Skewing It

I've been surprised, in reading Mauss, what a non-issue the whole mouse thing has been for me. When I first found out about mouse as a kid, it seemed so gimmicky, and to be honest, my first reading of it was cursory enough that the gimmickyness stayed with me. This time around, I guess I didn't really notice that the characters were mice past the first ten pages or so. What I do notice (and have trouble with) is the characterization of other peoples as other animals (Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs, etc). When I first saw the Pole depicted as pig, I was pretty shocked, and it still makes me feel uncomfortable, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

My feelings hear are harder to express than I thought they might be. Growing up, what was emphasized over and over again was the fact that Jews really worry often a real part of the culture in their home countries. Certainly not so much in Poland as in Germany, but even there, the rudeness of the shock, the perceived rejection by their own countryman, the people they had served with in war and celebratedwith in life, was what stung Jewish folks even before the brutal murder began. I feel like the depiction of the Jews, Germans and Poles as different "species" is incongruous with this historical fact, and that makes me sad.

I kind of wonder on the whole whether it would have been better if Speigleman had just made everybody mice. I guess some folks would say that this not having the different factions be different animals would defeat the purpose of doing it with animals at all, but I don't think this is so. For me, the whole mouse thing is about getting a little bit of distance from a story many of us have heard over and over again. The mouse thing makes it almost the story of the Holocaust, but also something else. This sort of titling or skewing gives us a way into the complexities of a story that is often impenetrable, which I find immensely exciting, particularly as a Jewish kid who has often found herself dissatisfied by the orchestrated blare and hush that defines modern Jewish discourse around this part of our history.

Memory's failings

Hatfield explores in his chapter "Irony and Self-Reflexivity in Autobiographical Comics" how effective Spiegelman is at pointing out the problems with memory. The best representation of this is shaped by the metaphor of Anja's papers. We learn at the end of the first book that Vladek destroyed all of her pictures and diaries when he was having a particularly difficult day. "Did you ever READ any of them?... Can you remember what she wrote?" asks Art. "No, I looked in, but I don't remember... only I know that she said, 'I wish my son, when he grows up, he will be interested by this.'" Vladek replies, his honesty about Anja's wishes and his actions doing nothing to assuage Art's rage--"God DAMN you! You-you murderer! How the hell could you do such a thing!!" (159.3-4).

The silence created by the absence of these papers causes Art clear distress. This feeling remains an undercurrent to the text as Vladek's health worsens and Art fights to get the rest of his story recorded. We can see simultaneously the desperation to capture memory--and with it, the stories of our loved ones--and the realization that it is ultimately impossible. Vladek seems to have accepted this, and in turn dismissed Anja's papers (and with them, their metaphorical value). He attempts to put Art's mind at ease in one scene, saying "But, before I forget-I put here a box what you'll be happy to see. I thought I lost it, but you see how I saved!" Art, the bold-faced text in his speech bubble showing his excitement, replies, "Mom's diaries?!" "No, no!" Vladek says. "On those it's no more to speak. Those it's gone, finished!" (113.5-7). Vladek is willing to share his own story with Art despite some misgivings, but now that Anja is gone, he seems to be saying, her memories are too.

Even his own memories are qualified, not only through Art's continual self-examination, but in several scenes where they go against "documented" stories. "You heard about the gas. But I'm telling not rumors, but only what really I saw" (69.8), he tells Art at one point. At another, when Art asks him about the orchestras at the gate of Auschwitz, Vladek replies, "No, I remember only marching, not any orchestras..." "It's very well documented," Art says, almost defensively. "No. At the gate I heard only guards shouting" (54.3-4). It is scenes like these and images such as the destroyed diaries that make "Maus" such an excellent representation of nonfiction comics, and that capture so vividly the bittersweet and temporary nature of memory.

Art's Harsh Words

We mentioned briefly in the last class that the last panel of Maus Part I is altogether shocking. After telling us of the horrors Vladek experienced (prior to entering Auschwitz), Art calls his father a "murderer." The statement is so horrific that it resonated with me even after closing the graphic novel. I was appalled at Art's reaction to his father burning Anja's diaries. Vladek explains "These papers had too many memories. So I burned them" (panel 1, p.159). Two panels later, Art screams at his father, yelling "God Damn You! You - You Murderer! How the hell could you do such a thing!!" (p.159). Yet, we understand why Vladek burned the diaries. As he explains, the memories were just too painful. His wife committed suicide. After surviving the horrific events of the Holocaust, she could not survive everyday life. Or maybe the memories of the Holocaust were just too painful for her. There is an anger and a hatred in Art's words as he leaves his father. It is altogether shocking, for lack of a better world, that Art would respond to his father in such a way.

While this seems uncharacteristic of Art (yes, he does often times have a short temper with his father, but this statement is over the top), it is not. This resentment towards his father continues into Part II. Chapter 1, "Mauchwitz." presents us with another disturbing view of Art. During his car ride, he explains to his wife Francoise that he has yet to understand the dynamic between himself and his father. However, the following panels are the most startling. He states, "When I was a kid I used to think about which of my parents I'd let the Nazis take to the ovens if I could only save one of them ... usually I saved my mother. Do you think that's normal?" (panels 7-8 p.14). It is through this graphic novel that Art is trying to figure out why he saved his mother and not his father. More importantly, "Maus" is providing Art with the opportunity to understand his father. His harsh reactions don't seem so out of place in this first chapter. It is easier to understnad that his outburst are out of confusion, not out of hatred. He does not yet understand why these memories are so painful for his father.

While it is obvious that Anja spoiled Art, we can not really call Vladek a bad father. Quite the opposite. As an outsider, it is easy to assess that Vladek's miserly tendencies, his overbearing personality, and neediness, are more for Art's benefit. Vladek is trying to forge a close relationship with Art; to enable him to have the life and happiness that Vladek never did.

Chapter 2, Maus II

For me, one of the most impressive chapters of the “Maus” series is Chapter 2, Part II. I think most of the power and artistry of “Maus” is on display in this chapter – the “inside-outside” dynamic of Vladek’s story and the struggle between father and son, Art Spiegelman’s own conflict in producing this story, and the effective mix of narrative and artwork.

