Week 7

First off, Maus is fantastic. In animation, we talk a lot about taking stories and changing the character's appearance or anthropomorphizing them in order to amplify the story and clarity. For example, in Zootopia, they use animal species to get across the theme of how we racially profile people. Art Spiegelman did just that by taking one of the most famous conflict stereotypes, Cat and mouse, in order to highlight the conflict of Jews versus the Nazis. This helped us to easily identify the association of characters because if you were to depict a Jew in the way many cartoons caricature them, you would be quick to dissociate yourself with the character due to the unappealing way they are depicted. So overall, I loved the way he caricatured his character groups because it made them more cartoon-like, but also amplified the idea he was trying to send.

What I also admired about the reading is the perspective from which we are receiving the information. I feel like if we got it solely from the first-person perspective of the father, I would have been a little bit detached because the information would just be fed continuously to me. However, it is told from the perspective of the son wanting to hear more about his father's experience, which kind of helps me to identify and project myself onto him. Overall, I think the way Art Spiegelman chose to tell this story through anthropomorphic characters, and outside perspective makes Maus a very interesting and immersive read.