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Old 01-31-2022, 03:07 PM   #1
wktf
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Maus

All, in light of the McMinn County Schoolboard in TN banning Maus…

https://comicbook.com/irl/news/maus-...85WtE702NyYXwc

…I’ve bumped my review of this Pulitzer Prize winning work in The Mighty Reviews sub-section of the Comics section, here:

http://www.statueforum.com/showthrea...56#post6017856

Last edited by wktf; 01-31-2022 at 08:07 PM. Reason: Adding in the link to the article about Maus’ being banned.
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Old 01-31-2022, 03:17 PM   #2
Mister H
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When I was in college there was a big exhibition of his work. That was my first exposure to it. I haven't read what the school board's specific objections to this are but I've always viewed Maus as historical fiction that leans heavily on facts.
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Old 01-31-2022, 03:21 PM   #3
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WOW, just read about the ban. I had no idea. Banned for swear words. Also said it may cause students to feel bad about themselves. WOW
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Old 01-31-2022, 03:35 PM   #4
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Do you know the really sad pathetic thing about these people who wish to do this banning pretty much every student who possibly would’ve taken this book out of the library or had this book removed from their reading curriculum can simply go on their phone or their laptop or their computer and either order a copy of it or download it and read it.

I guess these so-called enlightened people who are instituting these bands never had that thought cross their mind
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Old 02-04-2022, 05:32 PM   #5
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My question when first hearing about this story, was how old were the kids who were being taught this graphic novel? If they were 8-10-year-olds then yes, that's too young an audience for this kind of book, but I read that it was eighth graders--teenagers! Banning teenagers from learning about Maus in school sounds overly conservative to me.
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Old 02-04-2022, 07:54 PM   #6
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Obviously the most offensive thing in the entire universe. In fact even the letter M deeply offends me. Since I'm an entitled American I expect everyone else to honor me and never use the letter M again. In fact let me correct my post because most hyper sensitive people are hypocrites in some way.

Safe:
Obviously the -ost offensive thing in the entire universe. In fact even the letter - deeply offends -e. Since I'- an entitled A-erican I expect everyone else to honor -e and never use the letter - again. In fact let -e correct -y post because -ost hyper sensitive people are hypocrites in so-e way.
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Old 02-04-2022, 07:57 PM   #7
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Well they banned huckleberry Finn and dr Seuss even so what would be safe.
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Old 02-04-2022, 08:52 PM   #8
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If the Holocaust offends you, good. That's the lesson of learning about it, to never repeat the mistakes of that era. Which, if you go to Berlin, includes an empty library that commemorates the Third Reich's burning of books to a move to control information and demonize specific works of literature.

"Dort wo man Bucher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."
- Heinrich Heine (a warning from the 1800s that sadly came true in the 1900s)
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Old 02-07-2022, 02:26 PM   #9
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I was 19 when Maus first published in my country. I didn't know, it was such a respected work of art when i was reading it... I just liked to read comics, and it was just another comics, i grabbed from the bookstore.

When i finished it, i was like it's good but not as good as The Sandman. (: I mean, i didn't know much about WWII back then, i never studied WWII in history lesson at school in my entire education life. All the history teachers told me and the entire class about WWII was Turkey didn't fight in WWII, so who cares about it.

I still wonder why it was like that, i mean who makes these history lessons' contents ? very interesting...

I want to add another interesting thing that i remember. I heard on the news back in the day that Main Camp book's sales in Turkey was very high, so Israel was conserned by that... I never read Main Camp, but it sold so well in Turkey 'cause it was dirt cheap... The other books had very high prices for even the middle class at the time, but Main Camp was dirt cheap... It seems my people like to read, if they can find cheap books.
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Old 02-08-2022, 08:19 AM   #10
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Just posting my review of Maus from years ago here, for anyone who hasn't read the book or is on the fence:

Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Written and Drawn by: Art Spiegelman
Pantheon Books

How many original graphic novels, trades, or any other publication in this medium that you've read have won the Pulitzer Prize? Fear not, this is just a rhetorical question. As far as I know, there are only two possible answers to this question. The first is "none." The second, if you've read Maus, is "one."

My family does not claim any Holocaust survivors but we have had victims. My grandmother on my mother's side fled Poland, already rife with anti-Semitism and with Hitler's invasion only scarce months away, with her two daughters (these would become my two aunts as my mother had not yet been born) leaving her husband, who refused to abandon his successful architecture business, behind. He quickly followed her to the United States. Shortly thereafter the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and soon all of my grandparents' relatives would be murdered in Poland's various concentration and death camps. Maus may well include those murdered family members? stories as well.

Maus explores realms of horror and human depravity to which other graphic novels who can claim the same, such as DC/Vertigo?s Preacher series, simply cannot compare. Art Spiegelman, underground comics legend, co-founder and editor of Raw magazine and a contributing editor and artist for The New Yorker, gives us not only a story of actual Holocaust events but of real people and their experiences during one of humankind's most ghastly and grisly periods. This is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, Art's father, as told directly to Art and recorded for the purposes of this work. The tale within this tale is the author's unsparing recounting of his own tortured relationship with his aging and ill father amidst a series of tense and unhappy visits. Their painful relationship is a brutal backdrop to Vladek's story. The brilliant conceit of this work is that Spiegelman transforms the Polish Jews into mice, the Germans become cats, the non-Jewish Poles are pigs, the Swedes are elk (or deer), the French are frogs, and the Americans are dogs (with the relationship of dogs to cats and cats to mice, this anthropomorphic technique makes frightening sense: depicting the anti-Semitic non-Jewish poles as pigs requires almost no explanation). Thus he, at first, takes Vladek's tale and makes it more accessible to readers. But any comfort the reader may feel quickly disappears as the tale continues, as Spiegelman mixes photos of his murdered brother and his father in prison stripes with his cartoons, and the cast of characters move through experiences, also unsparingly detailed by Spiegelman, that defy a sane man?s imaginings to their inevitable conclusions.

A comic's primary objective is to entertain its readers. Every so often we are given a work that also enlightens and instructs us. With this work we are given a riveting story that makes us want to turn away but compels us to read on, that's drawn sparsely but with frightening simplicity, that pulls no punches in drawing us into the lives of these complex characters and educating us about their lives and experiences, and that should be required reading in high school and colleges as well as for comics lovers.

For Maus, Spiegelman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, a Guggenheim fellowship, and nominations for the National Book critics Circle Award. Comics Shop News issue #933 listed it as #9 among their Top 10 Non-Superhero Graphic Novels. Jerry Weist, who gave us the 100 Greatest Comic Books coffee table book, listed Maus as #69/100. He concludes his write-up of Maus thusly: "Much has been written about the visual genius of choosing mice for Jews and cats for Germans, and much more has been written about the intellectual implications of Maus, but of all the 100 greatest comic books within this volume, if you only go out and seek one to read, it should be Maus."

Last edited by wktf; 02-08-2022 at 08:23 AM.
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