Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Relying on the Narrator
In our class discussion it was argued that Bechdel's reliability as a narrator was sometimes faulty since she would often draw places or events that we know she could not have participated in. However, the bulk of the book focuses on events that she had been around for. What does it mean then, in comparison to Fun Home, that the bulk of Maus is visualizing a story that Spiegelman was not around for? Yes, it's true that there is more to emphasize that he learned this story from his father, but the fact remains that Spiegelman's story is wholly anachronistic. Does this make him an unreliable author?
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I'm not sure what you mean by "wholly anachronistic", but in drawing his characters as animals, he circumvents the problem of the reliability of graphic representation. In his own words, which Witek excerpts from "Comics Journal 65":
"If one draws this kind of stuff with people it comes out all wrong . . . I don't know what a German looked like who was in a specific small town doing a specific thing. My notions are born of a few score of photographs and a couple of movies. I'm bound to do something inauthentic."
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