Blimey. The universe has finally outdone itself in the cruelty of its punchlines. Marjane Satrapi, the ink-and-paper revolutionary who dragged Iranian history kicking and screaming into the graphic novels section, has shuffled off this mortal coil at the unseasonably ancient age of 56. Or rather, she hasn’t. Because this is a hoax. A magnificent, chest-thumping, gin-soaked hoax. But let’s not let facts get in the way of a good wake.
Newsrooms across the land are in a frenzy. Editors are frantically Googling ‘Persepolis’ while simultaneously trying to remember if they’ve ever actually read it. The UK literary world, a fragile ecosystem of tweed and anxiety, has already begun the ritualistic outpouring. Tweets of ‘devastated’ and ‘icon’ are being crafted with the same urgency as a student who’s left their essay until three in the morning. The Guardian has already published a tribute. In the future. They saw it coming. They always do.
But let’s paint the scene. A drizzly London morgue. A body. No, wait. There is no body. Because she’s alive. The hoaxers have struck again, the digital ghouls who feast on our collective hysteria. And yet, the mourning goes on. Because we love a good tragedy. We love the exquisite agony of losing a voice before its time. Especially if that voice spent a decade telling us about the Islamic Revolution while wearing a leather jacket. Satrapi was punk. She was literature. She was a bloody cartoonist who made us cry. And now, according to the internet, she’s dead.
But she’s not. So why are we acting as if the world has lost its moral compass? Because we’ve become addicted to the eulogy. We crave the catharsis of collective grief. We want to be the people who stood up for the artist, who shared the obituary, who said ‘I loved Persepolis’ (even if we only saw the film). The hoax has exposed us. We are emotional vampires, and Satrapi is just the latest donor.
The news cycle is a ravenous beast. It howls for fresh meat. And a dead artist, especially one who was female, foreign, and fiercely political, is prime rib. The BBC has already broken out the black tie. The bookshops are pulling her titles to the front. The publishers are drafting posthumous deals. It’s a beautiful, grotesque ballet of performance mourning. And Satrapi, the trickster, the raconteur, the woman who survived the Shah and the mullahs, has played us all for fools.
So let’s raise a glass. To Marjane Satrapi. Who is, I repeat, still alive. But in our hearts, she’s now a legend. Because death, even a fake one, has a way of consecrating greatness. We’ll remember her work differently now. With a bit of dust on it. With a sense of treasure lost. And when she inevitably pops up on Twitter to say ‘I’m not dead, you idiots’, we’ll all have a good laugh, share the article, and move on to the next tragedy. Because that’s what we do. We mourn. We move. We refill the glass.
In the meantime, I’ll be at the pub. Toasting the dead who aren’t. The gin is on the house. The hoax is on us.
