Safe Around Goražde: Are We Safe from Mainstream Media?
Safe Around Goražde, a graphic journal on the war in Bosnia, was read for my literature class. It was very different from Persepolis, which I talked about in one of my blog entries, in style and in form although the genre is the same. Since Sacco is an American journalist, his experience was secondhand. But his information was gathered and came from individuals who experienced the historic event firsthand.
The concept of The Truth which was laid out in the prologue brought about the question of perception. Different points of view from different kinds of people were illustrated by the graphic journalist. The Truth represents the story of the Bosnian war. As Sacco told his story, The Truth is not seen from one perspective alone but from various perspectives such as: journalists (himself & mainstream media), Goraždians, and Serbs. Even though the book didn’t show the nationalistic Serbs’ view, Sacco attempted to show the lives of innocent Serbs during the war. He also illustrated Bosnians as not just victims of the war but as human beings with flaws, wants, and needs.
Sacco, at the beginning criticize mainstream media and how they perceive these victims. In comparison to them, he told the story of Bosnians in a much closer look. He searched for the Truth by living with them, talking to them, and treating them like people. Mainstream media dealt with them as actual victims and portrayed them as such.
News coverage also looked at the war as a whole instead of dissecting it pieces by pieces. Sacco, on the other hand, focused on personal experiences of the Bosnians.
Which one told the story much better: the media or Sacco?
The media looked at the numbers whereas Sacco talked to people. It was a matter of quantity versus quality. The one that shapes memory is the mainstream media and therefore has more influence. That doesn’t mean however that it’s better. Sacco depicted these people as people. They aren’t just going to be remembered as victims but also as individuals who admire America and American culture, who have relationship problems, and who sing their hearts out in karaoke bars.
The way mainstream media decides what to remember and forget should also be brought into question. They shape personal, collective, and cultural memory. They do this by repeating ideas and withdrawing some truth. They use language as a form of manipulation. An example would be the report on the genocide of Aboriginals. Instead of calling it as genocide or mass murder, they called it vanishing or evacuating them.
Differentiating the truth from the ones that are shaped by media is a difficult thing to do. Is there an actual truth to begin with? Is there even a story without a hint of influence?
Thank you Therese to post this inspiring blog! I really share my agreement with your statement that Safe Area Gorazde does more works on telling us the truth about history. We sometimes choose to remember and forget something and this is where the bias come from. Just like Persepolis, what Satrapi’s aim is to remember those heroes and alleviate the prejudice people elsewhere hold on Iran. They, unlikely to the mass media, both base their works on personal experience, thus deserve the first hand document. About the distinction between quality and quantity, to me there is no one triumph the other because memory is created through social context, through communication between institution and is a collective form of ideas and memory. It is inevitable to keep these ideas from influencing each other.
Доброго времени суток.
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Удачи всем!