Weekly Response Eleven

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence…changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original.”

            – Literary Theory page 1235

Question: Does having Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis as a graphic novel accomplish a sort of reproduction?

Walter Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, talks about the way reproductions alter a work of art by making it visible to those not experiencing its uniqueness in its original position in space and time. The story of the Iranian Revolution and Marji’s life as a whole are both told through The Complete Persepolis in the form of a graphic novel. It can be argued that this form of storytelling changes these two events into works of art. However, readers aren’t experiencing them firsthand; they’re experiencing the reproductions Satrapi has put out for the public to see.

This method may just be the best way for her to explain these occurrences, though. It brings events that happened years earlier to the comic book form and therefore maybe more relative to those in today’s time. The pictures are Satrapi’s way of reproducing the events she recalls from her childhood. Readers aren’t getting the unique experience Satrapi had, but are in fact given the opportunity to make it their own. The ownership is being changed by this reproduction and therefore becoming relatable to readers by not only words, but pictures.