Overview
Housekeeping/Announcements:
- Due to illness, two presentations will be postponed to Thursday, meaning we will be seeing a total of four presentations
- Don't forget that there's no class on Tuesday!
- No weekly roles next week
- Finish Maus II for Thursday
- Alternate final project: create a comic (collaboration permitted/encouraged) about the class itself
Class centered mainly around a Theodor Adorno quote from the Hillary Chute article bridging the past and present through symbolism:
"To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."
Our discussion focused primarily on how secondary texts connect with Maus. Instead of just analyzing the book on its own, Prof. Sample gave us context to allow for a deeper and closer reading. We talked about the risks of "representing the unrepresentable" and that quote served as a springboard for discussing:
- A review of secondary texts relating to Maus
- Sufjan Stevens' "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."
- Art Speigelman's In The Shadow of No Towers
- Picasso's "Guernica"
- Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
- Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz
- Hitler "Remixes"
- Maus Part II Page references
Class Notes
We discussed the Adorno quote and its multiple possible meanings. Is it naming poetry as too "romantic" a form for that subject, or is it suggesting that to create art about tragedy takes away from its truth and severity? Generally, it seems to be considered taboo that humor, or the profit that comes from creating art, should be centered around horrific events. The counterargument would be that creating in the face of destruction is a redemptive quality of humanity. We went on to discuss various works of art based on tragedy.
Sufjan Stevens' "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otx49Ko3fxw

The class listened to Sufjan Stevens' ethereal, and somewhat eerie, song about serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr., which begun a discussion in connection with Theodor Adorno's quote "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."
Themes that were discussed in regards to Stevens' song and Adorno's quote were:
- The humanizing effect of creative works upon horrific events
- Everyone has the capacity of being this dark
- Creepiness of the hollow sound of the Stevens song but also lacks brutality of his real crimes
- How a song/creative work will evoke sympathy from the audience
- Makes the audience think about what side they fall on
- The song reminds people that everyone has the capability to become "that" dark - more of a warning!
- Gacy goes from characture in the song to human being - "had parents", "people loved him"
- Stevens connects with Gacy in the last lines of his song "check under the floor boards for secrets I have hid."
- References Scott McCloud's "Amplification through Minimalization"
...which begun a discussion in connection with Theodor Adorno's quote "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.
- A knee-jerk reaction to such creative pieces is to apprecitate the beauty, and then often feel guilty for indulging at the expense of an awful event.
- Making poetry in general (not strictly about Auschwitz) is "barbaric"
- The "barbaric" can have a sense of rawness
- This is a lowpoint in history - be aware of it
- The reality of it brings on guilty feelings
- Everything else seems trivial and pointless when put next to the reality of the event
Picasso's "Guernica"

Picasso painted "Guernica" in the wake of the Nazi bombings in Spain. The cubist piece connotes something evocative out of destruction ("Cubism with a purpose!"). The painting only came into Spain after the dictator was removed. The painting is ENORMOUS!
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

We discussed the fact that this novel also encompasses a wartime tragedy, the bombing of Dresden by the British, when there was no justifiable military reason to do so. Vonnegut seems to share Speigelman's guilt of "wading through the dead bodies" and creating art based on peoples' deaths, because he is quoted as saying that absolutely no one profited from the Dresden incident until he came along.
Art Speigelman's "In the Shadow of No Towers."

Instead of being printed in series, the comics were bound together as a book due to the political nature of its content. Many newspapers refused to run these full-page, controversial comics, but some did. Speigelman talks directly to the reader at many points in the series, in both human and mouse form. He uses images from hundred-year-old comics, including The Yellow Kid, to signify his awareness of the medium and its various portrayals of American history.
Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz

We started discussing this book by focusing on the importance attached to lice in the camps, and how something as small as the proper clothing, including footwear, could mean life or death. As seen in Maus and in other secondary texts, shoes have major importance. Clothes and shoes that were distributed at the arrival of concentration camps oftentimes decided fate of the people that entered the gates.
"Death starts with the shoes."
The above quote is in reference to the fact that to be given a pair of wooden shoes was almost a death sentence because of the likelihood of contracting an infection.
Brief Tangent on "Hitler Remixes"
An internet meme that has pervaded YouTube is a variety of "Hitler Remixes." Why do we feel compelled to make something lighthearted out of the Holocaust? Are we so far removed from it that we can make fun of it? Is it a coping mechanism to make Hitler less terrifying? If we make fun of him, does he perhaps have less power over us, or possibly by not making fun of him do we give him more power?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXnt8_okeRA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0PwqvwyG54&feature=fvw
Key Terms and Ideas
Barbaric:
In reference to Adorno's quote. This word has various connotations, not just savagely cruel or brutal. It can also simply mean raw.
Metafiction/Reflexivity:
Interconnected with postmodernism. Spiegelman (writing, film, etc) that is very aware of its own creation. Spiegelman's work is very meta because he discusses writing his comic in the actual comic.
Redemption:
Spiegelman is coming to terms not only with his father and the Holocaust, but with his use of the Holocaust in a commercial medium; recovering or reconstituting the ideas that make the work meaningful. Spiegelman's attempt to redeem/repair/understand his relationship with his father.
The Violence of Everyday Things:
Seemingly mundane elements of Spiegelman's present day narrative reference back to, and evoke, buried traumas and violences from his father's past. Examples include the omnipresent flies in the chapter "Time Flies," the use of the term "louse," and the picture of the pet cat in the psychiatrist's office. Also, the idea that something as apparently trivial as a louse, or a bad pair of shoes could hold extreme danger for those interred in the concentration camps.
Page References Maus II
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pg. 16, 43 -We picked out various "meta" moments in the text, like his unrealistic conversation with Francoise and his "Framed photo of pet cat. Really!"
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pg. 29 - The ill-fitting clothing of Mandelbaum
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pg. 41 -Spiegelman feels like he is capitalizing on the suffering of others. This is emphasized by the fact that his desk seems to sit atop a pile of dead bodies.
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As he gets interviewed, he regresses in age - the books' materials effect him and make him more childlike
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He begins to grow up when speaking to the psychologist - representing his coping with the story
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This particular section is more about himself than his father. ("Woe is me!")
- pg. 47 - The juxtaposition of past and present. Vladek's voice on the tape recorder (current day) transitions to his "actual" past voice in the concentration camp. This is also arguably a metafictional moment.
- pg. 91 - The magnified central panel of the louse.
- Shows and emphasizes the way in which apparently miniscule things could have significant and damning importance to those in the concentration camps.
- pg. 95 - Typhus: the new villian?
- Someone mentioned that the way "typhus" is typeset in the panel harkens back to the dramatic cover pages of superhero comics.
- Chapter title is "And Here My Troubles Began"
- Seems like first book and 50 pages were not all that bad!
- Asked how could life get worse at this point?
Comments (3)
pierce said
at 1:17 am on Oct 8, 2009
I went ahead and added a section on the violence of everyday things, and noted a couple more significant page points in Maus II. Starting out I did reword a couple of awkward phrasings and fixed a little spelling, but abandoned that in favor of the previous. Tried to avoid brutalizing anybody's post out of OCD. Going to try to get in on the next day's notes a little earlier so I have more to do than nitpick.
pierce said
at 1:18 am on Oct 8, 2009
Oh, and good job with the pictures.
Vaeyn said
at 1:22 pm on Oct 8, 2009
Cleaned up some grammar and formatted for better skimming, particularly with the quotes and Key Terms and Ideas.
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