Friday, April 27, 2018

Joe Sacco's Palestine and What Makes it So Good

Joe Sacco combines journalism and comics to create his graphic novel: Palestine. Palestine is a collection of stories put together by Sacco to represent the issues in Palestine. One distinct aspect of Palestine is how the characters are drawn. Most characters drawn in Palestine are very different from each other. The way Sacco drew the people could be described as using a 2-D shape to depict a 3-D object. This description is applicable because many characters' faces are drawn using rounded or flattened versions of regular shapes as seen below in the picture of the second page of the graphic novel.

However, Sacco contrasts this by drawing himself in a completely different manner. While focusing on every detail in the faces of the people he draws, he gives himself very simple features that consist of a rounded head and a very plain face. This is Sacco's way of distinguishing himself from everyone else during the comic.

It is clear throughout the comic that Sacco wants to separate himself from the rest of the people he puts in the novel. Sacco does this to avoid inserting his own personal bias on the political matter in Palestine. By making Palestine a story filled with other people's stories, Sacco avoids pressing his opinions on the reader. He spends the entire novel relaying what others tell him, and does not show his full reaction to the person's. Sacco shows the reader that he considers himself an observer in the artwork on the cover.




On the cover, we see Sacco drawn in all black and placed away from the refugees around him. This is to show the separation of his thoughts and bias' from those of the people around him. In doing this, Sacco allows for the reader to go through, understand, and form their own opinion on each story without being persuaded by Sacco's thoughts.

By focusing on everyone but himself in the novel, Sacco gives an unbiased representation of the matter in Palestine. This allows for the reader to form their own opinion and it also makes the graphic novel seem more fact-based and serious; however, Sacco's use of cartoon-like art lightens the mood of the novel and makes reading the novel a less daunting task. From Sacco's unbiased representation of Palestine to his cartoon-like art style, Palestine is a great graphic novel to read for any inexperienced or veteran graphic novel reader.


-Aidan Steineman, Fritz Souweine, Charles Steenstra, Eden Maxey, Spencer Donohue

1 comment:

Michael Hancock said...

You make some informative observations about Sacco's depiction of himself and others. You go on to suggest that his perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unbiased. What makes it so? Doesn't the fact that he almost exclusively interviews Palestinians make his account necessarily one-sided? Refer to specific episodes and even pages to illustrate your claims.