Maus
Maus is a autobiographical graphic novel surrounding a Polish Jewish family regarding the events of the Holocaust and its aftermath on the author's family. I found this piece very intriguing in its method and its direction in portraying society. Rather than the different groups of people literally being animals, they are merely symbolic and serve to clearly differentiate between these groups of people. They have subtle connotations such as the Jews being rats and the Nazis being cats and that implicit relationship that we already know exists. Personally, if they had been portrayed as regular people, it would have been much more difficult for me to differentiate between the groups of people as I am not well versed in the different types European ethnicities and social groups, coming from a different cultural background. The use of animals provides a very clear idea of how the society is made up in a structure that everyone will understand.
The sort of meta method that Spiegelman utilizes in making a comic about making a comic about their family history during the Holocaust is very unique and provides a personal viewpoint into the story. Usually, you don't see the behind the scenes towards making a graphic novel, but Art Spiegelman uses this to his advantage to create a very personal relationship between the reader and the author. You get to see the author's process behind generating the graphic novel, and how his relationship with his father who he had little emotional connections to in the beginning grow as he keeps coming back to record information for his graphic novel. You see information being presented very naturally but also in a revealing way, such as when Art mentions his older brother he never met who didn't survive the Holocaust, or the first girlfriend his father had before meeting Anna, Art's mother. It also creates space for the audience to breathe with humorous moments like when the father throws out the jacket for simply being too ratty, and other little things that remind us we are all just human (or in Spiegelman's case, rats), which is especially important when discussing a heavy theme such as the Holocaust.
The structure overall feels very easygoing, like telling a campfire story. Its flows naturally from the mouth to the paper, and feels exactly like it came from someone who scribed a spoken story. Events occur naturally. The conversations aren't convoluted or excessive, they are just regular conversations between family or friends or enemies. They are all very realistic and reflect upon real life as a memoir does. Even cutting between the past being told and the present of telling, it feels very easy to follow and understand without getting confused. You easily understand when you are in Poland trying to escape the prisoner camps, or if you are in the workshop with dad testing out your new tape recorder. I feel like I am someone within this conversation, sitting by the bonfire as I listen to the recollections of a Holocaust survivor.
Maus is a recollection of personal experiences from a Holocaust survivor in a format I feel I don't see commonly. To take such a difficult subject that has impacted a family so deeply for generations onwards, and bring a deeply personal twist to it, a personal perspective, and to show that no one is wholly in the right or the wrong, and that even those who have suffered extreme ethnic oppression can still portray ideals that reflect their suffering. Everything in this graphic novel radiates a unique energy that stems from pouring vulnerabilities of lives once lived, and thus brings a different energy and life to an awful event that couldn't be seen in a normal biography or encyclopedia. I had not heard of this graphic novel before this class, but I can easily see how it changed a medium and transformed its format into the mainstream world, as a link between real life culture and art as a means to reflection upon society and history.
The sort of meta method that Spiegelman utilizes in making a comic about making a comic about their family history during the Holocaust is very unique and provides a personal viewpoint into the story. Usually, you don't see the behind the scenes towards making a graphic novel, but Art Spiegelman uses this to his advantage to create a very personal relationship between the reader and the author. You get to see the author's process behind generating the graphic novel, and how his relationship with his father who he had little emotional connections to in the beginning grow as he keeps coming back to record information for his graphic novel. You see information being presented very naturally but also in a revealing way, such as when Art mentions his older brother he never met who didn't survive the Holocaust, or the first girlfriend his father had before meeting Anna, Art's mother. It also creates space for the audience to breathe with humorous moments like when the father throws out the jacket for simply being too ratty, and other little things that remind us we are all just human (or in Spiegelman's case, rats), which is especially important when discussing a heavy theme such as the Holocaust.
The structure overall feels very easygoing, like telling a campfire story. Its flows naturally from the mouth to the paper, and feels exactly like it came from someone who scribed a spoken story. Events occur naturally. The conversations aren't convoluted or excessive, they are just regular conversations between family or friends or enemies. They are all very realistic and reflect upon real life as a memoir does. Even cutting between the past being told and the present of telling, it feels very easy to follow and understand without getting confused. You easily understand when you are in Poland trying to escape the prisoner camps, or if you are in the workshop with dad testing out your new tape recorder. I feel like I am someone within this conversation, sitting by the bonfire as I listen to the recollections of a Holocaust survivor.
Maus is a recollection of personal experiences from a Holocaust survivor in a format I feel I don't see commonly. To take such a difficult subject that has impacted a family so deeply for generations onwards, and bring a deeply personal twist to it, a personal perspective, and to show that no one is wholly in the right or the wrong, and that even those who have suffered extreme ethnic oppression can still portray ideals that reflect their suffering. Everything in this graphic novel radiates a unique energy that stems from pouring vulnerabilities of lives once lived, and thus brings a different energy and life to an awful event that couldn't be seen in a normal biography or encyclopedia. I had not heard of this graphic novel before this class, but I can easily see how it changed a medium and transformed its format into the mainstream world, as a link between real life culture and art as a means to reflection upon society and history.
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