Including Sacco

On the very first page of Safe Area Gorazde, I found identifying the individual members of “we” to be very difficult because of the vague description of the scene that was presented to me. I saw a man who had wrinkles on his forehead, saying “I think things will get much better,” and a second man with Harry Potter glasses whose prescription is so bad that the thickness of the lenses conceal his eyes. Which one was Joe Sacco? Edin? (Am I the only one who was confused?) How ironic... considering the immense amount of detail that exists in this graphic novel. Of course, soon I was saved by page 5, where Joe Sacco’s identity is revealed, and it soon became apparent to me that Joe Sacco was very, very distinct. In fact, in contrast to Maus and Laika, the huge amount of details that Joe Sacco included in his graphic novel helped to easily distinguish everyone’s faces, most of which are unique and discernible. Joe Sacco--to me, at least--had a much more comical appearance in comparison to the people around him. I think that Joe Sacco wanted his presence to be noticed by his readers, perhaps to take a part in a different form of journalism in which the reporter/journalist inserts him/herself into the subject’s narrative.

Do we frequently see journalists interacting with their subjects? How often do journalists directly interact with them? In the limited number of visual news reports that I have seen, the reporter usually speaks into the camera and presents the scene before us. The reporter, after s/he has finished introducing the topic that applies to the place at which the reporter is located, is followed by aspect-to-aspect montage of shots as the reporter continues the story. Even interviews with inhabitants of the story’s location or innocent participants in and witnesses of the story exclude the reporter’s appearance, revealing only the reporter’s hand wrapped around a microphone. It would be a rare occurrence even to see the reporter’s entire self included in an interview with a random pedestrian, but that short glimpse of the reporter would be the only and smallest instance of the storyteller interacting with the story. Many written news reports are told in a storytelling but strictly objective fashion, completely excluding the storyteller from the story. Of course, there are Q&As, but the Qs don’t do anything to reveal the interviewer behind them. Ultimately, beyond including a name after the phrases Written by or Interviewed by, journalism seems to hide the journalist, perhaps to increase the amount of its stories’ objectivity that it presents to the highest extent. Directly including the journalist poses the risk of losing objectivity. The journalist would appear to be too invested in his/her story, which, as a result, would appear to be too opinionated for those who listen to it. People expect journalism to be objective. They want to learn the cold and hard facts behind the story... How can a journalist ever involve himself if he wanted to avoid jeopardizing his report of those cold and hard facts?

However, Joe Sacco obviously sees and envisions differently, mainly because he approaches his journalism in a different--though not particularly unique--way. His graphic novel Safe Area Gorazde has a strong resemblance to Exit Through the Gift Shop, in which the storyteller (and narrator) of the documentary is an important character in the story. I don’t know how Sacco planned to tell his story when he began his excursions in Bosnia. (If he usually includes himself in his graphic novels, then I guess that his plan is obvious.) However, it is easy to tell that the comical appearance that he gives to himself indicates his deliberate choice in making his graphic novel into a mix of a personal documentary and a journalist’s news report. Sacco wanted his appearance to be obvious; he wanted his readers to notice him when he entered the scene. He isn’t narcissistic... He was just trying to make a point about his presence in Bosnia. He wanted to show that he was directly involved in his story because the story about the war in Eastern Bosnia was told by people with whom he interacted. His main source material wasn’t only interviews. His source material also came from his emotional investment in his friends and interviewees who were more separated from him. In fact, Sacco says, “They had to love me in Gorazde. They had to want me... I was movement” (65) when he discusses his ability to go into and come out of Gorazde via the Blue Road. Strongly indicated by Sacco’s reaction to the French’s brief stint of restricting access into Gorazde, during which Sacco worriedly expressed, “I was wondering about Edin, Riki, the silly girls. If I was no longer movement, where did they stand?” (66), his emotional involvement even increased as his time in Bosnia progressed. It is quite undeniable that Sacco became invested in the story of the Bosnian War and how it affected those in Gorazde. Witnessing his many interactions in Gorazde forced me to assume that he felt compelled to include himself because his presence--his investment--was how he got his story.

Now.. don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean to say that Sacco wanted to tell the story of the war in Eastern Bosnia from a strictly subjective standpoint. Sacco still approached the story in an objective way, using research and the interviews that he gained from Bosnians and even placing quotation marks inside the narrative boxes to perhaps indicate that the narration was sourced from an interview. However, including his presence in Bosnia as he interviewed and learned from those around him raises an interesting question on objectivity and subjectivity. Are they exclusive?