It's a ROUGH draft

Nora Elizabeth Heneghan
Senior Seminar
Dr. Kalter
March 24, 2008
The Pedagogical Uses of the Graphic Novel in a Reading Reluctant Society
The graphic novel is the newest form in the evolving cycle of the written word.
It first made its debut toward the end of the nineteenth century. Originally, the “graphic novel” was just a simple comic that could be found in the daily or weekly newspaper. However, it quickly became clear that comics drew a crowd from children more than adults. This led to the “golden age” of comics. Between the 1940’s and 1950’s distribution of what became known as “comic magazines” skyrocketed from 500,000 to 7.5 million. Not to mention, the mass quantities were read on average by five people per magazine. During this “golden age” the pedagogical value was questioned by educators across the United States. Some viewed the graphic novel as an evil form of literature for a generation of illiterates. Others took the opportunity to seize the value. Since then comic books have been marketed toward children and frowned upon in the classroom. That is, until lately. Comic books, now known as “graphic novels” have found their way back to their original audience, the adult, and snuck back into the classroom.
The graphic novel is a term that was first coined between 1985-1990. It is a “novel whose narrative is related through a combination of text and art, often in comic-strip form” (dictionary.com). The value of the graphic novel has been a heated soapbox debate since its introduction. However, in 1992 Maus, a graphic novel memoir, won the Pulitzer Prize. The anthropomorphized scheme of the Holocaust initiated a new look at an old form. In Peter Schjeldahl’s article, “Words and Pictures: Graphic Novels Coming of Age”, he states that as the audience for comic books grow, so does the market. He argues that graphic novels are not just glorified comic books but they have become, for today, what poetry was for the generation in the 1960’s.
Ivan Brunetti, author of “The Cartoonist’s Eye”, stated at a lecture on March 19, 2008 for Illinois State University students that the influence of the graphic novel is gained through the pictures as much as the words. Looking back, the human being is first introduced to words through pictures. In Picture This: How Pictures Work, Molly Bang insists on the importance of the visual. In a correspondence with the Dean of Psychology of the United States, Rudolf Arnheim, she discusses the emotions that play into a picture. While reading words can be considered a reflective act, reading a picture is active. As the Arnheim states, “Molly [is] talking about a play of dramatic visual forces, presenting such features as size or direction or contrast as the actions of which natural and human behavior is constituted” (7). It is the artwork that makes the pages come alive.
Through debates waged academically, as well as socially, throughout the genre’s followers, it is clear that the graphic novel has developed and come into its own. The uses and purpose of this specific form are still being discussed. Take for example, Teresa Méndez who states that in 1992 40% of high school seniors were proficient readers. This percentage dropped to one third ten years later. Diana Tavitch, a professor of education at NYU looks at the graphic novel as a stepping stone, not a permanent solution but an opportunity for change in America’s pedagogical priorities. In the 1940’s the same tactic was used, take what is known and loved by children, and use it toward their academic advantage. In 1944 comics were even used to keep children in school. General Arnold McNutt appeared in 150 comics (20 million copies) stating it was their patriotic duty to return to school. The same year the Director of the Child Study Association stated that teachers who tore up comic books were doing a disservice to the student. Today, teachers may use Maus to introduce the Holocaust as easily as they may use Persepolis or American Born Chinese to talk about diversity and segregation.
However, the issue for educators then becomes the replacement factor. If students are going to read Black Hole, a satire on the 1970’s AID’s epidemic in America, are they not going to be interested the facts and statistics? Will graphic novels replace mainstream novels, or can there be a cohesion? In David Twiddy’s article, “Library Patrons Object to Some Graphic Novels” be discusses the potential problems with the growing genre. Because graphic novels are basically picture books for adults, children are drawn to the sometimes mature content. The Chicago-based American Library Association states that the graphic novel has been challenged at least fourteen times in the past three years. These problems include offensive language, violence, and nudity.
