Persepolis director Marjane Satrapi has made a stuffy and patronising drama that does a great disservice to its undeniably fascinating subject
As of late, it appears that large sectors of the entertainment industry have joined in a nobly intended yet poorly executed project to promote an increased female presence in Stem fields. Call it the Hidden Figures effect if you like, but an increasing number of releases have featured girls and women exploring science and technology, from the zoetrope-inventing moppet of Disney’s recent Dumbo remake to, er, Angry Birds 2. While the real world would be undeniably bettered by gender parity in laboratories and other workplaces, this small movement has made for some frightfully bad art. The messaging errs without exception on the side of the heavy-handed, and characterization often suffers from an imperative to shape a human being into an exemplar of model behavior. When combined, entertainment and moral instruction can have disastrously unstable reactions.
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