He likes big butts and he cannot lie
October 19, 2015 2:12 PM Subscribe
The interviewer is kind of an ass, TBH. Especially towards the start where he gets in all his self inserts. Crumb on the other hand has moments of being kind of gross and creepy but also some bits that are fascinating, which is very Crumb.
posted by Artw at 3:19 PM on October 19, 2015 [14 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:19 PM on October 19, 2015 [14 favorites]
"...you say that women will always go for the most obnoxious guy."Well, ladies, you have to love the men who've figured us out over the years, right? If only we'd learn to be educated by wise men, men like comic artist (part-time evolutionary psychologist?) Robert Crumb, then maybe we could be happy and not hurt poor dudes anymore.
"Even if it’s hard to generalize, if you make a joke about yourself that you are awkward or a failure, that’s what sticks in [a woman's] mind."
"In spite of feminism, women still want to be the object of attraction, and the male’s confidence in courting her is a test that he must pass in order to win her."
"This guy I know counted the number of times I decapitated women in my stories. I forget the number. I was kinda horrified at myself."
"[Misogyny is in my work.] I would be lying if I said I had no beef with the female of the species."
"They want Fifty Shades of Grey, which sold 50 million copies, all to women."
Gotta go barf now.
posted by iamfantastikate at 3:21 PM on October 19, 2015 [26 favorites]
I am completely unsure the point of posting this, except to highlight some other author who makes women feel disgusted. OP, what did you find interesting about this?
Also, barf. That was a lot of misogynistic psyche that I don't want to engage in.
posted by yueliang at 3:37 PM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]
Also, barf. That was a lot of misogynistic psyche that I don't want to engage in.
posted by yueliang at 3:37 PM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]
His sex talk is creepy, his politics are banal, his observations about America are ignorant and one-dimensional, but his work does everything great art is supposed to do and then some. He's the ultimate insider/outsider artist, all at once naive, calculating, shrewd and crude, unselfconscious and aware -- not the great American artist anyone was looking for, but the one we got. He talks about how his fame crippled him in the 80s, making getting to work like "moving pianos". I think he was hobbled by his own narcissistic prejudice against commercialism. If he had whole-heartedly sold out for a while, it might have re-booted his originality, and we wouldn't have a Robert Crumb who just copies photographs now.
posted by Modest House at 3:47 PM on October 19, 2015 [20 favorites]
posted by Modest House at 3:47 PM on October 19, 2015 [20 favorites]
“Is that why you mostly draw out of photographs now?”what's that about? i tried googling to find recent work but haven't had much luck.
“Yes.”
posted by andrewcooke at 3:52 PM on October 19, 2015
As usual, it's a giant tragedy when men are rejected, and it justifies all kinds of hatred of women. Women, of course, get ignored and rejected all the time but if they have any anger or sadness over it, it's because they're loser ugly harpies.
That said, I did find it a bit more sympathetic than I expected, because at least Crumb seems to like women in addition to feeling entitled to their time and attention. In general, I expect that kind of dude to hate women and expect them to be all over him, which was the impression I received from the interviewer's self-inserts.
posted by Frowner at 3:56 PM on October 19, 2015 [27 favorites]
That said, I did find it a bit more sympathetic than I expected, because at least Crumb seems to like women in addition to feeling entitled to their time and attention. In general, I expect that kind of dude to hate women and expect them to be all over him, which was the impression I received from the interviewer's self-inserts.
posted by Frowner at 3:56 PM on October 19, 2015 [27 favorites]
I am completely unsure the point of posting this, except to highlight some other author who makes women feel disgusted. OP, what did you find interesting about this?
You don't know why people care about this interview or about Crumb in general? I mean a.) his actual drawings but besides that the best I can give you is that his commitment to exegesis of his own creepiness seems to allow him a certain clarity about stuff like this:
The hippie culture of Haight-Ashbury, where it all started for me, was full of men doing nothing all day and expecting women to bring them food. The ‘chick’ had to provide a home for them, cook meals for them, even pay the rent. It was still very much ingrained from the earlier patriarchal mentality of our fathers, except that our fathers, generally, were providers. Free love meant free sex and food for men. Sure, women enjoyed it, too, and had a lot of sex, but then they served men. Even among left-wing political groups, women were always relegated to secretarial, menial jobs. We were all on LSD, so it took a few years for the smoke to dissipate and for women to realize what a raw deal they were getting with the ne’er-do-well hippie male. Men who acquired preeminence at the time were all frauds, fake gurus who were paying lip service to peace and love, charismatic cons who just wanted to fuck all their adoring disciples. Timothy Leary was like that. A big phony.”
and to have allowed it before most other people (well, men of the counterculture anyway) were willing to admit it.
I really don't like interviewer here either though - he seems to be to get the most offensive stuff out of Crumb that he can which Crumb being Crumb is not even news.
posted by atoxyl at 4:04 PM on October 19, 2015 [19 favorites]
You don't know why people care about this interview or about Crumb in general? I mean a.) his actual drawings but besides that the best I can give you is that his commitment to exegesis of his own creepiness seems to allow him a certain clarity about stuff like this:
The hippie culture of Haight-Ashbury, where it all started for me, was full of men doing nothing all day and expecting women to bring them food. The ‘chick’ had to provide a home for them, cook meals for them, even pay the rent. It was still very much ingrained from the earlier patriarchal mentality of our fathers, except that our fathers, generally, were providers. Free love meant free sex and food for men. Sure, women enjoyed it, too, and had a lot of sex, but then they served men. Even among left-wing political groups, women were always relegated to secretarial, menial jobs. We were all on LSD, so it took a few years for the smoke to dissipate and for women to realize what a raw deal they were getting with the ne’er-do-well hippie male. Men who acquired preeminence at the time were all frauds, fake gurus who were paying lip service to peace and love, charismatic cons who just wanted to fuck all their adoring disciples. Timothy Leary was like that. A big phony.”
and to have allowed it before most other people (well, men of the counterculture anyway) were willing to admit it.
I really don't like interviewer here either though - he seems to be to get the most offensive stuff out of Crumb that he can which Crumb being Crumb is not even news.
posted by atoxyl at 4:04 PM on October 19, 2015 [19 favorites]
Robert Crumb is an awful, awful person.
posted by flatluigi at 4:06 PM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by flatluigi at 4:06 PM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]
If only we all could use something as simple as drawing comics as an outlet to our own weird neuroses.
It's best I guess to confront them head on, but if you can't do that (yet), best to explore them in a way that doesn't hurt you, or someone else. Like developing a fantasy world, that doesn't make much sense.
So in this case, Art saves the day.
He's willing to show you what he knows is a very flawed individual and we're all so ready to pounce and point out those obvious traits.
But, he's not a killer, he's not a rapist. He's not the bro dude that's currently cat calling someone across the street.
His entire family has Issues, and he's been abused by them. His Brother committed suicide. R. Crumb is a survivor.
As usual, it's a giant tragedy when men are rejected
It's a giant tragedy when anyone is abused as a child. Full Stop. Any victim of abuse knows it's something you have to deal with for your entire life.
R. Crumb is easy to ignore if you find him pathetic, disgusting, whatever. He's not slinging hate through a social media outlet. He's just living far away, quietly.
posted by alex_skazat at 4:13 PM on October 19, 2015 [37 favorites]
It's best I guess to confront them head on, but if you can't do that (yet), best to explore them in a way that doesn't hurt you, or someone else. Like developing a fantasy world, that doesn't make much sense.
So in this case, Art saves the day.
He's willing to show you what he knows is a very flawed individual and we're all so ready to pounce and point out those obvious traits.
But, he's not a killer, he's not a rapist. He's not the bro dude that's currently cat calling someone across the street.
His entire family has Issues, and he's been abused by them. His Brother committed suicide. R. Crumb is a survivor.
As usual, it's a giant tragedy when men are rejected
It's a giant tragedy when anyone is abused as a child. Full Stop. Any victim of abuse knows it's something you have to deal with for your entire life.
R. Crumb is easy to ignore if you find him pathetic, disgusting, whatever. He's not slinging hate through a social media outlet. He's just living far away, quietly.
posted by alex_skazat at 4:13 PM on October 19, 2015 [37 favorites]
Context really, really matters here. There's an excellent documentary by the director of Ghost World and Bad Santa about Crumb called. . .Crumb, that paints a fascinating portrait of this weird, creepy, perverse little artist, his attitudes, his relationships, and most fascinatingly of all, the fact that he is the most "normal" member of his incredibly troubled family. He comes off more like Daniel Johnston than Dave Sim: brilliant at his art and dealing with serious personal issues in a world he really isn't able to fully function in, as opposed to some self-exiled hermit who hates everyone and everything.
posted by Ndwright at 4:16 PM on October 19, 2015 [33 favorites]
posted by Ndwright at 4:16 PM on October 19, 2015 [33 favorites]
I don't think Crumb hates women. He hates wooing, because it does not come naturally to him. He hates his own sexuality, because it is unusually strong and yet unusually difficult to fulfill. He sees women as slaves to their own desires, just as he is enslaved to his. Due to his personal quirks, their desires are unfathomable to him, his are alien to them, and yet he has no choice but to press forward. Obviously he has massive issues with sexuality but he doesn't blame it on women. He sees sexuality as an uncomfortable situation that both parties are stuck with.
posted by foobaz at 4:35 PM on October 19, 2015 [27 favorites]
posted by foobaz at 4:35 PM on October 19, 2015 [27 favorites]
True story; I was once somewhere with Robert Crumb, but didn't know who he was. I mean I knew of the artist, but didn't know what he looked like. At the time, I was a buxom lass, and this dude just started following me around the show. Like, not talking to me, or getting close enough that I could say anything about it. So, I'm having dinner later, and at the table were a number of big names in comics, and I mentioned this weird dude following me around, and discretely pointed him out, and everyone started to laugh and said "Oh yeah, that's Crumb. He's creepy as fuck, but harmless." And that is how I ended up with a Robert Crumb original pen sketch, of me...if I looked nothing like me, but instead looked like Robert crumb saw me. Which apparently includes whips and ridiculous shoes and an even bigger set of boobs.
