Boaz is haunted by the dogs he killed in the war in his sleep. Ronny feels guilty for not helping his friends who were killed when he managed to hide. Carmi left his country and seems to be attempting to suppress the war from his mind. Finally, Ari, whose mind temporarily buried the memories to protect himself from taking blame for the massacre. The men in Waltz with Bashir are depicted as sensitive to what is going on around them. They struggle or they are not able to cope with the reality of war; thus, they have to develop some protective mechanism to be able to function as human beings after the war. The majority of young soldiers is portrayed as confused, lost and incompetent. Often, they are at wits’ end in unexpected situations, they show weakness, fear and 87

cluelessness. Rather than superheroes, the characters in Waltz with Bashir are sensitive-feeling soldiers with a developed self-preservation instinct; they have believable patterns of behavior that represent a shift from the traditional war movies’ focus on individual heroes who are fearless, always cold-hearted and celebrated after the war is over. The only character that fits the traditional understanding of a hero is

Frenkel. Nevertheless, Frenkel’s authority is slightly mocked by showing him gazing at himself in a mirror and dwelling on his patchouli. Additionally, the primitive-sounding war song that celebrates war heroism contrasts with the constant wrongdoing of soldiers who miss their targets and shoot the innocent, destroy houses of civilians and slaughter individuals by accident, strengthening the film’s criticism of war heroism.

Waltz with Bashir fails to identify people in detail. Ari interviews many men during his quest for his lost memory. The viewer always gets the name of the interviewee; however, their classification is not mentioned. Thus, it is not obvious who was a member of which army, what position they held, what responsibilities they had. Perhaps, this is intentional. Maybe, Waltz with Bashir diminishes the importance of one’s classification within the particular war to suggest that the movie’s meaning reaches beyond this specific conflict. It does not matter which group one sides with. Wrongdoing, mistakes, confusion and errors are significant for war ingeneral; they happen on all sides.

The movie points out the long-term consequences of war on the level of individual soldier’s mental health. It illuminates the fact that soldiers carry trauma with themselves after leaving the service and it traces the protective mechanisms that individuals engage in to keep their minds healthy. Although pointing out the desensitization of people who are exposed to violence on a daily basis (as the TV correspondent commented on the behavior of civilians during gunfights on the streets), people were

“watching all this as a film.” Waltz with Bashir acknowledges the vulnerability of a young soldier’s psyche that can never be the same after experiencing war.

3. The Intersecting Message in Both Films

Both movies share some similar expressive techniques to create meaning. In order to achieve an alternative perspective on the Middle East and promote identification with the region’s inhabitants,

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir employ analogous strategies. They both: (1) emphasize the precedence of personal over political, which re-humanizes the people living in these countries and makes them easily 88

relatable; (2) depict the contrast of the personal benefit-seeking authorities in charge, who make political decisions, which frees the common people from responsibility and promotes sympathy for them; (3) demonstrate how political elites justify their deeds by utilizing the mechanism of an “ideograph;” (4) feature people who, whether civilians or soldiers, strive to adjust to theirmiserable conditions and try to make the best out of them; (5) encourage identification by recalling music idols that Middle Easterners used to admire together with Westerners, utilizing the powerful potential of nostalgia and shared experience; (6) touchon the issue of emigration which, on the one side, promises living in greater freedom, but, on the other side, however, destines them for facing stereotypes and carrying the stigma of their

Middle Eastern origin.

(1)The evidence of the significance of interpersonal relationships is the fact that they are the major part in the protagonist’s memory. Marji’s focus on social relationships is obvious and expected because of the narrative’s focus on her coming of age period. However, in Waltz with Bashir, focus on the personal might be surprising, since it is not in accord with the dominant discourse of central characters in war movies. The former soldiers, when remembering their Lebanon War experience, do not describe actual war actions, their own heroic deeds or political upheavals. More often, they recollect grievances or failures, wrongdoings that caused harm for someone innocent and people who shared some difficult moments with them, suggesting that, in one’s memory, the personal and intimate conscience takes precedence over overall political context. Additionally, both main movie characters’ memories disclose that, sometimes, their romantic concerns occupied their minds more fully than the actual war. Although this seems perhaps absurd in retrospect, it demonstrates the power of emotions that control one’s mind.

Marji, in Persepolis, summarizes her Vienna unlucky love story saying that “A revolution had carried off a part of my family. I had survived a war but a banal love story had nearly killed me,” revealing that close relationships get much deeper under one’s skin than discomfort caused by war. Similarly, Ari admits fantasizing abouthis own death to make his ex-girlfriend feel guilty for breaking up with him. Over twenty years later after the break up, Ari seems seriously upset when learning that his close friend, Boaz, was the reason for the break up. Although denying his anger in words, “It’s okay. I’m not angry,” his interruption of eye-contact with Boaz and a long gaze into an empty shot glass reflects evidence of the opposite. 89

The prominence of social relationships goes beyond the intimate sphere of romantic relationships.

As seen in Persepolis, people were secretly socializing at all times, hosting and attending secret parties, to simply make the misery of war more bearable. In Waltz with Bashir, the viewer is offered less perspective of the civilians because the narrative centers on the soldiers; nevertheless, the movie shows that, likewise, the soldiers yearn after camaraderie; thus, they engage in sports, drink together, sing songs and pose for pictures whenever they have time off. This tendency is not as much about desensitizing what is going around them, toward the war, as it is about the natural human necessity for fellowship, bonding and rationalizing that the situation is not as bad as it seems. The socializing that is portrayed in Persepolis in the example of secret parties with alcohol that were organized in post-revolutionary Iran and the pastime activities of the soldiers in Waltz with Bashir imply that that personal relationships are crucial for people to survive any situation. As Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir demonstrate, people are social human beings and their mental state can be easily shaken by fluctuations in interpersonal relationships. The more intimate the relationship, the more dramatic the consequences.

(2) Both movies faithfully depict authorities who are in political and military charge as bad, corrupt individuals who do not care about the wellbeing of their country (an interesting observation, if one considers that Marji’s and Ari’s home countries are governed by very dissimilar political establishments).

The negative relationship to those in power is emphasized in both movies by the physical unattractiveness of the personas with the most power. This trend signifies an abhorrence of the “little,” powerless people to those in charge who are shown as living in luxury and abusing their powers. In Persepolis, a man, probably a member of the secret police, harasses Marji’s mother for not wearing her scarf properly. She asks for a little respect and to be be addressed as “ma’am instead of “woman.” Instead, the man walks into her shouting “I screw women like you and dump them in a trash.” Additionally, the heads of state are portrayed as easily manipulated and corrupt as Marji’s father claims when talking to Marji about the Shah’s father. In

Waltz with Bashir, the officer who gives orders to the soldiers in the field, is depicted naked in a living room of a gold-decorated villa, watching porn. The porn film’s name: “Hies kommt der Klempner,” together with the dialogue, reveals the piece’s German origin, suggesting profanity of Western culture as a producer of these video recordings. This tangential reference is in accord with Kai Hafez’s claims in Mass

Media, Politics & Society in the Middle East Generally, where the author explains that Western media and 90

culture are, in the eyes of Middle Easterners, generally considered “pornographic, violent, and unsocial”

(14). Although the viewer of the porn is a Middle Easterner, he is not the one with whom the audience is supposed to identify. On the contrary, the porn-consumer is a caricature of a military commander who sends questionable orders from the safety of a luxurious villa to his subordinates in a dusty war-time environment. He is fat, hairy and with dull eyes. One can assume that his animated appearance most likely mirrors his personality rather than his real physical features. The portrayal of those in charge as incapable individuals amplifies the idea of war as something useless, futile and ill-fated in accord with the results that are shown.

(3) Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir demonstrate the misuse of “ideographs,” as described in

McGee’s text, “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link between Rhetoric and Ideology.” According to the author, ideographs are building blocks of ideology that “dictate[s] decision and control[s] public belief and behavior” (454). Both movies specifically touch on the word “terrorist,” that, as McGee says, is a word loaded with an ideological agenda. The word “terrorist” carries a heavy weight of connotation in any society. In the West, the wordimplies danger, fear and the necessity to purge the world from these undesirable phenomena. By calling someone a terrorist, one basically dehumanizes and removes their rights as a person in the public’s eye. Consequently, it is often considered okay to kill a terrorist, although on the way to the terrorist many innocent people might die, as the lyrics of a rough ode on war in Waltz with

Bashir claims. The word “terrorist” is used repeatedly in the movie. In one scene, Frenkel describes his daily routine in the Lebanon War and says that, every day, his troop was told to “go after some terrorists.”

This statement is followed by a cut to the murder of a youth holding a weapon, implying that the wide meaning of a terrorist. This rhetorical strategy was applied during the massacres in Sabra and Shatila. As one of Ari’s interviewees says, “They told us that the Christians would enter the camp and we would give them cover. Once they had purged the camps, we would seize control.” After, Ari’s question of what were they going to purge in the camp, the interviewee answers “Palestinian terrorists.”

Similarly, “purging” was a mission for the newly elected post-Revolutionary leaders of Islamist

Republic Iran, “We’ll purge anti-revolutionary elements,” announces the authority in Persepolis on TV.

Although not proclaiming the effort to purge the country from “terrorists,” the Iranian government employed the same rhetorical device of “ideograph.” However, this time, the name was “anti-revolutionary 91

element” instead of “terrorist.” The impact, nevertheless, stayed the same. As the author in Persepolis implies, behind the veil of an “anti-revolutionary element” it was possible to stigmatize anyone uncomfortable with the regime.

The mechanism of the use of “ideographs” by far surpasses the border of the Middle East. The demonstration of this rhetorical device in both analyzed movies, by presenting the actually pronounced words in contrast to images that reveal how the words were used, calls attention to this phenomenon and inspires one to think more critically about rhetorical statements.

(4) On the one hand, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir deal with the contrast between how civilians perceive war and how soldiers perceive it. This feature of the films is considerable because it touches on the distance that might arise between actual participants, meaning soldiers, and civilians. On the other hand, however, the analyzed movies show that for both groups, soldiers, as well as civilians, the main goal is to survive under any given circumstance. To make their wretched situation more manageable, they joke, socialize and entertain each other. While Marji represents a civilian, as a young child and later as a young female, Ari stands on the side of the active military participants; he isa soldier. Both movies hint at the immense spacing in between these two separate worlds. They both touch on the incomprehensibility of the fatality of war by those who are outside of the battlefield.

