Icon: The Malleable Form

Icons have a distinct advantage over words in their ability to evolve quickly over time.  While words can and do change over time, the process of their alteration takes place over much larger timescales than icons.  The malleability of icons is evident in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, through the icon of Marji herself.  As the story progresses our understanding of her image grows to encompass all it encounters from frame to frame.  She becomes a flowing symbol of personality.  Marji grows to stand as a part of Marxism, sexism, racism, and prejudice held in her image.  Words are not capable of holding as much detail as an image.  Pictures are indeed worth more than words, in the sense of information held.  Persepolis is a sort of autobiography for Marjane, and as such it chronicles her life and growth.  So, we can travel through a lifetime in Persepolis, and with each frame more information is packed into the image of Marji.  This phenomenon is not limited to the scope of Marji, but all of sequential art and beyond.  A familiar form absorbs its surroundings from viewing to viewing, and begins to be associated them.  A words meaning can be drawn from the surrounding text, but cannot encompass as much as an image.  What Persepolis teaches us about icons as language is that they have a great capacity to encompass and evolve with information rapidly, as well as be a more relatable medium than words, but at the loss of potential interpretations.