I have a lot of comic art, and I've been sketched by a number of artists, and only Crumb and O'Barr bother me so much that they'll never be framed and hung on a wall...and y'all, I have Clive barker paintings...that's how disturbing I found crumb's attention.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 4:38 PM on October 19, 2015 [52 favorites]
I have a lot of comic art, and I've been sketched by a number of artists, and only Crumb and O'Barr bother me so much that they'll never be framed and hung on a wall...and y'all, I have Clive barker paintings...that's how disturbing I found crumb's attention.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 4:38 PM on October 19, 2015 [52 favorites]
Artist Darryl Ayo recently tackled Crumb in a Tumblr post.
posted by aedison at 4:43 PM on October 19, 2015 [12 favorites]
Crumb is a liar.The whole thing is great, especially his response to another user's semi-rebuttal.
Watching him try to awkwardly explain his sexist and racist comics said more about him than his work itself does. All of his take-no-prisoners attitude is bravado. He is afraid and for all his navel-gazing, he’s afraid to look deeper into himself than a cursory “look at this awful thing that came out of my mind! I’m so unfiltered!”
...
It isn’t brave to “express your darkest thoughts” if you’re going to cower and make up obvious false explanations (“it was about how commodified everything is!” C’mon son.) then you’re not being honest. True honesty is more difficult than Crumb has revealed in his work or in his interviews.
posted by aedison at 4:43 PM on October 19, 2015 [12 favorites]
R. Crumb is an interesting artist with a looooot of issues (as everyone points out), but who always has the brilliant idea of having him be interviewed by another sexist schmuck, so the two of them can jam on all their misogynist beliefs? I don't want to read that; I want the interviewer to be, like, Trina Robbins.
posted by thetortoise at 5:19 PM on October 19, 2015 [14 favorites]
posted by thetortoise at 5:19 PM on October 19, 2015 [14 favorites]
And that is how I ended up with a Robert Crumb original pen sketch, of me...if I looked nothing like me, but instead looked like Robert crumb saw me. Which apparently includes whips and ridiculous shoes and an even bigger set of boobs.
I have a lot of comic art, and I've been sketched by a number of artists, and only Crumb and O'Barr bother me so much that they'll never be framed and hung on a wall...and y'all, I have Clive barker paintings...that's how disturbing I found crumb's attention.
When I think about Crumb, the thing that comes to mind first is the edition I had of Phoebe Gloeckner's A Child's Life, this brutal, nightmarish work that is in part about the inability to integrate experiences of sexual abuse into your adult sense of self, and the introduction by R. Crumb where he spent the entire time talking about how attractive Gloeckner was as a young teenager.
posted by thetortoise at 5:30 PM on October 19, 2015 [11 favorites]
I have a lot of comic art, and I've been sketched by a number of artists, and only Crumb and O'Barr bother me so much that they'll never be framed and hung on a wall...and y'all, I have Clive barker paintings...that's how disturbing I found crumb's attention.
When I think about Crumb, the thing that comes to mind first is the edition I had of Phoebe Gloeckner's A Child's Life, this brutal, nightmarish work that is in part about the inability to integrate experiences of sexual abuse into your adult sense of self, and the introduction by R. Crumb where he spent the entire time talking about how attractive Gloeckner was as a young teenager.
posted by thetortoise at 5:30 PM on October 19, 2015 [11 favorites]
When I watched the Crumb documentary years ago, my thought process went like this:
A) Crumb is not as bad as he's usually presented.
B) Crumb is every bit as bad as he's usually presented.
C) Holy crap! That family!
D) Crumb is awful, but he could be much much worse.
I don't think anyone needs to like him or his art, but I think maybe he's done the best he could with an awful hand. Compared to a lot of "confessional comics" creators, Crumb at least has some explanations, if no excuses.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:32 PM on October 19, 2015 [12 favorites]
A) Crumb is not as bad as he's usually presented.
B) Crumb is every bit as bad as he's usually presented.
C) Holy crap! That family!
D) Crumb is awful, but he could be much much worse.
I don't think anyone needs to like him or his art, but I think maybe he's done the best he could with an awful hand. Compared to a lot of "confessional comics" creators, Crumb at least has some explanations, if no excuses.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:32 PM on October 19, 2015 [12 favorites]
"I don't want to get drawn into defending how I can be a feminist and still love R. Crumb. That feels like a false issue. His work isn't about women, it's about him. If we were all as undeluded about ourselves as he is, the world would be a better place." - Bechdel Test creator Alison Bechdel, in an interview with Trina Robbins.
I saw this interview had been posted on Metafilter and told myself not to read the comments, knowing that a lot of people here would just be allergic to everything about the guy and the "OH BARF BUTTHURT MENS LOL" would quickly reach toxic levels. He's a brilliant and fearless artist with admitted personal issues and some problematic ideas. You can huff all you like, but that's not gonna stop people from reading and being fascinated by the guy's work in 500 years.
If only we'd learn to be educated by wise men, men like comic artist
You're using "comic artist" like that in itself is a dis, like it disqualifies somebody from being wise. Seriously, even if you hate Crumb personally, why the swipe at comics artists in general?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:41 PM on October 19, 2015 [34 favorites]
I saw this interview had been posted on Metafilter and told myself not to read the comments, knowing that a lot of people here would just be allergic to everything about the guy and the "OH BARF BUTTHURT MENS LOL" would quickly reach toxic levels. He's a brilliant and fearless artist with admitted personal issues and some problematic ideas. You can huff all you like, but that's not gonna stop people from reading and being fascinated by the guy's work in 500 years.
If only we'd learn to be educated by wise men, men like comic artist
You're using "comic artist" like that in itself is a dis, like it disqualifies somebody from being wise. Seriously, even if you hate Crumb personally, why the swipe at comics artists in general?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:41 PM on October 19, 2015 [34 favorites]
The movie Crumb (mentioned by Ndwright above) is absolutely harrowing. Saw it in the theater and I'll never watch it again. Some horrible, awful, no-good shit seems to have gone down in that family and I have no idea what it was except that it was HP Lovecraft-level wrongness. I don't mean to diss the documentary -- it's well-done, if you have the stomach for it, but not exactly a date movie -- but to this day I shudder a little when I see a piece of Crumb artwork.
And as Ndwright pointed out, he's the *functional* member of the family (hopefully excepting the two sisters, who declined to appear in the documentary).
And yeah...the interviewer was *way* too present in that article. I wasn't expecting happy things when I clicked on the link, but...that was a bit much.
posted by uosuaq at 5:42 PM on October 19, 2015 [8 favorites]
And as Ndwright pointed out, he's the *functional* member of the family (hopefully excepting the two sisters, who declined to appear in the documentary).
And yeah...the interviewer was *way* too present in that article. I wasn't expecting happy things when I clicked on the link, but...that was a bit much.
posted by uosuaq at 5:42 PM on October 19, 2015 [8 favorites]
I'd agree that the interviewer was trying way too hard to insert himself into the story. Crumb can be a great interview, but this one didn't do much for me. If you can track it down, Crumb's 1987 interview in The Comics Journal is a real work of art. It covers his whole life up to that point, including a lot of the stuff covered in the Crumb documentary, and it's like reading a novel or something.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:06 PM on October 19, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:06 PM on October 19, 2015 [5 favorites]
You know, it's time for some feminist real talk. And I'm sorry to anybody who came into this thread not to have to read about feelings while discussing Mr. Natural.
I would love, fucking love, to exist in a world where I do not have to have complicated feelings about R. Crumb. But do you-- rhetorical you-- get what it's like to be a person of carefully honed aesthetic judgment (so I flatter myself to think) and still be female? To have that fact not change and disappear with your study of history and art and literature but be emphasized, and reemphasized, and reemphasized in a billion fucking ways? And to be constantly lectured that you have to give up the work that you love in order to be a politically pure feminist, or stuff all your feelings into a little box in order to have a good conversation with the boys? Because this is a thing I've dealt with my whole life, and you are not my therapist, but I hate it, I fucking hate it.
I was not someone who loved Crumb's work and then learned later on how problematic it was; I was someone who loved his work when I was 14, who was obsessed enough that my big Crumb art book was full of chips and tears and a broken spine, and yet was never able to look at it without feeling discomfort and anger and bile. It took me years to be able to turn those inarticulate yowlings in my gut into language that other people could understand. Hell, it took years for me to be able to understand them.
I want to once read an interview where Crumb talks about his work and feel like the implicit subject, not perenially the implicit object. But that ain't the world we live in. And this isn't me getting all political in here again, this is me tallking about a thing that has haunted me since childhood. I want to be a critic. I don't want to be a Feminist Critic. I don't want to be an Angry Woman Critic. But what am I supposed to do with this? I don't want to have the same old boring conversation about R. Crumb and that great old chestnut he wrote about raping a headless woman and play the role of Feminist #1 in these conversations. But, like, I can't turn it off, man. I know about his family, and the abuse, and his brothers, and his sense of overpowering shame about his sexuality, and his place in the underground scene, and his alienation from '60s culture, all of it, I've seen Crumb a dozen times, but this shit never. goes. away.
If you DO get it, if you can read this and understand and perhaps even feel the same yourself, why do you expect me to uncomplicate that?
(Yes, nobody actually here right now in Metafilter is trying to say that, etc., etc. Take my rage as directed at the outward world as a whole, and dispense as needed.)
posted by thetortoise at 6:11 PM on October 19, 2015 [46 favorites]
I would love, fucking love, to exist in a world where I do not have to have complicated feelings about R. Crumb. But do you-- rhetorical you-- get what it's like to be a person of carefully honed aesthetic judgment (so I flatter myself to think) and still be female? To have that fact not change and disappear with your study of history and art and literature but be emphasized, and reemphasized, and reemphasized in a billion fucking ways? And to be constantly lectured that you have to give up the work that you love in order to be a politically pure feminist, or stuff all your feelings into a little box in order to have a good conversation with the boys? Because this is a thing I've dealt with my whole life, and you are not my therapist, but I hate it, I fucking hate it.
I was not someone who loved Crumb's work and then learned later on how problematic it was; I was someone who loved his work when I was 14, who was obsessed enough that my big Crumb art book was full of chips and tears and a broken spine, and yet was never able to look at it without feeling discomfort and anger and bile. It took me years to be able to turn those inarticulate yowlings in my gut into language that other people could understand. Hell, it took years for me to be able to understand them.
