So far, the two graphic narratives we've read in class have been powerful memoirs--1st-person stories of violence and loss. Given what we remember from McCloud, particularly his assertion that comics artists encourage reader identification through their use of icons, the gutter, and closure, can we say that comics are a medium particularly appropriate for telling first-person stories? What do you think?
For more on comics and the first-person, check out:
this book on comics, gender, and first-person storytelling
or this great article on the "I" and comics
Also, both Maus and Persepolis are deeply concerned with the nature of violence and how to depict it in visual form. Compare and contrast some of Spiegelman and Satrapi's choices when it comes to depicting violence. Describe some scenes of violence in the two works and how the choices these artists made affected your experience of reading the texts and your sense of the conflicts they were illustrating.
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ReplyDeleteWith the question asking if this medium is "appropriate for telling first-person stories," I have mixed feelings about this... I feel like the stories we have read (Maus and Persepolis) are some of the most heavy stories to talk or write about and the authors of both these stories have done it tastefully. Prior to reading these books, I would of said that this is an inappropriate medium to talk about these things, but once I experienced it first hand- I think there is a way to appropriately accomplish it.
ReplyDeleteThe violence scenes in Maus seemed more lifelike and had a sense of reality. I also feel like the author also truly gave everyone an identity in the story and completed thoughts. In Persepolis, the narrator is a child so a lot of the thoughts seem unorganized and are all over the place. Also, the deaths in Persepolis seem less real because of how they are told from a child. Lastly, the artwork in Maus seemed more lifelike and surreal, while the artwork in Persepolis seems incomplete- like the thoughts of the narrator herself.
The use of icons, the gutter, and closure are certainly powerful tools for encouraging reader identification, but I don’t find comics as a medium any more or less appropriate for telling first-person stories. I think the important change in understanding comics has been that folks feel comfortable ascribing significant serious readings to a medium often understood as childish. The novel might be an equally appropriate medium for telling first-person stories, what’s valuable is that Spiegelman and Satrapi didn’t have to write a novel, they produced first-person stories in a medium that they were comfortable working with.
ReplyDeleteThe depiction of violence in Maus feel I ought to find the most disconcerting is the murder of children in Maus I (108). Vladek tells Artie that the Germans swung crying children against a wall to stop them from screaming. The certainty of the claim immediately depreciates as Vladek explains that he heard this but never saw it. The depiction of the children’s death occurs in three frames. First, the crying children. Second, a German back turned to us, swinging a child against a wall. The child’s head is out of view. Third, the German still back turned to us, with Art and Vladek superimposed on the panel, partially obscuring the body of the child. In Spiegelman’s depiction the German is not only abstracted as a cartoon but is further unidentifiable because he remains turned away from the viewer. Emotional connections with the child are limited because we only see him as a part. The treatment of this child seems to represent the treatment of many children by many Germans, but because the individual is lost the depiction feels more like statistic reporting than traumatic narrative.
Edit: Novel connotes fiction. I meant prose.
DeleteCompare to this scene from Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKie_34cpJI
ReplyDeleteI find this depiction of violence more potent. Why? Certainly the pace is different. If I read, “Unterschaftführer, shoot her” in a comic I’d be welcome to go pack a few panels and reanalyze the motives of the Commandant. One can digest violence, which is often powerfully absurd, at a slower and I think therefore less effective pace. While there is stopping and rewinding, a movie doesn’t wait for the viewer. It’s much less busy with closure and can present more active packages. The film captures a sense of motion that comics does not. In the clip, the Commandant and Unterschaftführer are positioned far from the camera. That’s fine, the viewer wants to distance themselves from their severity. The camera remains with the two German soldiers, one who defends her and another who stays silent, and Reiter. Reiter of course is the object of sympathy from the beginning of her appearance, she’s standing in for Hirsch in this scene. The absurdity of the Commandant’s remarks, the jump from civil engineering to educated Jew to Karl Marx and then the dismissal of violence as a function of the job heighten the absurdity of the violence. The camera movement towards her and her movement toward the camera moves her into our focus and judgement, of course she shouldn’t be killed, she’s close to us now, within the saving grasp of our viewing. Then she’s taken from us, the sound of the gun, her body recoiling from the shot. To see the action of it all and participate in it without being able to act, forced to go along with the action, eye, and timing of the film makes me anxious and emotional.
