Response to Marjane Satrapi Lecture

How enjoyable it was to attend an event but be responsible neither for performing nor organizing--I attend a lot of events as a singer and public relations lady, but it's so seldom that I go to an event I'm not required to. What a different experience. I feeling a need to do this more. It's hard to take in a concert or lecture when you're eager for it to be over so you can clean up the artist's dressing room and go home.

Perhaps something that's just been on my mind and I'm projecting, but it was striking to me how comfortable Satrapi was in her own skin. I've been exploring the idea of taking up space--both in terms of women in general and in terms of my own unwillingness to claim a physical space for myself. In college, I considered doing a senior thesis on this issue, using Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Wharton's House of Mirth but it got too big and I'm not sure I was ready for such an expansive project. Instead I edited a collection of critical and personal essays for an introduction to women's studies course, which was the absolute right choice at the time and of which I'm proud. But I'm thinking again about this topic...

I was also intrigued by Satrapi's talk of fanaticism, that really this is what causes conflict around the world. Muslim fanatics have so much in common with Christian fanatics. I have respect for those who are thoughtful and patient on all sides of the political/religious spectrum. What angers me is when people take the word of their political or religious leaders at face value and don't think critically about what's being presented. (This issue makes me see the importance of the liberal arts--teaching one to think critically!)

Satrapi noted that fanaticism works by manipulating followers' emotions--something I've been thinking about and was glad to hear articulated. And this issue is what I see as the biggest difference between a president like George W. Bush and a president like Barack Obama. I don't think that Bush is malicious, he was just lazy. He relied on his advisers to explain policies to him and if they sounded like a good idea he said yes. I think of a program like No Child Left Behind which according to my teacher friends has been a nightmare that made them teach to tests more than ever before, but it sounds like a good idea. I see Bush in the Oval Office thinking, "No child should be left behind. Great policy," without going further and researching exactly what the impact of the program will be.

She thanked us, as Americans, for Obama, and pointed out that the leader of such a powerful country as the United States really becomes the leader of the world and perhaps we should hold a global election! How complicated would that be...but interesting thought.

Also interesting was during the Q&A portion of the lecture when Satrapi said as a sort of aside that she thought that had the Shah not been overthrown in a revolutionary fashion, she thinks that Iran would have evolved into a democracy in much the same way that India has.