Of course, you get a real sense of foreboding heading into this chapter with the title (“Auschwitz (time flies)”), the disturbing picture of the mice in flames, and the flies spread here and there outside the frame of the picture, but Spiegelman goes somewhere very different when he begins the chapter with a frank discussion of his own struggles with his writing, the publicity and questions generated by his first book, and critical forays into therapy. He also starts the chapter hidden behind the mask of his own creation, caught in his own world, fighting off the flies swarming about him.

As the narrative continues, you can see Spiegelman literally shrink in size, before he rises up to the task, gaining enough from his mice-masked therapist to head back into the story. Chapter 2 concerns itself with many of the details of the struggle to stay alive, the compromises and deals Vladek makes along the way in an attempt to keep in touch with Anja, and even one of more interesting conflicts of the story, where Art and Vladek have a back and forth over the Auschwitz orchestra (the artwork here frames this conflict nicely, with the phalanx of prisoners showing the orchestra, and then hiding it when the father disputes its existence).

The final details of the chapter are all too powerful, as they focus in on the “cremo building,” and the burning of bodies, which brings us full circle to the title page, and what we’ve been building up to for the length of the book, a steady gaze into the blackness. But there’s a last touch here that I found very interesting – after Vladek has gone to bed and Art and Francoise are on the porch, the author attempts one more level, literally and figuratively killing the flies on the porch (a disturbing reminder of the Zyklon B pesticide that we’ve just read about) but also putting to rest any last doubts that this story will be completed. Spiegelman has slain the last dragon of doubt in his mind, it seems, and will bring the rest of this story forth into the world.

Characterization in Maus

One aspect of Maus that really stood out to me was how minimalistic Spiegelman's characters are. The faces of the "mice" are practically indistinguishable, yet I never had a problem figuring out who any of the characters were. Witek brings this point up in his article, saying that "Spiegelman performs subtle wonders of characterization and expression using only two dots for eyes and two lines for eyebrows, and the unobtrusive quality of his drawing is one of its strengths." I agree with this completely, and cannot help but notice that this was not the case in his earlier renderings of "Maus", and was one of the many improvements he made in his final version. For me, the main way I could tell the difference between characters was their posturing. For instance, in his flashbacks Vladek has a very confident and composed posture. Though he is not always the tallest person in the scene, it often seems as though he is. This is also the case for the present day scenes with his son. Art is usually slouching and has an extremely agitated posture, and Vladek's remains calm.

I'm sure Spiegelman had many reasons for making his characters so similar. Perhaps he wanted to further emphasize that the Holocaust affected so many people, not just the ones in this story. Or maybe he felt that giving them certain distinguishing characteristics would make them too cartoonish, as is the case in his original renderings of these characters. However, I think that Spiegelman's main point was for the reader to focus on the story and not the people in it. It is very easy to get hung up on the visual aspects of characters, especially in a story that features a lot of them. But more often than not, this can lead to confusion, i.e., in Heartbreak Soup. By stripping his characters of all physical differences and having their distinguishing traits be reflexive of their personalities Spiegelman has forced his reader's attention to the more important elements of the story.

Borders that Bleed

Witek cites the insert of “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” as proof that “Speigelman’s visual style [in Maus] is a narrative choice, as constitutive of meaning as the words of the story.” (Witek, 100) But before Speigelman presents this juxtaposition, he has already made a distinct stylistic impression on the reader; the background of panels, in particular, draw the reader’s attention away from the mice and place emphasis more on the scene that surrounds the mice. That is, Speigelman busies and details the environment in which his mouse father lives to create a more realistic setting. Speigelman’s attention to shading (solid, stripes, checkered, flowers, polka dots, etc.) grounds the Maus world in the physical and adds believability, ultimately encouraging the reader’s identification with the mice as people.

And, as Speigelman capitalizes on a reader’s ability to suspend his or her disbelief more easily in a realistic setting, it’s worth zooming in on other instances where the background disappears. Many panels that depict Vladek on the treadmill as he tells Art a story provide a full image of Art’s “old” room (for instance, 12.2 or 23.4). But many other panels break outside the borders altogether when depicting Art and Vladek in the old room. In the first chapter alone, panels 14.2-3, 15.1, 17.1, 20.1, 23.1 and 23.6 break borders and defy Speigelman’s shading rhythm. This switch from background to no background is mirrored in chapter 2 in scenes of Art and Vladek at the kitchen table (for instance, 26.1 versus 40.8), and, in fact, progresses consistently throughout every chapter in Maus. In this way, the present tense of Art and Vladek is the only form that can transcend borders or, as Speigelman says, step outside the “neat little boxes.” (Witek 101) Yet the allowance for Art and Valdek’s transcendence of borders doesn’t stop here. In other instances, the present tense of Art and Vladek appear to cross into the Holocaust story (45.1 and 115.6 are good examples) to further disrupt the already disjointed narrative of the past. As Speigelman stylistically and subtly suggests (if there ever is any question of how Vladek has changed) that the present holds a stronger version of his father, he gives the present an advantage that the past doesn’t readily possess.

This stylistic approach of Speigelman is so effective in establishing power, that the image of the large rat (147.7) and the bleed of the Nazi truck and concentration camp (157.1 and 157.4) becomes more jarring and effectual. These remain the only two times in Maus that Speigelman shifts the power from the present tense to the past. The last panel in Maus, then, is worth scrutinizing under this same scope. Art leaves the novel and, in many ways, transcends the borders of the last page as if it was the only page in the novel. The borders on page 159 intentionally encompass him and his father, and Art's breaking of the boxes in the last panel implies a new transcendence and shift in power in Art and Vladek's relationship.

Fictional Parents...

