#animalled

Let's talk Maus.

So you have your surface level appalling stuff going on-- children being swung by their feet into brick walls, people being gassed to death, a family living in a 5' by 6' room full of decomposing trash. There are so many of these horrifying things, in fact, that it's easy to breezily overlook the fact that the characters are mice. Yes, mice. 

Hold on; pause. What??

From page one of this graphic novel, I was trying to untangle the web of confusion formed by the fact that the pages look like a comic book. Why in the world does Spiegelman use animated drawings to portray the chilling events of the Holocaust? And then it dawned on me. His portrayals of the Jewish mice wearing masks of pigs was far more gut-wrentching that any wordy description could have been. These people were not merely hiding aspects of themselves, they were taking on the personas of a completely different species. Seeing the edges of the masks and the strings that held them in place  created a visceral reaction that I could feel page after page. 

Ironically, even more disconcerting was the presence of non-humanoid animals such as the dogs that could sniff out the presence of Jews or the cow that lived alongside Vladek and Anja. On page 145 (at the bottom), where we see the cow, a dog, Kawka (a pig), and Vladek (a mouse), I was especially uncomfortable. In my reading, this image was a realization of what I think Spiegelman is trying to say. The Holocaust made us all into creatures no different from the animals that we have forever viewed as below us in the Western world. Because of the hatred of one man, every person in an entire region of Europe was made into an animal: fearful, instinctive, defensive. Just fighting to survive. Regardless of if a person is depicted as a mouse-- a Jew on the run-- or a cat-- a German soldier-- instinct and self-protection guides his actions. 

I finished reading  Zoo City a week or so ago.  I am already missing it. I am fascinated by the world that Lauren Beukes has created.  In my own quiet fashion, I admit to being also completely obsessed.  I hear movie rights have been sold and a movie will be coming out soon.  Hollywood has a habit of disappointing me so I am not too optimistic.  The book is set in a world in which you are made to wear your worst mistakes and shame on your body for all to see, without any chance of redemption.  Think of your biggest mistake and your biggest shame manifesting as an animal that you carry around all day.  In the book, the term is 'being animalled'.