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QC Forum Book Group - Maus Discussion Thread

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Alex C:

--- Quote from: a pack of wolves on 29 Jun 2010, 17:08 ---I'm not sure comics are a valued art form in the same way novels and cinema are.

--- End quote ---

Yeah, quality aside, Maus would have a leg up simply because nobody can really call out the Holocaust as being overwrought, exaggerated or solipsistic. At least not without having some serious sack. You can at least get past the book lining intro without someone deciding you're reading kid's stuff.

Barmymoo:
I think using a comic to portray this particular story worked very well with the switching focuses from the story of the camps and the story of the author. In books that can be tricky to do well, but something about visual media make it easier to digest in a film or comic.

Something I was wondering about was the fact that it was black and white. I know in Schindler's List this was used as a tactic to make a point; do you think that the same is the case here?

a pack of wolves:
It's used well and it doesn't hurt when giving the camp that oppressive, closed in feel to have it in black and white. I don't think it has any particular significance as a choice of colour palette though. Black and white was/is pretty standard for independent comics, unlike Schindler's List where it's a very obvious stylistic decision.

a pack of wolves:
Whether or not those character traits of Vladek's are attributable to the holocaust is addressed within the work. Mala refutes the theory, so you've already got the two sides of the argument. There's nothing else to say, which is what makes it a bad question. It takes discussion down a dead end where you either simply reiterate what was already said in the text or start psychoanalysing characters or the author, which is the problem with most of those questions. Asking why Anja killed herself is fairly ridiculous since the period of time covered (with the exception of Prisoner Of The Hell Planet, which is largely concerned with the after effects of her death) is years before her committed suicide. Although there's nothing wrong with a question there can be no definitive conclusion to there's just nothing to say about the matter beyond "she seems like she might have had depression, Vladek's not the easiest man in the world to live with and she did go through the holocaust thereby losing her first son, but we have nothing in her own words so it could have been anything".

I was mainly criticising them because of the sources they came from though. I'm a critic not just at heart but by training and I was disappointed that any academic would pose questions like that.

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