To backtrack slightly, there was something from Fun Home that I wanted to post on briefly:

One of the most interesting lines to me from the whole of Fun Home is when Bechdel is describing her parents and says, “I employ these allusions of James and Fitzgerald not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms” (67.1). This line appears above a panel depicting an ordinary mundane family scene: Alison and her mother are cooking (with the ever present “Sunbeam Bread” on the counter), her brother is leaning against the wall, and her father has just come home. Perhaps, for her parents, this ordinary scene of domesticity was a fiction. Her father obviously lived a “double-life” of sorts and her mother seems to be trapped by her family obligations. There always seems to be a sense of regret surrounding her mother of a life not lived. Her involvement in the local theatre and playing the piano seem to be the last vestiges of her former life and ambitions. Bechdel describes her mother’s appearance in a passport photograph, saying that her “luminous face has gone dull” (72.4) as compared with the younger, freer woman she was in the passport photo on the previous page, 71.1. She even describes her mother at that time through the lens of a fictional character, Isabel Archer from James’s The Portrait of a Lady, and describes the reason her mother stayed with her father as the same reason that Isabel stayed with Gilbert: “[b]ut too good for her own good, Isabel remains with Gilbert / … and despite all her youthful hopes to the contrary, ends up ‘ground in the very mill of the conventional’” (72.2-3). Relying on fiction as a way to relate to her own family serves to reinforce the sense of separation and “cool aesthetic distance” (67.2) Bechdel describes to the reader. At one point she even describes her household as being “like an artists’ colony. We ate together, but otherwise were absorbed in our separate pursuits. And in this isolation, our creativity took on an aspect of compulsion” (134.3). The only way left for Bechdel to relate to her family seemed to be through art.

My Spin on Vladek's emergent head (77.7)

At the end of class today, someone (forgive me for forgetting who) pointed out that in the last panel on page 77, Vladek's head and shoulders pop-up to provide the narration in a manner somewhat consistent with the original "Maus" cartoon. This is the only time in Maus that Spiegelman goes for this specific effect, but there are countless panels in which he gives us full frame shots of Vladek in the present providing retrospective commentary on the scenes he is describing (for example the bottom panel on 86: ('We didn't know yet of Auschwitz - of the ovens - but we were anyway afraid.")

So why the decision to include this abbreviated depiction of present day Valdek within the historically rendered scene on 77?

"Of course I said I only got half of what I really made. Otherwise I wouldn't save anything" present day Vladek says, but the Vladek of 1940 isn't saying anything in this panel. The narration, therefore, indirectly and retroactively puts words into young Vladek's mouth. I don't intend this to be a full explanation, as there is another factor to take into account: In additon to Vladek's head and shoulders being visible, we also see the handles of his exercise bike, an image that will take on greater significance as the chapter progresses.

In chapter one, when the bike is first brought into play, the reader might not take it as anything more than Speigelman's loyalty to accuracy. That is, if Vladek told him the story while riding on an exercise bike, why not commit it to paper that way. In chapter 4, however, greater attention is paid to this device, giving its use a ring of artifice. Upon completing his story about the last time seeing his father, Vladek is tired, which Spiegelman shows by cutting back to the present and depicting him hunched over on the bike (91.8). On the very next page, he says "Whoo - I overdid a little. I'm feeling dizzy" (92.1). Ostensibly, he's referring to the exercise session, but the implication that recounting history has exhausted him is impossible to ignore.

There also seems to be some significance that his chosen mode of exercise doesn't get him anywhere. Which brings us back to page 77. Here, the sly thriftiness that current Vladek describes did in fact get him somewhere. It was perhaps only through his frugal means of saving that Vladek kept enough money to bribe his way toward survival. On the other hand, here is an instance where Spiegelman is not resisting "caricature of the miserly old Jew" and is thereby spinning his wheels without getting anywhere.

Relying on the Narrator

In our class discussion it was argued that Bechdel's reliability as a narrator was sometimes faulty since she would often draw places or events that we know she could not have participated in. However, the bulk of the book focuses on events that she had been around for. What does it mean then, in comparison to Fun Home, that the bulk of Maus is visualizing a story that Spiegelman was not around for? Yes, it's true that there is more to emphasize that he learned this story from his father, but the fact remains that Spiegelman's story is wholly anachronistic. Does this make him an unreliable author?

Memoir as Therapy?

In her interview with Lynn Emmert, Bechdel discusses the benefit of therapy on her writing. In response to Emmert's half-asked question whether it had helped, she bursted out "Oh my GOD, yeah...It wasn't just the emotional benefits I got from therapy, but a whole way of learning to think psychologically," she elaborated. "Understanding what we were just talking about, these layers and layers of motivations behind people's behaviors." I found this fascinating, as the very same day, visiting writer Martin Moran had mentioned his "great editor" and his "great therapist" as the two biggest helps in writing his book. Obviously therapy mostly develops an understanding of one's self and the people in one's life, but is it also some kind of secret to getting a better grasp on people in general? Could all writers benefit from this "insider info" on our deepest motivations, whether for comics or prose, fiction or non-?

Bechdel mentions sharing her material with her mother, saying that each time it was very "emotionally tumultuous." I think that this depth of emotion is what makes her work so rich, and I think that it never goes too far into sentimentalism or schmaltz because a) Bechdel is an excellent writer and b) she had therapy to sort through her thoughts and memories, to sift out the deeper meaning and the strongest threads to braid together.

Character Depiction in Fun Home

Since we have discussed the way the writer depicts himself in many of our texts thus far, I thought it would only be fair to examine Alison Bechdel's self-portrait in Fun Home. Even in the few scenes that we see young Alison in a dress, there is an undeniable boyishness to her. She always has close-cropped hair, wears gender-neutral clothes, etc. We rarely see her smiling; in fact, she is often seen with a scowl on her face. The only time she is seen laughing is when she is telling a friend of her father's death on page 227. There is a slight hint of a smile on her face in several scenes when her father is giving her positive attention, most notably when she was his student on pages 198-199. There are very few similarities between the depiction of Alison and the depiction of her father; she mostly seems to resemble her mother. Whether this is actually the case or a just a way of Alison distancing herself from her father is unclear. Her character does not really change much physically over the course of time; it is easy to pick her out of crowd scenes and distinguish her from her siblings. Bruce, however, is not always drawn with a consistent pen. Even if Alison had not made a comment about her father's good looks on page 64, it would have been easy to tell that he was a fairly handsome man. His face carries a very bookish and serious quality, and his style seems to evolve in subtle ways with the passing of time. But the scenes in which he is reprimanding her or her siblings show a different man. For instance, the image of Bruce on 99.2 bears practically no resemblance to the image on 92.1, and is even quite different from the Bruce on 98.1. Perhaps this is Alison's way of conveying the idea that there was a side of her father that she didn't know, that he really was two people living in the same body. I think that Alison says a lot with her drawings, especially with the expressions on the characters' faces. She never states explicitly that she or her mother or her father were unhappy, but it is as clear as the titles of the books they are reading.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man

There is no escaping literature in Fun Home. Alison and her father are constantly seen book in hand, title visible. Chapter titles cleverly allude to some of the most celebrated works in the canon. Most of these references are explained within each respective chapter, but I found it curious that in Chapter 1, "Old Father, Old Artificer," Bechdel, allows the reader to believe that this is simply an invocation of the Daedalus/Icarus myth, whereas anyone who has read Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will recognize this as the begining of that novel's very last line. Of course Joyce takes on greater importance in the the graphic novel's final chapter, "The Antihero's Journey" (which follow's Joseph Campbell's model for the journey of the hero quiye nicely), mostly in relation to Ulysses which Allison "studies" in college. A Portrait of the Artist. . . is brought up fleetingly as a text that she should read prior to Ulysses; and when Allison mentions this to her father he remarks "You damn well better identify with every page."

