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 think it is important for critics of MAUS to remember that Spiegelman isn't only telling his parent’s story of the Holocaust, but his own experiences with growing up in the aftermath as well. If we view MAUS as art and a communication of his experiences, then any form can be appropriate. This is especially true if the reader remembers to differentiate genre and form.
ReplyDeleteI consider it a memoir, but like any memoir, there is always a slight aspect of fiction. Unless you have an inhumanly great memory, you will always be filling in some gaps and taking creative liberties with the story, the characters, and the dialogue. This actually takes an interesting spin when you consider the fact that this is a memoir-within-a-memoir in that he is telling his story and his father's story. Although his father would likely remember most things very clearly due to the nature of his story, he might have been subconsciously inclined to change some things just as any person telling their own story would. However, in such instances, the unreliable nature of the narrator is part of what makes the story compelling because we consistently wonder about their motives.
ReplyDeleteI think that Spiegelman's portrayal of the holocaust is anything but sacrilegious. He has created a book that can be enjoyed by all audiences and this means that some people who have never even read a book about the Holocaust because of its nature can now learn something new and have their eyes opened to this history. This is all due to the way Spiegelman told the story and I think that is something to be admired. I also think he chose a great vehicle for telling his story because of the tremendous range in audience he can reach with it. The important thing is that an audience reads the work and is educated on the importance of remembering these stories of the holocaust. Creating a work that can be enjoyed by all ages and races ensure that a greater audience can be reached and influenced by your work.
ReplyDeleteSo I think the choice of the medium of comics (specifically the comic strip) for MAUS has its benefits and its drawbacks.
ReplyDeleteThe obvious benefits are more making the difficult subject matter more accessible while simultaneously making the medium of the comic strip more serious. The maybe not-so-obvious benefits are a relaxing of the pressure for ‘historical accuracy’. No one is going to fact-check a comic book about the Holocaust panel by panel. Someone may do that for a book, and would probably do that for a movie. Another benefit that may not be totally apparent is that Spiegelman can write and draw the comic by himself. He gets to tell the story exactly the way he wants to without any ‘creative input’ from others. This is good for Spiegelman, but may not be a true benefit for the work overall.
There are some drawbacks though. While comics are perfectly capable of portraying plot/historical events, I think there is always an inherent disadvantage in comics to a deep portrayal of a character. In a performance on screen, we have every tiny mannerism of the actor telling us something about that character. In a novel, we often have in-depth description about the internal life of the character. Comics tend to not get as deep into the portrait of its characters because of the limited number of gestures able to be performed, and because of the lack of room to describe the internal life of the character in words. This is not to say that it can’t be done. But especially in the very loose art style Spiegelman is working in, depth of character can be very hard to achieve.
I feel like the characterization of different races, such as Jews into mice and Germans into cats, adds a lot of symbolism into the story, which adds a certain depth to the story. As others have pointed out, Maus isn't just the story of Art’s dad because it also includes Art’s experience. It’s a memoir within a memoir that also discusses the internal struggles of the author creating theses memoirs. I personally love the vehicle that Art choose to use to tell his father’s story as well as his own.
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