Released from prison, Mohsen tells Marjane and her family about the fate of their friends in prison. The depiction of the Ahmadi’s torture accomplishes the same thing as the depiction of violence in Maus – it emotes less but is presents violence as an issue more effectively. The violence in Schindler’s List feels like an emotional tool. The violence in Maus and Persepolis feels like it’s more interested in violence and reason (and violence as a thing done by reasonable agents). What strikes me about the depiction of Ahmadi’ torture scene is his similarity to his torturer. If the two swapped clothing, they could be each other. The power of this scene culminates in the transition of the splayed Ahmadi, burned with an iron, to an ironing board in Marjane’s home also with “arms” splayed. Marjane comments, “I never imagined that you could use that appliance for torture” (54). They are people who could be any people, using tools that everyone has in their home. The abstract identities of the torturer and tortured and ready access to an iron implicate the reader in the violence. I’m more interested in what separates the men from each other, or me from the men, or my use of an iron from that use of an iron then I am in compiling a dossier of characterization – in Persepolis and Maus violence is a human problem rather than a character problem.
Further research has revealed Spielberg's first name to be Steven and not Stephen. Whoops.
DeleteComics seem like an appropriate way to depict first-person stories. For one, the visual storytelling allows the reader to see more about what is going on in the narrator's head. I feel like it can also be more true to the intended story. We can right away see what the author intends us to see, rather than us imagining the visuals ourself.
ReplyDeleteMaus has a more realistic depiction, perhaps because most Americans know more about the gruesomeness of WWII and the Holocaust, rather than the revolutions in Iran. But it could also be because despite the fact the Maus' depictions are of animals, they are still very realistic to history and the facts we know, rather than in Persepolis, where not only is it more surreal in depiction, but since the story is being to by a young girl (at least in the first part of the comic), so the story is a little more fabricated and what a 12-13 year old would imagine the scenes she is told/overhears would look like.
I'm not really sure if comics are the right way to tell a first person story. on one hand, we've seen it can be done, and that it can be done well. by using comics you not only get to tell the viewer your experience, you get to show them, and thats pretty powerful. on the other hand I think there is something that is lost in comics, because your always looking from the outside in. It's a lot harder to feel like your inside the main characters head when your always watching them do things. in other words, I never felt like I was the main character. I don't think this ruins first person comic books, or makes them less valuable, but its an aspect of first person story that comic formats lack.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Maus had more implied violence. everyone knows about the holocaust and how terrible it was; that wasn't the point of the story. Maus was more about a story told through a historic event.
In Persepolis the situation seems sort of flipped. instead of telling a story through historic, its telling history through a story. There's probably less violence in Persepolis, but when its there, you can't miss it. its violent, its described in detail, its not just word of mouth, its right there in-front of you, so these moments really stick out.
In my opinion, it was hard to tell that the stories were or were not in first person. I think that has to do with my unfamiliarity when it comes to reading comics. I personally think third person omniscient is probably the easiest way for comics to be told because a comic involves an illustration that can be seen and therefore gives the audience a third person omniscient view of the characters.
ReplyDeleteMaus definitely had more violence, in my opinion, being that it was a post-war era and involved World War II and the Holocaust. Not to say that Persepolis was completely dry, but I felt that I understood and took more from the violence in Maus.
It makes sense the comics as a medium are appropriate for telling first person stories. I feel like first person is great, because it allows us to easily get into the head of a character and fully understand what they are going through. I think that comics play so well into first person that they work perfectly as the medium.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Spiegelman was not afraid to put violence into the story. There really is no reason to not include it in a story about the holocaust. I feel like it was there to capture the emotion of the reader that much more, and give the reader the feeling he was going for. This may have been one of the reasons he included animals as characters as opposed to using people. The violence in Persepolis is more watered down in comparison. Don't get me wrong Persepolis still had a lot of violence, I just think that Maus had much more violence. I also believe this is due more to the content of Maus since it was about the Holocaust.