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?

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[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?...