Watson Interviews Satrapi

Vogue o
nline, August 2016

Emma Watson: In Persepolis you show the relative freedom that women experienced in Iran in the 1970s
compared to the strict laws that governed their behavior after the revolution. Do you think life is any
easier for women now than it was when you were a child?

Marjane Satrapi: According to the law, we had much more freedom because women could, for example,
ask for a divorce. But when a woman is uneducated and is not actually economically independent, you
can have all the rights to divorce that you want and it doesnt make a huge difference. At the end of the
day, you know, if you have three kids, no education, no jobwhat do you do? You dont divorce; you
have to stay with the same asshole all your life!

Today the thing is that the laws are much more anti-women. However, at the same time, it seems that
repeating over and over to women youre worth half of men, youre worth half of men has meant all
these women actually go and study much more. So that today two-thirds70 percent!of students in
Iran are girls.

And so theyre playing a role in all of these domains. In the end, this means that when these girls and
women marry, they will be more educated than their own father, their own husband, their own
brotherand then they cannot give them shit! They can no longer tell them Youre worth half of men,
you know?

So if women have the possibility of working for a living, they could actually manage to get a divorce.
First you have to have economic independence of women, and then we can talk about the freedom of
women. If women are educated, they will be economically independent and they will just accept less shit.
That is the first step toward democracy.

The enemy of democracy isnt one person. The enemy of democracy is patriarchal culture. As with the
family, where the father of the family decides and has the last word, so a dictator is the father of the
nation.

If we have more educated women, then we have more educated societies. This is without any feminist
prejudiceits fact.

I have to tell you that when I was a child, my mum used to tell me all the time: Oh, you should never
count on your face; count on your intelligence. I dont care if you get married or not. I want you to study
and to be economically independent.

Now, as a child I thought she was actually telling me: You are extremely ugly, you are never going to
make it. You shouldnt even try to be cute . . . the cause is lost and no matter what, nobody is going to
marry you so at least try to be bright!

EW: Thats how you interpreted it?!

MS: Yes, absolutely. I talked to her about it when I was 28 and she, of course, told me I was very stupid
to think like that.
EW: But I guess now, understanding the context and time in which she was telling you that, it seems
extraordinary that she was giving you this message. What do you think made your mother so
empowered? Where did this empowered line of women from which you descended come from?

MS: This has a lot to do with geographyyou know, I come from the north of Iran. Its an area where we
plant rice, where the women work beside each other, bent over all day. So there is no division between
genders.

My mother grew up in this place and she was very loved by her father and family. But you look around
and you see a society that does not say that men and women are equal. That says it cant use women for
causes other than making children or sex. Women are actually using half of their capacity or less; half of
their talents or less; half of their brains or less; half of their work or less. So this society works at half
speed or less.

But she was a woman of the 1960s and 1970s, and she really didnt want me to learn those ideas. I was
brought up with the idea that you are a human being. They never told me you are a girl or you are a
boy. They told me anything that a human being can do, that is humanly possible, you can do.

And my parents were clear that the first thing you have to do is study and, if you study, you can do
whatever you want. But if you dont study, were going to give you shit! So the calculation was very easy
because if I wanted to have peace and do whatever I wanted, I had to be good at school. And that is what
I did.

EW: I had that when I grew up as wellmy mum was pretty laid-back about a lot of things, but I had to
do well in school.

MS: Also, I think that we blame lots of things on men and how nasty they are, but there is also the role
of women. In a patriarchal culture, who are the ones that raise the children? Its the women. Its they who
say: You know, oh my girl, you have to be pretty. My son, you have all the rights, et cetera. I have seen
extremely patriarchal women and feminist men, so I dont think its a question of gender. Its a question
of intelligence.

[Omission.]

We need to be a little bit smarter.

EW: That is really disturbing. Whats coming through, and what I really identify with, is that you really
believe in human beings autonomy and their own innate power and ability to govern their
circumstances. And I think thats awesome.

MS: The only person who stops you from being free is ourselves. Nobody can take your freedom. I mean,
I have lived in a dictatorship. I know what I am talking about.

EW: I was going to sayit is so difficult for those who havent experienced it to comment on or imagine
what it is like to live in those conditions, but you have the right to say something like that because you
really know; youve lived it.

