Comics and/as Documentary: the implications of graphic truth-telling Nina Mickwitz PhD thesis March 2014 School of Film, Television and Media UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA Comics and/as Documentary: the implications of graphic truth-telling Nina Mickwitz PhD thesis University of East Anglia School of Film, Television and Media March 2014 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 1 Abstract Examining examples from a cluster of early twenty-first century comics this thesis argues that these are comics adopting a documentary mode of address. The recognition that they share a documentary ambition to visually narrate and represent aspects and events of the real world, in turn calls for a closer examination of the contribution such comics present in terms of documentary’s repertoire. This thesis challenges the persistent assumption that ties documentary to recording technologies, and instead engages an understanding of the category in terms of narrative, performativity and witnessing. In so doing, it aligns with debates and questions raised by recent academic work around animated documentary. Shared concerns include conventions, truth-claims and trust, and the limitations of representation as verisimilitude. Mindful not to overstate correspondence with animated and inherently moving image forms, however, this contribution explicitly concerns documentary in comics form: as constituted by static and silent pages. The enquiry is structured according to concerns and themes that have been identified as central to documentary theory: the relation between documentary image and its referent; the production of archives and popular history; the social function of documentary as visibility and ‘voice’, and the travelogue as cultural narrative and production of knowledge. In other words, examples of comics that address actual, as opposed to imagined, persons and events of the historical world, are read through the lens of documentary. Close reading and visual analysis, engaging comics-specific frameworks, asks how comics by means of their formal qualities might offer alternative strategies and even the possibility to overcome certain problems associated with audiovisual modes of documentary representation. The thesis simultaneously extends an alternative perspective to literary frameworks, in particular the categories of memoir and autobiography, which have come to dominate in a steadily growing field of comics studies. 2 CONTENTS List of Illustrations………………………………………………………….. 4 Acknowledgements………………………………………………………….. 6 Introduction…………………………………………………………………. 7 Chapter 1 - Documentary: a mode of address…………………………….. 26 Chapter 2 – Comics: situating the form…………………………………… 48 Chapter 3 –Pointing in Different Directions: photographic realism, hand-crafted drawings and the truth claims of images…………………... 75 Chapter 4 – History in the Making: comics, history and collective memory……………….................................. 122 Chapter 5 – Visibility and Voice…………………………………………… 161 Chapter 6 – The Journey Narrative: alterity, authenticity and cross-cultural encounters……………………… 201 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………… 249 Appendix I …………………………………………………………………... 259 References……………………………………………………………………. 260 3 List of Illustrations FIG 1 Joe Sacco (2009), Footnotes in Gaza, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 31: 3-5……………………………. 8 FIG 2 Marjane Satrapi (2008), Persepolis; the story of a childhood and the story of a return, London: Vintage, p. 43……………... 8 FIG 3 Unknown (1948), ‘Gladys Behmer Plans Murder’, in Crimes by Women #3, October issue, Fox Feature Syndicates………... 52 FIG 4 Derf Backderf (2012), My Friend Dahmer, New York: Abrams p. 33............................................................................................ 53 FIG 5 Harvey Pekar/ Robert Crumb (2004) [1983], ‘American Splendor assaults the Media’ in American Splendor: ordinary life is pretty complex stuff, London: Titan Books, p. 139……… 105 FIG 6 Harvey Pekar/ Robert Crumb (2004), ‘Jivin’ with Jack the Bell Boy as He Goes About …Hustling Sides’ in American Splendor: ordinary life is pretty complex stuff, Titan Books, p. 62……………………………………………………………….. 108 FIG 7 Harvey Pekar/ Sue Cavey (2004) [1982] ‘Alice Quinn’ in American Splendor: ordinary life is pretty complex stuff, London: Titan Books, p. 226…………………………………... 110 FIG 8 Harvey Pekar/ Gerry Shamray (2004), ‘I’ll be Forty-Three on Friday (how I’m living now)’ in American Splendor: ordinary life is pretty complex stuff, London: Titan Books, p. 238……… 112 FIG 9 Harvey Pekar/ Val Mayerik (2004) [1985], ‘A Marriage Album’ in American Splendor: ordinary life is pretty complex stuff, London: Titan Books, p. 285: 1……………...................... 