The issue of a declining literacy rate is an epidemic that is particularly alarming for young men. Research shows that by the time a boy is two and a half he has already decided the type of literature he prefers. While young ladies are drawn to romantic stories, boys request fast paced adventure stories. In Debby Zambo’s article “Using Picture Books to Provide Archetypes to Young Boys: Extending the Ideas” she suggests the use of picture books for developing a young boy into his masculine role. After all, in a society where “an alarming number of boys are becoming distant from reading, being diagnosed with learning and emotional problems, and dropping out of school”, it may not be a bad idea to explore other options. Though Zambo does not include one graphic novel in her list of picture books to strengthen the male persona and entice young male readers, there are many what introduce powerful men that would be useful in the classroom. Take for instance Frank Miller’s depiction of the male superhero Bruce Wayne in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns or Dwight in Sin City: Family Values. The issues presented by Zambo are that most “picture books” are made for young children. If the young readers issue lies in his illiteracy the embarrasment of reading a children’s book for the ages Zambo suggests, sixth grade through high school, may inhibit the child’s enthusiasm further. The visual literacy that she refers to in her article is the idea of learning from pictures as well as from print helping to “move beyond the concrete, literal interpretation of what they see to deeper understanding of the complexities that exist” (127). While the two graphic novels listed above do not “lead boys away from violence and toward the actions of noble men” there are plenty of graphic novels that follow the path of the righteous man. For example, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth is heavy on symbolism and visual conceptualization. Though he may not come off as the archetypal male, he is identifiable as an alienated youth wise beyond his years which could be equally helpful to a young reader. Or even Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm a memoir about overcoming the odds, Barefoot Gen an autobiographical story of living through the bombing of Hiroshima, or again Maus. A main section of Zambo’s article is “A Boy Who Could Be King”. She uses her own experience as a teacher to show the importance of tapping into a child’s potential after reading Mr. Lincolns Way to one of her students she told the young man that he himself could be a leader, a King (128). To the same extent a young boy could read The Adventures of Superman and get just as much encouragement that they can be something more, a hero.
According to Zambo, “Literacy is related to academic success, and academic success offers boys more career and life opportunities” (124). It is with this declaration that educators must start down a new path of understanding and pedagogy. To fully understand the importance of the word and image relationship we must recognize the degree to which they work together. In Maria Nikolajva and Carole Scott’s article “The Dynamics of Picturebook Communication” the address how it takes both words and pictures to adequately display meaning. Kristin Hallberg’s term “iconotext” defines a picture book as having at least one picture on each spread, this is different from an illustrated book and can easy apply to the graphic novel (226). The thread between the pictures provides a backdrop for the narrative only furthering it’s discourse and appeal. In many ways the illustrations present more questions than answers. Ronald Schmitt states that an obstacle that the illustrator has to overcome is that the readers eye takes in the whole page first. He says, “Signification and stable meaning [are] continually deferred as the eye… jumps between words and pictures, spiraling, zigzagging and often interrupting the entire process to rescan the information in a new way” (Perret 74).
In “Graphic Novels for Multiple Literacies” by Gretchen E. Schwarz, she assures educatrs that the images in graphic novels do not discourage text reading. Rather the text and the illustrations work together to promote literacy. To the contrary, she states that M.R. Lavin author of “Comic books and graphic novels for libraries: What to buy” suggests that graphic novels may require more complex cognitive skills than just reading a regular book. It can be used to teach techniques such as dialog. It can also be used, as previously suggested as a bridge to other forms of literature.
Not only can the graphic novel be brought into the classroom to teach a new form of literature, it can easily cross barriers into other subjects such as history. Schwarz suggests that The Cartoon Hisotry of the Universe II which explains the history of China and India up until the fall of Rome could be easily used in a history class, of coarse it carries with it the stigma of irony and humor. The 9-11 Commission Report is available online to download for students, it contains 585 pages of facts, actions, and statistics. However, the graphic novel version, The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation, which includes the same truth of that tragic day in American history is available. When discussing their intentions on making the adaptation on National Public Radio, they stated “We are in the business of clarification and this is the perfect way to do it.” They insist on the fact that it is neither a comic book nor a graphic novel, it is a graphic journal. They thought it should be translated for the adult and the child that would think the 580 page report would be too overwhelming for. The two authors, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon, insist that it is not at all simplified. It gives all the facts faster and could be paired with the graphic novel In the Shadow of No Towers. In the classroom setting, not only do these novels present information faster but also equally accurate. These historical graphic novels can include, again, Maus, Barefoot Gen, Persepolis, Facts From Sarajevo and Palestine.
The benefits of the graphic novel in the classroom are endless and can be used for any subject. It opens up ideas of images effecting emotion, as expressed by Molly Bang, not only with colors but also with stereotyping. The bridge that comic books provide links the gap between low and high culture. Long before sparknotes.com and cliff notes, comic books reigned as the supreme force of condensed literature. Martin D. Perret, author of “Not Just Condenastion: How Comic Books Interpret Shakespeare”, states that in the 1950’s and 60’s Gilberton’s original Classic Illustrated produced comics that concentrated the most complex of Shakesperian text to words and pictures. When First Publishing took over Classics Illustrated the new prime audience was at the collegiate level. It is with both the pictures and the words, which are summarizations of Shakespeare’s, that the whole story comes together. The tradgedy of Hamlet is taken down from 40,000 lines down to 48 pages. His famous “To be or not to be” is taken down from 222 words to 14. Again, it is the images that carry the story, even the cover which is Hamlet’s father’s ghost summoning him presents the conflict of the story in a nutshell.