MS: I have lived in a dictatorship. There was a ban on everything! Was I less free in my mind? No, I
wasnt. Did I become a stupid person? No, I didnt. Because no matter how much they looked at me, they

Full interview: Emma Watson Interviews Persepolis Author Marjane Satrapi at

http://www.vogue.com/article/emma-watson-interviews-marjane-satrapi.
could not get into my mind. That belongs to me. And that is under my control if I decide it is. And I can
only decide that if I train it. If you dont use it, it shrinks, and if you use it, it grows. So it is up to us.

[Omission.]

EW: .I completely agree. So Uncle Anoosh tells your younger self in the book: Its important that you
know. Our family memory must not be lost. Even though its not easy for you, even if you dont
understand it all. How much did this idea inform the writing of Persepolis?

MS: Oh, very much so. Forgiveness is a good thing because you cannot go on living your life being angry,
because then you become like the people you hate. And that is exactly what is happening in the world
that we live in.

Our response to violence is violence. If we start playing the same game as the people whom we accuse,
that is very dangerous.

Ignorant people I can forgive, because theyre ignorant. But somebody who knows what hes doing is bad
and does it anyway, that is ten times worse. So I tried to forgive, but I realized when I started writing this
book that I was full of so much hate and angerI wanted to kill everyone! Everybody needed to be
punished.

And I wrote a couple of pages and I was like: [Expletive], Im exactly like them. Im exactly like them
and that is where they have succeededto make me like them. So I decided to take my time, to cool
down and to understand what happened. And from the moment you understand something, its not that
you justify it, but you can analyze it better.

And so it wasnt so much a matter of autobiography, because normally an autobiography is a book that
you write because you hate your family and your friends and you dont know how to say it to them, so
you write a book and let them read it themselves.

EW: Thats the best description of an autobiography Ive ever heard!

MS: I didnt have any other way to write about my story. I could not suddenly say, Oh, this is an
analysis of what happened in the70s and the 80s and the 90s in Iran, because I am not a historian and
Im not a politician. Im a person who was born in a certain place, in a certain time, and I can be unsure
about everything, but I am not unsure of what I have lived. I know it.

And it was very personala very small thing, which was important. As soon as you start to talk about a
nation, what is a nation? I mean, are all British people the same? Of course not. You have nice
peoplelike you. You have hooligans. You have all sorts of people. So one person youthe readercan
identify with; a nation you cant identify with.

[Omission.]

EW: .Im interested because obviously in the West, we project all of these quite strange ideas onto
what we think things are like in Iran, or what your life may have been like. Do you think women, and
particularly Western women, have blind spots in ways that we are oppressed? Do you think that we are
quite judgmental about the cultures but dont really look into our own and miss things?

Full interview: Emma Watson Interviews Persepolis Author Marjane Satrapi at

http://www.vogue.com/article/emma-watson-interviews-marjane-satrapi.
[Omission.]

MS: .We have a long way to go, but I think that is our own decision. We have to bring up our kids
telling them, You are first and foremost human beings. Your gender matters only when you are in love
and when you are with your lover, yes, your gender matters. You can be a woman or a man, whatever
you want to be. The rest of the time, just behave like a human being. Full stop.

And some feminist movements dont help because they lack so much humor. In America, you might see
bad behavior, and they respond, Oh, its such masculine behavior. You just think, Have you really
never seen a nasty woman? It has nothing to do with him being a guy. You know, Simone de Beauvoir
said, You are not born a woman; you become a woman. And so you are not born a man eitheryou
become a man, as society teaches you how to behave.

The feminist movement for a long time has been there to cut the guys penis off. And this is not a good
thing. We cannot make the same mistake as men did with the gentlemens clubsto exclude them. We
have to be more intelligent and say, We will make life together with you, we will collaborate, and lets be
together.

. . . I need a new kind of feminism where we are brighter than the stupid men of a century ago and we
teach them the lessons. That is how good we can be. Lets construct this world together. Lets behave
toward each other in a nice way, in a humanistic way, and maybe we can do something better.