In Persepolis, one can see how people lived while the war of Iran versus Iraq was going on. There was shortage of food. Executions and arrests happened on a daily basis; however, people lived the way they could. Marji was checking out boys, listening to music that was popular in the West, and buying the tapes on the black market e.g. “Between air raids, government repression and spying neighbors, life tried to follow its course. To make everything bearable, people had parties,” narrates Marji in Persepolis to explain how people were getting through in hard times. Every family, however, is influenced by the war in a different way. Family members were missing; some went to war, some were arrested, others decided to leave the country. When Marji moved to Vienna, people in her country kept suffering from shortages of everything and the war’s struggle, while the Austrians seemed not to care at all. Marji wonders how this is possible and her conscience cannot bear the weight of guilt for living in peace when her family lives in war,

“I was very confused. I had a safe frivolous life, while those who I loved knew the hell of war. However, hard I tried, I was haunted by guilt.” 92

A similar trend of dealing with the war is perceivable in Waltz with Bashir. When Ari returns home for his leaves, he enters his hometown where people behave like nothing significant was going on.

Young people party and go out to clubs or just hang out on streets. Ari’s facial expression reveals mixed feelings about the apparent ignorance of war. In one scene, the movie plays with aggression interestingly.

Ari is walking home when being on leave; he seems to be exhausted, tired and uneasy. He passes a gambling club. A couple of young men are fully engaged in playing videogames that simulate a real war situation. One of them is shooting targets on the screen with an imaginary gun. Not only is this scene a paradox because someone is playing at war in a casino while the real war happens just outside on the streets, it is also an intriguing juxtaposition of men who spend their free time playing video games simulating being in a real war situation with Ari and other soldiers who are in the actual war uneasy and uncomfortable. Taking this few seconds lasting scene as a template, in a broader perspective, it urges one to think about the real, the actual versus the seeming, the idealized. The gamblers in the club are very secure, there is no immediate danger threatening their lives, they sit in a comfortable chair, they can get a drink or smoke a cigarette and play at war. The shooting and killing might enablethem to feel like heroes, if they win and nothing happens in case they lose. In contrast, the soldiers in war face a “no-win situation;” it does not matter who is winning or losing. Both sides suffer from war; both have to deal with casualties and discomfort of a war atmosphere.

(5) Both movies feature some Western pop/rock-stars as a tool to increase identification with the

Western viewer who might remember a period of the same music star’s obsession in his or her own life.

While Carmi remembers that “Bashir [the assassinated president of Lebanon] was to them [his followers] what David Bowie was to me,” Marji shares with the audience her admiration for Bee Gees, Abba and punk. Interestingly, as these musical tastes are mentioned, both movies directly meet in time, in the year

1982. Considering that people in the Middle East, in 1982, were listening to exactly the same music as people in the West, it follows that the tastes and likings are shared all over the world. This idea of having something, such as music or life style, in common promotes intercultural identification. It might help to overcome hostile attitudes and prejudice to the Middle East as an empire of the “Other,” which has been largely discussed in Said’s writings.

(6) Both movies refer to the issue of emigration. In Persepolis, first, Marji’s parents consider leaving the Islamic Republic that was newly established after overthrowing of the Shah, following a huge number of their friends. However, finally, the father objects, “So you can bea maid and I can drive a taxi?” implying the price for freedom they would have to pay. In exchange for some liberties that are guaranteed in the Western countries, they would have to sacrifice their professional careers and enter the Western work-world asoverqualified, underestimated workers earning low wages and dealing with being looked down upon. In Waltz with Bashir, similarly, this same issue was presented in an interview that Ari had with

Carmi. By many, Carmi was predestinated to become a scientist, “They [meaning friends and family members] thought that by the age of 40, you’d be nominated for a Nobel Prize;” however, later Carmi ended up selling falafel in Western Europe and making a fortune by it. Today, he is proud of his wealth. He does not hesitate to show off with all the property he owns to make Ari believe that he has a good life; nevertheless, there is a shadow on his face that implies that the situation is more complex. After the war, he left his country, gave up on his smarts and started to sell falafel in Holland. “Health food was in fashion, the Middle East too” “Falafel is both healthy and Middle Eastern,” explains Carmi when Ari wonders why selling falafel brought his friend so much wealth.

Carmi did exactly what Marji’s father in Persepolis was not willing to do. Carmi gave up his intellectual potential and talents and put up with selling falafel on a small stand in Utrecht. Later, he was lucky and his business blossomed. He accepted the price he had to pay for his freedom; Marji’s parents did not want to pay that price. Their daughter, Marji, however decided differently. When she left Iran for the second time, she was aware of the sacrifice she was making. The very end of Persepolis closes with the voiceover saying “I never saw my grandmother again. She died shortly after. Freedom always has a price.”

C. Conclusion of Chapter Two

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir do not perpetuate the dominant rhetoric that is widely promoted by Western media. Persepolis challenges the media-created negative portrayal of common Iranians. Waltz with Bashir challenges the often idealized image of Israelis because the movie diminishes the opposition between the war enemies and focuses on the global atrocities that go hand inhand with war in general,

implying that no matter which side one represents, war is evil, traumatic and commits errors that affect everyone. On the other hand, Waltz with Bashir still provides a view through an Israeli eye that profits from a warm relationship with the United States. In other words, it is still an Israeli who is criticizing the war, saying that war is bad, attempting to reeducate the public while being lowly self-critical. At the end,

Israelis, as usual, come up in a sympathetic light. This critique, however, does not mean that Waltz with

Bashir is a bad movie. The film’s value consists in its priceless perspective about soldiers who deal with their experience of war with unusual depth. The fact that the text takes an American-friendly viewpoint is not a reason to condemn. The Israeli point of view is only one, but equally relevant, piece in the possible diversity of angles at the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. The viewpoint could be broadened by texts that deal with perspectives of other participating groups.

The movies do not persuade the audience to take sides. Rather, they offer the opportunity to identify with the characters in the film. They let the viewer, for a moment, to step into the shoes of a young girl who experienced the Iranian Revolution and of a teenage soldier who lived through the Lebanon War and show him or her how Marji and Ari negotiate their role during their lives. Both main characters are participants in major events but they feel absent to them, at the same time, augmenting films’ self- consciousness about representation. Contrary to predominant popular texts on Middle East culture, the movies are not one-sided. They do not necessarily side with anyone specifically; instead, they examine in detail Marji’s and Ari’s personal struggle with their own identification and representation within a larger context. The animated form of these movies helps to create a critical distance because it symbolizes how the characters deal with representation, rather than the reality.

Persepolis, although mostly black-and-white in design, does not perpetuate the simple black-and- white worldview. Additionally, the movie is humorous and evokes a pleasant rather than jeremiad atmosphere. While keeping a lightweight tone and utilizing wit instead of pathos, the movie represents serious issues, such as veiling, single-sex education, political injustice and prejudice in society. This way, viewers do not feel themselves being educated, taught or edified; rather, the enlightenment creeps in unobtrusively in the form of a joke. Consequently, the audience might welcome Persepolis, appreciating that they learn something about Iran through a story without being told what to think.

By juxtaposing Western and Eastern culture, Persepolis holds a mirror for Western society and enables the West to look at itself before judging the culture of the “Other.” Further, Persepolis addresses the Muslim tradition of veiling and sociability and contrasts it with the Western obsession with fashion, unhealthy beauty ideals, revealing clothing habits and with the lack of social commitment. Persepolis acknowledges that Iran restricts people and tries to control intellectual development. At Marji’s wedding, her mother cries because she imagined a different future for her daughter, “I wanted you to be independent, educated, cultured. Now you’re marrying at 21! I want you to leave Iran, to be free and emancipated!”

However, the movie shows real people with potential, desires and ambitions that suffer from theregime on a daily basis. Persepolis humanizes these Iranians, enables identification with them and this human element has the power to, gradually, help to rearticulate the West versus Middle East skewed relationship.

Waltz with Bashir deserves credit for admitting and portraying the reverse side of the war. The movie deflects from summarizing historical events. Where the traditional historical narrative would stop,

Waltz with Bashir begins. The film does not settle for enunciation of who did what, where and when. It reaches further and asks questions: why, with which consequences for a personal conscience, and with which level of guilt? It sensitively examines soldiers’ feelings and their process of coping with the life- changing past inthe Lebanon War. The film delicately uncovers trauma that these soldiers still bear on their backs and shows several ways and mechanisms how the involved dealt or did not deal with their war experience.

Waltz with Bashir opposes the traditional pattern of war movies that centers on heroes. No one in the movie is a real hero. Frenkel is the only one who aspires to be a hero; nevertheless, his portrayal as someone who still does not forbear from his war-like routines in the time of peace, symbolizes a necessity to constantly prove his own masculinity or his natural desire for aggression. The film suggests that there is nothing heroic about war by constantly reversing the perspective in the movie and showing that one’s

“heroic” killing cost many civilian lives, or by showing soldiers shooting at children, the unarmed or the elderly. The movie portrays soldiers as inexperienced, fearful, fallible and clueless individuals. Their commanders, on the other hand, are depicted as often ignorant and cruel, asserting their orders from a safe place drowning in luxury. This contrast challenges the viewer’s estimation of war in general and promotes the feeling of sympathy for regular soldiers who are sensitive and vulnerable human beings. 96

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir offer subjective views about objective events which reflects an attitude signifying a postmodern approach to history. In detail, this position, together with the historiography in the analyzed movies, will be examined in the following chapter.

IV. CHAPTER THREE: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND POSTMODERN CINEMA

A. Introduction to Historiography and Postmodern Cinema

The first chapter examines the cornerstone of the analyzed movies. Looking closely at the form, it illuminates that animation of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir offers immense expressive potential. In addition, it defines the films’ hybrid generic categorization. The second chapter builds upon and adds what kind of representation the form and the generic intersection provides. It closes, observing that the films offer subjective views on objective events, signifying a postmodern approach to history. Robert

Rosenstone, in his introduction to Visions of the Past, defines postmodern history film as:

[A] work that, refusing the pretense that the screen can be an unmediated window onto the past,

foregrounds itself as a construction. Standing somewhere between dramatic history and

documentary, traditional history and personal essay, the postmodern film utilizes the unique

capabilitiesof the media to create multiple meanings. (12)

The first chapter showed that Persepolis’s and Waltz with Bashir’s animated forms that are highly expressive, thus easily understandable, are wrapped into an autobiographical storyline that endows the films with attractive authenticity, personification and intimacy, making these intellectual films more digestible. The next chapter showed how representation gives rise to stereotypes that shape people’s perceptions about others and illustrated how the analyzed movies articulate an alternative to the dichotomous perception of West versus Middle East. The last chapter demonstrates the consequences of misrepresentation on the macro level. By exhibiting how the public’s memory is shaped or created by media content, I highlight the necessity of producing cultural texts that express alternative ideas, such as

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. I examinethe films through a postmodern lens and show that the movies impersonate a unique, subjective insight intothe past by keeping in mind that human memory is fluid, selective and malleable. Additionally, I argue that the animated form in combination with autobiographical

narrative that is personal and identifiable enables the viewers to connect unfamiliar concepts that would in a live-action movie or in a traditional documentary be difficult.

