Exploding Stereotypes

This chapter focuses on Spiegelman's aesthetics of transgression. By charting instances of provocation and subversion across Spiegelman's career, the chapter suggests that critical accolades and popular appreciation never dulled the edge of Spiegelman's formal experimentalism, nor did they take the sting out of his cultural critique and non-PC outbursts of outrage. The chapter seeks to show that the commercially successful and critically acclaimed Spiegelman of the post-Maus era and the transgressive Spiegelman from the world of underground comix are not as distant as the dichotomy might suggest. It argues that Spiegelman has maintained, throughout his career, a commitment to boundary-crossing in its various forms, and that his capacity for profanity as cultural critique has continued—not in spite of, but through changing models of distribution and greater interactions with the critical and commercial establishment. In order to maintain his commitment to the profane, this chapter proposes that Spiegelman has constantly renegotiated his relationship to the cultures he has been in dialogue with throughout his career.