I bring this up because for all the heavy handed connections Bechdel between between her family history and the works of Proust, Fitzgerald, James, etc, it seems as if Fun Home taken as a whole is a far more subtle and compelling retelling of A Portrait of the Artist . . . and I appreciate that she doesn't have to spell that out for me.

Fun Home Photographs

Almost in direct contrast with Sacco, Bechdel uses literary devices to her advantage in Fun Home and brings the reader into her non-fiction reality in an effective and seemingly effortless manner. The juxtapositions and dualities of her and her father, literary allusions and analogies in literature, and metaphors of snakes/mud/etc all effectively advance Bechdel’s memoir without challenging its believability. [Perhaps it is unfair to categorize Safe Area Gorazde in the same context as Fun Home, however, as the former is literary journalism and the latter memoir. For a reader, it’s much easier to enter the “truth” in a world of someone’s childhood than in a political and influential war-zone. But if it’s important to recognize the works’ difference in categorization, it’s equally important to note why shared (or singular) literary devices work well in one context and not the other.]

Bechdel uses one particular graphic device - the retracing of photographs - to help verify her story’s alignment with reality. The retraced photographs that appear at the beginning of every chapter reinforce the “real” people that Bechdel depicts. The comics inside the chapter are likely drawn to depict reality, but the stroke and form of the characters are more comic-like and steer away from the painstaking details that appear in the photographs. Bechdel didn’t need to present her non-fiction work in a strictly realistic manner (in fact, Bechdel goes so far as to give characters lines and dots for mouths, even when they speak!) Instead, Bechdel uses the comic form to her advantage, adding in retraced photographs only when prompted by her discoveries in the story. Photographs that Bechdel discovers of her family, father and Roy (47.6, 100-101, 102.1-3, 120) help tell her story alongside her narrative, strengthening the reader’s perception of the characters and adding credibility to Fun Home overall.

But where photographs work well in Fun Home, SAG lacks any realistic variations in its overtly comic form. If memory serves, Sacco doesn’t employ a single image or character in photographic realism. Even when given the chance to present one small image (the television screen in 122.2) to mirror actual images from the war, Sacco still employs a more comic-like style to portray “reality” and leaves me wondering whether or not he overlooked an opportunity to help his case of the “real truth.” In the end, this is just one of many devices that Sacco seems to have misused or, in this case, forgotten altogether.

Sacco's Comic Essay

We spent a lot of time discussing Sacco's choice of form in class. It left me wondering about how another form may have looked. I think his most comparable alternative would have been a photo essay. He could balance words and images in the same way that he did with comics, coupling his own experiences with his interviews and journalistic "file photos" of the tragedies in Gorazde and the surrounding region.

This would certainly deal with the issues of "The Real Truth," as we also discussed. Photos have a reputation of being more accurate, more representative of the "facts." However, they lack many of the benefits of drawings, especially those as intricate and evocative as Sacco's. A drawing--though it may not be as "accurate" as a photograph--is able to integrate the feelings and experiences of an event in a way that photographs can rarely reach. The exaggerated features of Sacco's friends and acquaintances may not be photorealistic, but they emphasize the horror of what they've seen, the hardships they've survived, and the overall intensity of emotion they have to live with. Using comics to tell their stories is like the fairly contemporary split between journalism and creative nonfiction. We can't always trust our memories, but I think that how we remember something speaks to the event and its impact more than a series of largely impersonal photos.

This brings up another important difference between a photo essay and what we have here. I think it's important to note the symbolism of a photo being taken, the camera a physical barrier between the photographer and the subject. Sacco spoke to the awkwardness of sketching or taking notes during some interviews, and how instead, he would often rush to a private space and scribble everything down afterward. Imagine if he was reliant on a camera, and was forced to pull one out with every interview--I very much doubt that the (mostly) trusting relationships he had would have been the same. Instead, I imagine a reception more along the lines of Howard Miller's in "An American in Palomar," when they found out his true motivations. I think that this encapsulates the most important effect of Sacco's choice of form--the intimacy of a drawing, and how much closer it brings documenter to documentee.

When Literary Devices Weaken -or- The Literary Journalism that Chose to Echo

On first read, the prologue in Safe Area Gorazde introduced me to Sacco as a journalist and placed me in the heart of the town - character and setting all at once. When cycling back through pages of SAG, however, the prologue hits me hard. The "Real Truth" becomes heavily weighted as a device of Sacco's narrative, almost as if Sacco is heading off questions of "truth" and "non-fiction" that are inevitable. By opening the novel with the shady "counterfeit" (see Justin’s post “Truthfully…”), Sacco sets up an interesting juxtaposition for the "real truth" he's about to detail. And this is where my problem lies – if Sacco's "real truth" is as such, why would he need to employ a literary device to help characterize it as true? Why would a journalist use the first two pages of a report to spotlight nonfiction vs. fiction and the issue of reliability if he knows that his account is a truthful report? Sacco knew that “real truth” would be at issue in SAG’s creative nonfiction form, but his attempt to dismiss the concerns in the prologue only makes the pages that follow more questionable.

Further, Sacco depicts the stranger in manner of the hard-boiled – a largely fictionalized genre which fits easier into the world of comics than the real-life Sacco does himself. In contrast to Sacco and the townspeople that befriend Sacco, the movements of the stranger are stiff and mechanical (consider scenes like 24.3, 61.3 or 102.2) and help separate the “fictional” stranger from the “real” people in the prologue. Add in the line that the stranger’s “dreams told him” (ii.4) he wouldn’t be injured in the war, and the stranger becomes an overly-fictionalized, dreamlike device who serves to balance truth. But, again, is it necessary for “real” non-fiction to define itself against fiction?