I want to once read an interview where Crumb talks about his work and feel like the implicit subject, not perenially the implicit object. But that ain't the world we live in. And this isn't me getting all political in here again, this is me tallking about a thing that has haunted me since childhood. I want to be a critic. I don't want to be a Feminist Critic. I don't want to be an Angry Woman Critic. But what am I supposed to do with this? I don't want to have the same old boring conversation about R. Crumb and that great old chestnut he wrote about raping a headless woman and play the role of Feminist #1 in these conversations. But, like, I can't turn it off, man. I know about his family, and the abuse, and his brothers, and his sense of overpowering shame about his sexuality, and his place in the underground scene, and his alienation from '60s culture, all of it, I've seen Crumb a dozen times, but this shit never. goes. away.
If you DO get it, if you can read this and understand and perhaps even feel the same yourself, why do you expect me to uncomplicate that?
(Yes, nobody actually here right now in Metafilter is trying to say that, etc., etc. Take my rage as directed at the outward world as a whole, and dispense as needed.)
posted by thetortoise at 6:11 PM on October 19, 2015 [46 favorites]
Ursula, thank you for defending Crumb. I'd been off and on trying to mentally compose a defense of my own, but had not the wit to do so today. The Bechdel quote alone does better than I could have done.
The man is a misanthrope and self-hating. He's not a misogynist. He's also an amazing artist.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 6:46 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
The man is a misanthrope and self-hating. He's not a misogynist. He's also an amazing artist.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 6:46 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
I am not into Crumb, really, and I don't feel the need to be. Nor have any of my comics friends really felt the need to push him on me. (I've had many conversations about, say, Dave Sim, and men in my life who are very feminist -- in a real way -- and love me and understand me -- have still been "well, at least read the books before he went insane." They aren't like that with Crumb.)
But ... I mean ... she's not a huge fan, at all. But my former hippie mother is a bigger Crumb fan than I am. She made paper mache figure of the Keep on Truckin' guy! She wanted to read The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb when she heard I had a copy! This is my mom that absolutely raised me as a feminist -- as someone raised to think she could do anything she wanted.
I don't like Crumb, but I also get a lot of it is a generational thing. I don't think it's a bad thing that tastes change and that we move on from the people who broke the ground. That's what progress is. It's not my thing but it doesn't have to be.
I really horrified a few people when I brought up that Small Press Expo has existed for an entire generation at this point. I see all these kids who have been alive the whole time I've been reading comics (and sometimes ... not even that old!) making awesome comics. I look forward to the day where people are more inspired by them and less by Crumb.
That's not to say Crumb isn't important to comics. He is. Absolutely. But he's just not where comics ends. He's just one of its beginnings.
posted by darksong at 6:50 PM on October 19, 2015 [7 favorites]
But ... I mean ... she's not a huge fan, at all. But my former hippie mother is a bigger Crumb fan than I am. She made paper mache figure of the Keep on Truckin' guy! She wanted to read The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb when she heard I had a copy! This is my mom that absolutely raised me as a feminist -- as someone raised to think she could do anything she wanted.
I don't like Crumb, but I also get a lot of it is a generational thing. I don't think it's a bad thing that tastes change and that we move on from the people who broke the ground. That's what progress is. It's not my thing but it doesn't have to be.
I really horrified a few people when I brought up that Small Press Expo has existed for an entire generation at this point. I see all these kids who have been alive the whole time I've been reading comics (and sometimes ... not even that old!) making awesome comics. I look forward to the day where people are more inspired by them and less by Crumb.
That's not to say Crumb isn't important to comics. He is. Absolutely. But he's just not where comics ends. He's just one of its beginnings.
posted by darksong at 6:50 PM on October 19, 2015 [7 favorites]
But what am I supposed to do with this?
It's okay to not like Crumb. His work is pretty messed up and it's not for everyone. I totally get the implicit subject/object thing.
I have similar feelings about Harlan Ellison - when I was 14 his stories were edgy and deep. Now they are boringly uncomfortable.
posted by foobaz at 6:51 PM on October 19, 2015 [6 favorites]
It's okay to not like Crumb. His work is pretty messed up and it's not for everyone. I totally get the implicit subject/object thing.
I have similar feelings about Harlan Ellison - when I was 14 his stories were edgy and deep. Now they are boringly uncomfortable.
posted by foobaz at 6:51 PM on October 19, 2015 [6 favorites]
Say what you will about R. Crumb. He's no Woody Allen.
posted by valkane at 7:09 PM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by valkane at 7:09 PM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
He's not a misogynist.
Even he says he is, man - though strangely not exactly anti-feminist (obviously depending on what one means by that if you don't get what I mean I can maybe try to articulate it later).
posted by atoxyl at 7:17 PM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]
Even he says he is, man - though strangely not exactly anti-feminist (obviously depending on what one means by that if you don't get what I mean I can maybe try to articulate it later).
posted by atoxyl at 7:17 PM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't really know much about Crumb's life or opinions (other than what I've pieced from the interview and the comments here). Never bothered to look him up that much. Whenever I came upon his stuff, I always felt conflicted, but I think I feel this way about pretty much everything ever. After all, trying to find an artist/writer/creator with The Perfect Set of Flawless Opinions, who can create the Perfect Non-Problematic Piece of Art is like trying to find the holy grail (I think the closest I've come to that grail is Rebbecca Sugar & Steven Universe, but who knows). My thought process whenever I read a Crumb comic always goes like
- Wow, this is a man who knows what he wants. And he wants big, chunky women.
- I'm a big, chunky woman. I guess it's nice to see depictions of my body type as attractive.
- Buuuut it's still feeding into the whole objectification of women thing when you look at the broader picture. He's not drawing men this way, for sure.
- On the other hand, there's a certain humanity to his female characters that I don't see in a lot of other X-rated comics.
- No... maybe I'm just mistaking the phsyical largeness of his women for character strength. It's just objectification from the POV of someone who fetishizes Amazon women, which is only a lesser evil if you compare it to usual patriarchal porn shit where the subject is the most 1-dimensional depiction of a submissive woman existing in a vacuum of plot or context.
- Oh god, whatever! I guess in the end he's just a man drawing what he likes and commiserating over his personal life, which is exactly what I do in my X-rated comics, so I can't fault him for that.
- Okay wait, he likes chunky black women but he's drawing them like they came out of a cartoon circa 1910. This is racist but in a weird Thomas Jefferson sort of way. Eghh... I cannot look past this. Is he being ironic here or something? I'm not seeing any deeper political message here. Am I missing something from this man's brain? I don't know anymore.
- This dude is really depressed and self-deprecating and is using his art as an emotional outlet.
- ok I'm starting to get bored of this comic. Moving on...
posted by picklenickle at 8:00 PM on October 19, 2015 [7 favorites]
- Wow, this is a man who knows what he wants. And he wants big, chunky women.
- I'm a big, chunky woman. I guess it's nice to see depictions of my body type as attractive.
- Buuuut it's still feeding into the whole objectification of women thing when you look at the broader picture. He's not drawing men this way, for sure.
- On the other hand, there's a certain humanity to his female characters that I don't see in a lot of other X-rated comics.
- No... maybe I'm just mistaking the phsyical largeness of his women for character strength. It's just objectification from the POV of someone who fetishizes Amazon women, which is only a lesser evil if you compare it to usual patriarchal porn shit where the subject is the most 1-dimensional depiction of a submissive woman existing in a vacuum of plot or context.
- Oh god, whatever! I guess in the end he's just a man drawing what he likes and commiserating over his personal life, which is exactly what I do in my X-rated comics, so I can't fault him for that.
- Okay wait, he likes chunky black women but he's drawing them like they came out of a cartoon circa 1910. This is racist but in a weird Thomas Jefferson sort of way. Eghh... I cannot look past this. Is he being ironic here or something? I'm not seeing any deeper political message here. Am I missing something from this man's brain? I don't know anymore.
- This dude is really depressed and self-deprecating and is using his art as an emotional outlet.
- ok I'm starting to get bored of this comic. Moving on...
posted by picklenickle at 8:00 PM on October 19, 2015 [7 favorites]
I hope my ragedump doesn't shut down conversation, because I want to hear what people have to say. But what I was attempting to get at above is that when talk of Crumb-or-whatever-artist and misogyny comes up, folks seem to assume that every woman with strong feelings just read all about him on Jezebel yesterday and likes repeating feminist talking points, or that we despise his work anyway and don't want to engage critically with it. I mean, give us the benefit of the doubt, okay? I am anti-censorship, I give to the ACLU, and I spent my frigging college years interning for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I have actually thought about this, and so, I presume, has everyone else here. This is not to passive-aggressively snark at anyone in this thread, not alex_skazat, Ursula Hitler, foobaz, Ndwright, Strange_Robinson or anyone else-- I'd love to hear more from you all, seriously-- but this is not the first time I've had this conversation, nor the first time it went exactly like this.
Another great American comics artist is Roz Chast, and the most recent thread about her work mostly consisted of people having to defend the idea that women can be funny. Life is a lot like this, you know?
posted by thetortoise at 8:02 PM on October 19, 2015 [7 favorites]
Another great American comics artist is Roz Chast, and the most recent thread about her work mostly consisted of people having to defend the idea that women can be funny. Life is a lot like this, you know?
posted by thetortoise at 8:02 PM on October 19, 2015 [7 favorites]
Great artists are often horrible people, but rarely do they so explicitly show off their horribleness. If anything, a lot of the most evil genius artists try to show you how great and understanding and beautiful they are.
I think a lot of what people love/hate about R. Crumb is his willingness to engage in his own horridness.
posted by cell divide at 9:46 PM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
I think a lot of what people love/hate about R. Crumb is his willingness to engage in his own horridness.
posted by cell divide at 9:46 PM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yeah, the truth. It's like a blade that cuts fucking deep.
That crumb docu-film though, the part where the one lady starts talking about how foot fetishists are just the way they are because when they were babies they were crawling around down low around all their women relatives, and that's what makes them the way they are? Holy shit did she nail Crumb. It was embarrassing how hard she nailed him. That was my big takeaway, anyway. Pretty good movie. Would watch again.
posted by valkane at 9:52 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
That crumb docu-film though, the part where the one lady starts talking about how foot fetishists are just the way they are because when they were babies they were crawling around down low around all their women relatives, and that's what makes them the way they are? Holy shit did she nail Crumb. It was embarrassing how hard she nailed him. That was my big takeaway, anyway. Pretty good movie. Would watch again.
posted by valkane at 9:52 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
Having never read Crumb before, and just having finished a few of his comics I found online, I think his issues with women are largely due to how messed up he is and not indicative of any problematic politics (besides those that inhabit his mind and control his life, that is), but his racial caricatures are incredibly hard to stomach.
