Proza. / Uklad. T. Kachak. Kyiv: Vts «Akademіya», S
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Аргументи сучасної філології: «нестача» і «бажання» у тексті _________________________________________________________________________________ Referenses Bіla, N. (2017). Mala nіby ne proty, Taka lyubov: proza. / Uklad. T. Kachak. Kyiv: VTs «Akademіya», S. 7 – 53 [in Ukrainian]. Gridіn, S. (2016). Nezrozumіlі: povіst'. Kyiv: Akademvydav, 2016 [in Ukrainian]. Kachak, T. B. (2018). Tendentsіi rozvytku ukraіns'koi prozy dlya dіtei ta yunatstva pochatku ХХІ st. Monografіya. Kyiv: Akademvidav [in Ukrainian]. Nikolajeva, M. (2019). What is it Like to be a Child? Childness in the Age of Neuroscience. Children's Literature in Education. Vol. 50, p. 23–37. Savchin, M. & Vasilenko, L. (2017). Vіkova psikhologіya: navch.posіb. Kyiv: VTs «Akademіya» [in Ukrainian]. JOE SACCO’S REPORTAGE COMICS AS A SUBCATEGORY OF GRAPHIC NOVELS Keba O.V. (Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine) Schilling D.O. (Annweiler, Germany) http://dx.doi.org/ Abstract The paper deals with the problem of genre identification of the Joe Sacco's works. Joe Sacco, a cartoon artist with a journalist degree, became famous for his graphic works about conflict zones, as for instance Palestine (1993) and Safe Area Gorazde (2000). These great reporting works were produced through applying to comics the subjectivist methods of «New Journalism». The emergence of reportage comics as a subgenre brought an outstanding and firmly exceptional figure into the history of graphic novels generally and comic journalism particularly. Keywords: Joe Sacco, New Journalism, factuality, fictionality, reportage comics, graphic novel. Joe Sacco is a Maltese-American comic book artist, cartoonist and journalist. His work is a compelling combination of eyewitness reportage and graphic art storytelling techniques. Joe Sacco is the author of, among other books, Palestine, which received the American Book Award, and Safe Area Goražde, which won the Eisner Award and was named a New York Times notable book and Time magazine's 114 Аргументи сучасної філології: «нестача» і «бажання» у тексті _________________________________________________________________________________ best comic book of 2000. His books have been translated into fourteen languages and his comics reporting has appeared in Details, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Harper's and the Guardian. Joe Sacco's last book Paying the Land is called a best book of 2020 by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Brooklyn Rail, The Globe and Mail, Pop Matters, Comics Beat, and Publishers Weekly. Joe Sacco's works are mainly defined as reportage comics, but many literary critics interpret them as graphic novels. They are not just limited to autobiographical or real facts, but also concerned with the making of the work itself, as well as with the issues of ‘factuality and fictionality’ (cf. Hescher 2016, 2). The interest in historical themes brought works based on exhaustive research and established a new genre within graphic narratives that opened a new horizon concerning issues of fiction and reality. Santiago Garcia wrote: «The historical graphic novel has established a kind of relationship between the comic and reality that had never been seen before, and which is a cousin of a still incipient but very interesting phenomenon: journalistic comics. There are a very few cartoon artists with the journalistic training necessary to approach the task rigorously, and the press has not treated it generally as much more than a mere curiosity, perhaps because of the immediacy that news requires and the extended time to commanded by the production of comics [...]» (Garcia 2015, 166f). The concept of reality has always played a crucial role in the context of journalism. The traditional approaches on journalism firmly rely upon the concepts of objectivity, which strictly obey the rules of «factuality and detachment» (cf. Macdonald 2015, 54). That is, a journalist is supposed to be neutral and/or represent the view of the authoritative source without expressing their own opinion. Such practice gave journalists the opportunity to appear impartial and received the name «the view from nowhere» or «viewless objectivity» (cf. Singer 2015, 67). Nevertheless, not all journalists agreed with the traditional attitudes and stood up against the dominant doctrine, which prohibited any inserting of a reporter’s own opinion or interpretation. The opponents of the objective journalism argued it ignored the person of a reporter and his/her obvious activity in the reporting and editing 115 Аргументи сучасної філології: «нестача» і «бажання» у тексті _________________________________________________________________________________ process. Additionally they criticized the consistent abandonment