An absolute agreement in interpretation of any event is hardly ever possible. Every car accident has at least as many scenarios as witnesses and victims. When discussing far-distant historical events, every person’s interpretation more or less differs based on countless factors. The times when history was cemented in books, narrated in the form of linear, definite stories by chosen and trained professionals who were granted authority to interpret various historical happenings are gone. As many crucial doubts have entered the academic debate, scholars have started to ask questions such as: Whose voices are represented in historical narratives the most? Who writes history andwhat position does he or she (but mainly he) represent? Who does the historical narrative focus on? Does it take into account the experience of the “little people,” of women, racial and sexual minorities, of poor people? Whose perspective is the objective one?

Later, many scholars came to understand that all previous historical narrative is based on subjective interpretations that might differ from one person’s experience to another. Thinking about ideology and one’s agenda entered the discussion and postmodernism theorists agreed that traditional history is not more than a cultural product of the Western world. The zealous debate flew into a postmodern approach to history. Originating in architecture, where the new approach attempted to overcome the simplicity of modernism, postmodernism is a way of thinking that influenced various kinds of fields, prompting to question the objective truth in science and humanities and opening a portal to broader spectrum of possibilities, rather than perpetuating previous sharp, black-and-white classifications. As Robert

Rosenstone, trained as a historian himself, explains in Visions of the Past, postmodernism represents a new way of creating meaning of the past (199). Admitting that historians can never wholly escape the influence of ideology, politics and language limitations, the author promotes a resignation of History “with a capital

H” (200). Rosenstone calls for a denial of these, authoritative “narratives, findings, and truth claims” because they represent “white mythologies [that] legitimate Western hegemony” and because they “fost[er] nationalism, racism, ethnocentrism, colonialism, sexism—and all the other evils of contemporary society

(200).

In terms of film, the debate about a faithful representation of history has been especially hot, since film belongs to the popular sphere and is consumed by masses of people on a large scale. As Rosenstone

points out a paradox: although history in film is mainly created and produced by historical amateurs, meaning people who do not have any proper historiographiceducation, their cinematic products play a crucial role in shaping today’s social consciousness about the past (65-66). Confirming the history-shaping potential, a French historian Pierre Nora, in Guynn’s Writing History in Film, argues that historian-created history replaces the public’s memory and consciousness of historical events that earlier used to be transmitted from one generation to another (173). In his opinion, decreased attention to traditions, customs and ancestral heritage widens the gap between the present and the past in today’s society because the past is no longer reflected in the present as it did in agrarian societies(173). Although Nora talks about the

“history written by professional historians,” his claim might be stretched to the media, since, today, people learn mostly from what they see on the screen. The media took over the role of managing the public’s memory from the monopoly of professionally trained historians.

It is not the objective of this chapter to provide a historical overview of the events that are directly captured in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir because this project does not take an explicit historical approach to the films. The examination of the historical context would be way beyond the expected scope of this chapter. The focus here is to elucidate the historiographicvalue of the movies and the historical information that the movies convey.

According to the online Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, historiography is “the writing of history; [especially] the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particulars from the authentic materials, and the synthesis of particulars into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods;” shortly, “the product of historical writing” or “a body of historical literature”

(549). According to the dictionary, historiography refers to people-created sumof writing about history, usually to a specific portion of writing on a particular subject.

I am going to argue that both films approach history in a postmodern way. They do not aspire to reconstruct the objective truth of historical happenings in Iranand Lebanon. Aware of the fact that history is an on-going, non-linear process that depends on where and who is narrating it to whom, Persepolis and

Waltz with Bashir turn away from the absoluteness of history and focus rather on the personal memories of central characters because “memory is an absolute” (Nora qtd. in Guynn 174).

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B. Historiography and Footprints of Postmodernism in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir

In Visions of the Past, Rosenstone suggests that, while written history is capable of qualities that an image is not, similarly, cinema is capable of transmitting information and ideas that are not communicable by written history (5). Arguing that the difference between written and filmic history consists in the fact that they operate with different tools, Rosenstone explains that written history is linear and scientific, while filmic history is able to utilize “a visual and aural realm that is difficult to capture adequately in words” (14-15). Believing that “past on film is potentially much more complex than any written text” because of its simultaneous employment of language with sound and image, Rosenstone claims that film can possibly change the way people think about the past (15). Successful historical films are, in Rosenstone’s opinion, significant for “showing, personalizing, and emotionalizing the past, and delivering it to a new audience” (11).

Using Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir as examples, one understands what Rosenstone means by the difference between a written description and an audiovisual portrayal of the past. How else could one convey the story of Persepolis when its artistic expression is based on the close intimate perspective of a child/teenager? How could an author of a novel get across the same meaning, keeping thesame expressive value of these animations? The original model for the movie Persepolis was a graphic novel that shared the expressive qualities with the movie, except that the audio level is obviously missing in the novel.

Persepolis’s, whether filmic or graphic novelistic faithfulness to simple, black-and-white design, caused the movie and the graphic novel to communicate a comparable meaning. However, in the case of Waltz with

Bashir, the difference between the movie and the accompanying graphic novel isabysmal; not only because of the significantly axed information in the novel but especially because of the inability to carry over the slow motion of some scenes. In addition, the novel lacks the powerful expression that music evokes. The juxtaposition of present and past in the “paper version” of Waltz with Bashir seems depleted, incoherent and unconvincing. Simply put, the qualities that make the movie, Waltz with Bashir, significant, compelling and memorable are hardly communicable via any other medium than film. In the case of

Persepolis, the precious graphic novel succeeds in conveying a similar meaning; however, the cinematic format surpasses the graphic novel in the scope of the potential audiences they reach. While graphic novels

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are usually read bya limited audience that specifically seeks this genre, the cinematic version of Persepolis is more likely to be seen by broader audiences with an interest in recent Iranian history.

Applying Rosenstone’s theory on the advantages of history in the cinematic form on analyzed movies, the author’s point about “delivering it [meaning the history] to a new audience” deserves special attention. Rosenstone emphasizes that, comparing the impact of disseminating historical information to the general public, visual media are the major source (22). Although history as a discipline blossoms, branching out according to various social approaches, audiences that consume advanced information produced by historians are “rapidly shrinking” (24). While written history fails in telling meaningful stories

“that matter to people outside the profession” (24), film being “a chief source of historical information”

(22), attracts burgeoning audiences when addressing historical topics (24).

The subject matter of modern Iranian history in Persepolis and the Lebanon War in Waltz with

Bashir are heavy themes and, when discussing them, participants rarely reach absolute agreement. In addition, these topics are immensely controversial. They somehow resonate in the public’s memory and have direct references to the current world’s political powerstructure. In William Guynn’s Writing History in Film, the author deals with the schema of public memory. He explains that, currently, media coverage, and television in particular, basically replaces historical experience and historical imagination (Kaes qtd. in

Guynn 166). This way, as Guynn argues, media “offer the packaged substitutes for the act of reminiscence”

(166). Guynn and Kaes argue that today’s public memory is directly shaped by the media that manipulates the reality by selecting and repeating distilled news which later become to be believed as the “’correct’ representation of the period” (166).

The largest amount of information about the region of the Middle East today comes from news coverage. Media convey and establishhistorical narrative in a much depersonalized way, often in forms of incoherent statements and by replacing victims with numbers and stories with statistics. Where can an average media consumer get an actual, engaging and personalized story of someone who experienced the complex history of the Middle East? As Rosenstone argues, products of professional historians are not very outsider-friendly and publicly accessible and, as Guynn claims, the general media coverage of the region is grossly deformed. In accord with Rosenstone’s examinations, film seems to be an ideal medium for filling the gap of coherence, wholeness and accessibility. However, as the overview of the mainstream media in

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the previous chapter indicates, the popular media content, whether fictional or non-fictional, tends to perpetuate similar distortion.

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir surpass the ongoing discussions on objectivity, bias and favoritism by narrating a single person’s story having her and his private opinions without aspiring to apply and generalize their own experience to a group of people, to a nation or to a part of the world. Authors of the movies are not professionally trained historians; however, they were actual participants in the events that their autobiographical movies addressed. Thisvalidates authority to their voices; moreover, it gives a valuable and rare urgency to their testimony and disseminates the knowledge “history with a small h”

(Rosenstone 201), meaning the history from below, of average people rather than the history of the elite.

This being an example of how postmodernism is present in the cinematic works. By employing this strategy, the movies escape the hunt for unattainable “real truth” and focus on a subjective memory of one average, rather than on a representation ofthe masses. By openly admitting that the movies are based solely on the authors’ memory, the movies are constructions of events that remained fixed in the authors’ memory exactly the way they remember them. This way, the movies deconstruct the “notion of historical knowledge,” which is, according to Rosenstone’s theory in Visions of the Past one of the features of postmodern approach to history (201). The movies unsettle the way we think about the past; they grasp things we know and turn them on their head.

The reliability of human memory is questioned in both analyzed movies. Guynn, in Writing

History in Film, engages in studying Paul Ricoeur’s theory and Saint Augustine’s essays on memory.

Guynn, drawing on Ricoeur, says that, “Through remembrance, an individual is able to move back in time to his or her earliest childhood recollections which memory evokes and organizes into a linear narrative”

(169). Yet Saint Augustine, when writing his Confessions in the fourth century, was aware of the paradox of human memory, writing that, “Memory’s huge cavern, with its mysterious, secret, and indescribable nooks and crannies, receives all these perceptions, to be recalled when needed and reconsidered” (qtd. in

Guynn 169). In his analysis of memory, Guynn suggests that memory is a malleable, vital phenomenon that evolves throughout time and in a relationship to the present. As if copying Saint Augustine’s description of memory as “a huge cavern,” Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir let us peek into their author’s caverns by animating their intimate memories. Their subjective and personal approach is more than clear.