According to the National Institute for Literacy the “average composite literacy score or a native-born adult in the U.S. was 284 (Level 3); the U.S. ranked 10th out of 17 high-income countries”. It also states that by age seventeen 1 in 12 white, 1 in 50 latino and 1 in 100 African Americans can read and gain information from specialized text. Other statistics include the fact that reading scores for 9 year olds increased during the 1970;s but since 1980 have shown no improvement. The National Assessment of Education Progess found that reading for fun had a “positive relationship to average scores”, the more reading materials a child is introduced to has a direct correlation with their literacy scores. However, between 1971 and 1999 the average number of reading materials found in the home has decreased, less students read for fun, and more television was watched. It is due to these dire statistics that it is no surprise that in 2002, the theme of the annual Teen Read Week, sponsored by the youth branch of the American Library Association’s theme was “Get Graphic”. In July of that year the “New York Times’” cover story stated that “the comic book could become the next ‘new literary form’” (Mé ndez). Though, the graphic novel is not a band-aid for the crippled literacy rate, rather it is a temporary crutch to help reluctant readers read again. In that same article Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University states, “Once kids know how to read, there is no good reason to continue to use dumbed-down materials. They should be able to read powems, novels, essays, books that inform them, enlighten them, broaden their horizons.”
Yet, it is the stigma of the graphic novel’s past that makes it hard to produce an audience in the classroom. In Jonathan Culler’s article “Toward a Theory of Non-Genre Literature” he discusses the issues of contemporary literature by quoting Philippe Sollers, one of the leading theorists and practitioners of “residual” literature:
Perhaps the most striking feature of modern literature is the appearance of a new monolithic, comprehensive mode of writing, in which the distinctions among genres, which have been completely abandoned, give way to what are admittedly “books,” but books for which, we might say, no method of reading has yet been worked out. 52
Yet he gives credit to the nexus of discourse by stating that “our most crucial and tantalizing experiences of literature [are] located at the interstices of genre” (53). Theorists such as Janice Radway look beyond the ideals of “high art” and focus on the needs of the audience.
In classrooms across the country educators introduce electives such as jewelry making, woods class, and film. None of which introduce nor enforce literacy. The graphic novel has been used by Hollywood to create a new genre for film. To use novels such as V For Vendetta by Alan Moore, the Sin City collection by Frank Miller, Road to Perdition, Persepolis, Batman, Superman, From Hell, Ghost World, 300, X-Men, or A History of Violence paired with their film counterparts would be a productive way to show the process of film making and adaptation of the novel to the screen: the similarities and the differences.
It may be discussed that the graphic novel is in fact not a novel of “high art“. To dispute this, take Ian Watt’s article “From The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding” where he discusses the works of the authors that created classic “novels”. Watt simplifies the elements of a novel into the “lowest common denominator”. First, a novel must be realistic, not real necessarily but it has to give us a “true report of it” (365). It must show an individual experience which is unique and original. Watt states that Defoe and Richardson “are the first great writers in our literature who did not take their plots from mythology, history, legend or pervious literature” (366). Frank Miller and Alan Moore could very well be the Defoe and Richardson of the graphic novel genre. The second aspect of the novel is the idea of the individual. They are a verbal, and in the case of the artistic aspect of the graphic novel visual, expression of any one persons identity. Each person is given a name that is their proper name, not a type of label. For instance, in American Born Chinese “Danny” is the name of the main character. For every rule however there is an exception; “Superman” is a type, but then again in Melville’s Moby Dick “Ishmael” is a type, or at least holds a meaning derived from the Bible. The third part to a novel, according to Watt, is the time factor. There has to be a continuous flow of time throughout the novel. This helps shape the characters and their history. There has to be a history of the past to help explain the actions of the present and future. Lastly, there must be a setting. The author has the power of “putting man wholly into his physical setting”, which according to Allen Tate is the “distinctive capacity of the novel form” (375). One thing that the graphic novel can absolutely avoid that other novels such as Robinson Crusoe can not is what Locke calls “abuses of language” or figurative language. The visual literacy aspect of the graphic novel denies any figurative language to fully take place. Watt states that the popularity of the novel in the past two hundred years is based on the correspondence between life and art. The graphic novel can only further this connection.
