Is writing a way of escaping to the context?

To start, I have a couple of questions for you to think about:- Which is your context? How do you feel about it?- Do you think we can put it away and just go on?- If you were a writer, what would you say about your country in this specific context (21st century)?

Maybe some of us may have felt overwhelmed by our problems at a certain time and took a piece of paper, or even facebook (any social network) and started writing in order to unburden, to reflect, maybe find a solution to the problem or just as a way of escape. 

Our experiences, the place in which we live, our families, people around us, the predominant ideology, etc. are part of our own context, we are living in a specific part of History and this, like it or not, has made an impact in our lives since everything we know is arranged by it and most of our decisions will be based considering this.

 

For writers, context has a powerful influence, too. I would say it is crucial and it gives a writer his/her own personal style since it is what has made him/her being who they are by taking into account their own experiences and the vision of world at that specific moment in History. Each novel, comic, play or comic that we have read during this semester are the product of a specific context and they all provide us a little more information of what was happening in world at a certain period of time, the first example of this is Hemingway, a writer who constantly talks about a "lost generation" which was wounded by WWI and that hide its frustrations in certain activities, then, there's Tennessee Williams, a man who was strongly influenced by his context and found a way to escape of it through writing and creating characters inspired on real life people who had been part of his life. 

Although Spiegelman doesn't directly talk about his own experiences on MAUS, we can see that he's not the exception to the rule since he uses writing to tell us about his parent's story as survivors of one of the worst tragedies of the world, the Holocaust, which was caused by an ideology which believed jewish people didn't even have rights and treated them worse than slaves. This kind of suffering had no comparison and that is what may made Spiegelman feel frustrated because he could not express himself and probably felt guilty if he complained about something since he knew that his parent's experiences were about a thousand times worse than what he was feeling at the moment.

As it was mentioned a lot of times before, experiences are part of what makes us who we are and writers try to show us a little bit about themselves when writing any type of text from their own perspective and I think it is quite useful for us to find out about literature of specific periods of History since we can identify its main visions from the perspective of people who just lived there and tried to leave their mark or were just trying to keep record of their memories. In this case, it is possible to state that most of the writers we read about in classes are trying to escape of their context by creating a new reality by writing because most of them were exposed to hard times and may have been frustrated because of it.

Holocaust, facing reality in different ways

While reading Maus, it was inevitable to remember the Holocaust topic itself. 

As you may remember, Spiegelman was criticized for writing Maus since it seemed he diminished the relevance of the Jewish tragedy by drawing a comic. This graphic novel shows two parallel worlds. On the one hand, the story of Vladek, Artie's father, who experienced the Holocaust since he was a Polish Jew. On the other hand, the story of Art and his father's interactions in the present. By characterizing people in his comics as animals (cats, mice, pigs, etc.), Art tried to simplify what happened and what he lived in the Holocaust, instead of facing the horrible catastrophe in a sensible way. 

This simplification of reality rang me a bell and I remembered a special character called Guido Orefice, a Jewish man and main character of Life is Beautiful. He was characterized by being very optimistic and a concerned husband and father. When the Nazi era started, they were taken away to a concentration camp. In order to distract his son Joshua, Guido creates different situations and stories for hiding the true from Joshua. There is a specific moment in the movie when a German woman calls Joshua to eat in a room full of German children. Since his life was in danger, Guido suggests him playing “The silence game”, in which the little boy was supposed to be quiet no matter the circumstances. Unfortunately, he says “thank you” and a waiter noticed it. After all, he is rescued by his father because Guido made children speak Italian. 

This situation reminded me of a particular scene in Maus, in which Vladek was walking trying to get a streetcar when some children called him Jew. Those children looked for their mothers and Vladek had to act as one of them. 

As you can see, Maus could be compared to Life is Beautiful since both try to show the Holocaust in a different and controversial way. On the one hand, Vladek put a mask in order to hide himself and try to be one of them, whereas Joshua had to act as a mute child and hide himself too from the German. On the other hand, both show an ironic view of society at that time, in which people were classified because of their race. 

