For this week’s assignment I read a few of the Gay Comix, Girl Fight Comics, Tits and Clits and Barefoot. I was intrigued by the raunchiness of the drawings and straightforward, in-your-face approach to the content that a lot of the pieces maintained. The content matter was sometimes not articulated in a way I found to be most productive in achieving what I perceived to be their point, but as I am living in a different era of these issues, my perception may be off base. Considering where these comics originated and how their messages were articulated was very interesting and makes me want to not only read more but also explore the contemporary equivalent of underground comics.
Maus I
I was unable to read the complete Maus, but I read the first book. At first I was off-put by the nails on a chalkboard echoing bad grammar and misuse of words. These errors seemed to dwindle as the book went on which was off-putting, as I thought such blatant misuse may have been employed intentionally, but I did not read that from the lack of consistency throughout the book.
The historical mirror this book was to the time period it was written was interesting, as the characters were striving to perpetuate their stories, as were the survivors from the war against the assertions belittling their experience or the severity of what happened.
I found it interesting that a few of my classmates were assigned to read this book in middle or elementary school, as a means of learning about the Holocaust. I can understand why the use of animals would be helpful for a young child’s understanding of the situation but personally found to be an oversimplification of personal identities, as many people’s allegiances, actions, and thoughts changed throughout the course of the war and I do not believe that the reduction of entire nationalities and religious identities to flat animal indicators is an accurate representation.
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