Skip to main content

Safe Area Gorazde: Understanding Another Point of View

By



Safe Area Gorazde does a really great job of presenting a country and its struggles through the use of a comic medium. Speaking from personal experience, I was never taught the history of this country. Before reading this comic, I had no knowledge of their war or economic struggles. I am actually a little surprised that this was not taught in schools, given that it is an excellent example of what war can do to an individual and the struggles of a nation to survive.

The comic begins with Sacco visiting Gorazde and conducting interviews, in which he obtains fir-hand knowledge of the effects of the war on the people. Gorazde is a Bosniak enclave that has been surrounded by hostile Serbian regions.  Though narrations from people such as Edin, for example, the audience is able to experience that multicultural atmosphere that was present between the Serbs and the Croat children. However, as tensions increased, those friendships disintegrated.

The people were eventually separated and resistance to this separation began to rise. After the first attack in 1992, families no longer felt safe and their city began to suffer falling infrastructure, a lack of utilities, and a shortage of food. Eventually the UN’s peace efforts fail and the US begins bombing the Serbian regions. This forces the Serbians to retreat and comply with negotiations, in which Gorazde is not to be receded to them. The people are happy by this news but they are well aware of the effort they must now make to return to their normal lives.

Throughout the comic, the author does a great job in evoking emotions through the use of the images, coupled with the text boxes. Though the comic is told through different lenses, the audience is able to fully connect to the story. Within Scott McCloud’s UnderstandingComics, he mentions that a “huge range of human experiences can be portrayed in comics through either words or pictures. As a result – and despite its many other potential uses – comics have become firmly identified with the art of storytelling” (152). Safe Area Gorazde does well to portray this storytelling in the way the art is showcased in relation to the actions they are presenting. For example, on page 2, in the second and third panel, the children are playing around while UN military vehicles are present in the background. Here, I felt this was an excellent example of storytelling through images, in that the audience is able to understand the play of children. But they are forced to incorporate that understanding with the militaristic actions in the background. A child should never have their play interrupted by war. This image does well to showcase the effects that war can have on children.

In addition, on page 4, the entire panel is devoted to illustrating the people on the street, with military personnel boxing them in. This image does really well to give the audience a feeling of desolation and entrapment. They are not free to move around as they would normally. This type of atmosphere is not one that many Americans would understand. This comic allows its audience to understand what that feeling of being trapped would look like. In reading this comic, you are able to take your own viewpoint and place it in relation to another’s. At that point, you are able to realize how uninhibited you are in relation to the issues that the Gorazde people were forced to endure.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Analysis of Aya: Life in Yop City

By
To begin this week's post, I'd like to first address a few things about the author's duty to his/her readers. When we think of reading material from other countries or cultures, what factors are important to us? What information do we need in order to recognize the significance of the author's work? For me, it's important for the author to find some way to connect to me as a reader. Do we share a common experience? Can I relate your story to mine? This is not to say that a writer's work is rendered unimpressive if they choose not to do this. But I do think it goes without saying that most impressionable works hit us emotionally. I also think that an author should be conscious of the world that they are painting for the reader. Is it true what you're writing? Does it provide some sort of insight into the world as you see it? Are you confirming outside opinions of your culture, or are you breaking the stereotypes that have been placed upon you? That being sai...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bringing Africa into the Fold

By
The comic Aya: Life in Yop City does a fantastic job of illustrating a culture different from the more popular Western variety. For those reading this, have you ever considered Africa in any way that was not influenced by main stream media? No? Well me either. It is sad to say, but my view of Africa was just - more or less - a vast land of chaos and poverty. Why? Because is that not what the media would have us believe? As a western country ourselves - presuming, of course, that you are reading this from the US or some European country - we do not consider other nations to have much value in comparison to our own. Because we have created a Eurocentric view of what society should be, we have disallowed other countries to feel that their own culture is worth portraying in novels or media. For example, most people are lead to believe that Africa is riddled with disease, famine, and "uneducated" people who are in dire need of help. This just isn't true! There are places ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Two Faces of Anarchy in V for Vendetta

By
As someone who has only seen the movie version of V for Vendetta once many years ago and have never read the graphic novel, I wasn’t exactly sure how similar or different the movie version would be to the graphic novel. I was in for a surprise when I discovered just how vastly different, they are from each other. With that being said, they do have some similarities when strictly looking at the motives of the characters. Let’s dive into those motives and how the author and illustrator of V for Vendetta achieved getting these motives across to their readers. In Scott McCloud’s chapter of Understanding Comics “ Blood in the Gutter ” we are presented with different panel – to – panel transitions, and an introduction to the term “gutter” as being the white space between the panels which is where the audience of reader “takes two separate images and transforms them into a single idea” (McCloud, 66). After finishing reading V for Vendetta , several themes or ideas that were most prevalent...
Post a Comment
Read more