Part I:
I had no idea what to expect before reading Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus. The cover suggested that the content within dealt with Nazi Germany in some way or another. The Swastika affixed with the skeleton-like cat face, and the mice huddling beneath it only peaked my curiosity about what I would soon read. I quickly learned from the synopsis on the inside cover that the novel was a Holocaust survivor story, but not your typical one because it reads like a comic book and there are no humans in it (for the most part), just the mice, who represent the Jews, and the cats, who represent the Nazis, as well as pigs and dogs, who represent the Poles and the Americans respectively. In addition, Maus tells two stories at once: how the father (Vladek) survived Auschwitz and how his son (Artie) researched his father’s story.
In general, I liked the originality of the book. I have read and seen other texts that deal with the Holocaust, but this was truly something entirely different, a postmodern interpretation, yet no less effective in documenting the horrors of Nazi Germany. I was surprised at how quickly I was able to read it too. I thought I would have to read a line then stop and look at the drawing, which was the case initially, but soon I eased into a rhythm. I could have understood the story even without the drawings, but they are important thematically and emotionally to enhance the narrative. Just as effective were the drawings themselves, which surprised me. I found that when the cats appeared on the page I still felt a sense of apprehension not unlike what I feel when I watch films on the Holocaust. I was also surprised by the lack of color within the pages. With such a vibrant front and back cover, I imagined the inside to be just the same. My theory is that Spiegelman wanted to keep the text simple, and maybe also represent the common black and white backdrop from both Holocaust films and footage.
In terms of specifics, my favorite part of the novel was the comic-within-a-comic sequence on pages 100-103, entitled Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History. I have really taken a liking to meta-fiction and this is a great example of how this text is self-aware. Even the simple, yet ingenious, way that Spiegelman draws the Artie’s thumb holding open Prisoner, exactly where the real reader might. What makes this part of the novel even more interesting, however, is that the narrative within this meta-comic makes reference to parts discussed in the work as a whole. If I break it down, and I love doing this, it would read like this: Maus is a comic book within a comic book that discusses the events of the entire comic book, which are written about by characters (or animals) who represent real people and real events! I also found it interesting that the meta-comic sequence in Maus is the only place where the reader sees real people, who are pictured in a vintage photograph being held up by a drawn hand in the first frame.
I have a great appreciation for originality, as well as risk taking when it comes to art. I think Maus has both. When you think of the Holocaust, you usually don’t think of humor, or cartoons and comics as a way to convey the past. But it works in Maus because it engages the reader and it does reflect real life somewhat because life is full of many different emotions, and sometimes the least expected emotions come out in the worst of times.
Part II:
Contemporary philosopher and theorist Hayden White argues that historians, like writers of fiction, exhibit a narrative structure in their work. This notion implies that historical events, such as the Holocaust, are delivered in a manner that is akin to story. In his book, The Content of the Form, White notes that narrative is “…a form of discourse that may or may not be used for the representation of historical events, depending upon whether the primary aim is to describe a situation, analyze a historical process, or tell a story” (27).
White also discusses the practice of emplotment when it comes to historical narratives. Emplotment is essentially the incorporation of plot structures within the presentation of historical events. These emplotments include: irony, romance, tragedy, and comedy. White argues that events in history, by themselves, do not represent narratives. Instead, a story develops out of the historian’s perspective on a particular event, using these various emplotments.
White’s theory can then be applied to Maus. There are examples of three of the four emplotments in Spiegelman’s story: tragedy, comedy, and irony. I’ll exclude romantic because the story itself does not have a metanarrative quality to it. In short, there are some elements of romance in the book, but it is not romanticized, which is the way I believe White would approach it.
With regard to tragedy, it’s obvious that the tragic elements lie in the Holocaust, but also the state of mind of Vladek, who will never be the same just for living through the death camps.
The comedy in Maus comes mostly from Vladek during the interviews. Spiegelman also presents Vladek as the sterotypical miserly Jew, especially through the eyes of Mala, Vladek’s second wife. In one scene, Mala says, “He [Vladek] has hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, and he lives like a pauper! Look! He grabs paper towels from restrooms so he won’t have to buy napkins or tissues!” (Spiegelman 132).
Of these three emplotments, it is irony that stands out the most. In the last scene in the book Artie calls his father a murderer for burning the memoirs of his first wife, Anja, whose contents documented her experiences in the death camps. Not to over simplify, but the ironies here refer to Hitler’s practice of book burning and, of course, the genocide.
For the most part, Whites theory of emplotment seems to hold true when applied to Maus. However, I don’t necessarily agree with him that historical events alone lack a narrative structure. If I understand White’s theory correctly, this would imply that tragedy, comedy, irony, and romanticism were never part of the Jews lives during the Holocaust. It is harder to argue for romanticism and comedy under these circumstances, but it certainly is possible. The tragedy is a no-brainer; they lived with it everyday. And you can certainly conceive of ironies. What about the Holocaust survivors, especially the ones who live many years beyond the event? Haven’t they already seen a lifetime worth of death?