EW: I love that and I completely agree with you about humor. Its everything. The author who we read
before P ersepolis was English comedian Caitlin Moran, who wrote a book called How to Be a Woman.
You know, in some ways its seen as quite controversial and there are things that people are very
offended by, butby godat the very least it has some humor.

MS: And we should have it!

EW: But I think women need to hear that, because growing up, I felt like I was educated a lot that I was
going to be in for a shit deal. Im constantly fascinated at the moment by the promotion and propagation
of a kind of narcissism that I find really strange.

Anyway, Kendra, from my book club, wants to know: There are many different opinions about the hijab and
Islam in regard to feminism; do you feel that either or both the hijab and Islam are anti-feminist?

MS: I think that any religion is anti-feminist, to start with. Any religion. Christianity, Judaism, every religion.
And even Buddhism and Hinduism. This is itit exists across all religions. Its a really patriarchal thing.

On one hand, I hate the veil because they force me to put it on my head and I hate it. On the other hand, who
am I to say to somebody who wants to put a scarf on her head, Dont do it?

This belief is so profound; it is so deep within human beings that when they wanted to ban the veil in France,
for example, they thought that I would be with them: Yeah, yeah! Lets ban it, lets do that!

[Omission.]

And I also think there was something inconsistent in the argument, which was that they should be
emancipated. But if these girls had to be emancipated, how can they be emancipated if they dont go to
school? If you ban them from school because their family forces them to put on a veil, then you achieve the

Full interview: Emma Watson Interviews Persepolis Author Marjane Satrapi at

http://www.vogue.com/article/emma-watson-interviews-marjane-satrapi.
same result that their families wantedto not be educated and to marry a cousin from a small town
somewhere.

So instead of going to school and being emancipated, she is 20 and she already has five kids. Another big
success! Instead of banning things, you have to have a real dialogue, and if people really believe in something
and they want to cover themselves, let them do it. But my question is that: Why is it that 30 years ago we
didnt have many veiled women, and why do we have it today? This is the question.

EW: Why has it gone up? Why is it increasing?

MS: Because, as in France, its a question of identity. In France, even after three generations, they call them
the Arabs, yet when they go to the country of their parents, they are called the French. They are respected
nowhere, so where and how do they find an identity? In religion.

.The only thing that can change the world is the slow evolution of culture.

If the culture of a society does not change, you cannot change anything. The thinking seems to have been that
because you go and throw bombs in Afghanistan and put in Coca-Cola machines that it suddenly becomes a
democracy. Bullshit!

But who cares about culture? Everybody wants to be elected in two years, which is very short to make change.
I dont even think its a question of conviction. Its not that our politicians were much better than before. Its
just so fast that you have information, then you have new information, and then there is something else on
Twitterit all means there is no time for reflection! We need to take our time to think. The brain of a human
being needs some time to digest and to understand. If we dont take this time we head directly into war. That
is where we are going.

EW: So therefore do you think that making art, interacting with culture, is the most revolutionary, the most
impactful thing that you can do as a human being? If you believe in the slow evolution of culture?

MS: You know, Emma, I come from Iran, and I never learned any English. I speak English because I watch
films. Thats the only way that I have learned itI have never taken one course of English. Its enabled me to
come from Iran, to live in France, and then make an American movie about a serial killer.

It means that being born in a certain place doesnt have to mean coming to think a certain way, though this is
still usually the case. Imagine if they put all the money they put into arms, weapons, and wars into something
that says: Any person who is a student, who goes to school, needs to have traveled to one other country in the
world before the age of 18. Believe me, the world would be a much better place.

As soon as you know somebody from somewhere else, then it is much more difficult to just consider them as
the enemy because the person becomes real. Its not an abstract notion anymore. So I really think that
cultural work is extremely, extremely important.I read a book, it changes my life. I listen to music, it changes
my life. Everything that happens to do with the brain has the power to change your life.

You know why these fundamentalists are so powerful? Because they play with the emotions of
peoplepressing on the buttons of their emotions. They have people yelling, shouting, and wanting to kill
themselves.

