Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed their winter holidays. So far in our second term, my ASTU Global Citizens class has tackled Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco, a journalistic graphic book documenting Sacco’s experiences in Gorazde. While reading it, I couldn’t help but compare it to Persepolis, another book we had read last term, since they both included illustrations. Although both books reflect on the history of particular countries, Bosnia and Iran respectively, there were key elements that distinguished the two books. Although I enjoyed reading both, I especially loved reading Safe Area Gorazde, mainly because of the thoroughly detailed sketches, and the sophisticated adult humor that went into the captions. With Persepolis, I enjoyed the cheeky, child-like humor; for example, when Marji envisioned God as Karl Marx. In my opinion, Safe Area Gorazde offered a more relatable sense of humor. Since Persepolis’ humor is from a child’s perspective, therefore the humor is not as vulgar. Sacco’s wild experiences in Gorazde range from his escapades in the discotheque, his drunken nights with Riki and Edin, and his cringeworthy attempts at flirting with the ladies of Gorazde.
War is the common theme between Persepolis and Safe Area Gorazde. The atrocities witnessed by both Satrapi and Sacco are both lightened by its comedic narrators. Marji, the narrator the Persepolis uses her awkward puberty experiences such as smoking with her friends, to depict her failures and successes throughout her teenage years. Sacco provides humor with his comical, sometimes uncultured foreign remarks and his responses to Riki, a soldier obsessed with the Americana lifestyle. Another element we briefly discussed in class was this idea that since Persepolis was written from a child’s perspective, it lacked realistic blood and gore. When Marji imagines a victim being severed into pieces, it is almost geometrical–lacking rigid lines and spilled blood. Sacco, on the other hand, does not shield his readers from the atrocities; instead he carefully sketches the severed body parts and the disintegrating corpses.
Satrapi and Sacco employed humor in a respectful way that did not retract from the dark themes of their stories. I would say that both Satrapi and Sacco succeeded in this by dividing their chapters. For example, in Persepolis, Satrapi would go back and forth with her chapters; she begins with a comical chapter about Marji’s adolescence, characterizing her as a troublesome, curious child. The next chapter would weigh in on the casualties of the war. Sacco would start with a chapter on his rowdy night at the club or a good time with funny-man Riki. The next chapter bluntly depicts Muslims being slaughtered in masses. Both Satrapi and Sacco have manipulated the way in which they tell their stories, using humor at their disposal.