All in all, I can say that the Holocaus has been shown in ironic ways and in that sense, Maus has been one of the perfect samples.

As a final question, can you identify any other movie that shows the Holocaust in an ironic or different way?

P.s. I also remembered Prufrock's mask to face society and its connection with Vladek's situation. In that sense, Vladek had to wear a mask too in order to be part of society, the same as Prufrock.

P.s. In case you have not watched the movie, here you have a link :) 

http://pelis24.com/hd/13532-la-vida-es-bella-1997-castellano.html

The situation described above goes from 88.00 to 92.20 minutes.

A graphic novel worth reading

Probably a lot of you have heard about Watchmen, maybe because it is also a movie and it is about superheroes, others may not have idea that it is one of the most important graphic novels ever written (and I mean before the teacher said that). Personally I love it and it is funny because even though I knew it was a graphic novel I saw the movie first.

Watchmen is written and created by Alan Moore and drown by Dave Gibbons. It tells the story of a group of retired superheroes during nuclear conflicts between US and The Soviet Union. But it is not only just a simple story of superheroes; Watchmen shows how dark and mature a superhero's story can be, it also represents problems of power and the fear of self destruction.The characters are well presented and well explained at the point in which you could understand their most hidden behaviors. There is a before and after in how superheroes started to be seen thanks to this novel, politically correct and bright superheroes started to decline and more realistic heroes with traumas and a lack of ethic became popular.

On 2009 Zack Snyder directed an adaptation of this graphic novel on the big screen, personally, I like how it was carefully filmed to make honor to the novel, but for some people this may be a problem, and the same Alan Moore explained why he dislike the movie adaptations of all his creations, why create a movie if the comic is already perfect and if it was not made to be a movie? As I mentioned before, I watched the movie before I read the novel and it was very interesting for me because I actually liked it, and when I read it I could recognize the other way around all the details that I had seen in the movie but multiplied by one hundred. So if you have the opportunity to read Watchmen and then watch the director's cut version of it, I think you will find a pleasant surprise and you will finally discover "who watches the watchmen".

Die widersinnig Schweine, Katzen und Mäuse

(The absurd/paradoxical pigs, cats and mics)

Pointing out the absurdity in a graphical work of Holocaust literature is not something to be taken lightly. Eventhough Art express his own concern, there were millions of people affected by this terrible event who would not like to be taken as a cartoon subject. But, what if words cannot explain such an inhuman scenario?

Maybe the answer would be as simple as his name. What is funny about Art, is the relation of his name with what he did. His last name is SPIEGELMAN,which in English means: MIRROR-MAN and when he recreated the Holocaust in images what he actually did was to MIRROR the worst historical event witnessed by HUMANS (and among them his father) doing  ART. What a fortuitous pun, isn't it?

Besides the pun, Spiegelman was into showing the absurd division of humanity by making people of each ethnicity look alike.

Thinking as a post-modernist artist and writer: "If reality has already been made art, if everyone has reflect their thoughts and life through abstract images or stories.... What is left, then? COMBINE BOTH, of course! I'll put my own thoughts in a combination of images and words, and to make it even more meaningful and attactive people will be characterized by animals that fit with their ethnicity."

Why would be the Jewish people represented as mics,Germans as cats and Poles as pigs?

It's very simple actually, there are some sayings in the German culture that may explain it. For instance, in many cultures including German's pigs are dirty, seen as impure animals. Poles in this case were seen as dirty and impure for helping the NAZIS to kill Jewish people, remember that the mostly known concentration camp built in Auschwitz was placed in Poland. Otherwise, Germans say that Jewish people speak MAUSHELN German, MAUSHELN means "to speak like a Jew" but it's also similar to the word MAUS=MOUSE. Well, finally for te Germans the only option was being the cats for being the predators of Jewish people.

