For our first Animation theory lecture, we watched the film Persepolis, an animated french film released in 2007, which revolves around the coming of age a young woman experiences while set during the Iranian Revolution.
I personally liked the film, its art style was nice and the animation of high quality. But when speaking about the ideologies behind the film, I felt it was a bit hypocritical how in the film they were blaming western powers, and yet the dubbed voices were mainly from westerners. It was ridiculous to hear in my opinion.
Another thing I notice is the dehumanization the director does for the evil characters. For the soldiers massacring the civilians and torturing those in the prison we always see them either from the chest down, or gas masks covering the entire face. Much like they did in Star Wars with the Clone Troopers, because once you cover the face and make them all look the same, you begin to forget they are human just like you instead of just evil monsters. They also did this with the design and movement of some evil characters, for example the nuns in this scene at 1:30, they slide across the floor and move like snakes, while they faces look cold, and reptile like. They also have sharp faces, which have been proven to be trait humans see as suspicious and sinister. While the 'good' characters are often seen wearing bright colours such as red and white, compared to the black used for others.
Since the film is made by a western country, its biased with our ideologies, dominant ideologies that are familiar in our daily lives, and by now seen by us as natural in the world. For exampe the religious followers are seen as evil fanatics who hate everything and everyone, while every western aspect in the film is seen as the saviour that brought Iran into a more 'modern' world, even though it was western powers that put the country into such a unstable state in the first place.
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