Maus is a graphic novel depicting the experience of being Jewish or Polish during the Holocaust and surviving by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. This novel really legitimized the graphic novel, and was also the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. It really encapsulated the idea that graphic novels are not just for happy, kid stories, but one can do anything with this medium. When reading the graphic novel, I found many parallels to the recent Disney film Zootopia. I wonder if the creators of this film looked at this book or got any inspiration from it for both use animals to represent race.
Yet in Maus, one can blatantly tell that mice are Jewish, cats are German, dogs are American, and Pigs are Polish. Where as in Zootopia, they use only 2 'races', predators and prey, which cleverly allows any race to put them selves in either position. Predators being the minority for the world is made up of over 80% prey animals, but also stereotyped are gruesome and dangerous creatures. I believe this brings people more into both stories for they don't depict people, thus the viewer/reader can more easily put themselves into those situations that have no specific human identity. I feel that both pioneered the subject matter, for Zootopia is not just a kid movie, and over the past couple of years I feel that animation as a whole is becoming more flexible of a medium in terms of subject matter.
A great example of this, and one of my favorite animated shorts of all time, is Borrowed Time, which was an independent Pixar short. This short is not fun and wacky, it is about "A weathered Sheriff who returns to the remains of an accident he has spent a lifetime trying to forger. With each step forward, the memories come flooding back. Faced with his mistake once again, he must find strength to carry on. (Wikipedia)" It is a beautiful short and Maus also reminded me of this in terms of changing the scope of a medium.
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Literature of Comics: Day 13
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