Option One – Cultural context
Comparative study: Cultural context Some Like It Hot
Persepolis
The plot of the film is set in motion by a violent act. Joe and Jerry in Some Like It Hot are forced to flee their homes and go into hiding because they witness a massacre. The luckless musicians go to Toothpick Charlie’s garage to collect a car at the same time as Spats Colombo and his men arrive to murder Toothpick Charlie and his men.
Chicago of the 1920s is portrayed as a place in which a person has to be violent in order to be seen as powerful. Spats has to regain power and public face after Toothpick Charlie tipped the police off about his illegal drinking club, so he must kill Charlie and his men. That is expected by everyone, including Federal Agent Mulligan. However, there is something unreal about the violence in the film. We are not shown the killings, only Spats’s henchmen firing the machine guns. Later in the film Spats is gunned down by a rival mobster, but this is all handled as a joke. Even Spats makes a wisecrack before he dies, using his trademark line – ‘Big joke’ – to describe his own murder at the hands of a gunman hidden in a giant cake.
Federal Agent Mulligan takes the murders in his stride and seems to be resigned to such brutal retaliatory attacks. Joe and Jerry, who once again happen to be in the thick of the action, engage in a ridiculous and highly amusing game of cat and mouse with mafia henchmen intent on killing them. Jerry is less concerned with being killed than he is by the fact that he may be dressed as a woman at the time: ‘I tell you, Joe, I’m just going to die of shame!’
Violence may have sparked off much of the action in the film, but it is all what Spats Colombo would call a ‘Big joke’.
The violence in the graphic novel Persepolis is far more serious and widespread than in Some Like It Hot. One of the biggest differences between the two texts is that violence is perpetrated by criminals in the film but by those in authority in the graphic novel.
The various ruling regimes in Iran during Marjane’s childhood and early adulthood sanction and indeed glorify violence and death. For example, during the Iran–Iraq War, young boys are given a plastic key painted gold in order to brainwash them into joining the army. The key is a symbol of the opening of the gates of heaven to those who die as martyrs in the service of their country. The Satrapi family maid is deeply distressed to find her young son has been given one of these keys by his teacher.
Marjane, the central character, and her young friends are deeply affected by the violence of the world in which they live. However, these violent acts are as abstract and unrealistic to the children as they are to Joe and Jerry. They know such things happen and they appear to be afraid, but there is no real sense that such things could have serious or lasting consequences. A good example of this can be seen when Marjane and her friends turn on Ramin, a young boy whose father was in the secret police of the previous regime. They believe he was responsible for the death of a million people, so Marjane takes nails from her father’s tool box to use as ‘American brass knuckles’ as she plans to administer a beating to the innocent child, who has done nothing worse than love and defend his father. However, unlike the characters in Some Like It Hot, Marjane learns of the seriousness and the reality of violent acts. Her mother
The Spinning Heart Conflict and violence affect the lives of the characters in each of the three texts.
While the violence in The Spinning Heart is not institutionalised, as it is in Persepolis, it is prevalent nonetheless and has a serious and damaging effect on the lives of the characters. In that respect, it is unlike the violence in Some Like It Hot, which is presented as yet another comic aspect of the text.
In The Spinning Heart, violence is accepted as a normal part of life in the world of the text and its consequences are generally ignored if possible. Fathers beat children, men beat their partners and the community accepts it and moves on. It is in this level of acceptance that the violence in the novel is similar to that in the other two texts.
In a world in which conflict is a part of life, people find their own way to cope. Sadly, as in Persepolis, this can lead to children growing up believing aggression and cruelty is acceptable and the best way to deal with any conflict. Frank Mahon was badly beaten by his father for a childish boast about having done well in school but he is unable to beat his own son, Bobby. Frank appears to regret the fact that he has ‘no stomach for violence’, saying it is ‘an awful affliction for a man to have’. Because he cannot hurt his family with his hands, Frank wounds with words instead. He is emotionally scarred by his father’s cruelty and recognises, too late, that he has done to Bobby exactly what was done to him. The difference between Frank’s situation and Marjane’s is that the young girl has the advantage of a mother to teach her that violence is wrong. Marjane learns the right way to behave from an early age and therefore violence does not become a way of life for her, as it does for Frank.
Leaving Certificate English 361 Excellence in Texts
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