But if you ask people to think, it is something different. As soon as you think, you realize it is really much
more complicated than it seems to be. You realize it is much more difficult to become hyperto yell, to shout,

Full interview: Emma Watson Interviews Persepolis Author Marjane Satrapi at

http://www.vogue.com/article/emma-watson-interviews-marjane-satrapi.
and to kill yourself if you think about it. So if everybody were to make this little effort just to think, I truly
believe it would cool people down.

I think culture is important, but at the same time you could see that during the 1930s you had a lot of
intellectuals in Germany, but many of them became Nazis. And why was that? They were humiliated and
extremely poor.

So there needs to be a little base of life for everyone, and then on top of that you have cultureand maybe
then we can go in a better direction. However, that will obviously never happen. We are too stupid for that.

So I think its extremely important that we try to change our lives around ourselves. When I was 30 years old,
I said, Im going to change this world, and after 10 years, the world was changing me. I became a cynical
person who did not believe in anything anymore. And so I said, I am losing even myself, and then decided
Okay, from now on Im going to change myself, and if I change myself, I have changed a little bit of this
world. I will try to be a better person. I dont always succeed in that because the nasty side of me is big, but I
try . . . I try.

EW: I love what you were saying about teaching people to be independent thinkers, because often you get the
message in school that you have to learn whats in your book by heart and be able to regurgitate it. And
actually the most important thing I learned in school was how to think, how to decide for myself, how to have
an opinion, how to go away and find the answers for things and compare and contrast different answers that
people were giving me. So I loved what you said about independent thinking.

Im also interested in how you self-identify. When someone says, Where are you from? or Are you
French?where do you sit with all of those types of questions?

MS: There are parts of me that will always be Iranian. These are things that I cannot change. You know, my
hospitality will always be Iranian. Ive been brought up this way. The doors of my house are always open.

I can never become angry with an old personits impossible. This is a very cultural thing; in my culture, no
matter what bullshit an old person says, I will always respect and be extremely patient with them. So these are
the parts of my culture that I like.

There are the parts of my culture that are extremely traditional: Men have to do certain things and women
have to be virgins and all of that[expletive] that. I never believed in it, I refused it, and I rejected it because
it is insane.

There are many things I like very much in the French people: the sense of rebellion, the fact that they are
never happy. I love the humor of the British. I love that Americans really want to be nice. They do a lot of
nasty things, but their wish is to be nice people. So there are so many different things that I like from different
places. I would simply say: I am a human being who tries to do things as she likes, and shes a very, very lucky
person to be able to do that.

[Omission.]

Its very similar to my thinking on identity. Sometimes at film festivals, people will say, Oh, we have to vote
for her because she is a woman. And I just think, Shes a human being who has made a film, so if her film is
good well give her a prize. But if it is not good, we are not going to give her a prize and treat her as if she
were handicapped.

Full interview: Emma Watson Interviews Persepolis Author Marjane Satrapi at

http://www.vogue.com/article/emma-watson-interviews-marjane-satrapi.
It is not a handicap to be a woman, frankly. So I try to think by myself, which means that sometimes I think
that I am above the law because Im like, Oh, this law seems very stupid to me, so I wont apply it. I give
myself that certain kind of freedom. I dont know why I shouldnt. And so I am basically a human being who
works with what she likes and am a lucky person because of that, I guess.

EW: Are your comics available in Iran? Can you buy them in Iran?

MS: When I was a teenager, I always had the latest music. One week after it was released, we had it on tapes.
Everything is available in Iran; its just a black market. The more you forbid something, the more people want
to see it. The more you say Dont do it! the more people want to do it. Dont forget the story about Adam
and Eve, where they were told do whatever you want, but dont eat the apple! And of course they ate the
apple. That is the nature of the human being.

[Omission.]

EW: Youve directed and co-directed four films including Persepolis. Is film where you see your future? How
are you feeling at the moment? Whats most inspiring you? What are you most wanting to do?

MS: For me, the cinema is a machine of creating empathy. There is no media in the world that can create as
much empathy as cinema.And also, when I write a book, do you really think that I then read my book and
think, Oh! Thats surprising! Of course not, I have written and created it all by myself. But when I make a film
there is always an actor who suddenly does something that was not expected, and Im extremely surprised. At
that point I am not a director anymore, but I become the spectator of my own film. Sometimes its the
production designer who makes a suggestion that I never thought about. So it is a result that is extremely
exciting and, yes, surprising for me. Its very difficult work and right now that is what I like to do. But this is
right now; I dont know about the future. I hope that I will have another two or three lives before I die, as I
dont like to do the same thing all my life. I have lots of hope for myself yet. Maybe I will become a dancer,
who knows?

