Review of Crumb (1995) by Victor M — 30 Mar 2014

Crumb is a intimate portrait of possibly the most acclaimed cartoonist ever. His comics in the 50's and 60's depicted what Freud would call, the repressed Id of American Society during the Eisenhower/Leave it to Beaver Era.

His characters, although comical, were lewd, sadistic, and very lustful. Women's body parts were oftentimes grossly disproportionate, sometimes reduced to only their legs and asses. The dialogue has a sort of Bukowski tone of apathetic disdain for the world.

This documentary takes place right before Robert Crumb is to leave for France with his wife and daughter and has taken this opportunity to reflect with family and friends about his career. He has two brothers and two sisters (the sisters declined to be interviewed for the film).

All of them were self-identified nerds at an early age; his older brother, Charles, is a unsuccessful comic and reader of Victorian novels. Still living with their mother, Charles has completely shut himself out of society.

Robert's younger brother, Maxon, is a fairly talented painter in the style of Picasso. He practices meditation on a bed of nails daily, sometimes in the streets of San Francisco. I'm sure Robert Crumb will be remembered for a long time for breaking the boundaries of Comic art and critiquing American society during an important time in its history.

Robert Crumb, the man, is a simple, dweebish looking character who always sports round rimmed glasses and a straw boater hat. He isn't interested about what other people think about his work or making money.

He is constantly refusing lucrative offers to adapt his comics into animated movies or tv shows after Fritz the Cat was made which he hated. Watching Robert Crumb, one gets an impression that here is a man who is not all there.

He seems to have no ego, or a very mild one. Described by his wife as a man "who would rather be a brain in a jar rather than a human body," Robert Crumb maintains a level of detachment of reality while also deeply observing what he sees and transcribing it into his work.

He makes no judgements or meaning on alot of what he draws, especially his more psychedelic work. This leads to much of what he draws to be labeled racist, misogynist, and deeply offensive to readers.

When asked about this controversy over his work, Robert Crumb (like he usually does) laughs it off and says that maybe it would be better if the government would lock him up and take away his pencils.

He goes further into saying that he hopes that by putting out into the world his innermost thoughts and feelings that it might do some people some good, and that this is the only way he can function as an artist.

Robert Crumb negates the idea of the artist as some heroic sufferer of humanity who makes some grand sacrifice for the sake of his art to give the people hope. On the contrary, Robert Crumb is a total nerd, some may even judge him mentally deficient, but he is always doodling and always picking out things that interest him, exaggerating and satirizing them for all the world to see.

Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that the most serious and profound issues could only be handled in the form of jokes. If this is true, then that would rank Robert Crumb as one of the most important artists of the past century.