(by dane youssef)
We all have racical and personal prejudicial biases. And anyone who says they don't is a lying P.C. coward.
The drawing style of Crumb a 1930's cutsey-slapsticky Bosco and Honey kind of cartooning. Crumb acquired this because he himself is self-taught. Never went to art school, never.
Back then, blacks were drawn with a minstrel show look and tribal African facial paint like they might wear in New Guniea because that was the look of cartoon characters and slapstick charcaters back in those days. The minstrel shows and other ethnic caricatures.
This stuff was popular and the style back in the '30's and '40's, when Crumb was a young'un. Mostly ideals (and "entertainment" like that has been forgotten--or at least discarded).
A racist? No more than the rest of us--and those around during that era, most likely. But a sexist more than anything? He was a mama's boy and was born, in his own words, "an ugly guy." So women wanted nothing to do with him. He was as sensitive as they are, but in more pain. Why weren' the women into Robert? Yes, he was ugly, but he was a better person that they were. A good man and he had a good soul.
The school bully knocked his older brother down and every girl in the school swooned over the bully. Yet once he got famous and successful, women wanted Robert. And how did he prove he was a better person?
He cheated on girlfriends, dated a different woman every night of the week and used these women for fodder in his art and his sicker than sick sexual desires.
"At least I hate myself as much as I hate everyone else." --R. Crumb
reply
share