Having this in mind, when people are concerned with German culture the simbolism tends to become ephemeral, what's the real importance about Spiegelman Maus is the recreation of the Holocaust in a comic showing the ESSENCE of one of the most important events in the history of Humankind not though facts, not through reality, not through abstract forms, but through all of them at the same time.

Remembering the Holocaust: New generations

The holocaust is probably one of the most terrible tragedies that have ocurred in the human history and without doubt the most shocking one in the past century. The horrors suffered by Jewish people, tortures, massive killings, and many other atrocities, have made of this tragedy impossible to forget for those who experienced it from a close position. 

However, for the new generations, such event on the history does not seem to be something to bear in mind. With the advances on technology, the massive spread of the Internet, and many other distractions and tools that technology is offering to youngsters, history appears to have been forgotten. 

Considering this, Art Spiegelman's 'MAUS' showed up in the 1980's as a controversial form of calling the attention of young people and new generations, making them feel interested about what happened during World War II. Despite the fact that Spiegelman's work appeared for the first time in the 1980's, it is still quite interesting in form and content for young people -like me- nowadays. 

Anyhow, this new 'digital' generation, which aims for amusement and new hobbies, does not give the impression of feeling attracted by the idea of remembering the Holocaust. For that matter, Hollywood and the big companies related to it, have come up with new scripts that show the history in an ironic and different way, such as "Inglourious Basterds", directed by the always controversial and gore-lover Quentin Tarantino. 

Although this movie is not based on the real facts of the Holocausts, it is definitely an attractive film that called the attention of many, catching a younger, blood-thirsty audience with a storyline full of revenge and the epic scene that everyone was hoping to see: Hitler being brutally murdered by a Jewish-American soldier. 

Facing the Past

First of all, let me tell you that I has never read a graphic novel before, and to tell you the truth my expectations were not high when I started reading Maus. I was deeply engaged with the story, which besides containing the obvious metaphor (anthropomorphic animals) it also has powerful Imagery. I was so in to the story that sometimes I forgot to REALLY look at the illustrations, but every so often I ran into one that demanded attention, such as this one:

 At first glance I thought “ohh! He feels guilty that he’s making money by writing about other people´s suffering”. But then I took a closer look and noticed the bar wire fence and watch tower outside the window, and how “we are ready to shoot” can be understood as “ready to fire”. The character has been sucked in to the holocaust farther than he ever thought he could. He is the son of a survivor, however, he still has the burden of his history and his linage. It’s not easy being Jewish.

Have you ever meet someone Jewish that didn´t tell you their religion within the first 10 minutes of conversation? Is not just religion, not just a race, not just a community, it’s a challenge. And it seems one of the challenges is “facing the holocaust”, even if you hadn’t been born when it happened.

Art Spiegelman’ "faced his holocaust" with Mause. Through writing this “not just another holocaust story”, he showed the world what being the wrong race during WWII was like, and he also showed the responsibility the younger Jewish generations feel about giving a voice to those who didn´t survive and to those who didn´t get to be born.

Thinking about this inevitably reminded of Steven Spielberg, maybe you´ve heard of him.

As a young movie director, Spielberg portrayed the Nazis as cartoonish evil bad guys whose sole purpose was to get beaten up by Indiana Jones. (have a look)

But then, after years of avoiding making a “just another holocaust movie”, he finally “faced the holocaust” by making Schindler´s List.

Maus and Schindler´s List both show the audience what the holocaust was like by focusing on what one character witnessed, and they both use this “trivializing” way of storytelling:

Spiegelman uses irony and metaphor, and Spielberg filmed his movie almost as a documentary, not planning his camera angles before shooting.

