The living dead

I sat down to read Persepolis 2, an autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Sartrapi, who grew up in Iran during the tempestuous 70s and 80s. As I often do before I start reading, I turned on the TV--for company? out of habit? fear of missing some great television event? For whatever reason, tonight I did catch a major television event: #6 on the list of Animal Planet's Extreme Animals--The living dead.

Number six is ostensibly about an ant which becomes the "living dead" after its brain is invaded by a parasite. The life cycle of the parasite, though, is even more compelling. The parasite somehow takes over the ant's brain without killing it which leads to the ant climbing a blade of grass to the very tip where it clamps down (something these ants never do for good reason). Here the ant sits for days if necessary until a rabbit (or a grasshopper) eats the ant. Incredibly the parasite escapes the rabbit's digestive system and then hangs out in the liver where layers of something or another cover it as it matures. From here it produces offspring which are peed out in some sort of droplets which, you guessed it, are saborosa tid bits eaten by the ant. Now that's one hell life cycle.

Obviously the parsite's perch of power questions our assumptions about size and strength. The microscopic parasite is running the show from the inside of those seemingly in charge of themselves. It's the physical manifestation of Gramsci's hegemony—no, serious. In one interpretation we humans are of course the brain-dead dangling ants waiting to be consumed; in another, the more Gramscian and the one I prefer, we might be lucky enough to be the rabbits--we unknowingly help the system along, we suffer some physical and mental energy loss, but there's hope that we can identify the potentially mind altering parasite and rid ourselves and our society of the beast. If we are the ants, we're screwed and nothing we "do" matters an iota.

Maybe I dig to deep and should finally, now, read a page of two of Satrapi before I’m too tired. I wonder if Satrapi will ultimately judge her acts of "rebellion" (western rock music and 501 jeans) as something meaningful. Or will she determine, as Fatima Mernissi does in Scheherazade Goes West, that western freedoms ain't what they are cracked up to be: while at a conference in the US she can't find a skirt that fits her beautifully big and appreacited (in her own country) hips without going to a special store.