Satrapi’s Use of Color in Persepolis

The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, is an autobiographical exploration into her childhood and how she came to terms with herself amidst political upheaval and the influence of Western culture. The graphic novel is a black and white rendering of the important frames in her development. The film, however, utilizes not only movement and sound, but the use of black, white, and gray tones in stark contrast with vibrant colors to achieve a similar story telling effect. This paper will focus upon the implications created by Satrapi’s specific use of color within both graphic novel and film.

Within Satrapi’s graphic novel, each and every page is dominated by two colors: black and white. There is no color, save for the protective binding of the title page. There are no shades of gray. If the color gray were desired, a thin black felt pen would be utilized to demonstrate texture and lighter tones. Would it be safe then to assume that the graphic novel medium is laboring under the pretense of “Life is black and white”? In essence, the multitude of characters in the novel, as well as, the physical background and settings are all concrete and deliberate – they are the two-dimensional embodiments of what it means to be “black and white”. According to Leatrice Eiseman’s Color: Messages and Meanings, every color holds an inherent meaning. The symbolic interaction between color is important, and Eiseman states,

“The combination of black and white always expresses extreme opposites. Symbolically, the ultimate connection is something that all humans can relate to as in the cover of night vs. the light of day. They are the alpha and omega, the yin and yang, the salt and pepper that season the flavors of color. The visibility factor of black against white in print, or vice versa, is indisputable. The final authority that verifies the ultimate truth is often expressed by ‘I want to see it in black and white’” (Eiseman 64).

In the novel, Satrapi gives her personal account of what life was like growing up in Iran and Austria. She chronicles diverse characters who are polar opposites of one another: the “Bearded men” in Iran, Momo, Frau Doctor Heller, Markus, Kia, and Reza. They all come from different countries, political, religious, and other demographic backgrounds, but through using specific colors like black and white to illustrate them, they become homogenous. They no longer hail from different countries or possess different skin tones. Instead, they fall under the broad category that consumes them: “Life is black and white.”

It may be argued that The Complete Persepolis is a novel set in perpetual flashback. The narrator’s tone suggests autobiographical reflection upon what is deemed important to remember and transcribe onto paper. The memory process “is not a passive one of mere retrieval from a memory bank. Rather, the remembering subject actively creates the meaning of the past in the act of remembering. Thus, narrated memory is an interpretation of a past that can never be full recovered” (Smith 16). If this narrated memory is an interpretation of an unrecoverable past, then memory itself is an intangible quality that can be explained through a number of ways. The text also goes on to explain that, “Memory is evoked by the senses – smell, taste, touch, sound – and encoded in objects or events with particular meaning for the narrator” (Smith 21). So, does color, or the lack of color, hold particular significance for Satrapi in The Complete Persepolis?
Undoubtedly, the answer is ‘yes.’ The limited colors of black and white communicate the author’s desire to represent a memory, a past experience in her life, as being a precise and meaningful endeavor. In addition, the selectivity in color creates a paradox: it allows a wide spectrum of people to vicariously insert themselves into a culturally bereft illustration. This is not to say that Satrapi fails to make her nationality known throughout the text, but in terms of the ambiguity of color, she allows the audience considerable freedom to experience her memories alongside and within the frames of the drawings.

In relation to other autobiographical narratives, the freedom that is found within the graphic novel form is only surpassed by one other medium: film. Where graphic novels seek to illustrate through frames and gutters, the superiority of film fills in what cannot be seen.

Unlike the graphic novel, the film Persepolis uses a much wider variety of color. All of the characters were translated into the film as they had appeared in the text – in black and white. However, it was the physical surroundings that underwent a noticeable change. In addition to the dominant colors of black and white, varying shades of gray, and other more vibrant colors were employed throughout the film. Eiseman notes that gray is “the middle ground between black and white, truly the perfect neutral…Because of this perceived neutrality, gray does have some interesting psychological connotations attached to it…[People] use their wisdom and ‘gray matter’(the brain) judiciously” (Eiseman 49-50). It is because of this fact, that we may interpret the film adaptation as an ascription to the expression “Life is not black and white,” because there is much more (gray area) at work.

In Persepolis, color is used as a means to convey a passage of time. Where the graphic novel as a whole could be seen as a continuous flashback, the film arranges scenes to direct the flow of memory and information. Additional scenes were added to the film to describe a subplot of Marjane as a young adult permanently leaving Iran, while functioning as the transition into the reflection of her past. In order to do this in a clear manner, the film employed the use of color to distinguish between past and present. The adult Marjane is illustrated in and surrounded by color, and her memories were limited to black, white, and gray tones. While not necessarily a flashback, there are a few similarities between this aspect of Persepolis and the classic film, The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy’s dreams are represented in vibrant color, while her mid-western reality is in sepia tone. Conversely, Marjane’s present reality is in color, while her memories are presented in black and white. Although these examples are not identical, the use of color allows the memories and dreams to be represented in a deliberate way, as to convey certain meanings that are specific to the storyteller.

In the film adaptation, color is also used to show Marjane’s cultural specificity. As previously mentioned, the graphic novel allowed for a broad audience to adhere themselves to the culturally ambiguous character of Marjane. In many ways, the film still allows the audience to do the same during her regression into her memories. However, it is during the present that we see Marjane colored and culturally specific.

Another interpretation regarding the use of color is that instead of being solely dependent upon time in the present, it also relies on the psychological maturation of Marjane. In essence, she is in color because she has overcome obstacles of politics, religion, and war to come into her own. She has become who she was meant to be. She is enlightened and illuminated – illustrated in color. In the 1998 film Pleasantville, the main characters David and Jennifer are transported into a 1950’s television sitcom via a magical remote. Their surroundings are entirely in black and white, which is the norm. Gradually over the course of the film, color is brought into their world through a loss of innocence and finding their true selves. This is very similar to what Marjane experiences throughout the novel and film, however, the main difference being that the latter medium provides an expression of this loss of innocence and self-discovery through the use of color. Ironically, Pleasantville’s promotional tagline was, “Nothing is as Simple as Black and White.”


Works Cited

Eiseman, Leatrice. Color: Messages & Meanings. New York: Hand Books, 2006. Print.

Persepolis. Dir. Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi. Perf. Chiara Mastroianni and Danielle Darrieux. 2007. DVD.

Pleasantville. Dir. Gary Ross. Perf. Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon. 1998. DVD.

Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon, 2007. Print.

Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. New York: University of Minnesota, 2002. Print.

The Wizard of Oz. Dir. Victor Fleming. Perf. Judy Garland. 1939. DVD.