In other words, he depicts women in a way that reflects his own psyche, but he depicts POC in a way that reflects cruel, ignorant, and dated mid-century stereotypes. IMO and YMMV.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 9:56 PM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
In other words, he depicts women in a way that reflects his own psyche, but he depicts POC in a way that reflects cruel, ignorant, and dated mid-century stereotypes. IMO and YMMV.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 9:56 PM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
thetortoise, I get what you're saying and I think you articulated the discomfort well. Discussions about Crumb tend to turn into arguments in a hurry, but I think you made your points well and you're obviously not coming at this from a smug or dismissive place. It sure didn't read like a ragedump to me!
But I think a lot of the stuff that makes you most uncomfortable about Crumb really isn't about you or other actual, living women. Crumb is giving you a peek at the fantasies in his head and the stuff that shreds him up aside, the sex fantasies and the resentments and the weird, squirmy things. It's about him. He is putting his most private self out there, knowing he is going to be vilified for it. (Even here, people are talking about what a horrible person he is.) Sometimes his autobiographical work is indeed didactic and reductive when he talks about women in the real world, and of course it's totally fair to disagree with him about that stuff.
But the example you cite, about a character raping a headless woman, is one of his darkest, and most bizarre sex fantasy stories. The image came to him in a dream and he was deeply disturbed by it, and he only finished the strip when his wife insisted he had to. It's not about real women, it's about his own weird kinks, an image from his subconscious that excited, fascinated and upset him. (And it's worth noting that the woman in question was a kind of evil, demonic character who had willingly tucked her head inside her body because it turned her on to be out of control and mindless like that. It wasn't as simple as a guy decapitating a woman. Crumb being Crumb, it was much weirder and more confusing.)
The fantasy stuff where Crumb has little guys doing gross stuff to giant, dominant women, that's all direct from his deepest, darkest id. That's what Bechdel was getting at. He's not holding up a cracked mirror to reflect women. He's opening up his skull and letting you peek inside, rendering it for us with these detailed, intense, crazy-ass little drawings, and that is so brave and amazing even if we're sometimes horrified but what we may see in there.
Crumb is fiercely against repression and he is all about personal, ugly authenticity in art. That's why he's been a big supporter of female artists like his wife or Julie Doucet, who are also fearless about exposing their dark inner lives to the world. The alternative to him exposing this stuff is to ask him to repress it. Crumb will apologize for any hurt feelings, he will feel guilt if he hurts your feelings, but he won't repress. Some people would very much prefer he repressed it, but I suspect you're not really one of those people. The fact that you're so drawn to his work despite your misgivings proves its value. He is an amazing draftsman with an unstoppable imagination and a compulsion to tell the truth as he sees it. That is a very rare thing, and worth celebrating.
Valkane, do you really think the woman saying that stuff was saying anything Crumb doesn't know, or hasn't expressed in his own comics?
Cpt. The Mango, Crumb's depiction of POC is not unlike his depiction of his issues with women, in the sense that he's determined to rip the lid off his skull and let it all bubble out. In his real life he is a good solid lefty socialist and a fanatic for the blues who could tell you more about obscure black musicians than you'd ever want to know. But he grew up in a racist culture. Sometimes his ugly racial imagery is making fun of white America's attitudes toward POC, and sometimes it's just him processing the racial garbage he grew up with, but those images rarely have anything to do with the lives of actual POC. Angelfood McSpade isn't a character, she's a shocking image, a symbol. But if you want to see him attempt to deal with POC as human beings, look at some of his strips about blues musicians. Those characters aren't just symbols to him.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:11 PM on October 19, 2015 [26 favorites]
But I think a lot of the stuff that makes you most uncomfortable about Crumb really isn't about you or other actual, living women. Crumb is giving you a peek at the fantasies in his head and the stuff that shreds him up aside, the sex fantasies and the resentments and the weird, squirmy things. It's about him. He is putting his most private self out there, knowing he is going to be vilified for it. (Even here, people are talking about what a horrible person he is.) Sometimes his autobiographical work is indeed didactic and reductive when he talks about women in the real world, and of course it's totally fair to disagree with him about that stuff.
But the example you cite, about a character raping a headless woman, is one of his darkest, and most bizarre sex fantasy stories. The image came to him in a dream and he was deeply disturbed by it, and he only finished the strip when his wife insisted he had to. It's not about real women, it's about his own weird kinks, an image from his subconscious that excited, fascinated and upset him. (And it's worth noting that the woman in question was a kind of evil, demonic character who had willingly tucked her head inside her body because it turned her on to be out of control and mindless like that. It wasn't as simple as a guy decapitating a woman. Crumb being Crumb, it was much weirder and more confusing.)
The fantasy stuff where Crumb has little guys doing gross stuff to giant, dominant women, that's all direct from his deepest, darkest id. That's what Bechdel was getting at. He's not holding up a cracked mirror to reflect women. He's opening up his skull and letting you peek inside, rendering it for us with these detailed, intense, crazy-ass little drawings, and that is so brave and amazing even if we're sometimes horrified but what we may see in there.
Crumb is fiercely against repression and he is all about personal, ugly authenticity in art. That's why he's been a big supporter of female artists like his wife or Julie Doucet, who are also fearless about exposing their dark inner lives to the world. The alternative to him exposing this stuff is to ask him to repress it. Crumb will apologize for any hurt feelings, he will feel guilt if he hurts your feelings, but he won't repress. Some people would very much prefer he repressed it, but I suspect you're not really one of those people. The fact that you're so drawn to his work despite your misgivings proves its value. He is an amazing draftsman with an unstoppable imagination and a compulsion to tell the truth as he sees it. That is a very rare thing, and worth celebrating.
Valkane, do you really think the woman saying that stuff was saying anything Crumb doesn't know, or hasn't expressed in his own comics?
Cpt. The Mango, Crumb's depiction of POC is not unlike his depiction of his issues with women, in the sense that he's determined to rip the lid off his skull and let it all bubble out. In his real life he is a good solid lefty socialist and a fanatic for the blues who could tell you more about obscure black musicians than you'd ever want to know. But he grew up in a racist culture. Sometimes his ugly racial imagery is making fun of white America's attitudes toward POC, and sometimes it's just him processing the racial garbage he grew up with, but those images rarely have anything to do with the lives of actual POC. Angelfood McSpade isn't a character, she's a shocking image, a symbol. But if you want to see him attempt to deal with POC as human beings, look at some of his strips about blues musicians. Those characters aren't just symbols to him.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:11 PM on October 19, 2015 [26 favorites]
Ursula Hitler:
Interesting response, thanks for taking the time. Like I said I've only read the few books I've been able to find online, so I welcome the news that it'll be worth it to dig deeper. He's certainly a fascinating character with what seems like a valuable body of work.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 10:20 PM on October 19, 2015
Interesting response, thanks for taking the time. Like I said I've only read the few books I've been able to find online, so I welcome the news that it'll be worth it to dig deeper. He's certainly a fascinating character with what seems like a valuable body of work.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 10:20 PM on October 19, 2015
I appreciate this discussion - for those who are newcomers, I feel like the FPP would have benefited from a few links to his work, perhaps the most moving part or a good starting point. I don't have the context of having read or seen Crumb's art before reading this interview, so for me, it seems just like another lecture that I tried listening to but couldn't connect with. I was genuinely confused, because I don't particularly enjoy artists with intensely male gazes, but I did want to see what this was about and why people connected to him and his work.
posted by yueliang at 10:37 PM on October 19, 2015
posted by yueliang at 10:37 PM on October 19, 2015
Ursula Hitler: "Crumb's depiction of POC is not unlike his depiction of his issues with women, in the sense that he's determined to rip the lid off his skull and let it all bubble out. In his real life he is a good solid lefty socialist and a fanatic for the blues who could tell you more about obscure black musicians than you'd ever want to know. But he grew up in a racist culture. Sometimes his ugly racial imagery is making fun of white America's attitudes toward POC, and sometimes it's just him processing the racial garbage he grew up with, but those images rarely have anything to do with the lives of actual POC. Angelfood McSpade isn't a character, she's a shocking image, a symbol. But if you want to see him attempt to deal with POC as human beings, look at some of his strips about blues musicians. Those characters aren't just symbols to him."
Honestly, this is where his work feels most problematic. And on multiple levels. On one level, he has the privileged familiarity with racial issues that white people from the 60s so often seem to have - like calling Barack Obama a "house negro" in this piece. It chafes to hear a white person use those critiques against a black person, critiques that were intended by Malcolm X to illuminate and enrich the dialogue among his own people. It feels a lot like that casual, nonchalant sort of betrayal that is unfortunately natural to a lot of us white people, even the well-intentioned ones.
But in general I think Crumb is not a racist, not in his heart of hearts. The problematic stuff has to do with this exorcism of racist demons you're talking about, an exorcism that is far and away the least reasonable and thoughtful thing about his work.
I'm not going to dig it up right now, but there's a Crumb comic that is (I think) intended to confront head-on the whole catalog of American racist imagery and tropes against black people - by portraying it vividly. It depicts savage, violent, barely coherent blacks raping white women, brandishing weapons, and seeking to overturn the social order and destroy white society. It's literally the most stunningly racist graphic art I've ever seen in my life; to this day, it's very frequently traded around on Nazi web pages, to the point where the last few times I've tried to link it I've had to be very careful since the top hits where it's hosted are usually really evil sites.
And yet - I do accept that Crumb is not himself a big fat terrible racist. I accept that he thought he was doing a specific thing with that comic - I'm not always sure what, but I'm pretty sure it had to do with putting it out there so it could be condemned, shining a light at the awful dreck of racism to tear it down and be done with it. But - it's wrong. That is not how you do that. Publishing a comic that is so indistinguishable from virulent racist propaganda that Nazis flock to it - that's not the way to confront racism. It's just a hideous mistake, and I wish he'd never done it. It's the reason I can't read any other work of his. I totally accept, as I said, that it wasn't expressive of what he really thought. But putting it out into the world - that was such a contribution to evil that I wonder how Crumb actually feels about it now.
posted by koeselitz at 11:26 PM on October 19, 2015 [13 favorites]
Honestly, this is where his work feels most problematic. And on multiple levels. On one level, he has the privileged familiarity with racial issues that white people from the 60s so often seem to have - like calling Barack Obama a "house negro" in this piece. It chafes to hear a white person use those critiques against a black person, critiques that were intended by Malcolm X to illuminate and enrich the dialogue among his own people. It feels a lot like that casual, nonchalant sort of betrayal that is unfortunately natural to a lot of us white people, even the well-intentioned ones.