When considering the prologue as a literary device, it’s necessary to consider the rest of SAG’s construction, too. Repetition of themes, focus on lifestyles and consumerism, structure of the narrative, etc. all define SAG as a creative non-fiction or literary journalism piece, rather than a clear-cut journalist account. And while this is something the reader knows from the start given the graphic novel format, it’s interesting how many of these devices weaken SAG as a whole and lessen the impact of Sacco’s message.

Given this, I as a reader still find SAG extremely powerful – the images and story resonate in my mind in a way that a traditional journalist account of Gorazde could not. And as Sacco foresaw the question of “real truth,” I wonder if he was mostly concerned with my praise – that is, did Sacco want to resonate more than prove reliability?

Reality and Fiction

The most striking image of the first half of "Fun Home" occurs on page 120. Panel two juxtaposes two very similar photographs. The first photo (the one on the left) portrays a young Bruce lounging in the sun in his early twenties, while the second photo is of a young Alison also in her early twenties. She wonders, "Was the boy who took it his lover? As the girl who took this Polaroid of me on a fire escape on my twenty-first birthday was mine?" (p.120). She goes on to highlight the similarities between the two pictures: the shadows dancing across their faces, their "pained grin[s]," and even the similar exterior settings. What is most interesting about this is the inclusion of the picture of her father (Bruce) dressed as a woman. However, her father looks nothing like a man in this picture, halfway tucked behind the two prominent images in the frame. Instead, he looks like a beautiful young woman, just as Alison looks like a handsome young man.

Panel two best represents the dualities that exist throughout the text. At times Alison brings particular attention to these "diametrically opposed" dualities (p.101). These are: femininity and masculinity, homosexuality and heterosexuality, and most prominently, reality and fiction.

Throughout the first half of the graphic novel memoir, Alison is not only trying to understand herself in terms of her father's mysterious double life, but also trying to come to terms with these many dualities that are maybe not so "diametrically opposed" (p.101). It seems that in the first half these definitions that she assigns to aspects of her life are not so clear-cut. For example, doesn't the memoir demand us to ask ourselves if there is really a huge difference between reality and fiction/art? Moreover, by writing about her struggle with identity and self in such a way (the graphic novel form) isn't she blurring the lines between reality and art? Alison explains, "my parents are most real to me in fictional terms" (p.67), as if this whole work was her way of finding a common ground between these dualities of reality and fiction. Alison even goes so far as to describe her mother's life in terms of Henry James's Catherine Sloper and Shakespeare's shrew, Katherine (p. 66 and 69). Again on page 83, after her mother reads Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning," Alice comments: "perhaps she also liked the poem because its juxtaposition of catastrophe with a plush domestic interior is life with my father in a nutshell."

The most prevalent duality in the text (besides the hidden/known duality concerning her father's life) is that of reality and fiction. Here Alison has a difficult time separating the two. I think that the text, like Alison, is forcing us to ask some questions. Are fact (reality) and fiction (art) really all that different? Is it simpler? More complex? Can we better understand and make sense of our own reality through fiction and art?

Sacco’s Splashes

I think “Safe Area Gorazde” does an effective job with its look at the Bosnian conflict, and I think one of the reasons is that Joe Sacco transmits a lot of information artistically, especially in terms of splash artwork (a midterm focus of mine). I counted five notable variations on the splash in his work, and I think it lends strength to the narration, because it recognizes both the multitude of characters and the fact that the sprawling town itself is a central character to this story. It’s hard to present a town effectively in only a nine-panel grid.

Here are the different variants I saw:

1. One-page splash (pages 1, 4) – Introductory shots of the town at the beginning of the book, one with the U.N. column, and the other of the crowd waiting to greet the trucks. It’s been noted in class the amount of detail that went into these, and the way that Sacco keeps us moving across the page with the text boxes.

2. Double-page spread (pages 14-15) – This is the only time in the book when Sacco uses this … again, an early introductory feel to the town, with all the bits and pieces we discussed in class. Effective as a mood-setter and first large-scale picture of the town.

3. Double-page top-half variant (pages 30-31) – This is where we get up into the hills and see a panorama of the town. I’d argue that Sacco could have resorted to this at least once more, during the “94 Offensive,” when the Serbs are looking over the same view (page 166). I think this would have created a nice bridge in the reader’s mind with the view we get after the fact in 30-31.

4. One page splash with “snapshot panels” (pages 46, 57, 65, 146, 188) – As we get into the book, we see these more and more, where Sacco keeps his story moving in a series of panels over a full page splash. I think the most effective use is of with the U.N. convoy winding its way in between the panels. In a way, the panels almost become motion lines for this column.

5. Panel splashes over a half-page (pages 8, 17, 27, 132, 195, 213, etc.) – Sacco resorts to these when depicting party scenes and when he wants to push the town into our consciousness (like a camera pulling back from the face to reveal the scene behind). A classic example is when they talk about giving bon bons to kids, and the final shot emphasizes the blasted town in back of the child (there’s bigger problems than tooth decay in Gorazde).

The strength of “comics journalism” has to be the combination of compelling artwork with comprehensive reporting. I think we could argue for some time about how Sacco reported things, but I think in terms of artistry, he definitely showed both a sense of experimentation and keen understanding of his craft.

"Total War"

In Gary Groth’s interview with Joe Sacco, Sacco states: “To me, with comics it’s up to the reader how long he or she wants to dwell on a particular image. A reader can make his or her experience either easier or more relentless in that way” (67). This statement reminded me of the first two pages of the section entitled “Total War.” In this section, pages 120-121, Sacco and Serif are shown a tape of the violence and destruction that was going on in Gorazde. The reader is not shown the tape but we are shown their reactions. The man showing them the tape is urging them to continue watching with an almost perverse interest or joy, exclaiming “YOU MUST SEE THIS! LOOK! LOOK! YOU MUST LOOK!” (120) The lettering is capitalized and gets increasingly thicker and bolder as the scene continues for emphasis. Sacco and Serif have looks of horror on their faces, yet they continue to watch. Serif partially covers one eye in panel 120.2, but still peeks through her fingers. In the next panel, 120.3, she completely covers her eyes and in panel 121.1 she looks the other way. She clearly cannot tolerate the atrocities she is witnessing and proceeds, in panel 121.2, to cover her face with both hands. However, after being subjected to the video for “an hour and a half” (121.3) there is a certain degree of acclimation to the violence they are witnessing and Serif is again watching the tape. Despite her initial uneasiness she offers to buy the tape, knowing it will be compelling news. The most interesting part of this scene for me is the last panel on page 121. An agitated Serif is walking away with Sacco, arms folded, and the text reads, “and only when we’d finally forced our way out the door and into the outside chill did he name his price—a figure so outrageous that it seemed to disgust Serif as much as all those full-color images of the dismembered and the disemboweled” (121.6). In a way this suggests another level to the horror of the war, that of both civilians and journalists trying to capitalize on the atrocities of the war.

