week seven: maus and the legitimization of the graphic novel

Maus is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman, serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The work employs postmodernist techniques and represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs. Critics have classified Maus as a memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. It is also a replacement for tragedy. The scene of Alan Moore's classic work "Watchman" at the end of the corpse running across the field should be more visually impactful than "Maus" itself. But the fictional story is shocking again, it is only fictional, the reader will have a sense of distance, and will think that such a thing will never happen in the real world. The Nazi Holocaust is just the opposite. It is not only true, but countless novels, documentary literature, movies, etc. were born in the past half a century. So even if you do n’t care about this history, you can still have a certain impression of it. This also makes its historical position completely different from any other genocide, it has become a symbol of popular culture. The narrative method of it is very special. It intersects back and forth between the two timelines of modern times and World War II and complements each other. With a strong color of biography comics. The book was published in the late 1980s, although many classic works were born in that era, in the eyes of those who rarely read comics, comics are still only children's books. The art style of it is kind of "simple", there may even be an illusion that Art Spiegelman is poorly painted. But in fact, this is what he deliberately did. The explanation he has given is that he was concerned that the painting was too elaborate, which would distract the reader ’s attention and affect the narrative, so the narrative is still his first-class concern, not the art style, and I think this is also a really important reason why it is a graphic novel, not just comic, and this is why it is so great.