Colour!

COLOUR!

In dealing with the heavy and often grotesque events that form the narrative bulk of Maus, Art Spiegelman utilizes colour to intensify the sometimes somber and serious tone and subject matter but in such a way that he can still jump from different times, events and perspectives in a coherent manner. The gloriously graphic swerve of Spiegelman's artistic style makes concrete the recollections of his father Vladek in totemic lines of black on white. I couldn't even imagine how one could stomach the events depicted in some scenes of human degradation, fire and murder is they were rendered in full bodily colour.  Similarly if the scenes with Vladek as an old man were rendered in the colours of the  60's and 70's when Art was writing there would be a disconnect for the palette choices of today's generations, ruining part of the timelessness that the black and white images possess. It is in the black and white reality of Mickey Mouse that the events take place, the brutality tempered through abstraction and strengthened through its cohesion.

In Schindler's List (Spielberg, 1993), the black and white style was similarly used to great effect. In that film however the bloody red of the swastika was used to highlight the innocence of a little girl in a red coat. Totally out of place in the mire of horror that surrounds her. Would Maus have been significantly improved by employing similar selective highlighting tactics? I don't think so. But what is your opinion? Below I have taken a copy of page 232 from Maus and added red highlight to the fire.