If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, How Many Can I Get For a Caricature? (Larry Donahue, Kate Rabideau, Julian Martinez, Dannie Lee, Lucas Urbanski)

In his graphic report, Palestine, Joe Sacco tackles the extremely involved conflict between Israel and Palestine while seeming to evade the complexity of the issues on the whole. Although for the most part he blatantly ignores the Jewish perspective, while writing about the Palestinians he does acknowledge a very wide range of the effects of the conflict by specifically relating how it affects individual people--an important deviation from mainstream journalism that sets this work apart. In the same way, his ability to convey the humanity of the conflict continues past his text and into his cartooning style; that is, he chooses to portray the complexity and dramatic essence of situations by extremely dramatizing the facial features of those involved in the demonstrations and skirmishes. Examples of this almost caricaturistic depiction of events can be seen on pages 38 and 127.

This trademark rugged cartooning style heavily benefits his work, as the subject matter tends to be more serious and, of course, real than that of most other graphic novels. Sacco’s heavy shading and lack of color helps convey the grimness of his message regarding the conflict. Many of these elements can be contrasted with the style of another graphic novel we’ve studied: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Persepolis’ images and characters consist of mostly simple, solid lines and colors, and extremely iconic characters. In the case of Palestine, however, Sacco’s more emotive, expressive style makes it so the story is portrayed as not only more serious, but more personal. In Palestine it is rare that objects are filled in as a single color as in Persepolis; rather, they are drawn with interlacing black and white, allowing Sacco to more subtly incorporate themes of tedium, weariness, outrage, and fear into his characters’ faces. As for the narrative itself, an important distinction lies in that, whereas Persepolis serves primarily as a coming of age story about an individual, Palestine’s lens focuses on a broader conflict and its subsequent effects on an entire populace.

However, as a reader this lens seems rather difficult to adjust to. Rather than making an effort to engage his readers by providing any contextual framework for the book, Sacco wastes no time in jumping into the gritty details of his subject matter. In other words, his intention is clearly not to engage a relaxed audience. In fact, the raw, unbeautified style with which Sacco depicts the faces of the Palestinians perfectly reflects his crude expository style, and it is in this way that Sacco takes graphic journalism to the extreme. Denouncing the charm that many graphic novels embrace, Sacco turns to this bare-bones appeal, as exemplified perfectly on page 117. Here, in a series cut-out boxes running down the page in a loosely structured curve, he cuts right into chapter five with a smattering of sentence fragments that reflect the direct eye-to-page approach with which he observed the events in the first place.

Despite such a direct approach to his writing, in the end, Palestine can still be identified as a polemical work considering the fact that Joe Sacco is simply an American visiting Palestine and recording the “interviews” of the people he meets--that is to say, he is an outsider looking in. It may seem that such a situation would result in a more undiluted view of the conflict and perhaps a lighter prevalence of bias; however, Sacco himself almost directly contradicts that, reminding readers of a bias that is so ubiquitous throughout the book that it is almost invisible: that his interpretation of the conflict is entirely one-sided. Near the end, he depicts the Jewish characters coming to him to file grievances about their lack of representation in his work. To this, Sacco, essentially agrees, but refuses to make any accommodation, as he explains that the Jewish side of the story is not what he is there for in the first place.

In conclusion, if you’re a history professor looking for a book recommendation, you’ve found it. Unfortunately, for those of you not so well-versed in politics and history, Joe Sacco’s Palestine is more likely to confuse and bore you than to enrich you. Nevertheless, if you’re set on reading it, make sure to take what meaning you can from Sacco’s powerful images and expressive caricatures--he may not be the most effective narrator, but as a graphic journalist he has certainly taken advantage of his format, and there is no doubt that within his images hides just as much meaning, if not more, than his words.