Like Spiegelman’s Maus, Roberto Benigni’s film Life is Beautiful (La Vita `e Bella) discusses the tragedy of the Holocaust. Both the book and the film share elements of postmodernism in that they are revisiting the history of the Holocaust.
In Life is Beautiful, the central method used to convey the narrative is humor. The film starts out by introducing the main character Guido (Benigni), who is very animated, talkative, and comical. When he begins to court Dora, whom he later marries, Guido is tenacious and witty in his attempts to woo over the woman of his dreams. In one scene, Dora is at an opera in the balcony with her husband to be (it’s only later that Guido “rescues” her from her unhappy relationship). Guido, who is also at the opera, attempts to get Dora’s attention, telepathically, from his seat below by using funny hand gestures. After the show, Dora’s fiancé leaves her waiting in the rain while he goes to get the car, but Guido beats him to it, picking her up, and Dora realizes a few blocks down that she is in the wrong car. Later in this same scene, when Guido and Dora finally arrive outside of her home Guido says: “You can’t imagine how much I fell like making love to you now. But I’d never tell anyone, especially you. Someone would have to torture me to say it” (Life is Beautiful).
Eventually, Dora and Guido get married and have a son, but their lives are soon torn apart by the Nazis. The second half of the film is set in a concentration camp, and while the tone quickly shifts to doom and gloom, the humor, for the most part, remains constant. Guido and Dora are split up, but their son Joshua (Giosue` in Italian) remains with Guido. From this point, Guido pretends that this is all a game in an effort to protect his son. He makes the game up minute by minute and tells Joshua that he can earn points for various tasks, for which the kid with the most points will win a tank. After some convincing, Joshua eventually believes that the game is real. The poignancy and the humor of the film intersect quite often during this part. In one scene, German soldiers dictate the rules for the laborers in the camp. Guido decides to translate, but he does not know German and they do not know Italian, which gives him an opportunity to spell out the rules of the “game” for Joshua. It’s such a powerful scene because you can’t help but laugh, yet you know that this is likely the beginning of the end for these prisoners.
Like Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, Spiegelman’s Maus also reinterprets the Holocaust. While there are elements of humor in Maus, most instances occur while Vladek is retelling his story to his son Artie, and the central method that Spiegelman uses is the intersection of high culture and pop culture. As I noted earlier, Maus is a graphic novel, or in a general sense, a comic book, so pop culture and high culture collide when it reinterprets traditional Holocaust literature. In addition, there are more simple, direct references to pop culture; one such reference comes from film, where Vladek mentions the 1921 film The Sheik: “People always told me I looked just like Rudolph Valentino” (Spiegelman 13). While Artie is interviewing his father throughout the book, he is almost always smoking a cigarette, yet another reference to pop culture. In one scene, Vladek yells at Artie for making a mess during an interview session: “But look what you do, Artie…You’re dropping on the carpet cigarette ashes. You want like it should be a stable here?” (Spiegelman 52). You can also argue that the uses of animals instead of humans in the book also represent pop culture. Mice and cats are common household pets, but they have also been popularized in movies and cartoons, such as Tom and Jerry.
Part III:
The recent attacks in Mumbai, India display certain parallels to the Holocaust in so much as that innocent people died because of who they are and what they represent. For the Jews, Hitler’s motivation for murder was to eliminate what he believed was an inferior race. In the first few pages of Maus, Hitler is quoted as saying: “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human” (Spiegelman 4). There has been much debate as to Hitler’s specific motives for exterminating the Jews, but one thing is for certain: when you label a group of people as anything less than human, it becomes clear that you lead your life on the basis of hate, and Hitler acted on this hatred.
Much the same can be said for the terrorists who attacked Mumbai. While their hatred, and subsequent actions against their victims, was not solely based on race, it was an attack on a belief system. Westerners have long been targets of Middle Eastern terrorists, and Mumbai is only the most recent attack, and unfortunately not the last. Westerners comprise a multitude of races, but like the Jews we are targets simply for who we are. We represent materialism, commercialism, free enterprise, indulgence, opportunity, freedom, and so much more. This is a generalization, but are we wrong in representing this way of life? I don’t believe so. Do all of us seek to aspire to these ideals? No. Should we assume that these ideals always function to better our society? No. But yet Westerners, like Jews, are still targets because we are parts of a whole, and it is the whole that must be destroyed. What it comes down to then is ignorance, and unfortunately, ignorance will always be ignored. The world should take comfort in knowing that the scale of Holocaust has not been repeated and hopefully will never happen again. But everyday there is a Holocaust somewhere in the world, where injustice and ignorance rule the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment