Week #7
Maus and Barefoot Gen
I read Maus by Art Spiegelman and watched Barefoot Gen for this week. The contents of this week were really heavy, especially because they are both non-fictional stories of the tragic events. However, it was definitely a valuable experience for me to read/watch them. It was interesting that how these two works use different approaches to convey the cruelness of war/holocaust to the audience.
Maus is drawn in pretty minimalist style and uses the representation -Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs. Despite of its heavy content, I found it fairly easy to read because of this style and representation. Also, I was surprised how the tone (narrative) is quiet and monotonous in Maus; even the expression of the characters are not very explicit. One of the reason behind this settled storytelling might be that Maus is created from the perspective of Vladek’s son, not Vladek himself; therefore, the tone of Maus seems pretty objective. I had the impression that Maus is in the middle of written-work and comic; although the visual significantly help us to read the historical tragic story (which might be a hard and intimidating topic for some people, including me…), Spiegelman’s important message is mostly in his narrative, not visual.
This approach is very different from Barefoot Gen. Of course it is driven mainly by visual storytelling since it is an animated film, but even its tone of the story seems significantly different from Maus. Barefoot Gen (and Grave of the Fireflies is probably in a similar category) focus more on the characters’ emotion rather than the detailed facts of characters’ war experience in order to tell their tragedy. Also, Barefoot Gen shows shocking images of people about to die, which emphasis the traumatizing experience of the creator Keiji Nakazawa. When I was reading Maus, I was in Artie’s viewpoint and I was kind of “listening” to Vladek’s story; on the other hand, as I was watching Barefoot Gen, I was in Gen’s viewpoint “witnessing” the war. Maus and Barefoot Gen both have their own way of expressing the cruelty of the war/holocaust; while Maus is more logical storytelling explaining the cruel facts (more for the adult audiences), Barefoot Gen appeals to our heart and is for wider range of audiences since the cruelty can be understood visually.
Although I mentioned that Maus is logical and has quiet tone, it does not mean that it is not moving. What I mean by “logical” is that Maus is not dramatized. In fact, a lots of tragedy and traumatizing events happen in Maus as much as it does in Barefoot Gen. However, the characteristic of Maus is that it is a comic not only about the war and holocaust but a person’s life. Therefore, although the emotion is not very explicit and looking monotonous, this reality enhances the fact that those cruel incidents are all true. Vladek is not perfect; he always complains about Mala comparing her with Anja. When I started reading this book, I expected that Vladek and Mala have a good relationship, supporting each other as survivors (like as in a lot of fictional stories!). However, the reality is different. Also, the relationship of Vladek and his son is not perfect either. (Although there are some cute scenes of them. I love the scene when Vladek is interested in Artie’s book and he expects Artie to be like Walt Disney.) As discussed in the class as well, Vladek is partially heroic but also very human. It is one of the factor that made me more interested in this book.
There are a lot of memorable episodes from Maus, but one of the topic consistently showing up in the book is distrust between people -which I did not really see in Barefoot Gen. This topic is even introduced in the first scene; when Artie was still ten years old, Vladek tells him the harsh reality, “Friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week…then you could see what it is, friends!” Vladek’s distrust of others can be seen in this scene, and as the story progresses, this reason is revealed. For example, Vladek and his family (not only them but all Jewish people) were not able to trust any other Jews, and they should’ve not. I was surprised that the stranger actually reported the presence of Vladek’s family to the Gestapo (from episode around page113.) Vladek says that “At that time it wasn’t anymore families. It was everybody to take care for himself!” In fact, athough Janina -who was Richieu’s governess- always offered she would help Vladek and his family, she rejected them by saying “you’ll bring trouble! Go away! Quickly!” Maus shows how fear can change people and their relationship; that was one of the most frightening fact from Maus for me as much as the cruelty of Nazi.
As I am from Japan, it was interesting to hear my classmates’ and Dr.Steiling’s thoughts about Barefoot Gen. I did not know the fact Dr.Steiling told us; when the radioactive bomb was tested, they were not sure about the power of the bomb; and it could’ve destroy the entire earth but they still tested it. I did not know much about the side of Allies and what was their motivation of using the atomic bomb (it was shocking to hear that a part of the reason they used a radioactive bomb is that they did not want to waste their testing). This week was a great opportunity to know the WWII from another point of view. In my opinion, although the creator, Nakazawa shows how terrible the radioactive bomb was, another important fact he emphasizes is that Japanese government’s mistake during the war; they should’ve never waited to surrender. In the movie, Gen’s mother says “Why they didn’t [surrender] earlier?” when she hears the news while she finds her family’s skulls. I felt that this line really represents the creator’s trauma and anger toward the war which killed most of his family and millions of people.
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