Joe Sacco has been called the heir to Art Spiegelman (Maus) and his awards shelf is creaking under the weight of trophies (Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel, Ridenhour Book Prize, American Book Award, etc.). But the magnitude of the achievements casts no shadow on the man himself. When hordes of fans showed up at his brief appearances at two bookstores in Delhi last month, the response surprised the 64-year-old Maltese-American graphic novelist. With an unwavering smile beneath a black fedora, he graciously shook hands, signed copies and obliged selfie requests. Sacco is known around the world for his comics journalism, a genre unique enough even without his choice of subject matter: the war in Bosnia, indigenous North America, relations between Israel and Palestine. For many Indians, his two graphic novels on Palestine – published in the 1990s and 1990s – were the first accessible and compelling reports from the region that did not conform to the existing media narrative. In the wake of the current violence Palestine And Footnotes in Gaza have breathed new life into and educated a whole new generation about the history of a people under siege. Sacco speaks Lounge about the current situation. Edited excerpts:
Amnesty International recently concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Palestine. You spent a lot of time in Gaza telling your stories. Did you ever think that violence against Palestinians would take such a form?
I can’t say I thought a genocide would happen. I thought that what they (Israel) euphemistically call a ‘population transfer’ might happen at some point. I thought that Israel’s long-term goals might be to remove the Palestinians from various areas – whether it was Gaza or parts of the West Bank. …Although when you look back you see the impunity with which Israel behaved for decades, the people they killed in their various attacks in Gaza, even my own research into the 1956 mass killings of Palestinians, the logic. of it was there.
Do you think anything has changed in the world’s perception of Israel and Palestine in the past year?
Younger people don’t have the romanticized image of Israel that people of my generation and older had: this scruffy little nation “besieged by the Arab world” and “making the desert bloom.” They saw the carnage and carnage on their phones and understood immediately. … They started looking into the issue and saw that historically there was a great deal of unfairness. Younger people now have a different story about Israel, and we can see the power that story is developing – Western governments have come to feel obliged to stifle that (narrative), to threaten people with that view, to expel them from schools expel. , to say that they will never work again after graduation. People lose their jobs because of their position. That shows how powerful this new story is.
View full image
Sacco is known around the world for his comics journalism. (Getty Images)
Survivor accounts from Palestine in the form of photographs and videos have been ignored and/or discredited by some media outlets. In this context, are you concerned that comics journalism would be even easier to discredit by someone so inclined?
No, I think it’s the opposite. We see a photo and tend not to trust it. We think, “Oh, this can be manipulated.” Even the voice can be manipulated. But with the drawn image, the reader immediately knows that this is being filtered through someone’s hand. Obviously it’s a subjective point of view… because I drew This people already know they’re seeing this through my eyes.
You’ve said before that your form of journalism takes time. Years, instead of hours, days or weeks. What does such a timeline contribute to the story and what are its limitations?
Sometimes I wish the books I’m working on could be finished in an instant. What written journalism has over what I do is that one day you see something and a day or two later people read about it. That is the power of newspaper reporting. When I studied journalism, I wanted to be a reporter who worked fast. I enjoyed working under deadline pressure. But I had to adapt to the medium, and this medium takes time. I’m very interested in getting the details right and drawing the buildings accurately, and that takes time. So instead of saying I’d like to do this faster, I’ve decided to focus on the benefits of ‘slow journalism’. … The longer I spend there, the more people get to know me, see me asking around, and understand why I’m there… I tend to look for universal sources of stories. What happened in 1956 was important to talk about because it is a historic event. I think I practice journalism through a historical lens.
Since you often represent people who are traditionally underrepresented and oppressed, do you struggle with the issue of realistic representation versus caricature in your comics?
When I first started the book Palestine, it was serialized. For the first song I made, I was criticized by a Jewish person I didn’t know and a Palestinian I didn’t know. Both said I drew them as caricatures. I had to think about that. The truth is that I never learned to draw realistically. I always had the tendency to draw everything in a grotesque way. It had its appeal. But I also realized that if I wanted to do journalism, or anything that aspired to a journalistic standard, I had to learn to draw more realistically. So over time I started to change the way I drew. I listened to those lessons and learned to draw more realistically, which is not natural for my hand.
Did this realistic change in style only affect your books on Palestine, or has it influenced all your work since?
It has permeated all my work. Even when I do more fun things, I try to get the realistic line out of my hand. But your hand tends to do what it is trained to do. (Initially) I beat it up so it could draw realistically. And now I beat it up when I need to draw more cartoony. My poor hand!
You have told horrific stories of violence throughout your career and immersed yourself in these stories that they have drawn. How do you balance the demands of your job with your mental health?
Well, don’t ever think that I’m so experienced in all this that I’m not shocked. I never got used to this kind of thing. It is always unpleasant to see things, hear stories and draw them, especially for the sake of drawing. Drawing is sometimes harder for you than being on the spot, in the emotional toll it takes on you. The genocide in Gaza right now affects me as it affects everyone. It’s so horrible. There’s a part of me that really wants to turn away from it. Decades of working with this kind of material have made me realize that because I haven’t become desensitized to it, I want to get rid of it. …For my own sanity, I want to distance myself from it. But I have to say I have a pretty good family life, good friends, a few martinis on the weekend. There are ways for everyone to cope, and I’m lucky to have the things I can cope with.
You say you want to distance yourself from these stories. But do you, as an artist who has previously reported on Gaza, also feel obliged to respond to this event?
I’ve created about 32 pages of comics (https://www.tcj.com/topic/the-war-on-gaza/) that wasn’t reporting, just my pontification about what was going on. One of my friends in Khan Younis managed to leave Gaza after sixty days of bombardment and contacted me. He said, “Please raise your voice.” So I felt compelled to do something. It’s a criticism of sorts, perhaps less of Israel than of the US, and our complicity in this… and there’s more in the works. If I wanted to think about my mental health, I would just go and do my side projects that I have been wanting to do for decades, but I also have obligations.
Are there any Palestinian writers or artists you would like to recommend to our readers?
Rashid Khalidi, the Palestinian-American historian who wrote The Hundred Years’ War against Palestine; Mohammad Sabaaneh, a Palestinian cartoonist – I especially like his black and white work; Refaat Alareer, a poet from Gaza whose work still resonates, was killed by an Israeli bomb a year ago along with family members.
Sumeet Keswani is an independent journalist.