Also, Schindler´s list, just like Maus, uses string imagery to make a statement. The most famous example from the Spielberg film is the girl in the red coat. The film is in black and white, and this red coat is the only color we see in the movie. Schindler (played by Liam Neeson) notices the little girl in red, wandering alone, amongst the chaos, but decides to walk away. (If you wold like to see the scene CLICK here)

Later, he sees a man wheeling away some burned corpses, and one of them is wearing a small red coat.

I found an interesting interview were Spielberg talks about his relationship with the holocaust. I´ll leave some interesting excerpts here:

On learning about the holocaust: "When I was very young, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of hers in Germany, a pianist who played a symphony that wasn't permitted, and the Germans came up on stage and broke every finger on her hands," he said. "I grew up with stories of Nazis breaking the fingers of Jews".

On how an Auschwitz survivor taught him the numbers: "He would roll up his sleeves and say, 'This is a four, this is a seven, this is a two,' " said Mr. Spielberg. "It was my first concept of numbers. He would always say, 'I have a magic trick.' He pointed to a six. And then he crooked his elbow and said, 'Now it's a nine.' "

"In a strange way my life has always come back to images surrounding the Holocaust. The Holocaust had been part of my life, just based on what my parents would say at the dinner table. We lost cousins, aunts, uncles."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/movies/bestpictures/schindler-ar1.html

The Holocaust from a new point of view

Maus,a book in which  the author tells experience about a kind and his father in the Holocaust in a more funny way by using comics. 

This interview reflect in a deeper way what the book is about and the thoughts that the author developed at the moment of writing it.  


The Holocaust Through the Eyes of a Maus (Art Spiegelman)

I also would like to share with you an explicit poem that it is easy to understand about the Holocaust and the how protagonist of the poem feels about it. The feeling of Anger due to the cruelty of the Holocaust and the lack of importance that people gave to this issue it is pointed out in the Anne Sexton poem, an American poet,  known for her highly personal, confessional verse. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die.

Anger, 
as black as a hook, 
overtakes me. 
Each day, 
each Nazi
took, at 8: 00 A.M., a baby
and sauteed him for breakfast
in his frying pan. 

And death looks on with a casual eye
and picks at the dirt under his fingernail. 

Man is evil, 
I say aloud.
Man is a flower
that should be burnt, 
I say aloud.
Man
is a bird full of mud, 
I say aloud. 

And death looks on with a casual eye
and scratches his anus. 

Man with his small pink toes, 
with his miraculous fingers
is not a temple
but an outhouse, 
I say aloud.
Let man never again raise his teacup.
Let man never again write a book.
Let man never again put on his shoe.
Let man never again raise his eyes, 
on a soft July night.
Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
I say those things aloud. I beg the Lord not to hear. 

Inheriting

After our presentation on Look Back in Anger, I started to reflect in the fact of anger in young people, and how in this context it was inherited. They were not angry at something that had happened to them, but they were angry because of things that had happened to their parents. They were angry because they grew up with angry parents. Then we have the example of Jimmy, who was also angry because people, young people, did anything to change their situation, it was frustration felt while seeing that people did not care.

We compared this feeling with our generation in our country, how we are angry, bothered by what happened to generations before us, fighting in a way to find answers, to understand what was to be there at that time, bothered maybe because we cannot relate to what happened to our parents.

That is the feeling I can see the author of Maus is expressing. The effort of Art Spiegelman to show, and understand his father, to recreate what his parents went through. I read in an interview how Spiegelman explain the difficulty of transmitting memories, memories that weren't even his. What better than to explaining them with pictures?

Spiegelman´s effort to "tell a story worth telling at a time when this story wasn't well told", when the tails did not reflect reality, people did not understand and people did not care.It  changed the way of storytelling, making graphic novels more deep, more meaningful. All because of the need for understanding.

We live in a more graphic generation, we need  advertising to show us what the product does, not to tell us. An image says more than thousand words! And Spiegelman sends us a touching message that we could not have get by reading a history book,we needed to see it.