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Waltz with Bashir does so directly, by addressing the issue of memory as a focal topic of the narrative. At the beginning of the movie, Ari does not have any memories about his experience from the

Lebanon War. After talking to friends, his memory starts to open up and Ari comes to be haunted by his unclear memories on the 1982 massacre, not knowing which exact role he played in it. Acquaintance with other characters who took a part in the Lebanon War that develops throughout the movie reveals that for many of these men, twenty years of maturation was not enough for them to grasp their personal experiences. History, in Waltz with Bashir, is mediated by a sequence of conducted interviews. Rather than attempting to “re-construct” exactly what happened and support the constructed narrative by a commentary,

Waltz with Bashir develops multiple, direct and subjective testimonies of men who shared the same experiencein the Lebanon War, particularly who were close to the 1982 massacre in Sabra and Shatila.

This way, the film refuses manufacturing and cobbling incomplete material together; thus, giving the remote past suddenly a clear-cut and definite façade, in accordwith Rosenstone’s description of experimental film (55-61). Rather, Waltz with Bashir takes an interrogatoryapproach; the main character traces his personal history by asking other people about their experience. Consequently, while gradually detecting Ari’s past, the audience follows destinies of other men. At the end, all these stories, side by side, illuminate the varying experiences of these Israeli soldiers in the massacre and bring Ari nearer to his submerged memory. By presenting soldiers who intermix combat actions with fantasies and dreams, the movie raises the question of where an objective experience begins and where it ends. As the narrative of

Waltz with Bashir shows, memory and interpretation on the events featured in the film vary from one soldier to another. Does it mean that human memory is an unreliable source of history? What would the reliable source be then? Or, is history simply always relative, as Nora argues in Guynn’s Writing Film in

History (174)? This strategy of “playing with the memory,” rather than reconstructing what happened in the past, conforms to the postmodern approach to history, as discussed in Rosenstone’s Visions of the Past

(201). Altogether, the multiple perspectives create a collage, rather than a coherent narrative signifying another postmodern technique as defined in Rosenstone (201).

The elucidation of the events relating to the massacre, nevertheless, is attained by the audience’s active assembling of the little fragments of various soldier’s testimonies, rather than by an authoritative, coherent, continuous statement and summary of what exactly happened, which, again evidences the

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postmodern approach to history (Rosenstone 201). Gaps, doubts, dreams and fantasies are not ignored in

Waltz with Bashir. They are presented as equal parts of the soldiers’ lives, since they are deeply rooted in their memories and they influence the way soldiers think about their past. All these scenes –Ari’s dream about floating to Beirut shortly before discovering the massacre, Carmi’s fantasy about a giant woman who saved him from his sinking boat, Boaz’s nightmare about dogs who chase his bloody conscience from the

War, Carmi’s gaps in memory from the night of the massacre, Ari’s doubts about his role in the massacre and Ronny’s disbelief in his right decision making in the War – are ways that Waltz with Bashir uses to call attention to the multilayered personal experience that surpasses what is objectively perceivable to other people around and, consequently, to the impracticabilityof a single, fluent, closed, all-encompassing and objective historical narrative. As Rosenstone highlights, in his Visions of the Past, by keeping “multiple interpretations” open, films accomplish an “interpretative complexity” (147). In Waltz with Bashir, this complexity is achieved by featuring doubts, dreams, fantasies and varying viewpoints, thus drawing attention to the fact that human memory about one event differs from one individual to another.

In Persepolis, memory does not play the central role as in Waltz with Bashir; nevertheless, the movie depicts people of various ages in the process of recollecting and narrating their personal views about historical happenings. All the characters whom Marji encounters, attempt to shape the little (or later teenage) girl’s opinion, to convince her of something or to move her over to their side. One can conclude that all characters that “narratehistory” to the girl have a particular agenda with which they approach

Marji. For the purpose of their goal, obviously, their stories are subjective, personal and they represent a biased point of view. Throughout the narrative, Marji encounters different ways of seeing. She tries them on; negotiates with various ideas; however, she realizes that none of them works forher completely. Her travel abroad provides her with a special insight. Her curiosity, sensitivity and openness to dissimilar approaches to the world enable Marji to acquaint herself with many of them. Nevertheless, the more viewpoints she tries out and the more ideas she negotiates with, the more confused she feels when trying to figure out where she stands.

Marji’s grandmother, representing the older generation, is the personification of life-wisdom and experience. She is the woman with a crucial status in Marji’s family and she has a tremendous impact on

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the girl. Marji carries her grandmother’s words deeply inside. With a worrying face, as she strokes Marji’s big head, the grandmother says (the night before Marji leaves abroad):

I don’t like to preach but here’s some advice. You’ll meet a lot of jerks in life. If they hurt you,

remember it’s because they’re stupid. Don’t react to their cruelty. There’s nothing worse than

bitterness and revenge. Keep your dignity and be true to yourself.

Marji nuzzles to her grandmother’s breasts, listens and the bed that they both rest in gradually becomes smaller, more distant and fades from the viewer’s perspective. The increasing distance, together with the darkness around the bed seems like the bed floats, symbolizing that this moment happened a long time ago.

The length of the moment that the movie devotes to this scene, on the other hand, indicates the significance of this in Marji’s memory. It does not matter what the room looked like or what color the sheets were; important to Marji are her precious grandmother’s words. The animated form enables the filmmaker to transmit a selective human perception. It allows addressing how themes of memory are etched in this film and makes one think about animation. In thisscene, faces, particularly the eyes of Marji and her grandmother, dominate the scene while other unnecessary details, such as the environment and objects in the room are diminished and obliterated by the animated form. This technique, which strips the scene from unnecessary details, allows the author to narrow the viewer’s attention similarly as depth of field does in a real-live action film. Selectivity of focus in real-life action is, in animated form, blown out of proportion.

Rather than blurring when presenting out of focus images, animation is complicit to completely erase the less meaningful elements of the scene and keeps only the elements that are supposed to draw out attention.

This way, animation greatly shapes the viewer’s perception because it can be very selective and predestine the audience to what they see.

Marji’s father and her uncle, members of the parental generation, provide Marji with historical information when it is necessary to explain political consequences and put ongoing events in larger context.

Uncle Anoush is a leftist activist and supplies Marji with adventurous stories from his emigration and jail.

The perspective of Marji’s relatives gets into a conflict with the official state-legitimized version of history and politics that Marji encounters at school. Negotiating with these two competing ideas, Marji confronts her teacher at school when the teacher’s words conflict with Marji’s actual experience. In one of her classes, she reacts to her teacher’s claim that today’s regime does not have any political prisoners and

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promotes liberty saying, “My uncle was jailed by the Shah, but the new regime had him shot. We have gone from 3,000 prisoners under the Shah to 300,000 with you. How dare you lie to us like this?” Although

Marji’s speech is followed by the applause of her female-only classmates, the disturbance springing from statements like this one and Marji’s inability to remain silenced when having to listen to any officially- generated state propaganda motivates her parents’ decision to send her to Europe, hoping that she will fit in better there.

Lastly, Persepolis presents a historical perspective of the youth and teenagers in Iran and in

Austria. Marji wonders about the contrast of political involvement in Iran and in Austria. While in her home country, everyone feels political changes intimately because the state is strictly governmentally controlled. Contrastingly, in Austria, Marji’s peers seem to live in an ahistorical time (life without any perception of current historical events), totally unaware of what is going on in other parts of the world.

Although some of them claim to be political activists, such as the members of an anarchist group, at the end, they do not really care about politics as much as about the slothful life-style that is associated with the group. “If the anarchists had won, we wouldn’t work at all,” complains one of Marji’s friends in Vienna.

This group of friends represents another discourse for Marji to negotiate; nevertheless, she gets into conflict with one member of the group, Momo, when talking about the purpose of life. Momo, while wrapping a marihuana cigarette asserts that life is void and all politics is only a “power-game” to hide the absurdity of life. Marji disagrees with him and gets angry, saying that, “Some people give their lives for freedom. Do you think my uncle died for fun?” This scene is a strong juxtaposition of two fundamentally unlike histories that are happening synchronously, but at a different place. Marji is torn between these contexts. On the one hand, she would like to fit in and be accepted. On the other hand, however, she cannot forget who she is and where she is coming from. Marji’s past experience and the memory about her family in Iran seems to be incompatible with thesuperficial and careless attitude of her Austrian friends.

Marji is a transitional character. She negotiates multiple competing discourses, throughout the narrative but she is never fully satisfied with any one of them. She encounters various approaches to what is going on in the world and realizes that history is a process contingent on who is speaking, who is listening and where one is standing. Marji, when in Vienna, is wearing two hats at the same time. She tries to fit in the Western context; she wears Western clothes, socializes the way people around her do; she even

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pretends she is French at one point to escape stereotyping. However, deeply inside, she cannot stop thinking about her home country and the on-going warfare. Her Vienna friends are in a different situation.

They have never seen an actual war besides some images on TV; thus, their minds wend another way.

Persepolis illustrates the capriciousness of history on the example from post-Revolutionary atmosphere in Iran. Marji was ridiculing the symbol of fake heroism and the fact that it was considered very “cool” to have marks from the war. Marji says, “Everyone had been a revolutionary. Everyone had fought the Shah. Our neighbor’s birthmark has magically became a war wound,” implying that people always flit to the side of the winner. A similar trend of quick adjusting and shifting sides was observable in the official state rhetoric. After the Revolution, one ideology switched to another and began to manipulate history in the opposite direction (but with the same zest). Books had to be rewritten because a new ideology brought new rhetoric. As Marji says, “Our teacher, who loved the Shah, made us tear up the photos of the royal family in our books. Political enemies thrived and the old internal enemies became national heroes,” confirming the age-long wisdom that history is in the hands of a beholder. The belief in the new ideology was questionable. As Marji’s dad proclaims when getting rid of policemen who intended to search his house for alcohol, “Arrogant, but no ideology. A few bills make them forget.” In Vienna, Marji’s greatest asset, evaluated by her peers, seems to be the fact that she experienced the war. Everyone asks her questions; everyone is interested in the fact that she was in a real war. Similarly, when she returns to Iran, her friends and relatives admire her for visiting the West. This scene is portrayed with Marji as if sitting on a throne, admits audiences. After talking to her, many realize that she is not westernized as much as they expected, when projecting stereotypes about the Westerners on Marji. They aredisappointed and leave.

