(A personal story, it will not be my entire post.)

I grew up without cable T.V., and the only channel I watched growing up was CBC. At 5:30 every night, The Simpsons would air, and I watched it religiously. As a child, I thought that because The Simpsons was a cartoon, it was for children- even though my mum constantly told me it was “a cartoon for adults”.

I grew up in a non- religious family, but I watched the Simpsons a lot. In fact, I was told the story of Adam and Eve through the Simpsons, in their 10th season, episode 18- “Simpsons Bible Stories”. In the Simpsons version of this essential, cultural, religious and foundational story, Homer actually eats all the apples from the tree, but blames Marge when God comes around to condemn them! From then on, I was sure that Adam blamed Eve for eating the apples, and that God was mistaken.

My Lit 12 teacher told me that the Simpsons is a rich source of social satire and irony. Looking back on my conception of Adam and Eve from the Simpsons, I see the social satire, and the questioning of themes that form the foundation of society and culture (originating from long ago).

I like the Simpsons version of Adam and Eve better, but I digress.

Maus and the Simpsons are similar in that they perform important cultural work in the form of a comic or cartoon. The Simpsons subersively interrogates society by poking fun at family values, cultural traditions and american stereotypes, while Maus, is an autobiography of the holocaust told through the form of a comic, a less traditional and respected medium.

Maus is an autobiography struggling to tell a tragic narrative concerning modern, western genocide- an atrocity and a subject that is as sad as it is unbelievable. When approaching the holocaust, the historian’s approach is, widely, fact based. The American Holocaust Museum does not use adjectives in any of its descriptions of the event. Although disputed, it is believed best practice not to include personal opinions in the form of emotionally charged descriptions and adjectives.

However, Spiegelman’s job is different, as he is writing an autobiography of his father’s life and holocaust experience, and one would expect a more emotionally charged and biased telling.  Michael Rothberg writes that “Spiegelman transgresses the sacredness of Aushwitz by depicting in comic strip images his surviver father’s suffering and by refusing to sentimentalize the survivor (665).” The medium of the comic allows Spiegelman to escape from the sensitive and tragic sentiment of the camps, and portray his father as a real and flawed person, instead of the tragic victim. He constantly portrays his father as flawed, petty and frugal, commenting that “in some ways he’s just like the racist caricature of the miserly old jew” (1, 131). Vladek is also seen as racist, himself, despite being in the camps, in book II when he is upset that they pick up a black hitchhiker.

The comic form allows Art to break away from the sentimentalized and traditional holocaust memoirs and their subjects, and in doing so, he also creates a popular and accessible medium for a larger variety of readers. The comic, as a subversive text, filled with social commentary, attracts readers- but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have value. Perhaps younger readers, or those interested in comics and art will pick up the book and learn about the valuable cultural narrative that is Maus and Vladek’s story.

Comics, as Maus was, are seen as fiction. However, if they are fiction or not, comics and cartoons, in their various forms allow for a transgression of accepted social sentiment- they have more leeway and less of a traditional framework than written mediums. In doing so, they can do important work, making pointed social statements, satirizing society and social tropes, and even telling tragic stories.

Works Cited:

Rothberg, Michael and Spiegelman, Art. We were talking Jewish: Art Spiegelman’s Maus as Holocaust Production. Contemportary Literature Vol. 35 (Winter: 1994). 665.

Maggie De Vries’s Missing Sarah frequents this week’s blog posts, and many of the posts related Jiwani and Young’s article “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse”. Maggie De Vries’s autobiography of Sarah gives the reader an opportunity to empathize and understand a sex worker’s life and a DTES perspective- breaking through the stigma of sex workers and DTES residents perpetuated by the media (and ourselves). There were three trends I noticed when reading the class blogs this week:

1. Blogs concerned different ways of looking at the DTES through connection, breaking through stigma, and education.

2. Blogs addressed problematic representation/social action.

3. Blogs examined the ways we attempt to understand the origins of sex workers/how society grapples with the concept.

1. News Ways of Looking at Sex Work and DTES: Connection, Breaking of Stigma and Education.

Kira writes from an educated perspective, a perspective that considers the alternative: that sex work is voluntary, that women have a say in the matter, that perhaps the occupation is enjoyable and lucrative for those that choose it. Her blog post is reminiscent of the movie, The Sessions, where the main character’s job is to allow disabled people to have sex- really changing their lives. Helen Hunt plays a relatively normal woman, a mother and a wife. Carly writes about how an instagram account allowed her to access within herself “compassion and understanding” into the world of the DTES, through humanizing photos of the residents. Sunny writes about the DTES as a community, one which, as she became more immersed in, she understood better. These three writers break through stigma through education, connection through social media, and immersion.

2. Problematic Representation/Social Action.

Stephen writes about the problematic representation of Tiffany Drew in Foresaken, arguing that her bio manifests a “fractured identity”, without allowing the reader more understanding of the nuances of her life. Patrick also critiques Foresaken, as he questions whether the biographies capture “life from the inside” as opposed to events that have social significance, such as the common sequence of: birth, drug addiction and death/disappearance. Sam writes about figures such as Trayvon Martin, or the missing women, whose media representations (missing posters, mug shots) represent them as degenerates and “asking for it”. Riley brings up monetary reconciliation for families of victims as a problematic offer of social action, raising questions such as: what amount of money could replace a loved one? Is this a result of society’s failure to investigate this women, is the government attempting to pay these families off?

3. The Ways We Understand/Grapple With Sex Work, Social Issues.

Many of the biographies in Foresaken are heavily focussed on explaining why these women ended up on the DTES, as if we need a logical reason for these women’s “degeneration”. Rafaella addresses how Maggie De Vries portrays Sarah as “vulnerable” and how this explains her entering the sex trade. Al writes about “naming the other”, and how the disenfranchised/marginalized become numbers- 4000 dead in Liberia of Ebola, while the 1 western Spanish person has their full name on display. The missing women are also grouped together, however, it is interesting that Foresaken attempts to individually name the women to give them more social respect. Al shows the way we comprehend social issues, for the marginalized, is sometimes quantified.

Works Cited:

De Vries, Sarah. Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss. Penguin Canada, 2008. Print.

Jiwani, Yasmin; Young, Mary- Anne. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse”. Canadian Journal of Communication (2006): npa. Print.

Ubc blogs of Eng 474: (linked)

Al Shaibani “What’s in a Name?”

Carly Bean “Humanizing Vancouver’s Forgotten and Ignored Society”

Kira Nordhoj “The Silent Motive for Sex Work”

Patrick Connolly “The Second Life”

Rafaella Caffo “Vulnerability as her Drug”

Riley Murtha “Monetary Compensation for Families of Missing Women Insufficient”

Sam Cohn Cousineau “If They Gunned you Down, What Picture Would They Use?”

Stephen Cook “Revisiting the Portrait of Tiffany Drew”