Persepolis is a graphic novel depicting the Iran Revolution through the eyes of a little girl which happens to be a true story. This particular novel is aimed toward the young adult market. However, according to WRCB TV, for Eastbrook Middle School Persepolis is off the shelves due to “offensive language an images”. Johnny Bishop, a parent of a middle schooler at Eastbrook, claims the book is full of filth, “… the more you read, the worse it gets”. It is Bishops fear that if they read enough of this perception of the truth, they will think it is okay to treat women the way they do in Iran. Though the book got pulled, is being reviewed, and the teacher apologized, Bishop claims “too little too late” (Johnson). However, in the article “Estranging the Familiar: ‘East’ and ‘West’ in Satrapi’s Persepolis” Nima Naghibi and Andrew O’Malley argue that Persepolis crosses all barriers in genre. They state it can be found in autobiography, children’s or young adult’s literature, graphic novel, middle east history, and women’s studies. Though Satrapi’s work is Westernized through the “comic book” form, its universality lies in the ideals of a childhood experience. Throughout the novel as her experiences grow and her perception of the world changes, the reader is able to see her physically change, grow and alter. She begins to get weighed down by the realities of revolution. Realities, according to Bishop, that are “not suitable for anybody in the middle school on down” (Johnson).
Watchmen, which is one of “Time” Magazines 2005’s 100 best novels, and that includes all novels, not just graphic, is one of the most influential graphic novels of all time. It is a compilation of twelve separate comic books put together which ran from 1986-1987. The plot consists of one former superheroes getting murdered. The novel opens with Edward Blake being found on the street below his appartment, having been thrown from the window. The investigation turns up nothing. In the history of the United States in Watchmen the Soviet Union and America have been waging a nuclear arms race. The plot of the story is not as important and the idea behind it. The last page of the novel states, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies” or “Who watches the watchmen”, it is a quote taken from the epigraph of the Tower Commission Report in 1987. The whole idea of constantly being watched. In Michel Foucault’s article “Disciple and Punish” he talks about the internalization of social control in western society. He also talks about the body itself being a mode for social discipline. Watchmen deals with the perception of authority surveillance being constant yet allusive. Foucault believes that the body is only useful if it is both productive and subjected. The power that ones body holds is the power that is expressed, not innately within. Foucault argues that power and knowledge fall hand in hand. However, the last thing that Rorschach states to his subordinate, who is a dense comical character, is “I leave this entirely in your hands” (32).
It is not the power-knowledge relationship that should be studied, it is the transformation of this relationship. Foucault uses the measures that the hierarchy had in place when the plague had entered a town. The powerful were there to lead, to take role and to segregate much like the retired superheroes must do to save New York. However, this form of discipline restricts citizens to their homes, treated like caged animals where they were only worth the paper they were written on if they could show their face upon role call. Everyone has someone to answer to. In Foucault’s preparations for the plague there was the man who locked the doors, there was the man that took the key, there was the man that supervised both men. In a system of power there is always someone hire on the chain of command. No one was given the leisure of stepping out or into a house without the permission on someone in charge. All of humanity, even today is divided up into the normal and the abnormal the only difference is how we deal with it. Panopticon is the idea that every human being who has a superior is only seen as a source of information not communication with one another. The subordinates are kept separate from one another but visual for the guardian, this visibility is a trap for the inmates. The big brother aspect of Bentham’s Panopticon is so that the inmate knows that he is always visible, maybe not always watched, but he could be at any moment. Foucault goes on to say that power does not lie in an individual but in the dispersion of power. He insists that the makeup of the panopticon is the relation of discipline not the relations of power. The processes that make up the discipline relations are as follows. One: The functional inversion of the disciplines. This means that the output of aptitude and speed is more than the input. Two: The swarming of disciplinary mechanisms. This means that the hierarchy must analyze and survey the people constantly from any side at any time. Three: The state-control of the mechanisms of discipline. Foucault says that the government must rule the punishment and control of the people under an unbiased rule. These techniques are all used to form a society based on rules and structure. People are surveyed in the panopticon the same way they were quarantined during the plague. There is a function to every part of the form. As a mass society is unstructured. It is the development of roles that keeps order. All of these disciplines recognize and must bring in power relations. The breakdown of this power forms the machine which keeps society running. The acceptance of the rules of discipline make a functioning society possible. This period, the “Enlightenment”, which created the liberties of the people also created the disciplines for them to follow. The function that Watchmen and Foucault provide together is that every graphic novel has it’s root in theory.