The direct approach of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir to history is problematic. On the one hand, both central characters, in some ways, seem to live quite an ahistorical life, a life without the perception of ramifications of occurring historical events. Crucial, world politic-shifting events go on imminently around them. Despite this, Marji cares about boys and music and Ari mourns over his break-up with a girlfriend. In Ari’s case, the disinterest in current events looks more remarkable than in Marji’s case because Ari is a soldier, in the immediate epicenter of war, directly “creating the history” by serving the

Israeli army. On the other hand, both movies strongly emphasize the importance of family memory and the heritage that family members pass from one generation to another.

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The history of Iran is, in Persepolis,packaged for the viewer narrated to Marji by her father. In her vigorous fantasy, young Marji draws pictures in her head. These pictures are presented to the audience as a puppet show of Iranian history. This way, Persepolis makes the audiencefamiliar with the complex Iranian history, providing a necessary context to understand the storyline. The political review, however, is overtly inscribed by Marji’s fantastic pictures that arise in her imagination when listening to her father. The viewer is reminded of the “greedy Europeans” who supported the Shah’s regime in exchange to access for oil and on the switching rulers who always started with promises of liberty and democracy and ended up as dictators. Although this “history class” might seem biased and one-sided, it is not disturbing because the history in Persepolis is an interpretation of Marji’s family members. It is not introduced by an omniscient voice-over but rather by Marji’s father or uncle. The movie does not present itself as an objective documentary but rather as a personal memoir of a girl who encounters various people, and all these people read history differently, based on their subjective background and perspective, leaving her overwhelmed by all dissimilar interpretations. The importance of family memory, is in both movies emphasized, suggesting that the “personal” matters to individuals more than the “general.” People remember the best things that they perceived with their own senses. As uncle Anoush says in Persepolis, “I’m telling you this because you need to know. The family memory must live on. Even if it’s not easy for you to understand,” and he narrates to Marji the story of his life, his persecution under the Shah and his fleeing to Russia as in the form of a bed-time story. Marji responds in a very serious tone, “Don’t worry, uncle Anoush, I’ll never forget,” and her huge animated eyes highlight the significance of this conversation for Marji. Later, she seems to be flattered by her uncle’s adult approach to her. When she receives a bread-swan, as a loving gesture from her uncle, she is very excited and smiles ear-to-ear.

The importance of family history is proven in Waltz with Bashir, when Ari’s friend, Ori Sivan, a psychologist, discovers Ari’s burden of genocide that was passed onto him by his parents who were in the

World War II concentration camps. Waltz with Bashir implies a boomerang of genocide in Ari’s family history. It was launched by Nazi prosecutors during World War II, when they were harassing Ari’s parents in concentration camps. During the Lebanon War, the boomerang was symbolically caught by their son,

Ari, who stood by the genocide that occurred in Sabra and Shatila camps four decades later. This symbolic heritage of the Holocaust was described by Ori, whohelped Ari to decode his thoughts and analyze his

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guilt. Additionally, the TV correspondent, Ron Ben-Yishai, who covered the Lebanon War, claims that he arrived to the camps saying “What a mess. You remember that picture from the Warsaw ghetto? The one with the kid holding his hands in the air? That’s just how the long line of women, old people and children looked,“ comparing the massacre in Sabra and Shatila to the Holocaust during the World War II. This comparison demonstrates a cycle of historical repetition in Ari’s family tradition where the son’s experience approximates the experience of his parents; however, the son is put in the opposite role, rather than in the role of the victim.

All these pieces of analysis represent the role personal memory plays for the central characters,

Marji and Ari, in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. This focus on personal memory is a priceless source of information, since the movies offer an authentic peek into Marji’s and Ari’s past experience. As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, when discussing Pierre Nora’s opinion on the modern memory-history relationship, “history, written by professionals, has come to replace traditional memory characteristic of older, particularly agrarian societies” (Guynn 173). Observing that contemporary society extracts knowledge from the authorities of history rather than from the contemporaries who are still alive, the author claims that the public loses valuable first-hand testimony (173). Further, Nora criticizes that, today, actual witnesses of historical events have not enough authority to share their testimonies, although many of them are still alive. The reason is that the current approach to history casts a privileged voice to authorities, who are re-interpreting and re-creating a representation of historical events (173). As explained earlier in the analysis, today, the media has the focal voice in the process of transmitting historical information. In the media, various people have the space to express their opinions on historical events, often including simplifying summaries, generalizations and personal interpretations. This, media-created, information is then taken for the “actual past reality” and people accept it for “history.” However, actual history is rarely simple, clear, linear or noncontroversial. Rather, history can be narrated from endless subject positions, since every person in the world might have a slightly different perception of occurring events. Given this circumstance, the analyzed movies provide a rare first-hand testimony that, at least according to Nora, is lacking in today’s public historiographiccorpus. In Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, memory is not replaced by created history, as Nora criticizes in his theory. Consequently, actual memories of a person

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who lived through the modern Iranian upheavals or the Lebanon War provide the cinematic texts with exclusivity, immediacy and intimacy.

The movies do not aspire to be overall, general testimonies of every Iranian or every Israeli soldier from that time. Vice versa. The movies make it very clear that their ambition is in the uniqueness, authenticity and unrepeatability of Marji’s and Ari’s experience, the experience of someone outside the ruling elite, that traditional history used to focus on. Theirstories have been developing for a lifetime, drawing on the family heritage of their relatives and other people who they came in contact with. The movies attract attention to the fact that it is impossible to tell a single story of their countries’ political, social and cultural development. The strength of the films is in the portrayal of one actual person’s experience and subjective perspective. The experience of the main characters is in no way applicable on everyone in their country, not even on everyone in their family. Rather than providing an authoritative generalization, as the traditional historians often tend to do, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir offer one, small, authentic perspective.

The approach to historiography in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir in many ways matches

Rosenstone’s description of postmodern history cinema that the author discusses in his Visions of the Past.

Explaining what the postmodern approach does to history, Rosenstone lists eleven points (point 1 – point

11) that werequoted in the introduction of this thesis, in the section Historiography and Postmodern

Cinema. Here, I am going to look at the analyzed movies through Rosenstone’s postmodern framework and examine in which regard it applies to them.

Persepolis’s film’s author, Marjane Satrapi narrates her personal experience in retrospect. Her authorial voice in the movie is represented by her animated alter ego, Marji. The narrative rolls out when this girl sits at the Parisian airport, Orly, after leaving her home country for the second time. Marji, deeply preoccupied with her thoughts, lights up a cigarette. A stereotypically Western-looking woman next to her, immediately protests by waving the smell from her face. This microcosmic scene sets up the tone for the narrative, illustrating the mocking of West versus Middle East stereotyping that will keep intersecting during the entire film. This woman personifies the recent anti-smoking fashion that is currently in vogue in the West and Marji, who rolls her eyes and movesover a little bit before she inhales the cigarette again, establishes her character that does not care much for what others think about her. Marji is sorting out her

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memories while sitting on a bench in a bright red coat. The color in this airport scene contrasts with the black-and-white remainder of the movie. This is not an accident. Animation itself creates a critical distance from the truth; it underlines subjectivity and self-reflexivity. Color limitation operates similarly. Black-and- white imagery isa chosen expressive technique that highlights self-reflexivity (point 1). The viewer is reminded that the black-and-white happenings are a product of Marji’s memory, while the “reality” is the contemplating girl at the Parisian airport in full color.

Waltz with Bashir is a story about a man who wants to create a memoir about his experience in the Lebanon War but does not remember anything. The viewer follows Ari Folman’s animated investigation of his own past. Folman animates himself to share the process of his search for his lost memories with the audience, drawing attention to the origin and method of the movie and being self- reflexive (point 1). He seeks out people, talks to them and, gradually, his memories start to come back.

Again, sharing this strategy with Persepolis, Waltz with Bashir uses color symbolism to highlight subjectivity of memories. The most part of the narrative takes place in the present. The present time is animated in truthful colors that resemble and correspond to the way everyone sees the world. The memories, on the other hand, are in some cases (especially in the most memorable, fatal ones) color- symbolical. The colors bear a meaning by standing for a particular emotion, with which the moment is fixed in the narrator’s memory, emphasizing subjectivity and personal coping with the situation.

The present/past intermixing (point 6) is a way to draw attention to the inseparability of these two.

Persepolis, as well as Waltz with Bashir, constantly reminds the viewer of the fact that these stories are narrated from the author’s present (and thus remote) perspective, which influences the way Satrapi and

Folman think about the past. At the same time, however, both authors are aware of the fact that the past determines their present, implying reciprocity of the process and keeping in mind that the present is the site of all past representation and knowing (point 11). Rather than summing up the meaning of Iranian recent politics since the overthrow of the Shah and of the Lebanon War with focus on the massacre in Sabra and

Shatila, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir make sense of these past events in a partial or open-ended manner (point 8). The partiality is caused by the subjectivity and high level of personalization of their perspective. In addition, both films lack any definite denouement and leave the audience without sharing what might follow. Persepolis raises questions regarding what happens to Marji after she leaves her home

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country for the second time, since the viewer remembers that the first time was not a very happy experience. Similarly, Waltz with Bashir provokes questions about Ari’s future and the way he will deal with his discovered past. This way, rather than serving history in a totalized manner, by constantly drawing attention to the interconnectedness of the present with the past, the movies raise questions, rather than present definite conclusions, and goad the audience to think.

Both movies employ a multiplicity of viewpoints (point 2) to call attention to the conditionality of history and on its dependency on who speaks, where and to whom. In Persepolis, the diversity of perspectives is achieved by a permanent feed of viewpoints represented by people Marji encounters. On the macro level, the film addresses the cultural gap of Western and Middle Eastern culture and the competing discourse of the official Iranian state rhetoric and the experience of Marji’s family. The main heroine is open to new discourses. She is in a position of constant negotiation with the context around her, never to her complete satisfaction.

Waltz with Bashir, although dealing exclusively with the Israeli side of the conflict, is a mosaic of various fragmentary (point 10) perspectives of soldiers who shared Ari’s war experience with him. All these men have a different experience from the Lebanon War but the moments where their stories intersect with Ari’s footprints help the central character to open up his memory. Ari’s memory comes back step by step, in a non-chronological order. First, he remembers his days off, on leave only, since these were mostly memories that did not have much attachment to his conscience. The more fatal recollections, which help one understand Ari’s role in the massacre and who he is now, come much later, since they have a higher potential to create trauma and change the way Ari will think about himself. This way, the movie eschews traditional narrative with clear beginning, middle and end (point 3). Rather, the narrative consists of fragments (point 10). Ari’s main concern gravitates on one focal topic, the massacre in Sabra and Shatila.