Going back to the Sacco quote, comics journalism is unique in that it allows for the reader to choose the extent to which “he or she wants to dwell on a particular image,” almost shaping the news in a way because a certain amount of control is then placed in the hands of the reader. In this way the reader is allowed to shape the news for themselves by filtering the images to “make his or her experience either easier or more relentless.” The “Total War” section discussed above illustrates the viewer (Serif), in this case taking the role of reader in the Sacco quote, controlling how much she sees by covering her eyes and thus censoring her experience.

More on Safe Area Gorazde...

I must admit that I am still somewhat undecided on how I feel about Safe Area Gorazde. Aesthetically, I think that Joe Sacco did a top-notch job showing the situation in Bosnia from a sympathetic point of view. I thought that his decision to use black panels to represent flash backs was not only helpful to the reader but also artistically sound and innovative. There were many episodes in the book that I found breathtaking in their subject matter as well as in Sacco's depiction of them. The panels on pages 92-93, which show Edin recalling the discovery of dead and decomposing bodies that belonged to some of his closest friends, are images that I will not soon forget. He employs his "floating" or cascading captions on these pages, but the drawings really do speak for themselves. In his interview with Gary Groth, Sacco says he uses this specific technique to "emphasize a scattered feeling", and it is one of my favorite things about his work. It really makes the reader pay attention to every little thing in the panel, and it definitely establishes a feeling of uncertainty and confusion.

All of that being said, there were several things about Safe Area Gorazde that I took issue with, most notably the character of Riki. Now, I may be reading too much into this, but it was nearly impossible for me to take him seriously. Riki is probably the most significant Bosnian soldier in the novel, and he is typically used as comic relief; we see him singing or making slightly suggestive comments in broken English. Though it is the sight of Riki walking toward the front line that causes Sacco to come "as close as I came in Bosnia to bursting into tears" (103.30), I could not get over the thought that he was being used as a stereotype. He was Sacco's funny, American-obsessed foreigner, the "wild and crazy guy" that we know all too well from movies, television shows, etc. There were scenes in the novel that reminded me of the scenes featuring Chin-Kee in American Born Chinese. However, instead of people being embarrassed by Riki they were egging him on. I am not sure that either of these reactions are correct, nor do I know what exactly the correct reaction is. I understand that Riki does have an enormous amount of depth to him, but I wish that Sacco had showed this more often. Perhaps he was trying to emphasize just how young and unprepared for battle the soldiers were, in which case he most definitely succeeded. I had hoped he would explain this a little more in the interview we read, but he made no reference to it. I read some more interviews about this book and was unable to find any information that satisfied my concerns. Again, I do realize that there is a large chance that I am reading too much into this. Perhaps I need to go back and read the Riki sections more closely to see more of the aforementioned depth that Riki possesses. But, seeing as I have already gone over these sections several times, I am afraid that I will just be disappointed.

Truthfully . . .

"The center of the book shifts, is everywhere and no circumference can be drawn until the end" (7.2-5).

Admittedly I recycled this City of Glass quotation from my last blog post but in formulating an argument for our impending paper, I'd like to see how it might apply to a reading of Safe Area Gorazde, specifically in relation to questions of truth and narration.

Like City of Glass, Safe Area Gorazde's prologue takes a number of cues from the hard boiled tradition: The smokey and shadowy bar, trenchcoat/fedora clad stranger, and suggestions of a "Real Truth" to be had. I'll stop the comparison there, because unlike Quinn, Sacco seems to know that Real Truth is a counterfeit form of real truth, thus his intent to avoid the stranger who offers him his own version of it (ii.7).

Instead Sacco gleans his truths from a number of different (sometimes competing, often complementary) sources. Much of the truths he focuses on in the early segments of the novel deal with the day to day of Gorazde's citizens putting the pieces of their lives back together as the author pieces together the story he is trying to write(16.1). Early in his relationship with Riki, Sacco presses him for some war stories, but only gets "I have seen many horrible things . . . I saw many people killed. Parts of people. Horrible things" (26.1) and as he reveals in that panels narration, that's as much as he'd ever get from Riki.

Sacco is however successful in getting some pretty horrific stories from other citizens (mostly told in the black guttered flashback sections that come to dominate the second half of the book). At points he seems unsatiable, interrupting a perfectly pleasant social gathering to interrogate Sabina about her "worst moment." "The Real Truth," Sacco narrates "was I hadn't come to record the antics of some silly girls" (151). Maybe he hadn't, but these ostensibly banal interactions constiute the heart of the story Sacco is telling. Afterall, he's not telling the stories that make up the wartime sections of the book. These horrific tales come from the people he has interviewed and every now and then Sacco even comes to question their truthfulnes. Take Dr. Begovic's "far fetched or maybe not" story about a man forced to eat his grandson's liver (125.3-4) or Nermin and Haso's claims of Serbian use of combat gas* (200. 2). Ultimately, as Sacco narrates since Gorazde was cut off from camera's "It's suffering was the sole property of those who experienced it" (126.3). Best to let them tell their truths and let the reader sort through them to create a complete picture.

Real Truth is dangerous. Politicos and claimsmakers twisted the Real Truths of history to justify, rationalize, and even incite the atrocities that we have just read about. The Real Truth of Gorazde as a "safe area" is actually the "meaninglessness of the safe area concept" (184). Even once "peace" most Gorazdians are skeptical of the truthfulness in the concept of "real peace" (214.1-4).