Black Hole by Charles Burns, as stated earlier, is a graphic novel satire of the AIDS epidemic in the 1970s. It introduces the sexually transmitted disease as a deformity that effects the students of one high school. It ruins the lives of everyone it comes in contact with. Though, the original outbreak was unexpected therefore the adolescence were careless about sex. It depicts the prevalence of alcohol and drugs in the society, therefore inhibiting the judgement of the teenagers. One such student, Chris Rhodes states, “We’d both been drinking a lot, so I guess I could blame it all on the booze, but it was more than that…” The lack of page numbers gives the book a sense of chaos, just like the virus itself. Chris loses her virginity to an infected boy. His infection had taken the form of a tiny mouth on his neck which, in fact, talked. However, Chris was unable to hear the muttering of the subconscious, which is what the tiny mouth expelled, due to the fact that she had lost her inhibitions.
Burns’ entire novel is black and white. The lack of color introduces the disease of deformity they are spreading as a black and white entity. Just like the AIDS outbreak, the students didn’t see it coming, they fell into a black hole of ruining their entire lives based on the bad decisions of one night. Though AIDS was a generally new virus to the United States, it was the threat of it that scared the nation. At one point in the story, the character of Dave, who has a facial deformity due to the virus, attempts to purchase chicken at Kentucky Fried Chicken. The man behind him torments him saying, “Why don’t you just leave? Nobody wanted you here.” In response, Dave pulls out a gun, hits the man in the face, spits in his mouth and says, “See how easy that was? That’s all it takes… a little spit. Some saliva… and now you’re one of us.” Though, the American Red Cross states that there are no known cases of saliva by itself spreading HIV, the threat is still there. Another graphic novel that can be used to help as a cautionary tool is Pedro and Me. It is the true story of Pedro Zamora, from MTV’s “The Real World”, fight with AIDS. This novel has won the GLAAD Media Award for Best Comic Book, 200 Publisher’s Weekly Best Book, 2000 Bay Area Book Reviewes Award for Best in Children’s Literature, 200 Eisner Nomination for Best Original Graphic Novel and YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, to name a few. Illnois Senator Lightford states in the Illinois Government News Network, “Knowledge and education are important to fighting the battle with HIV.” Yet, little information is produced in the classroom to introduce the problem to students. People aged 13-24 account for 13% of HIV cases. Three million cases of STDs and 870,000 teenagers become pregnant each year, in the state of Illinois alone (CCSSO). While the sentiment is there to resolve the issue, nothing is currently being done in the classroom to raise awareness.
The graphic novel as a learning device is by no means a new concept, however, as shelves are beginning to overflow with new novels, it is important to categorize. Barefoot Gen and American Born Chinese are both graphic novels that depict life within racial boundaries. Barefoot Gen: a Cartoon Story of Hiroshima is based on the Keiji Nakazawa’s true life experience of the atomic bomb being dropped on his hometown of Hiroshima when he was just a child. Though his story is blended in with the stories of others to create the 284 page piece. The story begins during World War II. Gen, Nakazawa’s alter ego, is just a child working with his family on the field of wheat that they leased. During this period of time his family is poor and food is hard to come by, mostly given to the soldiers. Though, their pots and pans used for cooking have been taken anyway to be made into ships. Gen’s father strongly opposes the war. He finds it to be wasteful of resources and lives. Because of this traitorous point of view his family is ridiculed and segregated from everyone else which only cuts off their means of living further. Their family is torn apart as one child goes to flight school where he attempts to change the worlds perception of his family, the younger children are sent to work in factories instead of school. The majority of the book leads up to the horror of the bomb but it, “Little Boy”, isn’t dropped until the last thirty pages. After the blast Gen sees the melting faces of people he knows, people he was just talking to. Clothes were burned or blasted off people die right in front of him as he runs through remains to help his family and enemies alike. The book concludes with the introduction of Gen’s little sister after the war had already claimed his siblings and his father.
American Born Chinese is not nearly as emotional or dark. It incorporates both the historical content of the famed Monkey King and the trials and tribulations of growing up as an American born Chinese boy. The Monkey King aspect of the novel is an ancient myth passed down from generation to generation, celebrated in China, lesser known in the United States. He is basically a heroic monkey born out of rock where when he first opened his eyes “rays of light” poured into the sky to which heaven took notice. However, throughout the novel the Monkey king becomes mad with the power he obtains by mastering “four major heavenly disciplines” then later the “four major disciplines of invulnerability”. Tse-Yo-Tzuh buries the Monkey king in a mountain of rock where he remains for five hundred years when he is finally able to relinquish himself from the fortress of his own self-importance and become what he was originally made into, a monkey. Jin, the young boy in the novel also struggles with issues of esteem, however, he finds himself an outcast in a society where the majority reject the minorities. The minorities are he and his friend Wei-Chen (who we later find out is the Monkey King’s son living as a human for forty years attempting not to implement a human vice). The novel recognizes those outside of the norm. Jin realizes in the end that who he is is who he is supposed to be. Both novels show life outside of the comfort level of the typical young adult reader, which is what they are meant for. Gen teaches the reader the horrors of war. The pictures illustrate a world that no American can imagine. They remain a helpful, yet disturbing guide to the hell Hiroshima had caused. American Born Chinese is more upbeat, Jin carries with him the weight of his race, which eventually is lifted off him when he realizes that Jin is a cool guy to be. Both novels can be used in either an English or a history class. Neither novel is remotely useless.