Conversations with other soldiers serve as a medium to approximate the main character to his suppressed experience. Every interview adds one piece into the mosaic but not until the end does one decode the meaning of the scene that repeats in the film three times but always discloses a little bit more, paralleling

Ari’s disclosure of his own memory.

The way Persepolis approaches the past is with humor and parody (point 5). Humor has the power to break the ice; it promotes communication and opens up dialogue, in contrast to traditional history texts

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that take history strictly seriously (point 4). Comical tone is lacking in the traditional media that deal with the Middle East. For Persepolis, it is the way the movie creates its meaning and keeps its significance. By presenting issues with humor, such as veiling or censorship, the film removes the dominant ideology that ordinarily demonizes these phenomena. Rather the film approaches the issues the way some Iranians approach them, with wit. Thus, one can laugh at a fully covered female in an art class where students are supposed to practice capturing body shape, as well as at an Austrian woman whose long armpit hair dances in the breeze of a hairdryer. By contrasting both sides of the spectrum, female hiding and revealing,

Persepolis shows young Marji caught in between, desperately trying to figure out what is better.

Waltz with Bashir employs surrealism (point 5) to transmit the specific, especially traumatic, memories on war. The yellow and black hallucinatory dreams or fantasies rely on color symbolism to provoke powerful emotions and transmit the scary experience of horror to the audience. Shiny yellow strongly contrasts with flat unfamiliarity of the black. The fact that this combination is unpleasant for the eyes to watch, parallels the fact that the depicted happenings were unpleasant for the actors to witness.

Additional visual techniques that highlight the surrealism in these traumatic scenes are elongated body shapes of the characters and employment of slow motion which evokes exhaustion and difficulty to move, which symbolizes their incapability to resist the pressure and the orders that were put upon them. This way, in Ari’s central memory about three soldiers approaching the massacre, the movements of the three bodies that emerge from the ocean and put on clothes resemble slow and apathetic sheep that proceed to their own slaughter. In another scene, Carmi shares his pleasant fantasy that enabled him to escape the war reality.

Thistime, perceiving the world in blue and white, Carmi hallucinates about a giant woman who saves him from a sinking combat boat and takes him far away from the warfare. The peaceful and hope evoking combination of blue with white, however, is quickly switched to horror and blood evoking yellow and red, when Carmi wakes up from his dream and comes to realize that he is at the epicenter of an actual war.

This discussion of postmodern elements in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir indicates that both movies employ the majority of strategies that, according to Rosenstone, postmodern history cinema employs to approach the past. Keeping in mind that postmodern historical film is a tendency rather than genre (Rosenstone 220), one understands that postmodernism in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir implies

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the way of seeing history: as non-linear, open-ended, contingent on who is speaking, where and to whom the past that not elements

C. Conclusion of Chapter Three

Both movies direct the viewer’s attention to the issues surrounding historical representation and understanding in general. By presenting the discord between Marji’s lived experience and the official rhetoric of her home country’s authorities, by juxtaposing a naïve, dull ode on war with real war images that depict rather tragic and sad than heroic events in Waltz with Bashir, the movies keep the audience questioning the idea of a single, unproblematic and objective depiction of history. While watching

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, viewers are aware of the fact that the films comment on the past from a position in the present and that the two time frames flow from each other. The past necessarily determines the present and the present without question shapes the way we think, reconstruct and understand the past.

By employing the mechanism of narrating the films from retrospect, both movies emphasize the distance between present and past. Throughout the narrative of Persepolis, Marji is repeatedly depicted at the Orly airport, deeply immersed into her thoughtson events that have shaped who and where she is now. The airport is a significant place where everyone feels disconnected. It symbolizes a gateway, a possibility of a change, a place suitable for contemplation. In Waltz with Bashir, the present time dominates the past time because most of the narrative is filled up with Ari’s scavenging stories from the Lebanon War. The stories he acquires and the flashbacks he encounters himself or through memories of his friends, however, are presented to the viewer as reenactments of the experienced or dreamed events. Here, the movie additionally utilizes slow motion and sometimes nightmare-evoking yellow and black color casts to highlight the distance of the past and augment the subjectivity of the memories. By frequently awakening the viewer from the past and reminding him of the reminiscence-and memoir-like nature of the stories, both movies openly admit that what one sees is the author’s personal memory and interpretation rather than an objective truth. Does this approach diminish the informative value of the movies? Not at all. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir demonstrate how the characters approach history. The basis of the films is the authors’ subjective experience. The authenticity, personification and intimacy of their stories is a valuable asset,

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since it enables the audience to peek into someone’s memory and identify with their perception of crucial historical happenings.

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir are cultural texts that represent an alternative to traditional narratives that focus on the Middle East. As Rosenstone claims in his Visions of the Past, experimental movies of this kind, usually, have to “give up large audiences” (77) because of their accessibility limitations and high sophistication that an average film consumer does not choose to see. However, creators of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir managed to produce cinematic works that represent the experimental wave which provides an original view into the past without sacrificing the potential toattract large audiences.

Further, Rosenstone argues that to uncover the “hidden past” one does not succeed with

“Hollywood-style films that will comfort the audience with a nice emotional release” (183). Rather, the film must “jerk the audience out of its well-made dreams—out of the passive role of film consumer” “…by creating disturbing film forms and utilizing a new film language that will make historical issues vital, urgent, full of contemporary meaning.” If applying this, Rosenstone’s, approach to the analyzed movies,

Waltz with Bashir fits better than Persepolis. The first movie’s nightmarish atmosphere that penetrates the whole narrative combined with the unprecedented ending that makes every viewer uneasy, does exactly what Rosenstone calls “jerk[ing] the audience out of its well-made dreams…” After seeing Waltz with

Bashir, one does not leave the movie theatre with a pleasant experience. More importantly, the pleasant experience is not desired, either. Rather, the film provokes thoughts on the general tragedy of war and particularly on the people’s impotence to learn from the past. The idea that no institution was able to prevent another holocaust from happening is the message that Waltz with Bashir points out to. In

Persepolis’s case, the movie’s overall humorous tone is a wonderful tool to promote identification with a viewer. On the other hand, however, it makes the evils that the movie portrays to look milder. The child- like style, additionally, enables the viewer to pass by many unpleasant events, believing that it is just an outcome of a child’s vigorous imagination. Persepolis is far from “disturbing,” Rosenstone’s characteristic for a successful evoking of the lost past. This movie’s strength, however, consists in its ability to influence on multiple levels. One can enjoy it as a pleasant, humorous story of an Iranian girl, or one can perceive its deeper implications, such as the fatality of one’s origin, the difficulty of emigration, stereotyping and

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generalizing, service to ideology that everyone somehow engages in. These issues might provoke disturbing and uneasy thoughts in viewers of Persepolis, although not in the form as brutal and as inescapable as in Waltz with Bashir.

The first chapter on form and generic tendencies showed that the movies use a combination of animated form that excels at utilizing expressive means together with a memoir-like narrative that invites accessibility and identification. The following chapter on representation indicated that Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir engage in an untraditional portrayal of people in the Middle East by highlighting the human dimension of these people and by pointing out to things that a Middle Easterner has in common with a

Westerner, rather than to their differences. This last chapter on historiography, shows that the postmodern treatment of history in the analyzed movies impersonates a unique, subjective insight into the past. By addressing larger issues that transcend the region of the Middle East, the movies’ attractiveness surpasses the borders of the Middle Eastern region and encourages critical thinking in everyone.

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V. CONCLUSION

The goal of this thesis was to examine the portrayal of people living in the Middle East in two animated movies, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, in contrast with the dominant representation of Middle

Easterners in the Western media. The thesis engaged in a careful analysis of three aspects of the films to inspect whether these cultural texts articulate something different about the fabled Middle Eastern region and how they achieve it. Those three aspects are the form and generic setting of the movies, the content and theoretical underpinnings.

First, the analysis anatomized the form and generic elements of the featured movies. The chapter looked at Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir through the lens of established generic categories in order to elucidate which film genres the movies combine. Additionally, the discussion of the animated form predicted the visual possibilities that this form offers and set up the groundwork for the following examination of actual representation of people living in the Middle East in Persepolis and Waltz with

Bashir. Familiar with the expressive opportunities that animation offers and with the untraditional mixture of genres that both movies employ, in the second chapter, the analysis focused on the portrayal of Middle

Easterners in dialogue with the dominant Western media discourse about this region. Lastly, the analysis culminated its search for anunconventional narrative about the Middle East by drawing attention to the way Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir employ historiography. Both films shift their focus from the documentary-like quest for objectivity and reconstruction of the “objective truth” to the sphere of intimate and personal retrospection of groundbreaking historical happenings. Additionally, thefilms center on average individuals, suggesting a postmodern approach to history that adheres to the idea that an “objective truth” is an unattainable phenomenon that is in a relationship with history always contingent on who is saying it, where to whom. All three chapters together, step by step, indicate that Persepolis and Waltz with

Bashir offer an alternative viewpoint about the people living in the Middle East that stands out when juxtaposed withtraditional narratives about the Middle East that dominate the Western media. As

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mentioned in the Introduction, alternative media production is a necessary and desired counterbalance to the distorted portrayal that retains stereotypes and manipulates the public opinion, strategically feeding into strengthening of the myth of the “Other” (Renov 44). Drawing on this claim, Persepolis and Waltz with

Bashir are valuable cultural texts that provide this alternative outlook. Interestingly, although being alternative and highly intellectual, the movies donot compromise their accessibility, digestibility and attractiveness. This way, the films have a potential to address broader audiences than traditional alternative articulating intellectual texts which makes them all the more significant and remarkable.

The first chapter on form and generic tendenciestreats genre in terms that Steve Neale determined in his “Questions of Genre.” Neale explains that genre is always a process; its meaning shifts with each new genre film that stretches the meaning of a specific genre a little bit further while drawing on the previous films in the same generic corpus at the same time. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, however, are not genre films. They are generic hybrids that pull their intertextual meaning from multiple genres while not embodying any single one of them fully. Both movies draw on conventions from various generic corpuses, combining traditions of multiple genres together. The reason for their hybridization is perhaps an effort to escape genre conventions that would inject an undesired meaning into films. Genre films never escape the intertext connotation of other films of the same genre. This poses a limitation for films that want to avoid a context that might shift their meaning or reception. Consequently, Persepolis and Waltz with

Bashir selectively pull on only those traditions and conventions that serve their goal.

