Passage of time study question

Marjane Satrapi often attempts to imply the passage of time within single frames or images. Often however, she shores up these attempts to visually show passage of time by explicitly including it in the text. The frame showing the Shah's attempts at democratic reform is one example. Here he says no to multiple candidates for prime minister. The candidates stand in a line, while each is rejected, and the final candidate is represented only by an ellipses. The linear imagery here strongly suggests the passage of time, and frame could be interpreted as showing the passage of time, as well as cultural change. However, the caption at the top of the frame says "For a few months, he actually did try, he tested a dozen prime ministers."(Satrapi 41) This gives the image a sense of time apart from the implied sense of time set up by the image itself.

The frame depicting various family members leaving in the midst of political unrest (Satrapi 64) is the best example of a single frame depicting the passage of time, culture, and ideology. Here the family says goodbye to various family members as they board a plane for Los Angeles. In the text this is shown as a single event, with the name of one flight being announced in the terminal.What the reader can infer is quite different. It is unlikely that a large number of family members exited on a single flight. Instead, the reader can infer that over a period of time, changes in political ideology and culture drove large segments of the narrator's family to leave. This can be inferred based on personal experience, as well as the context given to the reader by previous chapters and frames. Instead of a single event, we have an image of that single event acting as a substitute for multiple events and changes over time.