Jobnik

I alluded to Jobnik in my Red Son post earlier today. Well now I would like to dedicate a blog to the idea of violence in Jobnik and were I see there to be a contradiction between the ideas presented about violence and the art style.
Jobnik focuses on an American’s Jew’s time spent in the Israeli army. While she is there the second intifada breaks out and there are casualties on both sides of the struggle. With losses being reported constantly in the newspaper Miriam, the woman who has joined the Israeli army, becomes swallowed by it. Miriam slowly becomes so saturated with the news of the death that it becomes, “background noise.” An interesting thought, given the idea in psychology that the brain will filter out constant unchanging stimuli until the background stimuli are changed. The idea of violence against two people who have opposed view points, is the same as in Red Son. When two groups hold contrary view points, debate will eventually disintegrate into violence. Thus if violence is inevitable why do we seem so shocked by it?
I think the 2nd intifada was so shocking because it came amongst talks of peace. However it does aid my point, debate will result in violence when ideas are polar opposites. What is more interesting is Miriam seems to become desensitized to the violence, the only time she really shows the slightest bit of worry is when a bus runs down an army battalion, and even then the only reasons she worries is because she’s worried if her former lover is one of those who gets hit. So what do we make of violence and war? Is it evident that even the softest heart will become callus and hard with the drone of violence constantly in their ear? The simple answer is yes, but this leads me to the contradiction that I see with the story and the art style.
The art style of Jobnik barrows heavily from the Japanese chibi style, this produces discontinuity in the work, because the chibi style is meant to be very cute and innocent, and obviously putting this during the second intifada displays a heavy bit of juxtaposition. Then why must it be there, as I’ve said it’s a contradiction, one that bothers me to no end. I believe she uses this art style to better represent herself personally. She says she was always a shy outsider in her youth, and that that has really been carried with her to Israel. This art style was chosen for this edition as well as in the original comic form the art was different, so she must have chosen it for a reason. This I think is to illustrate how out of her element she was, when she was swallowed up, in the dessert by stars we see her have a mini break down and again later we see her in her chibi form she really sees the world as innocent, which is surprising given her sexual exploits, so what could she really be meaning juxtaposing a innocent art style with adult ideas.