But in general I think Crumb is not a racist, not in his heart of hearts. The problematic stuff has to do with this exorcism of racist demons you're talking about, an exorcism that is far and away the least reasonable and thoughtful thing about his work.
I'm not going to dig it up right now, but there's a Crumb comic that is (I think) intended to confront head-on the whole catalog of American racist imagery and tropes against black people - by portraying it vividly. It depicts savage, violent, barely coherent blacks raping white women, brandishing weapons, and seeking to overturn the social order and destroy white society. It's literally the most stunningly racist graphic art I've ever seen in my life; to this day, it's very frequently traded around on Nazi web pages, to the point where the last few times I've tried to link it I've had to be very careful since the top hits where it's hosted are usually really evil sites.
And yet - I do accept that Crumb is not himself a big fat terrible racist. I accept that he thought he was doing a specific thing with that comic - I'm not always sure what, but I'm pretty sure it had to do with putting it out there so it could be condemned, shining a light at the awful dreck of racism to tear it down and be done with it. But - it's wrong. That is not how you do that. Publishing a comic that is so indistinguishable from virulent racist propaganda that Nazis flock to it - that's not the way to confront racism. It's just a hideous mistake, and I wish he'd never done it. It's the reason I can't read any other work of his. I totally accept, as I said, that it wasn't expressive of what he really thought. But putting it out into the world - that was such a contribution to evil that I wonder how Crumb actually feels about it now.
posted by koeselitz at 11:26 PM on October 19, 2015 [13 favorites]
The whole thing is great, especially his response to another user's semi-rebuttal.
I'm not sure it made any sense, but I haven't seen the film in a while. There is something odd about requiring someone to be smooth and comfortable with whatever comes unfiltered from their head that strikes me as a bit much. Of course he quotes a stage performer when he talks about being "real"
posted by smidgen at 11:27 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure it made any sense, but I haven't seen the film in a while. There is something odd about requiring someone to be smooth and comfortable with whatever comes unfiltered from their head that strikes me as a bit much. Of course he quotes a stage performer when he talks about being "real"
posted by smidgen at 11:27 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
The whole thing is great, especially his response to another user's semi-rebuttal.
Crumb had discussed his motivations endlessly. He had to, given that the subject simply won't go away. He doesn't always give the same answers, but I don't think any of his answers were "lies" or cowardly and I think you'd have to tilt your head and squint to see his interviews in Crumb that way.
Artists vastly less compelling than Crumb have been attempting to "call him out" since 1960-something. I remember Dave Sim dismissing Crumb as a "nostalgia story" like 20 years ago. If anybody is a nostalgia story these days, it's Sim.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:39 AM on October 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
Crumb had discussed his motivations endlessly. He had to, given that the subject simply won't go away. He doesn't always give the same answers, but I don't think any of his answers were "lies" or cowardly and I think you'd have to tilt your head and squint to see his interviews in Crumb that way.
Artists vastly less compelling than Crumb have been attempting to "call him out" since 1960-something. I remember Dave Sim dismissing Crumb as a "nostalgia story" like 20 years ago. If anybody is a nostalgia story these days, it's Sim.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:39 AM on October 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
Here's one way to look at Crumb: he's you guys, fifty years ago. If you sat down with him and talked politics, you'd be on the same page.
What's never going to be easy to take is that he dives deep into his id and puts what he finds on lurid display. And what he finds is exactly what you'd expect to find in a guy who grew up in the repressive, racist, sexist 1950s. He's more honest about it than most of us want to hear. (Not everyone had his kinks, of course, but try to imagine growing up with his particular kinks in the '50s; he had no resources to understand what it was about and to deal with it safely.)
That sort of thing seemed like a good idea at the time. Face up to all the crap that had been repressed and lied about. It's not so hip these days... either it isn't a good idea to let it all hang out, or we're a lot more buttoned-up now.
Someone asked where to start.... it's hard to say; he's produced an enormous quantity of comics, often small one-shots, of varying quality. A few years ago there was a "Coffee Table Art Book" that's a pretty good overview. Personally I think his funniest stuff is the slice-of-life comics written in and about the '60s. His art got better later, though.
posted by zompist at 12:51 AM on October 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
What's never going to be easy to take is that he dives deep into his id and puts what he finds on lurid display. And what he finds is exactly what you'd expect to find in a guy who grew up in the repressive, racist, sexist 1950s. He's more honest about it than most of us want to hear. (Not everyone had his kinks, of course, but try to imagine growing up with his particular kinks in the '50s; he had no resources to understand what it was about and to deal with it safely.)
That sort of thing seemed like a good idea at the time. Face up to all the crap that had been repressed and lied about. It's not so hip these days... either it isn't a good idea to let it all hang out, or we're a lot more buttoned-up now.
Someone asked where to start.... it's hard to say; he's produced an enormous quantity of comics, often small one-shots, of varying quality. A few years ago there was a "Coffee Table Art Book" that's a pretty good overview. Personally I think his funniest stuff is the slice-of-life comics written in and about the '60s. His art got better later, though.
posted by zompist at 12:51 AM on October 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
I was flabbergasted in this interview when Crumb was talking about reflecting on his older work and confronting his own misogyny and the interviewer insists that there is/was none. Crumb definitely has a knack for seeing himself, always has.
posted by elr at 1:19 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by elr at 1:19 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
If anyone wants to watch the documentary about Crumb, it can be streamed for free on Crackle.
I like some of his artwork, but the guy definitely has issues.
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 1:19 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
I like some of his artwork, but the guy definitely has issues.
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 1:19 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'm not going to dig it up right now, but there's a Crumb comic that is (I think) intended to confront head-on the whole catalog of American racist imagery and tropes against black people - by portraying it vividly.
"When the Godddamn [slurs] take over America": Crumb airing out all of his racist thoughts about black and Jewish people in two strips so vile the KKK republished them in one of their magazines and which today can be most readibly found on hard rightwing/nazi websites.
Those are the starkest examples of Crumbs catharsis based later work, as well as that rape fantasy comic about the headless woman: utterly vile and Crumb knows it and playing on themes that are present throughout most of his work. Here those are concentrated to the point where it becomes hard to defend even as catharsis: those strips aren't mocking nazi propaganda, they are nazi propaganda.
As Crumb says in the interview, he was always more accessible than some of his contemporaries and I always feel this tension in his work between him being honestly trying to process his own feelings and just going for shock value out of commercial consideration and because that's how he has been typecast. He has always had a knack for commercial - Mr Natural, Fritz the Cat, Keep on Trucking - characters and concepts after all.
Which also makes it hard for me to judge how much of Crumb's work has lasting value beyond the shock effect, if you disregard his artwork. How much of it will be remembered after he and the generation of underground comix fans he was part off has died?
posted by MartinWisse at 2:34 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
"When the Godddamn [slurs] take over America": Crumb airing out all of his racist thoughts about black and Jewish people in two strips so vile the KKK republished them in one of their magazines and which today can be most readibly found on hard rightwing/nazi websites.
Those are the starkest examples of Crumbs catharsis based later work, as well as that rape fantasy comic about the headless woman: utterly vile and Crumb knows it and playing on themes that are present throughout most of his work. Here those are concentrated to the point where it becomes hard to defend even as catharsis: those strips aren't mocking nazi propaganda, they are nazi propaganda.
As Crumb says in the interview, he was always more accessible than some of his contemporaries and I always feel this tension in his work between him being honestly trying to process his own feelings and just going for shock value out of commercial consideration and because that's how he has been typecast. He has always had a knack for commercial - Mr Natural, Fritz the Cat, Keep on Trucking - characters and concepts after all.
Which also makes it hard for me to judge how much of Crumb's work has lasting value beyond the shock effect, if you disregard his artwork. How much of it will be remembered after he and the generation of underground comix fans he was part off has died?
posted by MartinWisse at 2:34 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
The impression I get from this interview is of a deeply sane, civilized, and self-aware man.
There's nothing in this interview he hasn't explored in a lot more detail in his comics. But he does go a little further into explaining his brother than he did in the movie. His brother was in many ways the emotional heart of that movie and the most important influence in his life:
"My brother Charles was my master. He was a genius at drawing comics. He was very dominant. He really influenced how I see the world. I always wanted to please him and he was always talking about a narrative, a story in comics. He had a very powerful vision of the world, much stronger than mine. He even started making mystical, spiritual advances while he was still in his teens. Then everything went bad for him, he tried to commit suicide by drinking furniture polish in ’71 and they pumped his stomach. The state, because my parents had no money, put him on a very powerful tranquilizing drug and that flattened him out for the rest of his life. He knew it was bad, but he couldn’t get off it.
“Were you devastated when Charles eventually did kill himself?”
“No, I was relieved,” Mr. Crumb said. “A sad, tragic character. The last time I saw him, he told me, ‘If I can’t dig myself out of this, I’m gonna kill myself.’ He was a fascinating, interesting writer, too. A great cartoonist when he was young, but he lost interest in cartooning. He was very proud of my success because I was like his student.”
“There are a lot of people in America who live in their beds like Charles did; it’s an American thing. I knew many people like that, men and women. He was gay, right?” I asked.
“He never had sex. He liked young boys. That’s an American thing—that extreme isolation, alienation, loneliness.” Mr. Crumb observed."
posted by zipadee at 3:19 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
There's nothing in this interview he hasn't explored in a lot more detail in his comics. But he does go a little further into explaining his brother than he did in the movie. His brother was in many ways the emotional heart of that movie and the most important influence in his life:
"My brother Charles was my master. He was a genius at drawing comics. He was very dominant. He really influenced how I see the world. I always wanted to please him and he was always talking about a narrative, a story in comics. He had a very powerful vision of the world, much stronger than mine. He even started making mystical, spiritual advances while he was still in his teens. Then everything went bad for him, he tried to commit suicide by drinking furniture polish in ’71 and they pumped his stomach. The state, because my parents had no money, put him on a very powerful tranquilizing drug and that flattened him out for the rest of his life. He knew it was bad, but he couldn’t get off it.