As the analyses indicate, animation represents the choice of the aesthetic form of the analyzed movies. It enables the authors to give rein to their fantasies and capture their memories with the same intensity, subjectivity and significance that is stored in their own minds. Free from compromises that bind down classicalreal-life action films, animation enables filmmakers to achieve maximum artistic and aesthetic expressivity. This transcends the purely visual experience by including something beyond the appearance, e.g. the atmosphere of the moment that André Bazin attributes to the advantage of paintings over photographs. Furthermore, as discussed in the analysis, animation benefits from a great potential to evoke emotions that exceed the potential of real-live action (Cavanagh qtd. in Power 115). Additionally, animation is capable of directing the audience’s attention by hyperbole and exaggeration that navigates a viewer’s attention by making some elements stand out by augmentation of size or by simply erasing the 119

less meaningful elements of the scene. In real-live action, the attention is usually directed by the manipulation of depth of field. The camera’s shallow focus determines which part of the scene will get the most attention. This technique, nevertheless, hardly reaches the attention drawing potential of animation.

Animated form creates a critical distance. In contrast to real-live action, an animated film builds up certain remoteness from the truth, suggesting that, instead of representing the “truth,” the film is about someone’s personal view of their own experience.

In the case of Persepolis, the animated form is an artistic paradigm for a film that is narrated in an autobiographical manner. The memoir-like strategy of the central heroine whose memory is flooded with detailed recollections is combined withthe elements of teen film and comic books. Teen film is slightly reflected in this intellectual text by the focus on the coming of age phase, by the characters’ obsession with fashionthat takes precedence over substance and by the seemingly playful and simplistic style. Inaddition, a comic book resembling aesthetic has the potential to appeal to young audiences without excluding older generations. The comic book heritage is clearly derived from the film’s graphic novel predecessor. The simplicity and cleanliness of style that bubbles over with images of childish boisterous imagination contrasts with the urgency, weight and seriousness of the topics that the movie touches on. This way, the analyzed cinematic piece addresses heavy themes in a simple form while keeping its intellectual depth and highly expressive aesthetic.

Waltz with Bashir utilizes animation to depict surrealist, horror-like and hallucinatory recollections of the Israeli soldiers who participated in the Lebanon war and whotodaystill deal with the trauma that this experience developed. Waltz with Bashir is a paradoxical self-referential non-fiction presentation about Ari, the main character, who would like to make a film, a memoir, about his experience in the Lebanon War but he does not remember anything. The movie could be regarded as an anti-memoir or as a personal documentary. The narrative follows Ari’s investigation of his lost memory and his attempt to fill in the blanks. Taking up on autobiographical fragments of his friends’ memories, step by step, Ari’s selective recollections start to make sense and he begins to remember. By blurring the line between fiction and non-fiction and intermixing autobiographical memories with dreams, hallucinations and fantasy, the film draws attentionto the phenomenon of memory and deconstructs the traditional idea of documentary by

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suggesting that personal experience and intimate, subjective, perception of an event affects people, justifying the relevance of imagination and subconscious.

Both films’ intellectual and emotional orientation that draw its “meat” from spheres that are beyond traditional documentary, imply a “new form of documentary,” an essay film (Richter qtd. in

Rascaroli 27). In accord with the discussion of essay film, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir privilege the complexity of subjective experience over raw historical facts. They enrich historical happenings by adding intimate fantasies, peaks into imagination and dreams, transmitting and evoking emotion. Maintaining a reflexive, subjective and personal voice, together with the intermixing of reality with dreams and fantasies, creates a collage of human experience that blurs the strict line between fiction and non-fiction, a characteristic signifying an essay film.

Persepolis’s and Waltz with Bashir’s unique combination of animated form with conventions borrowed from various film genres gives rise to movies that are based solely on their authors’ memories, thus challenge Siegfried Kracauer’s assertion that historical movies can never truthfully represent history because they are only imitations (qtd. in Rosenstone 25). In addition, the fact that animated movies are free from compromises that would result from actors and actresses interpretations that would manipulate,

“create” a meaning. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir utilize sophisticated artistic means of animated expression, in combination with autobiographical approach that adds to the films’ authenticity and personification. Additionally, they draw on traditions from other genres, challenging the idea of a strict line between fiction and non-fiction. This way, the movies stretch the traditional perspective about the Middle

East, while staying accessible, poetic, aesthetic and entertaining.

The specific way these movies stretchthe representation of Middle Easterners is examined in the next chapter. This chapter examines how Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir achieve an alternative perspective of the region that is usually fabled with stereotypes. At the beginning, the chapter emphasizes that the stereotype that is associated with Marji, as an Iranian, differs from the one that is connected with

Ari, as an Israeli. Coming from a country that is heavily associated with Islam and that was denounced as a member of the “Axis of Evil” by the former president G. W. Bush creates an obvious problem for Marji who tries to fit in in Austria. Ari, on the other hand, benefits from an overall sympathetic and affectionate attitude toward Israel that is widely spread in the United States. Overall,however, the Middle Eastern 121

region is heavily weighted by prejudice and black-and-white simplifications that cause misrepresentation and misperception of the Middle Eastern culture as the culture of the “Other,” cementing the polarized

Western worldview that establishes the Middle East as its central source of problems.

In contrast with the traditional portrayal, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir provide an alternative perspective about people living in the Middle East. Both movies center on individuals who experience major historical events; however, both main characters feel a part of and, simultaneously, outside of the happenings to which that they are physically present, in Iran and Lebanon. This way, the movies draw attention to representation itself, instead of perpetuating the Western media’s traditional portrayal. The ambiguous characters, Marji and Ari, who negotiate their positions throughout the narrative, demonstrate how people struggle with representation and how they think about it.

Marji, themain character of Persepolis, is caught in between her Western and Oriental identity, which is, by the media, usually depicted as being in diametric opposition. How is it possible that Marji negotiates these two back and forth, in and out, throughout her life, then? The bathroom scene, which plays at the Parisian airport, where Marji, wearing her modest Iranian clothing, encounters a scantily dressed female who openly advertises her femininity to the public eye, illustrates that the heroine is torn apart. She is not fully comfortable in her original, Oriental, neither in her Western shoes. Although this scene is mainly about the contrast in clothing customs, on a larger scale, it indicates Marji’s state of mind and her struggle to find herself.

Similarly,in Waltz with Bashir, the central character, Ari, encounters the gap between the military discourse on heroism and his actual experience. To illustrate this contrast, the movie utilizes the juxtaposition of images with words that contradict each other. The powerful set of tragic war scenes that overflow with errors and human tragedy is accompanied by a naïve, celebratory ode on war that praises toughness, courage, fearlessness and confidence of soldiers. These characteristics, however, are lacking in the majority of soldiers who are interviewed throughout the film. Besides that fact that lyrics, as well as the singer’s performance, are primitive, banal and dull, they dramatically contrast with the experience that Ari and his friends had in the Lebanon War.

Attention to the issue of representation is augmented by the movies’ animated form. As already mentioned in the first chapter on genre, animation creates a certain distance, in contrast to real-live action 122

representation. While real-live action might evoke the feeling that the film somehow represents or reflects the “truth,” the animated form incites the feeling of a portrayal that someone else has in his or her mind. In this regard, animation is more personal, more subjective and more creative. Using Bazin’s claims about painting versus photography and applying them to animation versus real-life action, similar principles follow. Animation prefers emotional realism over visual realism –as Pat Power stated in his “Animated

Expressions” (118) – which opensup new possibilities of portrayal.

Persepolis represents a challenge to the dominant distorted portrayal of Iranians. Opposing the black-and-white worldview, the movie approaches serious issues, keeping a lightweight tone enriched by humor; thus, creating an inviting setup for thinking about weighty topics, such as prejudice, political injustice or veiling. Additionally, by presenting two extremes of the spectrum, e.g. on the example of clothing, Persepolis holds a mirror to Western society, enabling the Western people to look at themselves first, before judging the “Other.” The film focuses on average Iranians whose characteristics, desires and ambitions very much resemble people of the West, with the exception that Iranians suffer from the state- generated persecution. This promotes identification with these Middle Easterners which is a priceless step for the demystification of Iran as the seedpod of evil.

Waltz with Bashir challenges the idealized image of Israelis by focusing on the global atrocitiesof war in general, rather than on any differences between soldiers of any particular side. The film offers a valuable and rare reverse perspective at war. Instead of focusing on war heroism, Waltz with Bashir investigates the war trauma and negative consequences of a soldier’s psyche after experiencing the war.

This way, heroism is being looked down upon, as if it were a necessary display of someone’s lacking masculinity or a vent for aggression. It is necessary to highlight that although critical of war, the movie still features an already sympathetic Israeli soldier who is the enlightened one, the one who knows that war is bad and who attempts to reeducate people. At the end, the movie perpetuates sympathy for Israel, supporting the persisting idea that Israelis are the “good guys,” the educated ones, the ones who esteem democratic and human values. This, per se, is not a problem. Why would it be? The Israeli perspective is equally relevant to any other perspective of other sides that were present to the 1982 massacre. It is up to witnesses of the massacre on other sides to articulate their view and possibly broaden the audience’s outlook. 123

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir unobtrusively offer the viewer to step into the shoes of an average Iranian girl and of an average Israeli soldier and mediate a personal experience to the audience.

Offering a subjective view about objective events that are happening implies a postmodernapproach of history that is examined in the last chapter of this thesis.

In terms of depicting history, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir are not films that approximate or clarify the historical context of modern Iran or of the Lebanon War. Both movies assume that the viewer already knows something about these groundbreaking historical events, since they still resonate in the public’s consciousness today. Instead of focusing on information, which is what traditional documentaries usually do, both analyzed movies focus on the phenomenon of human memory. By pointing out the malleability of memory, the films unsettle the way we think about history. In this regard, the movies are deconstructive. They draw attention to the things the viewer knows and turn them on their head. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir understand history in postmodern terms; as an open-ended, non-linear, unfolding process that depends on who is speaking, who is listening and where one stands when saying it. This is clearly demonstrated in the example of both central characters, Marji and Ari.

The whole narrative of Persepolis is filtered through Marji. She lives in different places and encounters various people who all have their views: her parents, her uncle, teachers, or friends in Austria.

Marji tries on these dissimilar discourses and realizes that none of them is completely working for her. She realizes on her own that history is contingent on who stands where and whom one addresses. Since she travels and lives both in the West and in the Middle East, the heroine gets a unique insight. However, consequently, she never feels at home; she is never fully accepted and develops a permanent identity crisis.