Are there any different ways we as "youngrys" try to better understand what had happened in the past?
Can we have the certainty that what we believe as truth, is indeed?
Which medium would you choose to tell your story?

Art and Vladek

After having finished reading the book, a lot of things went through my mind as the graphic novel is so full of information, but what I could not understand right away was the relationship Art Spiegelman, the author, and his father Vladek had, so I investigated.

Vladek’s behaviour was of a tense man, maybe even compulsive, with the pills’ counting and keeping everything neat. But this he cannot control, as I believe these behaviours are a consequence of the Holocaust. The clearest example of it are his savings, he lived with little, but he always had something saved for the future, the same way he did when he was in the camps.

This was exactly what bothered Art, this presence over his life, Auschwitz. “My father and I could hardly get together without fighting…if I was going to tell the story, I knew I’d have to start visiting my father again.”[i] After I read this I thought that he went to his father only so he could write his book, but then he said “from the book a reader might get the impression that the conversations in the narrative were just one small part, a facet of my relationship with my father. In fact, however, they were my relationship with my father. I was doing them to have a relationship with my father”[ii] and I realized that it was not out of interest he was doing it, he was looking for the explanation why his father was like this.

I believe that this relationship was complicated because of this Auschwitz’s shadow, which created an unhealthy family environment filled with secrets and taboos. This can be understood as I think most people who survived such horrible experience do not want to relive them, but pretending that everything is fine is not healthy and we can see that in this relationship, filled with guilt and regrets.

Do you think that this is a recurrent story as Vladek’s father was not very present in his life either?

Who do you think were the fatherly figures for Vladek in the book? And for Art?

---

[i] WITEK, Joseph (Ed.), Art Spiegelman: conversations, Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi, 2007, p.79

[ii] WITEK, Joseph (Ed.), Art Spiegelman: conversations, Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi, 2007, pp.79-80

The best of both worlds? Yes, the best thing ever!!

In my opinion, there´s nothing that can get over a good novel and a cup of coffee during a cold rainy day. Well, that was before I had met this wonderful graphic novel launched by Marvel, YES!, Marvel, and I have to tell you, there´s nothing else in the world that I want right now than having this book in my hands, well, there´s something ( to pass all the courses this semester). Here you have a new adaptation of the classic novel written by Jane Austen but in a new format to get to a new kind of public. Nancy Butler featuring Hugo Petrus made the adaptation of this piece of art and transformed it into a new colourful representation of Elizabeth Benet´s world.

"This project has been like a dream for me as a writer and as a former graphic designer- not only am I adapting a book I love, I am doing it in the one forum, comics, where words and pictures carry equal weight" Nancy Butler, two-time winner and multiple RT Reviewer´s Choice winner in Regency.

What I find interesting about this adaptation is that it gives me the feeling that I can get closer to the character´s world, and it´s a good way to promote reading in young people because they what is good about graphic novels is that they are able to catch the attention of the reader easier than a novel because of its illustrations and its short dialogues.

For the ones who don´t really like novels, this is a good alternative to read this wonderful piece of art which includes the amazing story written by Jane Austen and the beautiful illustrations which make it more than recommended.

"Ghost World"

While reading "Ghost World" I noticed that in some of the frames there was the phrase "Ghost World" in the walls. This phrase represents the ephemeral nature of life, because everything has a start and a finish  point. 

In the novel Enid and Rebecca are stuck in the past, always reviving old memories. They are also afraid of changes because, as I understood, they feel insecure and scared about the things that they will have to face in the future, about the idea of becoming independent and the fact that they cannot be together forever turning just into ghosts, aparitions. 

What I learnt from the novel is that we are in this world to make changes and to grow, eventhough after this we dissapear. The idea is to find new ways an adapt to reality in order to leave one's mark.

I know that this image is not from the novel...but I like Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson's personification better.

What's important is the impact of what they show?

In advertisement, it is of Paramount importance to create impact when it comes to show something and sell a product. As Andy Warhol claimed, you have to make it visible to the audience.