“Were you devastated when Charles eventually did kill himself?”
“No, I was relieved,” Mr. Crumb said. “A sad, tragic character. The last time I saw him, he told me, ‘If I can’t dig myself out of this, I’m gonna kill myself.’ He was a fascinating, interesting writer, too. A great cartoonist when he was young, but he lost interest in cartooning. He was very proud of my success because I was like his student.”
“There are a lot of people in America who live in their beds like Charles did; it’s an American thing. I knew many people like that, men and women. He was gay, right?” I asked.
“He never had sex. He liked young boys. That’s an American thing—that extreme isolation, alienation, loneliness.” Mr. Crumb observed."
posted by zipadee at 3:19 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
I think that headless woman comic was really brilliant, it's like the concentrated essence of a peculiarly male combination of resentment, sex, and aggression, I don't understand people who go on and on about how misogyny is at the center of everything and then think it's not a worthy subject for art. Is the beef here that he doesn't ennoble misogyny the way some other artists do? That he tries to examine it within himself instead of denying it and ascribing it to some third party?
posted by zipadee at 3:28 AM on October 20, 2015
posted by zipadee at 3:28 AM on October 20, 2015
Thank you, Ursula Hitler, for your thoughtful response. I agree that if I didn't think Crumb did extraordinary, introspective, artistically rich work, it would be much easier to write him off as a hateful jerk not worth another thought. But there's just no way to reconcile all this, because a lot of it hits me in the gut. Dialogue like this is the closest I can get to understanding it.
Thanks also, for koeselitz and MartinWisse and others getting into Crumb's racist/racialized stuff. This is something that I find harder to talk about with nuance than his depictions of women, because I am white and struggle with finding a way in that doesn't allow whiteness to run roughshod, so I appreciate other people getting into it.
Even his work on great bluesmen, which has a hell of a lot more consideration and artistic sensitivity poured into it than the Angelfood McSpade-type stuff, hits a lot of racist buttons for me. Comics like "That's Life" (excerpted here), which has a poignant humanism in its depiction of art's dependence on oppressive social circumstance and ability to survive both that and its subsequent deprived-of-context commodification, have a use of an imagined Black dialect that is very much not the lived one of Zora Neale Hurston and a reliance on incredibly loaded stereotypes. There's a reason why his works nearly always only depict Black people at length in the past. And I don't want to boil that down and say, "well, that one's problematic, but look at the stuff that isn't," because you can't take the problem out of R. Crumb.
I have his collection of portraits of jazz, blues, and country artists on my shelf (it replaced the one that was just cards, happily), and it's funny that for a confessional artist, that seems to have become the most durable part of his work, at least in the moment we now find ourselves. It's the one that's the least about R. Crumb, his sense of shame and disgust here subordinate to a quiet respect.
posted by thetortoise at 3:40 AM on October 20, 2015 [6 favorites]
Thanks also, for koeselitz and MartinWisse and others getting into Crumb's racist/racialized stuff. This is something that I find harder to talk about with nuance than his depictions of women, because I am white and struggle with finding a way in that doesn't allow whiteness to run roughshod, so I appreciate other people getting into it.
Even his work on great bluesmen, which has a hell of a lot more consideration and artistic sensitivity poured into it than the Angelfood McSpade-type stuff, hits a lot of racist buttons for me. Comics like "That's Life" (excerpted here), which has a poignant humanism in its depiction of art's dependence on oppressive social circumstance and ability to survive both that and its subsequent deprived-of-context commodification, have a use of an imagined Black dialect that is very much not the lived one of Zora Neale Hurston and a reliance on incredibly loaded stereotypes. There's a reason why his works nearly always only depict Black people at length in the past. And I don't want to boil that down and say, "well, that one's problematic, but look at the stuff that isn't," because you can't take the problem out of R. Crumb.
I have his collection of portraits of jazz, blues, and country artists on my shelf (it replaced the one that was just cards, happily), and it's funny that for a confessional artist, that seems to have become the most durable part of his work, at least in the moment we now find ourselves. It's the one that's the least about R. Crumb, his sense of shame and disgust here subordinate to a quiet respect.
posted by thetortoise at 3:40 AM on October 20, 2015 [6 favorites]
MartinWisse: Which also makes it hard for me to judge how much of Crumb's work has lasting value beyond the shock effect, if you disregard his artwork.
I don't see how we can consider the value of a comic artist's work while disregarding the artwork. To me that's like considering the value of Jamie Oliver's work while disregarding the food.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:01 AM on October 20, 2015
I don't see how we can consider the value of a comic artist's work while disregarding the artwork. To me that's like considering the value of Jamie Oliver's work while disregarding the food.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:01 AM on October 20, 2015
True, true.
Artwise, Crumb is one of the great cartoonists/caricaturists of the last 100 years.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:31 AM on October 20, 2015
Artwise, Crumb is one of the great cartoonists/caricaturists of the last 100 years.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:31 AM on October 20, 2015
I agree. Doesn't mean we have to like him as a person, but we can't deny the impact of his art.
At least, over here, we have Peter Pontiac.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:50 AM on October 20, 2015
At least, over here, we have Peter Pontiac.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:50 AM on October 20, 2015
I think this thread gives Robert Crumb a bum rap. Sure, he has his peccadilloes--they're well-known and illustrated in his comics! But there's so much more to Crumb's work than this.
I'm 60 and belong to a half a generation apart from the 1960s proper. But close enough and curious enough to be a part of that scene, the hippies... the Bay Area...psychedelic drugs, free love, eastern religions and dropping out of the "game".
Some of his insights into cosmic and existential human questions are profoundly down-to-earth.
Too, his later works, especially his illustrations (like the set of 1930s musicians) show a remarkable skill and talent. His Book of Genesis (209) is truly a labor of love. The ENTIRE Book of Genesis illustrated in pen and ink and beautiful hand lettering.
When I think of R.Crumb I think of Mr. Natural and how elderly he is becoming. I just right behind him.
Thanks, Artw, for the post. I enjoyed the read.
posted by rmmcclay at 5:38 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'm 60 and belong to a half a generation apart from the 1960s proper. But close enough and curious enough to be a part of that scene, the hippies... the Bay Area...psychedelic drugs, free love, eastern religions and dropping out of the "game".
Some of his insights into cosmic and existential human questions are profoundly down-to-earth.
Too, his later works, especially his illustrations (like the set of 1930s musicians) show a remarkable skill and talent. His Book of Genesis (209) is truly a labor of love. The ENTIRE Book of Genesis illustrated in pen and ink and beautiful hand lettering.
When I think of R.Crumb I think of Mr. Natural and how elderly he is becoming. I just right behind him.
Thanks, Artw, for the post. I enjoyed the read.
posted by rmmcclay at 5:38 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
I have watched the documentary a couple times and I still don't understand why the family was so horrible. The children were fed and clothed and schooled and not beaten or molested. Apparently discipline was strict but the punishments were more of the mental humiliation style. Yes the children as we see them turned out disturbed and the mother is neurotic. What is not clear to me is whether or no or what nature of it can be related to any child abuse.
Am I the only one who thinks the three Crumb brothers were not abused? For all we know their parents might have actually been perfectly decent but their DNA combination was somehow a predetermined catastrophe?
posted by bukvich at 6:01 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Am I the only one who thinks the three Crumb brothers were not abused? For all we know their parents might have actually been perfectly decent but their DNA combination was somehow a predetermined catastrophe?
posted by bukvich at 6:01 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
MartinWisse: He has always had a knack for commercial - Mr Natural, Fritz the Cat, Keep on Trucking - characters and concepts after all.
Crumb started out working for American Greetings, which may have influenced his style. (I get the same impression from the work of Jim Woodring, who worked for the Ruby-Spears animation studio early in his career. So did Jack Kirby, but he was a mature artist by then and influenced the cartoons rather than being influenced by them.)
bukvich: I have watched the documentary a couple times and I still don't understand why the family was so horrible.
I can't find any handy scans of this right now, but his family life was even more messed up than was shown in the documentary. His dad was a World War II vet who just sort of emotionally checked out after the war, and his mom would go into rants at the dinner table and do things such as claw at his dad's face, which his dad would endure stoically and then go to work with his face covered in scratches. (One of the more subtly disturbing things about Crumb's story is that he has two sisters, but doesn't really talk about them at all.)
Also, I didn't mean to be dismissive of Crumb himself in my comment at the top of the thread; like a lot of other people here, I own and have enjoyed a lot of Crumb's work, but also have strongly mixed feelings about much of it. Even in Zwigoff's documentary, it's possible both to have a lot of sympathy for him in the context of his family and still be creeped out when his ex-girlfriend is talking about him and he keeps just sort of pawing at her.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:44 AM on October 20, 2015 [5 favorites]
Crumb started out working for American Greetings, which may have influenced his style. (I get the same impression from the work of Jim Woodring, who worked for the Ruby-Spears animation studio early in his career. So did Jack Kirby, but he was a mature artist by then and influenced the cartoons rather than being influenced by them.)
bukvich: I have watched the documentary a couple times and I still don't understand why the family was so horrible.
I can't find any handy scans of this right now, but his family life was even more messed up than was shown in the documentary. His dad was a World War II vet who just sort of emotionally checked out after the war, and his mom would go into rants at the dinner table and do things such as claw at his dad's face, which his dad would endure stoically and then go to work with his face covered in scratches. (One of the more subtly disturbing things about Crumb's story is that he has two sisters, but doesn't really talk about them at all.)
Also, I didn't mean to be dismissive of Crumb himself in my comment at the top of the thread; like a lot of other people here, I own and have enjoyed a lot of Crumb's work, but also have strongly mixed feelings about much of it. Even in Zwigoff's documentary, it's possible both to have a lot of sympathy for him in the context of his family and still be creeped out when his ex-girlfriend is talking about him and he keeps just sort of pawing at her.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:44 AM on October 20, 2015 [5 favorites]
I have watched the documentary a couple times and I still don't understand why the family was so horrible.
I saw it when it first came out on DVD and don't remember any details but do remember my underlying feeling was like uosuaq: I'm in no hurry to watch it again because the family dynamics were horrifying.
