Authority and the Movie Persepolis

For a very long time, traditional notions such as religion have been fundamentally important as a world view of people in various places of the world. States and institutions have attempted to maintain authority over the communities by finding ways to transform these thoughts into a control mechanism. And Iran had shown this type of attempt during the time that is seen in the movie Persepolis.

Max Weber defines authority as the "probability that a command with a given content will be obeyed by a given group of persons." For Weber, authority can be divided into three branches, namely charismatic authority, legal-rational authority, and traditional authority. Charismatic authority is a leader's legitimized power with the help of his or her uncommon personal features. Legal-rational authority is a type of leadership that mostly acts with a rational ruling basis. Remember how in the USA, nearly half of the citizens were against the administration of President Donald Trump before his tenure ended. However, since he was legally elected to rule the country, he continued his duty as it was decided in the beginning. Finally, traditional authority is an authority based on custom or tradition. Moreover, Weber indicates, "Wherever there is an organization, there will be authority and authority will become enmeshed in traditions.".

To go back to the movie, we can say that the Iran government can be accepted as an example of traditional authority by looking at the actions of the government to manipulate their own people and give them promises based on traditional and religious values, as it is seen.

*Spoiler alert for the rest!!

In the movie, in schools, children are taught strict rules related to religion such as drinking is wrong and forbidden, men cannot see a woman without a headdress, martyrization is a blessing for us, and so on. Iran's government, just like all other governments, believes that youth is the future for themselves. And by giving this kind of education to young ones, when there are no rigid ideas in their minds, they aim to affect new brains and create obedient adults for a successful revolution.

Moreover, there is a scene in which Ms. Nassrine, who is one of the acquaintances of Marji's' family, mentions something her son's teachers in school told him. She says that they gave her son a key and said that it helps him to go to heaven, which has women and food in it if he dies at the war zone. 

We then see another scene where, even if they have certain rules and traditional restrictions about all these, a boy is offered a kind of meal that is hard to find in that time and a woman that is forbidden to be with without marriage. The state offers this kind of privilege just to convince him to be a soldier and die for his country if necessary. So, we can say that authority is able to first take things from you just to give you in the future to control your actions.

In conclusion, we can see that states might use their authority in different ways to improve the impacts and believability of their actions in order to achieve their ultimate goals. In the movie Persepolis, the authority of the Iran government utilizes tradition on people to enhance its capabilities.

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