EW: Brilliant!

[Omission.]

When did you know that you wanted to write your memoir as a graphic novel? When did the idea come to
you that you were going to do that?

MS: I found myself saying the same bullshit over and over and facing so many prejudices. It got to the point
where I simply thought, I have to put it in a book, because while I like to talk, constantly repeating myself was
so tiring. I really didnt believe anybody would ever read it, but if people asked me questions after I had
written it, I could say, There is a book; you can read it.

I never thought, never in my life, that anybody would be interested. I didnt think it was interesting at allit
was just for me. So it became a success, but I never imagined it. But I didnt have any other choice than to
write ityou know how human beings are: The less they know, the more convinced they are. Ignorance gives
you this confidence in yourself. As some people were ignorant about how it was, but so confident in their
perception, meant I wanted to give them just another point of view. And it became this unplanned, surprise
success.

[Omission.]

Full interview: Emma Watson Interviews Persepolis Author Marjane Satrapi at

http://www.vogue.com/article/emma-watson-interviews-marjane-satrapi.
EW: I have a question from an Iranian woman who is part of the book club, who wants to know what your
hope is for the women and people of Iran and what you think is achievable?

MS: I think lots of things might be achievable because 70 percent of our students are women, which gives me
hope. I hear more and more that womengirlsare refusing to marry. Who have decided that you cannot lead
a life under the control of your father and then under the control of your husbanddecisions that didnt exist
20 years ago. So as this mentality and culture changes, then we can have real hope. And it is changing. On a
historical scale its nothing, but in our lifetime its something. I would really prefer change for good now,
rather than having all this revolution where spilled blood just brings more spilled blood. So I have a lot of
hope, yes. I think its going to be fine.

[Omission.]

EW: You did your comics in saturated black ink, and Im interested: Why did you choose that? And how do
you think that conveys different emotions and atmospheres to other comic styles?

MS: As a literary genre, comics are really connected to fine arts. In comics, with the illustration, you write with
your drawing, with your images. So whatever you dont write, you draw and vice versa. So instead of writing,
Well I was sitting in my bed and I was watching out of the window and the bird was singing and so on, you
just draw all of that. So whatever you draw has meaning that people read. If I use color, it has meaning people
read. If I draw backgrounds, the same.

I always thought that what I had to say was too much; it was complicated with lots and lots of words. So I had
to go very mellow on the other side because otherwise the rhythm of reading would be destroyed. Thats why
I went for something black and white, completely, with an extremely minimalistic emphasis, because I thought
that was the best for the rhythm of the reading.

Usually when I paint, I use lots of color. You can draw anything and if you put a little color here and there, it
will look nice. It is extremely difficult to work in black and white because you cannot cheat. In black and
white, you can make any drawing, you put a little color here and there and it looks nice, it is immediately
evident whether its good or its not good. It actually presented a really difficult challenge: How am I going to
make it work in only black and white?

[Omission.]

EW: Someone once told me, as we were talking about, that depression was anger without enthusiasm. And

MS: I went through a big depression! And do you know what happened? I have to tell you the funniest story. I
was so depressed, and when I am depressed I cannot breathe. Breath just doesnt come to me. So one night I
was all alone, and this breathing rhythm comes. That was just before Persepolis, and I called the ambulance
and just say, I cannot breathe. So they come and put me in aluminum paper like a roasted chicken . . .

EW: Oh, God!

MS: And they put me in this blanket and stretcher and start to carry me down the stairs, which go in circles. I
end up falling down, all the way down the stairs, and I broke my head. I needed four stitches! That made me
come out of my depression actually. Because I had so much pain there that my breath came back and I
decided: Now you have to do something. And then I wrote Persepolis.

Full interview: Emma Watson Interviews Persepolis Author Marjane Satrapi at

http://www.vogue.com/article/emma-watson-interviews-marjane-satrapi.