Ghost World is a graphic novel based on the awkwardness of life after high school. It was made into a movie starring Steve Bucemi, Thora Birch, and Scarlett Johanson. The problem with the education that adolescence are receiving is that they are accustomed to the movie version of life. They could read, but they could get the same information faster and less actively. The idea of Ghost World is to find one’s own identity, to be creative. Mikhail Bakhtin defines the novel as “a diversity of social speech types, sometimes even diversity of languages and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized” (674). The graphic novel finds it’s own “social significance” by “Characteristic intentions and accents” (675). Ghost World uses “specific semantic nuances and specific axiological overtones; thus it can create slogan-words, curse-words, [and] praise-words.” The characters Enid and Rebecca at times make up their own version of the English language. Daniel Clowe’s makes an appearance in his own graphic novel as a nerdy comic book writer who is shunned by Enid, introducing the metafictional aspect of the novel. The book itself covers taboo subjects such as sex, pedophilia, molestation, Satanism, rape, cancer and STDs yet, the characters are complex and true. It definatly situates itself far from the “generic and professional stratification of the common literary language” as Bakhtin would say. “Discourse in the Novel”, Bakhtin’s essay he states, “In the English comic novel we find a comic-parodic reprocessing of almost all the levels of literary language, both conversational and written, that were current at the time” (678).
Art Spiegelman’s Maus: My Father Bleeds History is the most complex yet pedagogically useful graphic novel thus far. In his six chapters, originally published in Raw magazine from 1980-1985, he openly discusses the brutality of the Holocaust. The artistic depiction of the Holocaust anthropomorphizes the Jewish population as mice, the Nazis as cats, and the police as pigs. This representation shows that people, in situations as disturbing as war, become nothing but animals. The only part of the novel that humanizes the characters is in the section titled “Mouse Holes” where a comic is found that talks about the suicide of Anja, Art’s mother. The history of the Holocaust is given through Spiegelman’s memories of his father’s stories. Maus covers the mutilation and genecide of the Jews through pictures of hangings, slave labor and death. Spiegelman’s Maus puts emphasis on both the drawings and the words. For instance, the style that he uses is straight forward, pictures side by side, however in cases of extreme suffering or severely important information, the pictures turn and the frames darken. The realities of Maus are shown through maps and the timeline that his father presents while “telling” the story. These realities are personal to Spiegelman as well as universal in Holocaust survivor stories. Though the story shows the struggle of one man, the pictures make it clear that it could be the story of any person, the animals look similar. The story, however, is not just about World War Two. Maus also shows the relationship between Speigelman and his father, it depicts the complex nature of a survivor and the generations that follow. This novel is timeless and a powerful tool to introduce to Holocaust and World War Two.
The hesitation that teachers show when approaching graphic novels is completely valid. Not only do they face complaints from parents, but they also have to deal with the uncomfortable nature of the, sometimes pornographic, image before them. Though this form opens the door to discourse about the word and image relationship as well as the image to person relationship. In high school, the majority of students were asked to read The Catcher in the Rye. Throughout the novel Holden fantasizes about sex, he gets upset at the thought of his buddy Stradlater having sex with Jane, and he gets gets aroused by the idea of spitting on a girls face during sex. If these thoughts and actions we depicted pictorially, The Catcher in the Rye would be banned from the cannon. Even the worst graphic novel seems to have less swears that what Holden Caulfield comes up with. Picture Holden Caulfield smoking a cigarette, walking through the subway with a huge “Fuck you” in red ink in the background on a black and white picture (Salinger 204). That image would be enough to bad it with the rest of the graphic novels.