Speaking of that comment above, when saying the documentary is "not a date movie", was that theoretical or do you have an amazing story to go with that. I watched the doc with my wife and we'd been together a decade at that point and she still probably had some thoughts about leaving the kind of guy who would intentionally rent that.
posted by yerfatma at 8:03 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
I saw it when it first came out on DVD and don't remember any details but do remember my underlying feeling was like uosuaq: I'm in no hurry to watch it again because the family dynamics were horrifying.
Speaking of that comment above, when saying the documentary is "not a date movie", was that theoretical or do you have an amazing story to go with that. I watched the doc with my wife and we'd been together a decade at that point and she still probably had some thoughts about leaving the kind of guy who would intentionally rent that.
posted by yerfatma at 8:03 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
"When the Godddamn [slurs] take over America": Crumb airing out all of his racist thoughts about black and Jewish people in two strips so vile the KKK republished them in one of their magazines and which today can be most readibly found on hard rightwing/nazi websites.
I'd never seen them before, so I've just gone and looked them up.
I didn't think they were especially vile -- and fairly unusually for Crumb's work, they didn't strike me as being so much about *his* racist thoughts, as they were about the huge racial anxieties that underlie US society.
You can look at Alex Jones or David Icke's websites at any time to see the jewish conspiracy theories being articulated by regular middle class Americans. People who don't think of themselves as white supremacists -- they just know which way is up. They're not 'sheeple'.
And if the whole gun control issue isn't about the anxieties articulated in the other one, then I've no idea what the hell it's about.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:13 AM on October 20, 2015
I'd never seen them before, so I've just gone and looked them up.
I didn't think they were especially vile -- and fairly unusually for Crumb's work, they didn't strike me as being so much about *his* racist thoughts, as they were about the huge racial anxieties that underlie US society.
You can look at Alex Jones or David Icke's websites at any time to see the jewish conspiracy theories being articulated by regular middle class Americans. People who don't think of themselves as white supremacists -- they just know which way is up. They're not 'sheeple'.
And if the whole gun control issue isn't about the anxieties articulated in the other one, then I've no idea what the hell it's about.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:13 AM on October 20, 2015
He reminds me of a child actor or one-hit wonder. He did something novel when he was young. He hasn't grown a ton, but people still remember his novelty. However, when people talk to a former child star, and they seem like they haven't grown and have some gross ideas for an adult, they are not surprised. When Vanilla Ice reveals he's not a good person on a reality show, people expect that. Crumb, though, worked in comics, not TV or pop music.
posted by ignignokt at 8:15 AM on October 20, 2015
posted by ignignokt at 8:15 AM on October 20, 2015
That sort of thing seemed like a good idea at the time. Face up to all the crap that had been repressed and lied about. It's not so hip these days... either it isn't a good idea to let it all hang out, or we're a lot more buttoned-up now.
I mean, here's the thing. Letting it all hang out might have been a noble ideal. But in practice, it never all hung out. It hung out unevenly, and the bits that hung out the farthest were the ones that were most compatible with the fucked-up institutions that people were trying to eliminate — stuff like institutional sexism and racism.
And that's not exactly Crumb's fault. He didn't ask for his shit to be more widely read and distributed than any taboo-breaking shit being written by women, or black people, or queers. He didn't ask for his creepy fantasies to capture people's imagination in a way that, say, Valerie Solanas's creepy fantasies or Samuel Delany's creepy fantasies never did. (I'm sure he would have been thrilled if Valerie Solanas had been an artist of his caliber, and gotten an audience as big as his. But even if she had been that good an artist, it's hard to believe she would have gotten that big an audience. Delany sure didn't.)
For all I know, he really wanted to see all the taboos broken, and thought he was just doing his part. But that's not what happened. Because it turns out if everyone just unleashes their id at once, all it ends up being is a big pile of raw materials for our fucked-up institutions to use — and to use selectively.
It's like everyone in the alternative media recorded themselves saying all the gross things they could think of all at once. And then it got fed into a big mixing board, and everyone in the country came and twiddled the knobs, and somehow in the final mix all you can hear is Crumb and a few other creepy white guys yelling about their hardons. They weren't the ones running the mixing board, and it's not totally their fault they ended up so high in the mix. But the end result is still that when we listen to the recording, instead of hearing a wide range of voices like they wanted, we're hearing all this creepy stuff coming from one small set of voices. And that means it's real hard for us to feel like their contribution made the recording better.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:28 AM on October 20, 2015 [11 favorites]
I mean, here's the thing. Letting it all hang out might have been a noble ideal. But in practice, it never all hung out. It hung out unevenly, and the bits that hung out the farthest were the ones that were most compatible with the fucked-up institutions that people were trying to eliminate — stuff like institutional sexism and racism.
And that's not exactly Crumb's fault. He didn't ask for his shit to be more widely read and distributed than any taboo-breaking shit being written by women, or black people, or queers. He didn't ask for his creepy fantasies to capture people's imagination in a way that, say, Valerie Solanas's creepy fantasies or Samuel Delany's creepy fantasies never did. (I'm sure he would have been thrilled if Valerie Solanas had been an artist of his caliber, and gotten an audience as big as his. But even if she had been that good an artist, it's hard to believe she would have gotten that big an audience. Delany sure didn't.)
For all I know, he really wanted to see all the taboos broken, and thought he was just doing his part. But that's not what happened. Because it turns out if everyone just unleashes their id at once, all it ends up being is a big pile of raw materials for our fucked-up institutions to use — and to use selectively.
It's like everyone in the alternative media recorded themselves saying all the gross things they could think of all at once. And then it got fed into a big mixing board, and everyone in the country came and twiddled the knobs, and somehow in the final mix all you can hear is Crumb and a few other creepy white guys yelling about their hardons. They weren't the ones running the mixing board, and it's not totally their fault they ended up so high in the mix. But the end result is still that when we listen to the recording, instead of hearing a wide range of voices like they wanted, we're hearing all this creepy stuff coming from one small set of voices. And that means it's real hard for us to feel like their contribution made the recording better.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:28 AM on October 20, 2015 [11 favorites]
He reminds me of a child actor or one-hit wonder.
I don't think you can read his underground comix work, his Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country, and his book of Genesis and describe him as a one-hit wonder or a child who never grew up. Just in his record covers alone you see an extraordinarily plastic artist who was capable of rendering a huge variety of ideas and moods, and they manage to be distinctive and signature without ever losing the recognizable Crumb style.
His catalog is enormous and incredibly varied. we tend to focus on his most outre works, because those are the pieces that have been most visible, but if you really dig into Crumb you quickly discover extraordinary complexity. I mean, for an artist who is widely described as intensely personal and autobiographical, he was exceptionally willing to step out of the way and have his art function as a support to other people's writing. We would not have American Splendor were it not for Crumb, and while the illustrations are recognizable Crumb's, the voice is Harvey Pekar's, and Crumb does a magnificent job of supporting Pekar. Crumb did the same with Bukowski, and was a genuine collaborator with his wife, the marvelous Aline Kominsky-Crumb
He's a difficult subject, and he's certainly someone who people can fairly criticize, but he's genuinely an important artist, genuinely accomplished, and his career is long and worth exploring for those interested.
posted by maxsparber at 10:41 AM on October 20, 2015 [10 favorites]
I don't think you can read his underground comix work, his Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country, and his book of Genesis and describe him as a one-hit wonder or a child who never grew up. Just in his record covers alone you see an extraordinarily plastic artist who was capable of rendering a huge variety of ideas and moods, and they manage to be distinctive and signature without ever losing the recognizable Crumb style.
His catalog is enormous and incredibly varied. we tend to focus on his most outre works, because those are the pieces that have been most visible, but if you really dig into Crumb you quickly discover extraordinary complexity. I mean, for an artist who is widely described as intensely personal and autobiographical, he was exceptionally willing to step out of the way and have his art function as a support to other people's writing. We would not have American Splendor were it not for Crumb, and while the illustrations are recognizable Crumb's, the voice is Harvey Pekar's, and Crumb does a magnificent job of supporting Pekar. Crumb did the same with Bukowski, and was a genuine collaborator with his wife, the marvelous Aline Kominsky-Crumb
He's a difficult subject, and he's certainly someone who people can fairly criticize, but he's genuinely an important artist, genuinely accomplished, and his career is long and worth exploring for those interested.
posted by maxsparber at 10:41 AM on October 20, 2015 [10 favorites]
I hope my ragedump doesn't shut down conversation, because I want to hear what people have to say. But what I was attempting to get at above is that when talk of Crumb-or-whatever-artist and misogyny comes up, folks seem to assume that every woman with strong feelings just read all about him on Jezebel yesterday and likes repeating feminist talking points
Yes, this is very frustrating. I first read a reasonable amount of Crumb's work in the nineties because I was interested in Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Julie Doucet (there were some big women's comix anthologies that came out around that time where I found their work) and because the college library had a bunch of Harvey Pekar. I admit that I have pretty much missed his work about race because I was reading stuff that followed on from his wife, Doucet and Pekar, but I've read a pretty solid amount of his work at this point.
It strikes me that if we were talking about a science fiction convention and SecretAgentSockPuppet upthread had been followed by a weird little dude who wrote a short erotic vignette about her and gave it to her and then that dude turned out to be, oh, I don't know, John Scalzi or China Mieville or someone famous and lauded, we would virtually all be advocating that the con committee bounce him so hard he saw stars. But because it's comics and it's Crumb, creepin' on a woman doesn't discredit him.
It's also interesting that women cartoonists who have written a little hyperbolic violence against men (Dianne DiMassa, some of the women around Doucet and Kominsky-Crumb) got a ridiculous amount of personal blowback back before the internet. Crumb can write all this really shocking stuff over his whole career and oh, that's just Crumb.
I mean, I actually do think that - as near as anyone can tell - he's a guy who is honestly trying to explore all this dark stuff rather than trying to hurt anyone. His work is immensely engaging even when it's creepy.
posted by Frowner at 10:41 AM on October 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
Yes, this is very frustrating. I first read a reasonable amount of Crumb's work in the nineties because I was interested in Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Julie Doucet (there were some big women's comix anthologies that came out around that time where I found their work) and because the college library had a bunch of Harvey Pekar. I admit that I have pretty much missed his work about race because I was reading stuff that followed on from his wife, Doucet and Pekar, but I've read a pretty solid amount of his work at this point.
