Art Spiegelman’s Maus

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P R E P A R ED B Y N . L E SL I E D EL A C R U Z , P H . D .P H I L O S O P H Y D E P A R T M E N T

Art Spiegelman¶s Maus:

Comics as an artistic andphilosophical medium



Points for discussion

y A short history of comics

y Some key concepts from Understanding Comics b y Scott McCloud (1994)

Definition of comics Some early forms of sequential art

The interaction of word and image

y On Joshua Brown¶s ³Of Mice and Memory´ (1987) The narrative structure of Maus

Memoir as history

The metaphor of mice



A short history of comics

y Comic books have long been dismissed as readingmaterials for children and

semi-illiterates. However,since the late Americancomic book creator WillEisner pu blished A

Contract with God in1978, a new genre of comics emerged.




y Eisner¶s narratives deal with serious (one can evensay, existential) themes,

such as despair, alienation,and betrayal, all in thecontext of the blue collarlife.




y Shortly after the commercialsuccess of Eisner¶s ³serious´comics, Alan Moore wrote

W at chmen, a 12-issue seriesa bout neurotic superheroesset in alternative-history United States.




y While the latter still featuredcaped figures with fantasticpowers, it also dealt with

darker political issues. Moore will later mine this Orwelliantheme in his classic V forV endetta.




y Outside the West, the art of comics storytelling hasalso flourished in Japan, due largely to Osamu Tezuka(1928-1989). The creator of the Astro Boy series, he is

considered to be the grandfather of manga and anime.




y Among his many ponderous works is his eight-volumeBuddha series, a lavishly illustrated collection of Siddharta Gautama¶s adventures.



Definition of comics

y ³Comics« refers to the medium itself, not a specifico bject such as µcomic book¶ or µcomic strip¶.´(McCloud 1993, 4)

y W ill Eisner, a seminal comic book artist, definescomics as sequential art.

y McCloud (1993, 9) further refines the definition as³Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deli berate

sequence, intended to convey information and/or toproduce an aesthetic response in the viewer.´



Definition of comics



Some early forms of sequential art

y Sequential art has been used throughout humanhistory, since the ancient times, to convey information or to tell a story. E.g. Egyptian

hieroglyphs and Aztec manuscripts










y Integral to comics is the interaction between wordand image. Surrealist René Magritte¶s famouspainting, T he T reachery of Images, demonstrates

this paradoxical interaction.







y McCloud (1993, 24-25) refers to Magritte¶s paintingin explaining the voca bulary of comics.




y McCloud refers to Magritte¶s painting in explainingthe voca bulary of comics.




y Thus, contrary to thepopular idea thatcomics is simplistic or

childish, the mediumactually encouragesthe creative use of theimagination.




y For example, Joshua Brown, in his critical analysis of Art Spiegelman¶s Maus, o bserves that the mice arenot individualized in terms of faces, but in terms of

gestures or actions.

Desperation Em barrassment




y ³I didn't want people to get too interested in thedrawings. I wanted them to be there, but the story operates somewhere else. It operates somewhere

between the words and the idea that's in the picturesand in the movement between the pictures, which isthe essence of what happens in a comic.´

²Art Spiegelman, interview with Joshua Brown



The narrative structure of Maus

y ³ Maus is the story of two survivors of the Holocaust.The first is Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew who,along with his wife An ja, survived Auschwitz andcame to live in Queens, New York. There, Vladek and

An ja raised their second son, Art, their post-Holocaust child«. Art grew into adulthood under theshadows of his parents' past, the darkest appearingin 1968 when An ja committed suicide. Art himself is

the second survivor, although at first his tormentseems self-indulgent compared to the elementalhorror of his parents' experience.´ (Brown, 1987)



The narrative structure of Maus

y ³Throughout Maus, Vladek's story is paralleled b y Art's attempts to come to terms with theopinionated, tight-fisted, and self-involved father

whose personality was formed in a world andthrough an experience so completely divorced fromhis own. The ghosts of this past swirl around Art whois haunted b y the irretrieva ble experiences of the

dead, their residue found in familial relationshipscharacterized b y guilt and manipulation.´ (Brown,1987)



Memoir as history

y Some have questioned theo bjectivity and accuracy of Maus

as history, which raises the issue of

o bjectivity in the writing of amemoir

y Spiegelman looked at photographsand viewed period films in order to

come up with realistic art



Memoir as history

y However, the testimony of Vladek himself is revealed in the book asunrelia ble, blurring the line betweenmemory and fiction

y Furthermore, in the interests of space, Spigelman had to rewrite thedialogue rather than present ver batim transcriptions of hisconversations with his father

y Vladek also destroyed An ja¶s diaries, which could have provided a morecomplete picture of the story




y ³Through the metaphor Maus palpa bly confronts thereader with the social relations of Eastern Europe of nations divided b y nationalities and b y culturally-

constructed, politically-exploited stereotypes.´(Brown, 1987)




y ³By drawing people as animals, Spiegelman evokesthe stratification of European society that hadseemed dormant but soon exploded into an orgy of

racism. When you read Maus, you don't tend toidentify the characters as animals. You decipherhuman beings, and then the metaphor takes hold.

You are disrupted, upset. That is the effect

Spiegelman hoped for«.´ (Brown, 1987)




y ³Spiegelman tackled Hitler's metaphor to undermineit. The horror of racial theory is not rationalized orsupported b y the metaphor; it is brought to its

fullest, tense realization.´ (Brown, 1987)




y ³ Maus captures the terri ble relationship between thelost world of European Jewry and the present. Itportrays the frustration of a son who grew up in adifferent setting, trying so hard to understand the

world that shaped his father, to grasp the stunningdimensions of an unfathoma ble experience."Unknowa bleness" is the void separating the twogenerations, and the awareness of the limitations of

understanding, of how remem bering and tellingcaptures and, yet, fails to capture the experience of the past, permeates Maus.´ (Brown, 1987)

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Art Spiegelman’s Maus