When Art Spiegelman published MAUS I in 1986, he transformed the medium of comics and greatly affected the American literary world. His work experimented with the traditional form of the comic strip at the same time that it altered forever the content associated with the medium. Spiegelman's choice to depict the Holocaust and its aftermath in a medium often associated (rightly or wrongly) with children, cartoons, and simple caricature changed both the landscape of the comic and that of Holocaust representation. Comics or "comix," as Spiegelman dubbed them, were suddenly taken much more seriously than ever before. MAUS I and II appealed to a broader audience than did the conventional comic strip. When MAUS won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 (after the publication of the second volume in the series), Spiegelman's work drew even greater attention. Since the publication of this magnum opus, he has become one of the comix medium's greatest advocates, traveling the country with his Comix 101 presentation and arguing for the importance of the form.
Spiegelman was born in 1948 in Stockholm, Sweden. His parents, Anja and Vladek, who appear as central characters in MAUS, were refugees, survivors of the concentration camps and World War II. Using the medium of the comic and the figures of the cat and mouse to represent Nazi and Jew respectively, MAUS tells Spiegelman's parents' stories, as well as his own. After getting his start by editing and writing for the graphic magazine RAW, in which early drawings from MAUS were serialized, Spiegelman went on to draw covers for The New Yorker for a number of years, eventually falling out with the editors due to the political nature of many of his drawings.
How does Spiegelman's medium affect his message in MAUS? Is there something sacrilegious about his representation of the Holocaust? Do we read his work as straight memoir, fiction, or some hybrid in-between genre? Has he chosen the appropriate vehicle for telling this story?
I appreciate the additional information. I do feel that Speigelman is trying to show the Jews as a hunted people, cats hunt mice. I noticed the difference in the conception art, but I am not sure that it changes much for me. In the way that McCloud showed that a circle two dots and a line can make a face, the difference in the actual work and the conception art doesn't really change much about the book, only perhaps that by distancing himself further from realistic allows the reader to identify more as a non-jew, and still not feel like a cat. The cats are must more true to cat-like features therefore we all become mice.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure exactly how Spiegelman arrived at his decision to use the comic book medium and animals rather than people to tell his story, but I think it was very effective. This is not to say that the story couldn't have been told in other ways, but I think how Maus is probably best reflects Speigelman's personal impressions of his father's story. In terms of what genre Maus is, I see it mostly as a memoir, but I definitely think Spiegelman is crossing a few different genres. For instance, the use of animals in place of people seems like a dark satire at times.
ReplyDeleteI think this medium was a good choice. Look at the time that Spiegelman made Maus. It was the '70s and '80s. There were not very many films, animated or live action, that had touched the subject of the Holocaust. Besides the gruesome pictures that are still frequently seen and used, there was no visual representation of this tragedy. The Diary of Anne Frank, and maybe one or two others may be exceptions to this, but you get the idea, if you weren't there, you didn't fully understand what is was like, how it felt to be there. Then comes Maus, a visual representation that not only puts a survivor's perspective on it, but it gives other generations who didn't live then a metaphor to help them understand the terrors of living during the Nazi regime. I don't know if this is why Spiegelman chose the cat-mouse-pig metaphor, but I can see why and how it works.
ReplyDeleteI think Spiegelman's passion for the medium shows that he believed in what he created. His approach with the characters seems appropriate since he was telling the story of someone else and there is no way he could know how the actual realism of the events appeared. The story is an impression of Spiegelman's feelings about his father, his own ability to understand his father, and the basic concepts he understood about the Holocaust. I think a respectable balance was found in maintaining a somber and serious tone while still making it clear that the narrator was not there to witness the story himself.
ReplyDeleteI cannot imagine Maus taking place in any other medium. And it's not the content I'm talking about. Sure you could tell this same story in a movie, novel, or radio program, but the delivery will NEVER match what comics could provide in this case. The words written in this book are heard by the reader and associated with the imagery alongside it that when put together allow the reader to see deeper into the story than any other medium could reproduce. We can visually see the carnage and unfairness and relate to the people behind the faces while their dialogue makes the events more powerful. the words chosen make the terrible situations feel more real, and when juxtaposed with cartoonlike simplicity we feel like we can actually exist in this place during this time. It's some of the best comic storytelling I've ever read honestly.
ReplyDeleteI would call this a memoir. Not everything in a memoir is 100% true anyway so he has leeway to tie the story together. And I certainly don't find it sacrilegious. I've read reviews where people think that, and heard talk of it, but most of the time that opinion is coming from someone who hasn't read the book. Just flipped through the pictures. Which goes back to what I said before. Maus is amazing by how it combines the pacing of both the images and words alongside them.
I think he made a great decision using this medium. At that time, it was a risk, but I think all in all, he wouldn't have regretted making this choice. It was different, unique, and I'm sure he faced a lot of criticism, it is hard for people to imagine using comics in detailing and narrating such a tragic time in history, but I think that's also one of the great things about his work, it is interesting, and makes it easier for people to process everything they're reading.
ReplyDeleteI think using this medium allowed Maus to broach a subject in a manner that was quietly surprising, but also in your face startling, much like the holocaust itself. I think this was a great way to broach the subject without having to really embody the subject, because comics are so typically associated with kids, cartoons, and less serious matter, this allows people to approach this very serious subject with a sort of protective barrier between them and the subject matter at hand. Allowing people to for the first time really contemplate the atrocities, without having to really feel the disgust associated, since after all they were reading just a comic....i'm not sure if this makes sense, but what i am saying is that Spiegelman sort of broke the medium/genre in that no one else could use it and its' associations for such a numbing effect on such an electrifying event....
ReplyDeleteThere are so many ways to tell a story. I feel as if the graphic novel was the perfect medium for his storytelling. I feel like if it was a normal book, the reader wouldn't fully get the character of Vladek as much as in this version. The images give so much emotion and seriously provide a glimpse into the time even if it's with use of animals. The use of animals pushes the individual groups of people into their most simple forms.
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