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Punk certainly is not ded.

When I was in grad school, I was a magazine slut. I would tear through everything I could get my hands on, from high-end glossies to lowly gossip rags. I inspected every page, memorizing the masthead, dreaming of the day I might find my name on the list. I thought nothing of spending $50 on bizarre pubs at one of those huge magazine stands in Harvard Square. Written entirely in Japanese? That’s not a problem – I’m looking at the design. Filled with images of men and women in artful, yet compromising positions? That’s OK. The weirder, the better.

My obsession eventually led me to a basement comic book store in Cambridge that had an excellent selection of obscure magazines pushed into a tight corner under a grand display of X-men figurines. It’s here where I discovered the innovative story-telling art of the graphic novel. I had read Ghost World in college, but thought that was just a comic book geek anomaly. Up until then, I had no idea there was entire genre.

It was in this basement comic book store that I discovered “Persepolis,” the autobiographical graphic novel that was recently transformed into the animated film of the same name.

I was drawn to the starkness of the black and white figures, the touching innocence of the main character, the sense of femininity that didn’t reek of unicorns and pink flowers. Most of all, I was moved by the ease in which Marjane Satrapi showed that, even when surrounded by a harsh political reality, at age 13 the mysteries of puberty trump everything.

I finally got the chance to see Persepolis at the Music Hall last week during its week-long run. Despite the film's political hook (it’s based in Iran) and an Academy Award to hang around its neck, there were only about 25 people in the audience. The turn-out may have been small, but the movie garnered deep guffaw-style laughs and a chorus of sniffles.

Persepolis tells the story of Marjane, a young girl born to an aristocratic Iranian family during the reign of the Shah. As adolescence hits Marjane, the Islamic Revolution hits Iran. Guided by a sage and saucy grandmother, independently minded parents and the lyrics of 80s-era American punk, Marjane is the kind of girl that doesn’t take crap from anyone. This charming trait soon lands her in trouble in a country that frowns on dissent.

She is sent abroad, takes up with a group of anarchists, gets her heart broken, lives on the streets and eventually finds herself back in Iran, pretending to live the life of a nice Muslim girl. But as we all know, opinionated women never stay quiet for long.

From the moment the film began, I was transported into a mythical and exotic land where everything revolved around the world of a precocious girl. Instead of being waifish and weak, or cruel and conniving, this little girl was a bull. And she was funny. Her treacherous navigation into adulthood was incredibly real and riddled with pain. But all of her struggles made Marjane’s eventual redemption that much more sweet.

The film also allows an insider glimpse into the mysterious culture and politics of Iran. In case you haven’t noticed, the Republicans are ready to bomb the shit out of that country as soon as they have a good enough excuse. Most Americans don’t know anything about Iran or the people that live there, myself included. Persepolis at least helped me understand that, like America, not everyone in Iran is pumped about their leadership.

Politics and puberty aside, Persepolis is ultimately about trying to fit in. Marjane struggles to belong in a restrictive society, but when she goes abroad, she discovers it's no fun living in a world where everyone thinks Muslims are cruel heathens. In the opening scene, Marjane puts on her head scarf in the airport bathroom, readying for her return to the Muslim world. She immediately garners dirty looks. In the next scene, Marjane rips the headscarf off and lights a cigarette. It’s clear that, whether heading to Iran or not, she never really want to wear it anyway.