Muslim cultures did not want people to believe that they went against the Qur’an and had people who were homosexuals, so they never said anything about it. In Iran, if people were homosexual, it was not widely spoken about. In Vienna she had, “eight housemates were eight men, all homosexual”, and to Satrapi this was extremely different from what she was used to in Iran. In Vienna, Satrapi had more freedoms than she had in Iran, and things were completely different from Iran.

Some people in Iran may make it seem like Iran hates westerners, but Satrapi notices quite a difference in living in Vienna than she does in Iran. Because of this, we seem extremely wealthy because we have things that they cannot afford to have. In their country, most people do not have running water or air conditioning, so what we see as normal things that we need and have in a house, these people do not have. For example, when I visited Tanzania and Zanzibar, a lot of the African kids believed that the American kids from our school were all very wealthy. There are some cultures in the world that will stereotype other cultures. Because of this issue people in Iran will stereotype westerners in ways that we stereotype them, by what they wear and what we think we know about that culture.

Western countries, mainly the United States and the United Kingdom, were blocked from buying Iranian oil by the former presidency, so they replaced the president with a Shah who would allow them to buy oil from Iran.

The main reason for the hate that Iran lashes out at Western culture is because we dismantled the old regime that they had, which happened to be a democracy. The country of Iran acts like it hates Westerners, but a lot of its citizens envy Western culture. In Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood, the concept of contrasting regions is explored by Satrapi when she talks about what it’s like to grow up in Iran, and to be misunderstood no matter where you go simply because of where you came from.

Marjane satrapi's