Can we draw a circumference by the novel's conclusion? Sacco returns to Gorazde feeling alienated as all his friends have left but finds Edin there who is concerned with"getting on with things" (227.4), looking ahead instead of walking in circles.

*Recent evidence supporting truthfulness of these claims

Sacco In Iraq

Here's a link where you can view Sacco's Guardian coverage in Iraq. Look closely and see if you can find my friend John Kuniholm. These were published a few months after John arrived home in North Carolina, minus his right arm.

http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/03/joe_sacco_in_ir.html

Safe Area Safe for Subject?

I approached reading Safe Area Gorazde with a great deal of trepidation. I really loved the idea of the piece-- as I love the idea of anything that uses creative media to give voice to injustice-- but I was very nervous about how the people of Gorazde would be portrayed versus how they wanted to be portrayed versus how they had actually expressed themselves to Sacco.

I majored in anthropology in undergrad and I always approached "testimonies" and cultural case studies with the same feelings of uncomfortability. I feel like, no matter how hard an artist/ethnographer/interviewer tries to keep their subject best interests at heart, no matter how committed they are to furthering their subject's interests, the fact remains at the end of the day that you are using someone else's experiences for your own pleasure/exploration/gain. Even though this type of art is something I'm studying and engaging in, my feelings of core conflict remain.

This conflict is particularly strong for me when people who have undergone trauma are concerned, simply because the interviewer is providing an emotional release for the subject that puts them in vulnerable, even emotionally dangerous places, and then using what comes out to make subjective art. Despite (perhaps despite is not the right word. Maybe in addition to this) I feel like Sacco has really created a lovely piece of art here that has the potential to do real good in the world. I think that he uses to two techniques that really offset or maybe mitigate some of the risk I described earlier.

One is that he incorporates himself into the story, making it clear that the story details not just a re-telling for his subjects, but also a journey for himself. Secondly, he doesn't reduce his subject down to "suffering machines" he really goes out of his way to describe the minutiae of their experiences, even when they don't "directly apply" to the situation that drew him to Gorazde. To me, these two techniques indicate an important brand of respect on Sacco's part. In the end, when you create this kind of art, you can't control the effects that it has on your informants. Sometimes the best thing you can do is, in the act of creation, use specifics to keep your heart in the right place.

Safe Area Gorazde

Having long been a fan of political cartoons, I was surprised at how jarring and sometimes unsettling I found Safe Area Gorazde to be. To be perfectly honest, I am not even sure what it was that left me feeling this way. I think it is partly due to the first person narrative, the knowledge that these were similar or identical to the experiences that Joe Sacco had while he was there. The scenes of him sitting around with his new friends were especially touching. I tend to be somewhat skeptical when I see television journalists fraternizing with citizens in war-torn countries; it always seems forced and unnatural to me. However, in Sacco's depiction of the events, you can see a true bond between the reporter and his subjects. In fact, he rarely describes what he is doing as work. For instance on 67.3, when Sacco has finally returned to Gorazde after being delayed in Sarajevo for several weeks, he mentions doing interviews upon his return. Yet this comment is only made in passing, and it is secondary to him passing out lipsticks and letters. The reader understands just how much Sacco missed his new friends, and how distraught he had been over the possibility of not being able to return. I think the illustrations during this episode, especially 66.2, convey this sentiment in a very realistic and emotional manner.

One element of Sacco's story that I found particularly compelling was his sense of guilt over his role as messenger between Gorazde and Sarajevo. While he clearly has no problem delivering notes and packages back and forth between loved ones, I think that it made him more resentful of the fact that the short distance between the two places was so insurmountable for the citizens. He already has it pretty easy, seeing as he has the luxury of being able to return home to America whenever he wants, but the fact that his status as an American makes it easier for him to travel within a foreign land is a frustrating fact for him to deal with.

Borders and Lack There Of

While reading the text, I couldn't help but notice how Sacco uses borders in some cases and doesn't in others. Throughout the graphic novel, Sacco breaks the boundaries, literally and metaphorically. What begins as a neat story, pages i and ii, turns into something altogether chaotic. Pages i and ii ("Prologue) introduce us to the narrator, Sacco. He is sitting in a coffee shop hoping to find out the "Real Truth." In other words, Sacco is looking for something neat and pretty that can be written and drawn into neat boxes. As the story progress, these boxes drastically change.

The next section entitled "GO AWAY" is framed by two splash images without borders. The caravan driving through "No-man's-land" is in a very real sense, endless. It is also a timeless image. Without Sacco's brief descriptions, the image could be placed, any where during any war. Moreover, the image implies that the destruction is far more severe and extensive than in just this one snapshot. The following two pages (2 and 3) are very neat. Although the caption box protrudes slightly past the frame, everything is very uniform. These are the facts, they are without emotion. Just plain facts. The last image (p.4) is the second splash page. Like the first image, this is just a snapshot of the "57,000 inhabitants"(p.1) of Gorazde. The isolation of the town is evident in the backdrop of hills. The destruction is also evident in the faces of the peple lining the streets. It is also interesting to note that soldiers guarding the road are without expression.

The "Red Carpet Part I" begins in much the same way, until the party in "Part III." At this point, order begins to disintegrate. As Sacco becomes more emotionally involved with the people of Gorazde, he loses his border "inhibitions." The images in each frame blend into eachother, the captions and dialogue overlap. We do not see the strict boxes again until stories like "Disintegration" and "Disappearance." These stories are again a presentation of the facts. Sacco presents the people's stories solely as news facts. These are very unbiased representations of what happened during the war. These stories are provided in neat little boxes with neat caption and balloons. It is not until Sacco relates his personal experiences to us, that the borders are blurred and almost disorienting.

Writing Oneself into the Story

“You become part of a story if you’re a journalist. I mean, you can try to write yourself out of it, but you become involved. I think it’s more honest to show that your involvement affects people.” (Joe Sacco, from “The Case for Comics Journalism,” page 6).

It helped to read Kristian Williams’s article before heading into “Safe Area Gorazde” if only to really observe the technique that Joe Sacco was using, a very first-person narrative all but cognizant of one’s own role in influencing news events, however minor, and the responsibility of owning up to that.

Elsewhere in the article, there is also a statement that journalism will have to redefine itself in the 21st century, and that the “plain-speaking language” of the front page of the newspaper is only another kind of seductive rhetoric … like reading a comic book.