The problem becomes what Louis Althusser classifies as the ideological state apparatus’ that inhibit us from truly discovering the arts. Even in the simplist form, men do not see the world around them for how it truly is, they attempt to mold the experience to fit their personal ideologies. It is when a group of people with the same ideologies come together to form a school board that censors art like the graphic novel that can only improve literacy and a child’s range of experience that ideology becomes a barrier. Ideology has a material existence, it is found all around us. Take for instance the Bible, which is also being made into a graphic novel, it represents the views that people instill into generations to conform to the written word of a “higher power” the book itself holds material form, the same material form that Black Hole has, yet the Bible is used to exhibit a way of life rather than a form of entertainment and pure, uncorrupted education. Altheusser states that the term “ideas” has disappeared, while the terms “practices, rituals, and ideological apparatus” have appeared. The words that have survived are “subject, conscious, belief and action”. In this world that Altheusser proposes ideas have halted, he states “there is no practice except by and in an ideology; there is no ideology expect by the subject and for subjects”. With this type of reasoning, the proposal of a graphic novel into a system of ideologies becomes a ridiculous notion. However, it is the idea of the subject that might change the system of ideology. There are two types of subjects, the subject that is submissive and gives up all freedoms except the freedom to accept their submission or subject two who is an author of and responsible for their actions. In a world of set ideologies, with the slightest hope for “idea” to reappear, subject two is our only hope.
Graphic Novels are not only meant to be taught to observe but it is also an active art. Savannah College of Art and Design offers a graduate program in cartoon/comics. In James Sturm’s “Comics in the Classroom” he discussed the steps forward that the genre as an major have taken. Sturm, a teacher at Savannah College of Art and Design has built a curriculum around the idea that comics can not only influence your art, but you can also go into the field. Just as it takes visual literacy to read a graphic novel, it takes a vast array of skill to familiarize oneself with the ability to write through pictures. Research skills are also taught so their stories are convincing and realistic. The field of graphic art can also lead to a career in animation, illustration, storyboards for marketing, and journalism. Just like any other subject taught a collegiate level, there are aspects to the graphic novel that surpass the simplicity of simple comics. On March 19th, 2008 Ivan Brunetti presented “The Cartoonist’s Eye” for the Illinois State University English Department Lecture Series. He is an instructor at Columbia College in Chicago. He had put together An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Caroons, and True Stories which was published in 2006 as well other works. He started his lecture by stating the importance of the doodle. He said, “Comics are not just a series of pictures they are a sequence.” This is the aspect of the graphic novel that some readers take for granted, much like a movie, the frames have to be edited to show only the most important aspects of the story. Brunetti stressed that words and pictures not only work together but are an emulsion of writing. In Sturm’s piece he states that “if academe begins to recognize an encourage the talented students who have chosen this medium, institutions can not only duplicate the growth of the sequential-art department […] but also play a crucial role in advancing an important new art form”. In Universities across the nation, young artists are encouraged in the “high arts” of painting, sculpting, dance, and poetry, the same should be done for the sequential art.
There is no time like the present to increase the awareness of this coming of age art form. In Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” she takes a psychoanalytic approach to the fascination with film . Much like film a graphic novel is the combination of dialog and images. One of the main issues that educators have with the graphic novel is the stereotypical depiction of women and the blatant racism of white masks equal good and black masks equaling evil. Through film she states that women represent the lack of phallus in a heliocentric society. Women in general are not made to make meaning but represent meaning. She states that film, much like the sequential art form of the graphic novel, takes people as objects and subjects them to a controlling and curious gaze, though part of the magnitude of the graphic novel is the illustrator wants that gaze to be met with intrigue and a curiosity of why that image is the way it is. Mulvey states that the “I” is split between the active male and the submissive female. However, this seems to be an over-exaggeration of the age old fairytale, women as victims, argument. She states that women are sexualized, fall in love with a man, and then become the property of them and that full plots revolve around this system of differences. Mulvey’s argument fails in the fact that it lumps all stories together. That is to say, if a theorist claimed that all women in novels are subject to the rule of the male ego. Her assertions are too vague. Though, in any form of art the reader, viewer, audience is the “invisible guest” it remains to be the power of that guest to assert their own assumptions onto the media. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s article “The Culture Industry as Mass Deception” states that culture ultimately defines us, yet culture is defined by the capitalistic society in which we live. Mulvey directs her angst toward the film industry for over sexualizing women, yet Horkheimer and Adorno insist that the population gets what the population wants, or at least what the culture consumes. The relationship between film and comic art has been a tumultuous one.
The fear of graphic novels replacing the predecessors is irrational. There have always been shorter versions of the classics and yet there they still sit on the shelf. Not only are graphic novels being made into movies and visa versa, but novels much like the Shakespearian Hamlet, are also being made, or have been made, into condensed versions. This includes Frankenstein, The Bible, Murder on the Orient Express, The Odyssey, I Am Legend, and Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol. To assume that the graphic version of The Odyssey will replace the original, which has been around since ancient Greece, is an uninformed idea considering that sparknotes.com, cliff notes, and the internet have been around long enough to crush that theory.