114 FIG 10 Joe Sacco (2009), Footnotes in Gaza, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 297……………………................... 137 FIG 11 Joe Sacco (2009), Footnotes in Gaza, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 265………………………………... 142 FIG 12 Joe Sacco (2009), Footnotes in Gaza, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 51…………………......................... 147 FIG 13 Emmanuel Guibert (2008), Alan’s War, New York and London: FirstSecond, pp. 105-106…………….. 155 FIG 14 Emmanuel Guibert (2008), Alan’s War, New York and London: FirstSecond, p. 135: 3-4……………… 155 4 FIG 15 Josh Neufeld (2009), AD New Orleans: after the deluge, New York: Pantheon Books, p. 142……………………........... 172 FIG 16 Josh Neufeld (2009), AD New Orleans: after the deluge, New York: Pantheon Books, p.176……………………………. 172 FIG 17 David B. (2005), Epileptic, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 1……... 186 FIG 18 David B. (2005), Epileptic, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 42: 3-5............................................. 186 FIG 19 David B. (2005), Epileptic, London: Jonathan Cape, p.130………………………………... 188 FIG 20 David B. (2005), Epileptic, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 112….. 193 FIG 21 Craig Thompson (2004), Carnet de Voyage, Portland OR: Topshelf Productions, p.95……………………… 214 FIG 22 Craig Thompson (2004), Carnet de Voyage, Portland OR: Topshelf Productions, p. 87……………............... 220 FIG 23 Guy Delisle, (2005), Pyongyang: a journey in North Korea, Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, pp. 32-33……………………. 224 FIG 24 Guy Delisle, (2005), Pyongyang: a journey in North Korea, Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, p. 74………………………… 225 FIG 25 Guy Delisle(2006), Shenzen: a travelogue in China, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 101................................................... 230 FIG 26 Marjane Satrapi (2008), Persepolis: the story of a childhood and the story of a return, London: Vintage, p. 6: 1……………. 235 FIG 27 Marjane Satrapi (2008), Persepolis: the story of a childhood and the story of a return, London: Vintage, p. 44……………... 235 FIG 28 Marjane Satrapi (2008), Persepolis: the story of a childhood and the story of a return, London: Vintage, p. 195………......... 239 FIG 29 Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: the story of a childhood and the story of a return (2008), London: Vintage, p. 274: 1-2………... 243 5 I want to take this opportunity to thank some of the people who have helped me get this far: Catherine Morley for opening my eyes to the excitement and challenges of academic work in the first place and Roger Sabin for continued encouragement, kind interest and support. I am immensely grateful to the UEA’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities for funding my studentship and to Brett Mills for offering to supervise this project. He always did so with good humour, generosity and patience. Mark Jancovich also helped on several occasions, offering impromptu pep-talks on the number 25 bus. Last, but by no means least, I want to thank Martin Barker and Stella Bruzzi for their helpful comments and constructive criticisms. This is for Joe and Billie, thanks to whom I will always be more than my work. 6 Introduction My fascination with comics was from the start intertwined with a burgeoning interest in academic study. Writing my dissertation on the relations between word and image as an undergraduate illustration student, I eventually realised that this dynamic plays out in particularly intriguing and interdependent ways in the form of comics. Here, images are not merely points of entry into the written texts or illustrations of its content. Instead words and image narrate interactively. Meanings arise from their collaboration and also from the ways in which they undermine, destabilise and contest each other. Over time my determination to pursue research in this area grew, and consolidated around texts taking as their subject actual, as opposed to imagined, persons and events. To read the comics by Joe Sacco, and those by Marjane Satrapi in many ways offers considerably different experiences, not least in terms of subject matter. Joe Sacco’s work depicts his travels in conflict ridden areas in the early 1990s Balkans and more recently the Middle East, while Marjane Satrapi’s childhood memoirs are about growing up during Iran’s revolution and transformation into an Islamic state. Aesthetically, too, there are clear disparities. Sacco’s style mostly adopts a realist tenor, at least by comics standards. At times his line drawing exaggerates angles, foreshortening and characterisation. But this is countered by the naturalistic observation of detail, cross hatching to articulate shadow and form, and use of linear perspective [see FIG 1]. Satrapi’s work, on the other hand, is highly stylised