of the ordinary people by dominant objective reporting model and suggested to integrate them into the reporting process. Thus, the shift was made away from the traditional conception of objectivity to its counterpoint – the subjective approach to journalism. One of the greatest proponent and representative of this trend Joe Sacco argued that «reporting is an implicitly subjective form” that enables a journalist to emphasize and acknowledge his/her “role of his social position and values» (cf. Sacco 2012 qt. in MacDonald 2015, 55). Consequently, there appeared a demand for an adequate medium, which would permit this kind of subjective transmission of information. One of the solutions appeared to be the comic journalism or reportage comics. Reportage comics have a particular quality that makes it superior to conventional press media: The marginal position of the genre allows it to transmit information, which is being suppressed or manipulated by other media in mainstream press in favor of certain economic and/or political interests (cf. Garcia 2015, 167). This becomes possible through questioning the paradigm of the factuality and adding the paradigms of subjectivity and fictionality. Reportage comic artists achieve this effect by explicitly and «self-referentially thematizing [these paradigms] not only through the verbal-pictorial discourse, experiments in layout, coloring, or metaleptic devices», but also through one unique feature, which can only be assigned to this subgenre, namely «a narrating character, who is (or acts as) a journalist or a comparable person» (Hescher 2016, 50). The exponents of the genre can be read as self-referential metafiction on the one hand, and as educational comics on the other hand. The emergence of reportage comics as a subgenre brought an outstanding and firmly exceptional figure into the history of graphic novels generally and comic journalism particularly. Joe Sacco, a cartoon artist with a journalist degree, became famous for his graphic works about conflict zones, as for instance Palestine (1993) and Safe Area Gorazde (2000). These works were produced through applying to comics the subjectivist methods of «New Journalism», most importantly, pointing out «the individual perspective as an organizing consciousness» (Garcia 2015, 167). 116 Аргументи сучасної філології: «нестача» і «бажання» у тексті _________________________________________________________________________________ In the case of Joe Sacco’s works we are confronted with journalistic works, which are concerned with fact and fiction. Sacco inserted his own figure as the protagonist of his works, and represented himself in a cartoonist and grotesquely exaggerated way. He foregrounded his role as a reporter through both his presence and his artistic style. Sacco «exploits all the resources that comics art places at his disposal and that would be beyond the reach of simple prose reporting» (ibid.). The cartoony representation might contradict at the first glance the objectivity demand of the genre. Though it allows for a critical presentation of facts on the one hand, and a «journalists’ self» on the other hand (cf. Hescher 2016, 2). Achim Hescher underscores this idea: «Although the cartoonistic images seem at first to jar with the journalistic demand for objectivity, upon closer inspection, they allow for a critical presentation of 'facts' and the involvement of the journalists' self in their presentation: Sacco, for example, drawn like a Crumbian underground hero, makes ironic and sarcastic comments about himself, his desire for fame, and his journalistic methods; also he uses layout that is reminiscent of a storyboard and underscores the subjectivity involved in the choice of his material…» (Hescher 2016, 2). Sacco’s choice of the comic medium for his nonfictional texts has several implications: Sacco, as a reporter, is obligated to transmit the ‘reality’; he is concerned though that the concept of reality is essentially questionable – who is to decide what reality really is? Thus, he calls into question the whole idea of objective journalism (which is usually maintained in photojournalism or conventional press). Sacco’s style projects the subjectivity of the artist-journalist preserving at the same time the documentary purpose of his works. Nonetheless, Sacco argues that facts and subjectivity are not «mutually exclusive» (Sacco 2012, xiii). That means that he does not completely abandon the standard journalistic methods for witnessing and reporting facts, and his comic journalism is based on extensive background research and, as any other reporting form, is capable of quoting correctly and reporting accurately (cf. MacDonald 2015, 56). Sacco creates his works by combining the professional journalistic methods with the subjective coloring applying to it an artistic filter of a comic designer.