Blog Post 3 (due Sunday 9/29, 11:59 P.M.; comment due Monday 9/30, 11:59 P.M.): Read the Heck out of MAUS: how can we 'represent the past'?

 Over the week, we've been looking at how Maus works—as a story, as history, as art, as autobiography, and a great deal more.  We called this an exploration of 'the poetics' of history: all the codes and conventions guiding how we write (and in this case draw) history.

It's tough.

• What if your narrator (the historian) is a confessed neurotic?  Had a 'nervous breakdown' when his mom committed suicide (who wouldn't?)?  Is haunted by the stories of the Holocaust he heard as a kid?  Doesn't get along with his father—the 'hero' of the story?  And lots more.  We called this the problem of the writer's subjectivity—the way any producer's consciousness always structures what he or she sees.
•  What if you set out to tell your history visually? And not just with pictures, but with a representational paradigm or genre — 'comix' — that people think is for idiots and makes us dumber?  And what if you're trying to (re)BUILD that genre (into 'the graphic novel) while you're at it?
•  What if your historical data (your father's convoluted and emotionally-laden memories and stories) are flawed, biased and partial?  How are you going to be 'true to your source' and not mislead or lie to your reader? 
•  What if you want to represent things that aren't 'just facts?'  Things like emotions, prejudices, pain, fear—what Spiegelman calls 'someone's inner life'?

And finally, what the heck IS it?  Fiction or non-fiction?  History or novel?  What can a producer 'make up' without 'lying'? 

 

Well, that's Maus.

Let's 'read the heck' out of a part of it, concentrating on what we call the visual rhetoric: the way images on the page 'argue' for a view of—well—of everything: the world, Jews, all of us, literature, Hitler, 'race,' father-sand-sons, comix, and a great deal more.

Robin Does Some Homework:

In this famous page (41 of Maus II), Spiegelman gives us a representation his 'inner life' (he wears a mask; he's afraid of his success; he's afraid he's dishonored his father by turning his life into a story (and selling it); he's haunted by Vladek's stories of the camps and by the Holocaust itself; he can't sort out the story--and like everybody who was ever depressed: he feels dead and rotting.  But he's a JEW, raised on Jewish theatre and stand-up.  He tells stories like Woody Allen.  And he doesn't want to burden his reader witha grim, deadly, unreadable story.)  Lots going on here, and these minimal illustrations show where I might start my analysis.    

What to do:

1.  Start with either of these:

 

• DEFINE A PROBLEM in 'representing history,' maybe starting with one of the big ones listed above. 

• FIND A GREAT SCENE IN MAUS—as small as a panel, as large as a page—in which you see the toughness of representing history in play.

2. Write up your problem; get it into your own words, into language Mom would understand.  Why's it a problem?  Why does it matter?  How does it work?  Short and tight, so we can all see what you're dealing with.
3. Draw, diagram, illustrate, annotate the scene.  Really.  Draw little arrows, connections, circle stuff.  Use colors.  Mark up the page like a drawing in a biology textbook, so your readers can see the issues you're working on in action. 

4.  Put it all together and post it to the Blog as an illustrated little explanation.

Yep, you're going to have to do some Xeroxing and scanning, unless you have a hot drawing program on your computer.  So think ahead about the timing.