Crumb Page #9

the figure comes out the way I want it.

The males, I don't care what

they look like.

So he starts to f*** her.

He penetrates her from behind,

and he's getting really excited.

At the same time he feels guilty.

While he's in the middle of coming...

he imagines her severed head...

and then her face condemning him.

She says, You little sh*t!

Cut to Mr. Natural.

He's home, phone's ringing.

I got home an hour ago.

Yeah, it's Foont. He's feeling guilty.

Foont wants to bring her back.

He can't handle it.

Mr. Natural says,

Okay, bring her over.

Make sure you put the head back on

before you take her outside.

He realizes the head's been smashed.

He doesn't know what to do.

Actually, a lot of these poses

in these panels...

I took from freeze-framing

the Fly Girls on In Living Color.

He ties up a shirt into a ball

and puts it on top of the cap.

Then he puts a hat on.

He pushes her in the car.

We cut to Mr. Natural's house.

Mr. Natural's saying he's going

to regret it if he doesn't keep her.

Mr. Natural says, Forget it.

We'll put the head back.

Mr. Natural unscrews the clamp,

pulls the pipe out of her.

He reaches in.

This is probably the most sickening,

disturbing panel in the story.

Aline says it's the most disturbing part

of the whole thing.

He's pulling hard, and he pulls

her head back out by her tongue.

Her head was actually inside her body

all the time.

Foont is very shocked,

then relieved that her head is back.

Mr. Natural says, Old African

witch doctor stuff. Nothing special.

And she says, That was so weird!

Mr. Natural says, Yep.

Then they both realize the head's back,

the trouble's back.

She says what happened to her

and what did Mr. Natural do to her...

and where does he get his crazy ideas?

At this point, Foont feels guilty and

starts apologizing to the devil girl...

for having done the deed to her

when she didn't have her head.

She says, What are you saying? '

She realizes that Mr. Natural handed her

over to Foont for him to play with.

She says, You gave me to that shmuck to

play with as if I were a piece of meat.

He says, What the hell's

the difference? '

He tries to get away

and she's chasing him.

In the end, she's raging with anger

and she says...

Where's a butcher knife? I'm going

to cut both your heads off!

Typical comic book ending.

I see a theme...

running through his work

that is very frightening.

And it's the woman with her head

either cut off or somehow distorted...

something done to it so that

nothing is left but the body.

And the body, of course,

you can have sex with.

When Crumb draws that little monster,

Mr. Natural...

doing things you or I would not normally

think of doing with a headless woman...

it is not intended, I imagine,

to be apologia for beheading...

or an apologia for rape.

But it is an acknowledgement

that these kinds of fantasy...

actually do dwell in homo sapiens,

they're there.

I'm saying that

it's very irresponsible to put...

dangerous sexual fantasies

on paper...

and make them available to the public.

It's important for women to not just run

in horror from pornographic images...

and immediately think

they represent oppression...

and the power of men

to degrade women.

And to think, sometimes,

about the fact that they often are...

They're fantasies of having power.

They're fantasies

of being able to dominate...

that come out of a fear

of precisely the opposite.

Fear of not being able

to be attractive to women.

Impotence fears.

And fears of powerlessness

in general.

How do you feel about the way

he depicts women in his comics?

He depicts his id in its pure form.

The dark side of human nature

is in every person.

That's what I was drawn to

in his work.

That he could illustrate that

really clearly.

It's unusual to see it.

I think it's always there.

Does any of that bother you?

He's not like that in other ways

as a person.

He gets it out in his artwork.

He fools around with other women.

How do you deal with that?

I fool around with other men.

I have hostilities toward women.

I admit it.

It's out in the open.

I have to put it out there.

Sometimes I think it's a mistake.

I should never have let it out.

I'd be more well-Ioved.

The whole thing would be easier

and cleaner if I didn't let it out.

But it's in there,

and it's very strong.

And it ruthlessly...

forces itself out of me

onto the paper...

for better or worse.

When I was 9 or 10,

my brother collected Zap Comix.

When I saw those,

they really deeply, deeply...

terrified me.

I was deeply upset.

I looked at them and thought...

This is adulthood?

This is what adult women are?

This is what I grew up into? '

It was horrifying.

I wonder if you think about the effect

on people who read it...

or what you're validating for boys.

I just hope that somehow...

revealing that truth about myself

is somehow helpful.

I hope it is. But I have to do it.

Maybe I shouldn't be allowed.

Maybe I should be locked up

and my pencils taken away from me.

I just don't know.

I really can't say.

I can't defend myself.

I was with my daughter Sophie watching

Goodfellows on videotape.

The violent part horrified her so deeply

she started getting a stomach ache.

I shut it off,

wouldn't let her watch it.

I think it's a great movie, truthful

movie. I got a lot out of seeing it.

It's obviously not for a kid.

Sometimes certain

harsh realities of life...

You've got to protect your kids

a little bit from that.

They don't understand

a lot of things yet.

Not everything's for children.

Not everything's for everybody.

Have you gotten criticism about the way

you draw black people?

Oh, yeah, but it all came

from white liberals.

Here's an example of the kind of thing

I'm talking about in Ooga Booga.

It's actually a mockery of black people.

It's a vomiting up

of Crumb's own racism...

his own deepest

hostilities and fears.

If you have a knee-jerk reaction,

and that's as far as you get...

then you say he's a racist.

But once you think about

how he's toying with that...

how he's shoving it in your face...

you start to think

about your attitudes...

and how the stereotypes came about,

and it gets complicated.

All that stuff I did in the late '60s...

I didn't really know what it was about

when I did it.

It was very instinctive.

Somehow LSD liberated me in this way...

that allowed me to put it down

and not worry about what it meant.

I had a vague idea

that it meant something...

but it was later that I'd look at it,

analyze it and see what it's about.

Somehow the term n*gger hearts

just came into my mind...

as a product.

It's like it's some black,

deep thing...

in American collective mind

or something...

that has to do with turning

everything over for a buck.

I'm not sure exactly,

but it's some message like that.

Quite a number of people

these days would like...

this nice, milky vision of culture

in which it's all improving...

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