Marji is too open-minded and too outspoken to live in post-Revolutionary Islamic Iran. When in Austria, she encounters strange anonymity and ignorance toward happenings in her home country and she cannot stand it. Exhausted, mentally as well as physically, she returns back to Iran only to depart a couple of years later. Enriched by her Iranian college degree and an unsuccessful marriage experience, she leaves Iran for the second time. At the airport, in Paris, Marji sits down and recollects her life up to this moment. This way, her autobiographical narration begins and comes full circle, at the very end, when she arrives in Paris.

While Marji’s head is flooded with memories on her childhood and growing up in Iran and

Austria, Ari’s memory on the Lebanon War is absent. Consequently, Marji’s story is narrated exclusively 124

by her, in a mode ofself-inscription. Ari’s story, on the other hand, depends on recollections of other people whose fragmented narrations help Ari to penetrate into his suppressed memory. When meeting these multiple soldiers who participated in the Lebanon War, Ari encounters various narratives that all relate to the same event, the 1982 massacre in the Beirut refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. Nevertheless, all stories differ. Every soldier has a dissimilar experience. Moreover, the personal experience is shaped by the soldiers’ emotions, imagination and by the way they currently approach this specific episode in their lives.

Ari realizes that history essentially depends on who is narrating it, to whom one speaks and where (or when) one stands. Waltz with Bashir demonstrates that people’s memory is shaped by a constant negotiation with their own past, suggesting that memory about the same event shifts in time. This idea is clearly observable on Ari’s gradually unfolding remembrance of his role in the massacre. The identical scene of Ari getting into Beirut and approaching the massacre repeats in the film three times. Every time, however, the movie reveals more, paralleling Ari’s rediscovered memory. Similarly, in the case of other soldiers who help the central character to unravel his lost experience, these other men project their dreams, nightmares, fantasies or justifications into the retellings of what they happen to remember. By justification,

I mean their personal ways of dealing with their own conscience. Dror, for example, excuses his passive bystanding to the massacre by reporting the witnessed atrocities to his commander. Carmi refuses to admit to any guilt, claiming that he does not remember anything. Perhaps, he simply does not want to remember.

Altogether, the interviews in Waltz with Bashir show that the line between a victim of a situation and a perpetrator is unclear. One can hardly live carrying the personal responsibility for standing by when others were being slaughtered. Consequently, people need to develop waysto adjust their memories on this weighted past. The movie, Waltz with Bashir, is about how this negotiation with one’s own memory and conscience occurs. At the end, the diversity of perspectives that are being offered, together with varying interpretations of the same event, the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, raises the question of the traceability of an objective historical truth. Insisting that everyone interprets history subjectively, the movie challenges the idea of a truthful, unbiased portrayal, in accord with the postmodern approach to history.

This analysis indicated that Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir represent an alternative to the dominant Western media portrayal of the Middle East. The films challenge the traditional Western rhetoric that tends to depict the Middle East as the “Other.” Whether representing the demonized Iranians or 125

idealized Israelis, both films focus on what people have in common instead of what sets them apart. The issues these movies approach by far surpass national or regional borders in the Middle East. The animated form provides Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir with a large palette of artistic expressions that invite personal depictions of imagination, dreams and hallucinations, moving along the edge of reality. The memoir-like style furnishes the films with authenticity and personification that increase identification with the characters. Additionally, the hybrid generic form of both films accommodates the narrative that disrespects the strict border between fiction and non-fiction and reality and fantasy. Altogether, the generic liberty endowed by the animated form creates a welcoming environment for an alternative portrayal of

Middle Easterners that surpasses the dominant Western media discourse on the region. Free from generic constraints, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, turn the distorted image of the fabled region upside down

(through narratives that challenge the black-and-white simplistic worldview) and provide a reverse perspective, holding the mirror to the West. Rather than demonstrating a clear standpoint, judging and moralizing, the analyzed films point out to intercultural intolerance, misunderstanding, the absurdity of war caused by lack of knowledge about other cultures and perception of them as the “Other.“ The major asset of

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir consists in the films’ ability to reach beyond the level of seeking a

“truthful,” “objective,” “real,” portrayal. The analyzed movies assume that such a portrayal is unattainable anyway. Consequently, they do not aspire to offer any more accurate perspective on the Middle East.

Instead, the texts point out the conditionality of one’s standpoint and the development of one’s perspective in time. Dealing with history throughout their narratives, the films disclose that history is always dependent on who is saying it, where one is standing (geographically or timewise) and whom one addresses.

Depicting central characters negotiating their own lives, roles and the people they meet, the films attract attention to the issues of representation, exposing stereotyping and turning it on its head. Cultural texts like this matter because they represent a small part in the chain of ideas that need to occur in order to transform the general public’s consciousness about the Middle East. Not that texts like this do not exist; however, rarely do these texts keep their intellectual and critical qualities while staying aesthetically inviting, widely understandable and entertaining, at the same time.

Consistent with these qualities, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir are priceless mediums that might attract viewers who generally avoid traditional documentaries, perhaps because they do not like the feeling 126

of being educated or because they simply distance themselves from serious and political topics. The analyzed movies, however, while highly accessible and understandable,force one to think about the Middle

East in different terms and challenge the general consciousness about the region. This way, the films do serviceto the idea of democracy that functions the best when an informed public engages in conscious decisions. Today, the general public often turns away from politics because many people feel that it is too complex, too difficult and too broad to comprehend. Traditional documentaries sometimes encourage this attitude with their austere style that struggles to attract wide viewership. Alternative cultural texts, such as

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, offer a precious invitation into the awareness of politicalhappenings by resonating the chord of humanity in an intimate and personal approach.

This research assumed some audience-related behaviors, e.g. the accessibility of the films and the ability to identify with the central characters, without actually engaging in any audience analysis. In the future, it would be desirable to expand this study by a careful audience analysis that would pay attention to the viewership perception of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. A thoughtful investigation of audience perception should consider diversity of ages, education, nationality and religious orientation toprecisely indicate specific ways the audience evaluates the movies, relates to them and identifies with the characters.

This audience analysis should investigate whether the image of the Middle East that viewers had in their heads before screening of the films changed after seeing Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. Additionally, it would be beneficial to examine the analyzed films through the lens of a gender-based approach that would pay attention i.e. to the articulation of femininity and masculinity in Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir.

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VI. EPILOGUE

I started to work on this thesis in the fall of 2010. Since that time, many crucial political events have occurred. Some of them deserve recognition here because they significantly shape the public perception of the Middle East.

Large nationaluprisings in the Middle East that started in the beginning of 2011 have already caused the falls of Tunisia’s and Egypt’s presidents which spread quickly growing into unrest and instability in the whole region. At the head of Western media’s focus is the Libyan opinionated leader,

Muammar Gaddafi, who has tried to suppress the revolt in Libya without any hesitation to use violence.

Soon, the battle of Gaddafi’s forces and the rebels culminated in a civil war. At the end of March 2011

“liberators” entered, first, by diplomatic and, second, by military intervention using multiple nations’ forces under the supervision of NATO.

The Western media have been closely monitoring the current situation in the Middle East. The

“Libya Crisis” is the number one world news for the dominant news corporations, such as BBC and CNN.

The fact that people across the region revolt and unite themselves against their authoritarian rulers plays into the Western hands, since the rebels seem to be fed up with decades of dictatorialand corrupt regimes and demand establishment of democracy, the by the majority of Western-only approved ways to govern people.

Thanks to today’s state of things, the portrayal of the Middle East seems to shift.

The oversimplified black-and-white worldview that has dominated the Western media, especially strongly after the attacks of 9/11, was sententiously illustrated in the Columbus Post-Dispatch, on September 4,

2007. That day, the newspaper published a metaphorical image of Iranians “as cockroaches spewing out of a sewer” (qtd. in Dabashi ix), promoting the association of fear and incredibility with Iran or the Middle

East. Comparing this and similar imageries of the discussed region to today’s situation, one cannot disregard a certain change. Right now, speaking about spring 2011, average people in the Middle East are

128

depicted as victims of a totalitarian rule, whose patience and forbearance with their governments overflows.

Thus, they leave their former passive roles and many of them become active agents of the resistance or at least supporters of the region-wide rebellion. Currently, the media largely focus on the voices of the formerly oppressed, on average people, on women whose agency is validated in the voice of national upheavals, creating an important distinction between the “corrupt and profit-seeking” leaders and “poor,” average people who are fed up with their incompetent government. Since the rebelling crowds strive for democratic values that are close to the West, obviously, they gain Western sympathy and, moreover, diplomatic and military support.

The goal of this epilogue is not to provide an additional analysis of the most recent development of the portrayal of Middle East in the Western media. That would be far beyond the scope of this section.

Instead, this note aspires to serve as a reminder that the image of the Middle East is changing. However, it is too up-to-date and too fresh to decide what image the shifting attitude will create. One needs to keep in mind that, while the world news seems to increasingly sympathize with the average people living in the

Middle East, the sympathies are the more profound the closer these people resemble Westerners, in terms of their values, religion, goals and opinions. This observation is important because these people in the

Middle East have their own Middle Eastern identity, their shared history and their unique culture that should be respected and preserved. One would be naïve (and the media already discuss this) to believe that simple implementations of Western governmental systems will solve all the problems in the region.

It is crucial to persistently learn about the Middle East, to talk to people who are native to the region in order to understand their positions, desires, ambitions and values. This aspiration is the strength of

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir that intellectually elevates them above other cultural texts, such as a 2010

Xavier Beauvois’s film, Of Gods and Man, also deals with similar issues. However, Of Gods and Man, features French missionaries who come to Algeria with their Christian faith and, although having the holiest intentions, are killed by Islamist troops who harass the country. This film that has been awarded the

Grand Prix Award at the Cannes Film Festival, the César Award and many others cements the stereotypical gap between cultures by depicting the educated, cultivated and peace-loving Christians (moreover, coming from France, the former colonizers of Algeria) in contrast to the uncouth Islamist terrorists who are violent, aggressive and who provoke conflicts. The movie tries to communicate a troublefree symbiosis of the 129

monks with the local villagers; however, the disproportion of attention that is devoted to those who represent the West over the locals is blatant. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, on the other hand, depict people living in the Middle East as intelligent human beings composed of the same flesh and bones as people in the West, engaging in similar activities,worrying about similar things and spending time in a similar way and freeing the characters from excessive religious classification. Taking sides does not necessarily have to be a problem. Taking sides repeatedly and excluding opposing sides from media access; however, is an issue that might result in public opinion shifts. Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir challenge the dominant discourse on the Middle East and enrich it by providing unique reverse perspectives about the

West, about war, about heroism, about cultural habits. The Western viewer deserves more texts like these two.

130

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