Matthew P. McAllister, Ian Gordon, and Mark Jancovich’s essay “Buster Meets Superhero Comic, or Art House Meets Graphic Novel? The Contradictory Relationship Between Film and Comic Art” exemplifies the relationship that the two have. It is this close relationship that makes graphic novels hard to put into the classroom, they become to closely identifiable with movies and television and less identifiable with education. Due to the overwhelming success of graphic novels made into movies, it is simple to say the trend will continue as long as consumers keep buying tickets. It is a double-edged sword. While the movies that come out of the genre may be appealing to audiences, it is only if they are properly adapted and paired with their counterpart that they are useful, in any way, pedagogically.
The pedagogical use for the graphic novel is currently limited, for every two steps the genre takes forward, something or someone pushes it one step back. After the success of V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman graphic novelist all-star Alan Moore is working on his next novel Lost Girls which is blatantly pornographic. The characters are named Alice, Wendy, and Dorothy, depicted the adventures of lost women in earlier tales. This novel follows Moore’s huge successes, however the audience is limited and will by no means make it into a school or a library due to pedophilia, bestiality, and homosexuality. Though Moore states his reasoning behind doing the book is as follows:
Lost Girls originally came about because it struck me that there really isn’t any good, serious artwork dedicated to sex, given that it’s a human activity in which most of us have some interest. There are whole genres of books dedicated to the fields of, say, being a detective, or being a space patrolman, or being a zombie back form the dead, which are fairly rarefied in terms of their actual human application. But he only genre that is actually dealing the sexual material is this gritty, unpleasant, under-the-counter kind of genre, where there are absolutely no standards.
This, according to “Publisher Weekly” is why Top Shelf Publishers is willing to stake it’s entire business, literally, on this publication. However, with this step forward artistically, Moore is creating a chasm around the genre in general. There are standards for graphic novels. Just as there are for novels. In this period of transition, Lost Girls seems to put a crack in the fragile framework for the pedagogical use of the form. But then again, in George Gustine’s article “For Graphic Novels, a New Frontier: Teenage Girls” he discusses DC Comics attempt to draw teenage girls into the male dominated genre. Like any other work of literature aimed toward teen girls in the 21st century they push individuality. DC Comics will promote the girl emphasized comics with $250,000. Cecil Castellucci, author of PLAIN Jane graphic novels explains that the experiences of her characters comes from the real experiences of her youth making the work accessible to anyone who lives in this world. The atypical demographic makes the minx series of comics, including PLAIN Jane, a source for growth, trial and error. Not only is the genre growing across demographics, but across continents. Tara Mulholland’s article “Britain Embraces the Graphic Novel” she begins by explaining the original opinion that Britian had on the subject: juvenile. The graphic novels that began to change it all across the pond were Ethel and Ernest and Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. Manga, Japanese comics, are also making their way into British culture. HarperCollins introduced its first series in summer 2007: the “Agatha Christie Comic Strip Editions”. Sales have increased 41% in one year for graphic novels in Britian. The new popularity, again, gives partial credit to the term “graphic novel” considering “comic” stigmatized the genre previously. One step backward, two steps forward.
However, once again in a society that is overwrought with illiteracy, incompetence and ignorance, any step that could lead to a child picking up a book, is a step in the right direction. While society perpetuates generation after generation whose personal goals it is to avoid reading as much as possible, it is important to look back at the potential of what is right in front of us. There is more to the graphic novel than “BAM! ZOOT! WHACK!” As stated, literacy is directly related with the options that are given to children. If the reluctant reader refuses to sit down and read Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the graphic novel is there to aid in the discovery of knowledge and the introduction to a media source that includes both visual literacy and competence of language. This leads to the connection that links interest and knowledge. Since its arival in newspapers across America in the late 1800’s people have grown to accept and appreciate comics, then graphic novels, as part of the American culture. The industry will continue to grow if educators and parents alike take the right steps to furthering the literacy of their children and students; because it is the right thing to do. The Department of Education’s website asserts the “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001”. President George W. Bush stated, “Our children… deserve an education worthy of this great nation. Thoegther we will make sure that every child learns that that no child is left behind.” It is with this notion that educators must engage students in whatever form of literature that will provide them with the tools to expand their vocabulary and general understanding. As children we grow up on the keen idea of words and pictures forming our collective unconscious, as adolescence images and language are an emulsion of our perception of the world. Graphic novels help bridge the gap between now and tomorrow.