I liked the tone Joe Sacco found for his work, and the ways that he inserts himself into this history. In between scenes of unbelievable cruelty and savagery (mostly transmitted through people’s back-stories about fleeing various horrors), we have his personal observations and stories of people wanting basic things – jeans from Sarajevo, news of the outside world (song lyrics and current movies), and mostly the kind of hope that a UN-card carrying freelancing journalist can provide.

“Do they know about Gorazde in America?” asks one character on page 53. “Yes,” Sacco lies.

I also kept noting the not-so-flattering ways in which Joe Sacco drew himself into his own comic. A few examples include a drooling, toothy laugh (8.1), a sweaty, drunken dance (10.4), a full-on monstrous tongue shot (11.1), and food in mid-swallow (50.2). I think all this lends some credence to his voice, a refreshing, more interesting, and more human character than the finely-coiffed, coolly-composed talking heads that get sold to the public daily on the news circuit. For me, Sacco’s first-hand observations and analyses work well, not only because of the pictures and detail that he brings to fore, but because he brings this style of self-effacement and humor to his work.

I’m still pondering though the effect of drawing a character with glasses without any pupils (sort of like a permanent camera). Is it just another form of lampooning one’s look (the bigger-than-life glasses hiding the eyes) or is there some metaphor hidden in there?

Eye Just Don't Know Anymore

"The question is the story itself and whether or not it means something is for the story to tell" (2.8-9).

A few panels later, our narrator tells us that what Quinn liked about mysteries was " . . . their economy. There is no sentence or word that is not significant . . . Everything is essence: The center of the book shifts, is everywhere and no circumference can be drawn until the end" (7.2-5).

Unlike in genre hard boiled detective stories, though the central mystery in City of Glass is essentially unsolvable. By the end of the book we have a harder time drawing a circumference than we did at the outset. One even has a hard time even putting a finger on what exactly the mystery is. At the crux of this dilemma is our inability to wrap our heads around the narrator and what's at stake for him. Typically we're used to our detectives giving the "voice over": In Chandler we have Marlowe to orient us. Hammet provides Sam Spade or the Continental Op. Though the milieus into which these authors thrust their detectives are confusing and frought with red herrings, we are with them every step of the way. Their disorientation is ours as is their triumph over it. Not so with Quinn, suffering a private madness on which the narrator can really shed no light. This leaves the reader to try to puzzle matters out for himself, a potential exercise in futility or "shell game" especially when taking into consideration the quote with which I began this post.

I'd like to conlude with another (rather lengthy) quote, this from the novel City of Glass and leave open the question of whether it can shed some light on the graphic novel especially in regards to the mystery of the narrator:

"The detective is the one who looks, who listens, who moves through the morass of objects and events in search of the thought, the idea that will pull all these things together and make sense of them. In effect, the writer and the detective are interchangable. The reader sees the world through the detective's eyes, experiencing the proliferation of details for the first time. He has become awake to the things around him . . . Private eye. The term held a triple meaning for Quinn. Not only was the letter "i" standing for investigator, it was "I" in the upper case, the tiny life bud buried in the body of the breathing self. At the same time, it was also the physical eye of the writer, the eye of the man who looks out from himself into the world and demands that the world reveal itself to him."

On form and content...

Looking back over the interview with Paul Karasik on the Indy Magazine link, I found Karasik’s statement about the layout of City of Glass very interesting. He said, “the grid got to serve double duty there as both backbone and as a symbol unto itself […] as well as holding the story together […] ultimately it also allowed the story to fall apart.” Keeping in mind that City of Glass was adapted from a novel, I was thinking about the ways in which form often mirrors content in novels and how that enhances the text as a whole. The structure of the graphic novel varies from a tight controlled nine panel grid to a full page, borderless image with panels staggered across the page, as on pages 130-131. The deterioration of the grid mirrors Quinn’s descent into madness and losing the already precarious sense of reality and identity that he had in the beginning. Karasik even says that Quinn’s “state of mind and pent-up life […] kind of unravels, to the point where the panels themselves unravel.” We get a preview of the impending dissolution of the form as Quinn reads Peter Stillman’s book about the breakdown of language on page 39. (I mentioned this section in my first post on COG, but in a slightly different context. )

Page 39 looks at Stillman’s theory about the separation of language from God and illustrates how words and images were interchangeable before the Fall. This “fall from grace” of language led to a disparity between word and image and this is one of the several smaller breakdowns that prepares the reader for the eventual breakdown of the system of the grid that was holding the story in place up till the end.

What's up crossover

http://abc.go.com/primetime/pushingdaisies/index?pn=comic

Interesting potential for bringing new recruits to the world of comics, or marketing gimmick that cheapens the form?

How "look" shapes reception

I appreciated the depth and the range of Bill Kartalopoulos's interview with Paul Karasik, and look forward to having Karasik at AU discussing the issues they covered at even greater length. His description of his lectures and practices with his students gave me a much clearer picture of a comic's creation than any of McCloud did (though I suppose that could have been different if we'd read "Making Comics" instead).

Whereas I often felt like McCloud's tone was that of someone pleading with an audience that fundamentally didn't believe in the value of comics, Karasik's description of the structure and value of the form is casually convincing. He seems to have a stronger, less conflicted grasp on what it takes to make a comic--"it's not a rational process," he says, though "there are rational pieces to the process." McCloud leaned toward this kind of analysis, but never quite got me there--so what's different about Karasik? Is it that this interview is between two interested parties and pretty much guaranteed to be read by interested parties, whereas McCloud was reaching for a broader spectrum of reader? Is it that the interview is in prose form, not in comic form, and I'm simply trained to be suspicious of comics and accepting of prose? Or is it something else entirely--my opinion of the two themselves?

Though McCloud explains that he chose the style he did for accessibility's sake, it had the opposite effect for me. It was too "cartoony," too difficult a jump for me to consider it a medium, an art. The work in City of Glass, on the other hand, struck me by its depth, by the richness of visuals and symbols, by the potential for reading and re-reading and always discovering some new connection. It's interesting that Karasik claims his strength lies in "thinking about how the clock works, not how the face looks"--is it because City of Glass had such a strong "face" AND such strong "inner workings" that I was more receptive to Karasik's discussion? What were your reactions to his RISD lesson plan?