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Mario the lone bookwolf's Reviews > Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1)
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A way to deal with the unspeakable that makes it even more disturbing and weird.
Using animals for certain nations is a balancing act
It´s still a great work, but maybe all the same animals of one species would have been an even better choice. Not just because it would have been ideal to show that they´re all the same, just different, let's say with dogs or cats and many breeds, but because it´s just an unnecessary point of criticism that could have easily been avoided. It's petty and art is free, but some nations might not find it that great to be associated with certain animals.
Definitively nothing for kids or even some adults
It´s just too hardcore, by using anthropomorphized animals and the art of painting, it gets even worse and kind of more graphic. But the impact and mind blowing factor are amazing, because it´s
Much more memorable that way than in general anti war productions
Because people are used to war movies, games, satires, pictures, etc., which creates a kind of habituation effect and deadening, but this is something different and more tangible. Each page screams out the terror, the underlying themes are the sickest possible for even the most murderous apes on the planet, and one will never forget the associations between the pictures and reality itself.
It could be used for visualizing other atrocities too
There have been other genocides in colonial history without numbers of the people killed, starved to death, or infected with plagues and no real interest in redemption by giving back land to Native Americans of both Americas or historical revisionism. Let´s say removing statues and street names of mass murderers in the US, just imagine this in Germany with nazi leaders and the swastika instead of slave trading warmongerers and the confederate flag. Impossible and unthinkable in Europe after WW2, but in the bible belt, it´s totally fine more than 150 years after the American civil war.
Even more disturbing is the 20th century history of Russia and China with numbers between dozens of millions up to 100 million people killed per country. Especially adapted to one country and its history, the Maus concept would have immense potential for opening minds and maybe even something like redemption and a real reappraisal of history besides political correct drivel, bigotry, and empty promises. The crazy and disturbing thing is that it would mean imprisonment or even death for the artists creating such works in many countries that are still developing or already full scale dictatorships, with advanced surveillance technologies making the police states seem too perfectly developed to ever fall. Because resistance and rebellion have become impossible.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
Using animals for certain nations is a balancing act
It´s still a great work, but maybe all the same animals of one species would have been an even better choice. Not just because it would have been ideal to show that they´re all the same, just different, let's say with dogs or cats and many breeds, but because it´s just an unnecessary point of criticism that could have easily been avoided. It's petty and art is free, but some nations might not find it that great to be associated with certain animals.
Definitively nothing for kids or even some adults
It´s just too hardcore, by using anthropomorphized animals and the art of painting, it gets even worse and kind of more graphic. But the impact and mind blowing factor are amazing, because it´s
Much more memorable that way than in general anti war productions
Because people are used to war movies, games, satires, pictures, etc., which creates a kind of habituation effect and deadening, but this is something different and more tangible. Each page screams out the terror, the underlying themes are the sickest possible for even the most murderous apes on the planet, and one will never forget the associations between the pictures and reality itself.
It could be used for visualizing other atrocities too
There have been other genocides in colonial history without numbers of the people killed, starved to death, or infected with plagues and no real interest in redemption by giving back land to Native Americans of both Americas or historical revisionism. Let´s say removing statues and street names of mass murderers in the US, just imagine this in Germany with nazi leaders and the swastika instead of slave trading warmongerers and the confederate flag. Impossible and unthinkable in Europe after WW2, but in the bible belt, it´s totally fine more than 150 years after the American civil war.
Even more disturbing is the 20th century history of Russia and China with numbers between dozens of millions up to 100 million people killed per country. Especially adapted to one country and its history, the Maus concept would have immense potential for opening minds and maybe even something like redemption and a real reappraisal of history besides political correct drivel, bigotry, and empty promises. The crazy and disturbing thing is that it would mean imprisonment or even death for the artists creating such works in many countries that are still developing or already full scale dictatorships, with advanced surveillance technologies making the police states seem too perfectly developed to ever fall. Because resistance and rebellion have become impossible.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
June 22, 2022
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Joe
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Jun 24, 2022 10:13AM
Interesting review, Mario, I will have to check this out someday. IMO, and everybody has one, if they want to be serious about giving land back to the Indians, I say they start first with Martha's Vineyard, where the rich live, or maybe Wall Street.
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Joe wrote: "Interesting review, Mario, I will have to check this out someday. IMO, and everybody has one, if they want to be serious about giving land back to the Indians, I say they start first with Martha's ..."Thanks!
"I say they start first with Martha's Vineyard, where the rich live, or maybe Wall Street."
Exactly that´s the reason why they will never do it. If it was the land of normal working class people, ok, maybe, but certainly not the property of the 1 percent.
One of my favourite books of all time (and no. 1 graphic novel ever)! I agree that the choice of animals to represent nations is a balancing act, esp. using pigs to represent the Polish. There was a tv series a few years ago "Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter" that also portrayed the Polish in a less than favourable light for their role in the Holocaust. This was the most contentious aspect of the otherwise excellent series. Overall, I think it's problematic to say X nation is bad or Y nation is good because there always going to be conflicts and divergent allegiances. In fact, Spiegelman highlights this by having his elderly dad shout racist abuse at some black man near the beginning of the book -- showing that even Jews that had suffered the worst kind of atrocities are not immune to racist thoughts or acts.
"In fact, Spiegelman highlights this by having his elderly dad shout racist abuse at some black man near the beginning of the book -- showing that even Jews that had suffered the worst kind of atrocities are not immune to racist thoughts or acts"That´s truly one of the strangest aspects of the human psyche, that victims become perpetrators themselves for reasons nobody can understand or logically comprehend.
Mario the lone bookwolf wrote: "That´s truly one of the strangest aspects of the human psyche, that victims become perpetrators themselves for reasons nobody can understand or logically comprehend. "One of the strangest, I agree. I think about it this way: when you hear repeatedly that something is wrong or bad, you internalise it, esp, if it happens a lot when you're young. You believe the narrative because it's difficult to counterpose an alternative narrative. This is how internalised homophobia works, in my view. When everybody says 'You're bad', what recourse do you have as a child or a young person to say 'hang on a minute, no, actually, I'm not'?
Vicky wrote: "Mario the lone bookwolf wrote: "That´s truly one of the strangest aspects of the human psyche, that victims become perpetrators themselves for reasons nobody can understand or logically comprehend...."Exactly that´s why they try to get them when they´re still young and easy to manipulate and indoctrinate.
