FEBRUARY 10 • 2022 | 9

with these books or what it 
means to be ongoing witness-
es to horror. 
According to a taxonomy 
outlined by Scott McCloud, 
graphic novels can be 
“word-specific,” “picture-spe-
cific” or “duo-specific” based 
on what element of the page 
is carrying the information 
the reader needs to under-
stand the story. The Prisoner 
on the Hell Planet section is 
particularly picture-specific. 
The pictures are the story. 
The story is the message. 
And the message is the teach-
able moment explaining what 
loss and grief and horror felt 
like to a child of survivors, 
showing readers emotions 
that words could never con-
vey.
One of the low points of 
a meeting full of low points 
came when a school board 
member said, “It looks like 
the entire curriculum is 
developed to normalize sex-
uality, normalize nudity and 
normalize vulgar language. If 
I was trying to indoctrinate 
somebody’s kids, this is how I 
would do it.”
The idea that a depiction of 
the corpse of a young man’s 
mother is “sexual” says more 
about the school board mem-
ber than it does about the 
book, and that he thinks such 
images are a way to “indoc-
trinate” children is the truly 
Orwellian element in this dis-
cussion. Allowing students to 
see visual representations of 
things that are fundamentally 
unspeakable is not indoctri-
nation; it is good pedagogy, 
and it is a validation of the 
big feelings that adolescents 
are having and are unable to 
articulate.
In “Regarding the Pain 
of Others,” Susan Sontag 
writes that photographs force 

us to face things we would 
otherwise try to minimize. 
Photographs do not allow 
us to hide from the reality 
of trauma, and — for some 
— the simpler and more 
straightforward the image the 
better. She writes that “pho-
tography that bears witness to 
the calamitous and the rep-
rehensible is much criticized 
if it seems too ‘aesthetic’; that 
is, too much like art.”
Maus forces the reader 
to bear witness in a way no 
written account can, and the 
picture-specific portions of 
the book are especially good 
at forcing the eye to see what 
the mind prefers to glide past. 
Maus forces the reader to 
confront reality with increas-
ing pressure — it begins with 
soft, color drawings of ani-
mals before it slaps the reader 
in the face with the Albrecht 
Durer-on-psychedelics black-
and-white style of Prisoner on 
the Hell Planet and ends with 
actual photographs of the 
Spiegelman family as a final 
reminder to the reader that 
these people lived and died in 
these terrible ways.
The decision by the 
McMinn County board 
members was wrong, and 
they have received plenty of 
criticism for it — so much so 
that they issued a statement 
clarifying that they do not 
oppose instruction about the 
Holocaust. But that doesn’t 
change the fact that they 
uncritically accepted as sexu-
al an image that is undeniably 
not and ignored how visual 
records of atrocity serve as 
some of the most powerful 
teaching tools available. 

Jennifer Caplan is an assistant 

professor of philosophy at Towson 

University who teaches and research-

es Jewish comics and graphic novels.

South Florida 
Real Estate

SHELDON
JAFFEE

LANGREALTY

• 40+ Years of Experience
• In-depth Knowledge
 of the Market

(561) 395-8244

Proven Results!

SheldonJaffee.com

