Reaching beyond the commix/tureArt Spiegelman's "Maus" as relational genre

Resumo

This essay foculses on the representational stratebrics in "Maus" as instancing its generic multimodality and intrinsically relational nature. Considering Spiegelman's own refashioning of the comic book genre as 'commix' (from commixture) to highlight his interest in the creation of intermedial codes/languages operating in-between word and image, I argue that representational, iconographic and visual conventions and techniques in "Maus" engage in multiple ongoing Processes of relational reference with a wide array of genres, styles, and aesthetic forms, and modes of representation. These include history / memoir, typographical art, educational materials, literary metafiction in the postmodernist trend, performative arts such as cinema, showbusiness and the carnivalesque, contemporary Holocaust memorializing, and even, in an antithetical fashion, photography and family albums. In order to organize this wealth of resources, the essay moves from the more widely known graphic aspects of "Maus", towards more technical and thought-provoking representational techniques, such as frame design and organization, drawing scales, angles, and styles, and various uses of iconography, always with a particular emphasis on the relational implications of all these devices.