Maus Research

I had a tough time finding strong articles relating to Maus that weren’t already used, but I did find this video on Youtube.  This video comes from a Battle of the Books competition in Britain.  I don’t know very much about these competitions, but from what I’ve read online, they are for students to “read books and come together to demonstrate their abilities and test their knowledge of the books they have read”.  So the students quiz each other and answer questions about the books they have read, and they gain points for answering these questions correctly.  However, in this particular video, it only shows one part of the battle, and it doesn’t seem as if there are points involved.  In this battle, Kev F. Sutherland, who runs the UK’s biggest comic festival, argues for Maus I and II and how both are excellent representations of the Holocaust.  He notes that there are two stories being told: one about Vladek and his survival during the Holocaust, and the other about how Art obtains this story from his father.  Sutherland supports the statement that the graphic novel “presents the unspeakable through the diminutive”, as one of the hosts describes it.  Sutherland claims that the comic does not exaggerate the events that took place during the Holocaust, and because Art transcribes Vladek’s story so closely (with his broken English included), the comic becomes “honest and simple”.  He comments that what became of Vladek becomes an important point to the significance of these events, and the fact that Art does not hold back in revealing these issues also plays into bringing this comic to new heights.  I found it interesting that the woman mentioned and emphasized Art’s issues such as his depression and how this impacted him writing the comic.  I’m not entirely sure if this video presents new insights into the comic, but I thought it to be helpful in pointing out how the lack of exaggeration really made the comic even more effective in portraying a substory of the Holocaust.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soUHcd-dIjE