It strikes me that if we were talking about a science fiction convention and SecretAgentSockPuppet upthread had been followed by a weird little dude who wrote a short erotic vignette about her and gave it to her and then that dude turned out to be, oh, I don't know, John Scalzi or China Mieville or someone famous and lauded, we would virtually all be advocating that the con committee bounce him so hard he saw stars. But because it's comics and it's Crumb, creepin' on a woman doesn't discredit him.
It's also interesting that women cartoonists who have written a little hyperbolic violence against men (Dianne DiMassa, some of the women around Doucet and Kominsky-Crumb) got a ridiculous amount of personal blowback back before the internet. Crumb can write all this really shocking stuff over his whole career and oh, that's just Crumb.
I mean, I actually do think that - as near as anyone can tell - he's a guy who is honestly trying to explore all this dark stuff rather than trying to hurt anyone. His work is immensely engaging even when it's creepy.
posted by Frowner at 10:41 AM on October 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
However, when people talk to a former child star, and they seem like they haven't grown and have some gross ideas for an adult, they are not surprised. When Vanilla Ice reveals he's not a good person on a reality show, people expect that. Crumb, though, worked in comics, not TV or pop music.
This doesn't seem like a good analogy because while his 60s popularity was something of a fluke thing by his own account he's been respected in the field ever since. And all the unpleasant stuff about Crumb is *in* his work - is the subject of much of his work - and has been for some time.
posted by atoxyl at 11:01 AM on October 20, 2015
This doesn't seem like a good analogy because while his 60s popularity was something of a fluke thing by his own account he's been respected in the field ever since. And all the unpleasant stuff about Crumb is *in* his work - is the subject of much of his work - and has been for some time.
posted by atoxyl at 11:01 AM on October 20, 2015
The sf con comparison doesn't quite work because (a) science fiction writers write science fiction, not (ostensibly) weird boner fantasies, and (b) China Mieville is like 40 or something, and from a generation where doing something like that would just not be considered cool or normal. The Crumb story is more like that post-Oscar video clip of 80-something Jack Nicholson trying to put the moves on Jennifer Lawrence. Was that creepy? Jesus Christ, was it ever. Is Nicholson's fame, age or rep an excuse? No. Is it an explanation? Goodness yes.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:09 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:09 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Everybody's talking about Crumb, but the big news in the alt-comix world these days is that Denny Eichhorn (1945–2015) passed.
posted by telstar at 1:15 PM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by telstar at 1:15 PM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
It strikes me that if we were talking about a science fiction convention and SecretAgentSockPuppet upthread had been followed by a weird little dude who wrote a short erotic vignette about her and gave it to her and then that dude turned out to be, oh, I don't know, John Scalzi or China Mieville or someone famous and lauded, we would virtually all be advocating that the con committee bounce him so hard he saw stars. But because it's comics and it's Crumb, creepin' on a woman doesn't discredit him.
Well I don't know about everyone else but even though I've been defending his work in a qualified way I didn't favorite that comment because I thought it was an endearing anecdote but rather the opposite.
posted by atoxyl at 1:26 PM on October 20, 2015
Well I don't know about everyone else but even though I've been defending his work in a qualified way I didn't favorite that comment because I thought it was an endearing anecdote but rather the opposite.
posted by atoxyl at 1:26 PM on October 20, 2015
Holy shit, Eichhorn's dead? Geez.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:27 PM on October 20, 2015
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:27 PM on October 20, 2015
Sorry to hear that. Only had one volume of his stuff (which was passed on to me by MeFi's own Tube, who I think knew him) but it was pretty good. I'll have to be on the lookout for more.
posted by Artw at 1:30 PM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 1:30 PM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
I cannot forgive the racism or the misogyny, and cannot think of them as confessional--but in terms of portraiture, the (neo-con) Australian art critic Robert Hughes, called him the American Brughel--and for the vastly under resperesented and under sellng set of drawings done after dinner on paper placemats--they are part of a tradition of American realist almost reportage, that I find both very smart and very moving.
here
here
here
here
but even these have movements where gender and race posion the well (if we can forget the anti-semetic metaophor)
this
or here
posted by PinkMoose at 2:34 PM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
here
here
here
here
but even these have movements where gender and race posion the well (if we can forget the anti-semetic metaophor)
this
or here
posted by PinkMoose at 2:34 PM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've always thought it was ok to enjoy (or seriously critique) an artist you wouldn't want in your house. Or around your kids. Etc.
There are some vile people who are good artists. And vice versa. Roman Polanski, some good movies, but a despicable human.
But I think Crumb and other 60's artists suffer from the Seinfeld thing.
The only thing I really remember from watching Bullitt a few years ago was the car chase. But when Steve McQueen said "Bullshit" in '68 it was edgy and paved the way for more latitude in expression.
I still can't get over Edward G. Robinson using a tommy gun to gun people down but harsh language simply isn't done.
And for "underground" comics, the dope humor, the Ralph Bakshi juvenile sexuality (with cats!) was in many ways necessarily juvenile. But Crumb is a bit different from that in that he explored weird areas of the mind that no one seemed to touch. He brought up things no one was talking about. What seems dangerous about his work is that he isn’t kidding. And that makes for good art, regardless of the artist or the issues, at least someone is talking about it. Contrast the playful, but socially acceptable in its milieu Bettie Page with Robert Mapplethorpe.
Crumb’s thing seems to be that people get he’s crazy
But because it's comics and it's Crumb, creepin' on a woman doesn't discredit him.
Yeah, some artists seem to get away with that. Weird.
When Dave Richards introduced Janis to Crumb, "he grabbed her tit," says Dave. "She just looked at him and said, 'Oh honey!' and R. Crumb was delighted."
Maybe because, some of them, are outside all such boundaries? I don’t know that Crumb is, or should be there, but Picasso comes to mind.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:54 PM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
There are some vile people who are good artists. And vice versa. Roman Polanski, some good movies, but a despicable human.
But I think Crumb and other 60's artists suffer from the Seinfeld thing.
The only thing I really remember from watching Bullitt a few years ago was the car chase. But when Steve McQueen said "Bullshit" in '68 it was edgy and paved the way for more latitude in expression.
I still can't get over Edward G. Robinson using a tommy gun to gun people down but harsh language simply isn't done.
And for "underground" comics, the dope humor, the Ralph Bakshi juvenile sexuality (with cats!) was in many ways necessarily juvenile. But Crumb is a bit different from that in that he explored weird areas of the mind that no one seemed to touch. He brought up things no one was talking about. What seems dangerous about his work is that he isn’t kidding. And that makes for good art, regardless of the artist or the issues, at least someone is talking about it. Contrast the playful, but socially acceptable in its milieu Bettie Page with Robert Mapplethorpe.
Crumb’s thing seems to be that people get he’s crazy
But because it's comics and it's Crumb, creepin' on a woman doesn't discredit him.
Yeah, some artists seem to get away with that. Weird.
When Dave Richards introduced Janis to Crumb, "he grabbed her tit," says Dave. "She just looked at him and said, 'Oh honey!' and R. Crumb was delighted."
Maybe because, some of them, are outside all such boundaries? I don’t know that Crumb is, or should be there, but Picasso comes to mind.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:54 PM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
nebulawindphone: "They weren't the ones running the mixing board, and it's not totally their fault they ended up so high in the mix. But the end result is still that when we listen to the recording, instead of hearing a wide range of voices like they wanted, we're hearing all this creepy stuff coming from one small set of voices. And that means it's real hard for us to feel like their contribution made the recording better."
I hesitate to quote you because the whole comment is so insightful. That seems like it applies to a ton of discussions about problematic art (like our recent discussion of how someone could like the writing in characterization of Ant-Man but be disappointed that it ends up being another superhero movie where women are sidelined).
posted by straight at 6:43 PM on October 20, 2015
I hesitate to quote you because the whole comment is so insightful. That seems like it applies to a ton of discussions about problematic art (like our recent discussion of how someone could like the writing in characterization of Ant-Man but be disappointed that it ends up being another superhero movie where women are sidelined).
posted by straight at 6:43 PM on October 20, 2015
I've long thought that if we had more Crumbs, we'd have fewer serial killers.
posted by Scram at 10:04 PM on October 21, 2015
posted by Scram at 10:04 PM on October 21, 2015
Crumb's sexual weltanschauung sounds very close to Michel Houellebecq. I wonder if they are Frenchbuddies? Or at least I wonder if they delved into eachother's work?
posted by dgaicun at 8:33 AM on October 22, 2015
posted by dgaicun at 8:33 AM on October 22, 2015
Per Crumb, this interview is full of fake quotes about his sexual habits and Occupy Wall Street, and he wonders if the Trump-related Republican owners of the Observer have a political agenda to discredit him.
posted by Scram at 9:14 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Scram at 9:14 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Wow. I'm a great admirer of Crumb and inclined to take his side, and it did seem like a lesser Crumb interview... but as a former working journalist, I can't help but be reminded of some of the fits people would throw when they realized they'd said more than they intended and now it was in print, or when they objected to how a fumbling, 3-paragraph answer was condensed into two brief sentences.
I'm not saying the journalist did a great job, or even a good job. All I have to go by is the finished piece and Crumb's comments on it, and I respect Crumb and didn't think too much of the article. But I have a hunch he's being a little paranoid, and perhaps he hooked up with a journalist who followed all (or at least most) of the rules but still produced an article that Crumb wasn't happy about. I can see Crumb wanting to take back the line about bombing banks, but all the agonizing about his favorite sex position being misrepresented (and his general disdain for interviews) makes me think there was probably no pleasing the guy.
Seriously, track down Gary Groth's interviews with Crumb. Those things are just great.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:53 PM on November 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm not saying the journalist did a great job, or even a good job. All I have to go by is the finished piece and Crumb's comments on it, and I respect Crumb and didn't think too much of the article. But I have a hunch he's being a little paranoid, and perhaps he hooked up with a journalist who followed all (or at least most) of the rules but still produced an article that Crumb wasn't happy about. I can see Crumb wanting to take back the line about bombing banks, but all the agonizing about his favorite sex position being misrepresented (and his general disdain for interviews) makes me think there was probably no pleasing the guy.
Seriously, track down Gary Groth's interviews with Crumb. Those things are just great.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:53 PM on November 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
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posted by Halloween Jack at 3:10 PM on October 19, 2015 [19 favorites]