Crumb

this cartoon, <i>Joe Blow...</i> 640 00:43:46,542 --> 00:43:50,087 is one that I thought about, um, a lot in that light. 641 00:43:50,170 --> 00:43:55,843 <i>On the one hand, it's a satire of a 1950s — the healthy facade of the American family.</i> 642 00:43:55,926 --> 00:44:00,389 <i>And it kind of exposes the sickness under the surface.</i> 643 00:44:01,724 --> 00:44:07,604 But at the same time, you sense that Crumb is getting off on it himself in some other way. 644 00:44:07,688 --> 00:44:10,316 And on another level, it's an orgy. 645 00:44:10,399 --> 00:44:14,194 It's a self-indulgent orgy, um, in a fantasy. 646 00:44:14,278 --> 00:44:19,116 And the fantasy — Specifically, this story is a story about a father... 647 00:44:19,199 --> 00:44:22,661 <i>who commands his daughter to give him a blow job.</i> 648 00:44:22,745 --> 00:44:25,164 <i>And she does, and they wind up having sex.</i> 649 00:44:25,247 --> 00:44:29,335 <i>And the little sort of</i> Leave It to Beaver <i>type brother character comes running in...</i> 650 00:44:29,418 --> 00:44:31,855 and sees the father and his sister, and he's shocked and upset. 651 00:44:31,879 --> 00:44:33,797 <i>He goes running to the mother to tell her.</i> 652 00:44:33,881 --> 00:44:39,219 <i>And Mom comes out of a closet wearing a sort of S-and-M kind of getup.</i> 653 00:44:39,303 --> 00:44:41,347 <i>And the little boy says, "Oh, cool."</i> 654 00:44:41,430 --> 00:44:44,475 <i>The next thing, Mom and son are having sex.</i> 655 00:44:44,558 --> 00:44:47,770 The whole panel ends — The whole cartoon ends with the parents saying... 656 00:44:47,853 --> 00:44:51,607 "Gee, we should spend more time with the kids." Or something like that. Very funny. 657 00:44:51,690 --> 00:44:56,445 Um, so, you know, you read something like this... 658 00:44:56,528 --> 00:44:59,531 and I think that it has gone over the line... 659 00:44:59,615 --> 00:45:05,287 from a satire of a 1950s, hygienic... 660 00:45:05,371 --> 00:45:08,707 you know, family in denial... 661 00:45:08,791 --> 00:45:13,087 into something which is just Crumb producing pornography. 662 00:45:13,170 --> 00:45:16,382 <i>And I think this theme in his work is omnipresent.</i> 663 00:45:16,465 --> 00:45:19,760 <i>It's part of an arrested juvenile vision.</i> 664 00:45:19,843 --> 00:45:24,723 <i>Crumb's material comes out of a deep sense of the absurdity of human life.</i> 665 00:45:24,807 --> 00:45:26,910 At a certain kind of psychic level, there aren't any heroes... 666 00:45:26,934 --> 00:45:29,311 there aren't any villains, there aren't any heroines. 667 00:45:29,395 --> 00:45:32,106 And even the victims are comic. 668 00:45:32,189 --> 00:45:36,693 And, um, I think it's this which people in America find rather hard to take... 669 00:45:36,777 --> 00:45:40,197 because it conflicts with their basic feelings — 670 00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:44,410 that sort of mixture of utopianism on one hand and Puritanism on the other... 671 00:45:44,493 --> 00:45:47,663 which is only another kind of utopianism. 672 00:45:47,746 --> 00:45:52,376 Which has given us the kind of messy discourse that we have today. 673 00:45:52,459 --> 00:45:57,089 So, naturally, Crumb, like all great satirists, is something of an outsider in his own country. 674 00:46:21,905 --> 00:46:25,826 <i>♪♪ ♪ Females on my tip, and it ain't funny ♪</i> 675 00:46:25,909 --> 00:46:28,579 <i>- ♪ Why ♪ - ♪ I don't know, probably 'cause I got money ♪</i> 676 00:46:28,662 --> 00:46:31,206 ♪ Don't want me Just want my riches ♪ 677 00:46:31,290 --> 00:46:34,460 ♪ Things like that keep stitches on my britches ♪ 678 00:46:34,543 --> 00:46:36,503 ♪ I wear all 501s ♪ 679 00:46:36,587 --> 00:46:39,089 <i>♪ Many wear Adidas but I have none ♪</i> 680 00:46:39,173 --> 00:46:40,883 <i>♪ Filas, I'm coolin' ♪♪</i> 681 00:49:14,828 --> 00:49:16,872 <i>Jesus! This fucking raging...</i> 682 00:49:18,707 --> 00:49:22,252 <i>epithet music coming out of every car, every store...</i> 683 00:49:22,336 --> 00:49:24,504 <i>every person's head.</i> 684 00:49:27,924 --> 00:49:30,844 <i>If they don't have noisy radios, they got earphones on, like...</i> 685 00:49:30,927 --> 00:49:33,347 <i>"Motherfuckin', cock-suckin' son of a bitch."</i> 686 00:49:33,430 --> 00:49:36,391 <i>That's a lot of aggression. A lot of anger, a lot of rage.</i> 687 00:49:36,475 --> 00:49:38,286 <i>♪♪ ♪ Just callin' to the motherfuck ♪</i> 688 00:49:38,310 --> 00:49:41,396 Everybody walks around — They're walking advertisements. 689 00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:44,608 They've got advertisements on their clothes, you know. 690 00:49:44,691 --> 00:49:48,236 <i>Go walking around with "Adidas" written across their chest...</i> 691 00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:50,572 or, you know, "49ers" on their hat. 692 00:49:50,656 --> 00:49:53,617 Jesus. It's patheti