As in Art Spiegelman's "Maus", the second half of the 20th century gives much more importance to visual aspect, more than the linguistic form that was the previous focus. 
Nowadays, we can see how advertisement focuses on making impact on the audience, in order to sell a product, even if the image shown has no relation with what is actually being advertised.

In the previous videos, we can see that, even if they are advertising lingerie, they still overuse sex in order to get attention. This is an example of RUPTURE since we can easily unite meaning between sex or sexual aspects and the use of lingerie.

However, there are some cases in which we cannot find any relationship between the image shown and the actual product being offered.

In this case, as in Warhol's art, it's clear that what is important is the image being shown, the impact of the advertisement, more that the product itself.

I do tally with the idea that making impact, even if that implies using sex as a tool, is helpful and might be engaging for the audience. However, I do think there is a difference of epic proportions when it comes to sell a product and to overuse sex, loose the real message and being tacky.

Do you think this type of advertisement shows only FRAGMENTS of life? so it can be considered light art?

Do you feel appealed or identified with this type of advertisement? does they incentive you to purchase or use certain brands or products?

Do you think these advertisements shapes the way our society sees beauty, sex and lifestyles?

Different ways to tell a story

from Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

When I saw myself facing Maus by Art Spiegelman I could not help but remember some books that I have read recently and started to think about this new way of “writing” books, and also this way of depicting reality through the use of characters that are not entirely human. For example, a few weeks ago, I read a book called Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick. In this book he tells two stories, one story is told with words and the other one with drawings. The stories seems to overlap at some points along the book, but despite the similarities in some situations, they are not overlapped because one of the stories happens several decades before than the other. How come these stories go together in the book to tell only one? Well, you will have to read it. The interesting thing is how you can extract meaning from images and tell a story in your head only by watching drawings. 

from The Arrival, by Shaun Tan

from The Arrival, by Shaun Tan

There are other examples of books that only have drawings. Not a single word! Yet, they are rich in meaning and it takes a while to get the whole story, such as The Arrival by Shaun Tan. This book tells the story of an immigrant arriving to the USA having no idea of the language used and being amazed by all these new things that are there, and also telling the inside world...his feelings, etc.

Our ways to convey meaning or to tell stories are limitless. Through the use of drawings we can go even further, because sometimes words do not seem to reflect quite exactly what we try to say. Or maybe because is an easy way to engage the reader who might think that for having less words it is going to be an easy-to-read book (what a poor argument!) Posibilities, I think, are also limitless.

from Animal Farm, by George Orwell

Another interesting resource is the use of animals. One of the books that I have read that have this feature is Animal Farm by George Orwell. Since it is a very critical-political book, I am not going to discuss or cover the plot, but it is interesting how the author depicts different characteristics and roles in society through animals. This is probably because animals represent in a very specific and plain some aspects of our personality or place in the world. For example, dogs represent loyalty for many people, cats represent intelligence, lions represent royalty, and so on and so forth.  Maybe this is what the author intended to do...maybe not..

 

 I know, all of these books have nothing to do with the story in Maus, but is not the story itself that called my attention, it was the fact that this book is so radically different from the others that we have read so far in this course, in terms of the form that it made me think about why the author is using animals to tell the story? Was it necessary? Will the story have a greater or lower impact if written in a different or conventional way?

Also, it is not a new idea to depict humanized animals. Fables have used animals for ages to tell stories and teach to children. Maybe using animals makes Maus easy to digest because its story is a very harsh one. Holocaust is not a nice story to talk about, but maybe a necessary one in order to reveal the dark side of humans that we need to be constantly aware of.

"If you are wise you won't be deceived by the innocent airs of those whom you have once found to be dangerous"

 The Cat and the Mice - Aesop

 

There are so many ways to tell a story to impact others and to give an artistic personal touch to your work. Finally, I want to share two pictures. Do you see any resemblance? Yes? No?...