Crumb Page #5

just incredibly hostile to women...

very sexually hostile.

I wasn't expecting it.

I was really shocked and taken aback.

And just kind of like, whack!

It's hard for me to believe...

that he can't channel himself

into doing better work.

I like a lot of his work. And I don't

miss the satirical aspect of it.

Then I have a different reaction.

Perhaps one of being really

turned off and disgusted.

And you know this cartoon,

Joe Blow...

is one that I thought about a lot

in that light.

On the one hand,

it's a satire of a 1950s...

the healthy facade

of the American family.

It kind of exposes the sickness

under the surface.

But at the same time you sense...

that Crumb is getting off on it

himself in some other way.

On another level,

it's a self-indulgent orgy in a fantasy.

And the fantasy,

specifically, this story...

is a story about a father...

who commands his daughter

to give him a blow job.

She does,

and they wind up having sex.

And the little Leave-It-To-Beaver type

brother comes running in...

and sees the father and his sister,

and he's shocked.

He runs to the mother

to tell her.

And Mom comes out of a closet wearing

a sort of S&M getup.

And the little boy says, Oh, cool.

The next thing,

Mom and son are having sex.

The whole cartoon ends

with the parents saying...

Gee, we should spend more time

with the kids. ' Very funny.

So you read something like this...

and I think that it has

gone over the line...

from satire of a 1950s...

hygienic family in denial...

into something which

is just Crumb producing pornography.

I think this theme in his work

is omnipresent.

It's part of an arrested

juvenile vision.

Crumb's material comes out of a deep

sense of the absurdity of human life.

At a certain psychic level, there aren't

any heroes, villains or heroines.

Even the victims are comic.

It's this which people in America

find rather hard to take...

because it conflicts

with their basic feelings.

That sort of mixture of utopianism on

one hand and Puritanism on the other...

which is only another kind

of utopianism...

which has given us the kind

of messy discourse that we have today.

So Crumb, like all great satirists,

is an outsider in his own country.

Jesus! The f***ing

raging epithet music...

coming out of every car, every store,

every person's head.

If they don't have noisy radios,

they got earphones on like...

Motherfuckin' cock suckin'

son of a b*tch.

That's a lot of aggression.

A lot of anger, a lot of rage.

Everybody's walking advertisements.

They've got advertisements

on their clothes.

Go walking around with Adidas

written across their chests...

or 49ers on their hats.

Jesus. It's pathetic.

It's pitiful.

The whole culture's one unified field...

of bought, sold,

market-researched everything.

It used to be people fermented

their own culture.

It took hundreds of years,

and it evolved over time.

That's gone in America.

People now don't even have

any concept that there ever was...

a culture outside of this thing

that's created to make money.

Whatever's the biggest, latest thing,

they're into it.

You just get disgusted after a while

with humanity...

for not having more,

kind of like...

intellectual curiosity about

what's behind all this jive bullshit.

Charles and I talk

quite a bit about things.

- We don't talk that much.

- Yeah, we do.

We hold aloof from each other

for the most part.

You spend all your time

watching television...

and doing your crossword puzzles.

I don't watch television. I turn it on

because it puts me to sleep.

It's a good way to get to sleep.

We're two recluses

living in the same house.

I wake up at 3:
00 a.m.

and it's still on.

You do most of the talking

in the relationship, Mother.

There's no doubt about that.

You told me that even though you take

medication, you still feel depressed.

Yeah, but not as much as I would

if I wasn't taking the medication.

What would happen

if you stopped taking that stuff?

I don't know.

I tried it a couple of times...

and I didn't like what was starting

to happen to me.

- He gets insomnia.

- I felt I was becoming unhinged.

So I got back on them in a big hurry.

I tried this a couple of times,

about two or three times.

Do you still think

they're picking my brain, Mother?

Yeah.

You have nothing to hide,

nothing to be ashamed of.

He's a good person.

People like Charles.

You know.

Some people like me

and some don't.

I'm a very quiet,

well-behaved citizen.

- I've gone from one extreme to another.

- You've gone in a complete circle.

You used to make trouble

on the streets.

One of the last times I went out

with you, we were walking around...

and you went up to some old lady

on the street...

and started drilling her

about her spiritual life...

and she got frightened

and threatened to call the police.

Charles goes up to these strangers

on the streets, starts raving at them.

He was just a kid having fun.

- This was when he was about 30.

- No, he wasn't!

He's still doing that kind of stuff.

Now he doesn't leave the house.

He got in trouble whenever he went out.

Will you give me one good reason

for leaving the house?

At least he's not out

taking illegal drugs.

- No, he's taking legal drugs.

- I'm taking legal dope.

Or being married and making

some woman miserable.

This is true.

One thing that kind of...

I spent all this money.

And he's got these $200 teeth upstairs

and he won't wear them.

- They're too uncomfortable.

- At first.

You gotta leave them in there.

Then you don't know they're there.

I never go anywhere, see anybody.

What does he need them for?

To chew food or what?

Pride in his own appearance.

He never goes out.

What does he care what he looks like?

I take a bath about once

in six weeks.

I believe in having

a certain pride in yourself.

In a way not that your ego gets out

of hand and you're an egomaniac...

Pride can't exist

except in relation to other people.

Yeah. That's right.

I don't know. Your hygiene habits

are pretty good.

I'm never constipated.

That's about all I can say for myself.

That's something. You don't have

hemorrhoids? Then you're doing good.

Your father used to have trouble

that way, with constipation.

He was constipated all the time.

- You were really obsessed with...

- I could say something, but I won't.

You always gave us kids castor oil.

You were obsessed with constipation.

When all you kids were real little,

I had to take care of you by myself.

That period where you used to try

giving us all enemas? That didn't work.

- I never gave you enemas.

- Somebody...

You always threatened to give us enemas

if we didn't behave properly.

- I did not!

- Somebody tried to give me an enema.

- She wouldn't admit it, but...

- That it's not a regular suburban house?

It's a suburban house...

that looks like Whatever Happened

to Baby Jane or something.

She has weird trinkets around?

She has cats.

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