Print this post.PREFATORY NOTE by PATRICE GREANVILLE
The interview that follows with Robert Crumb first appeared five years ago in the Los Angeles Times. It was soon selected for our archives with the idea of documenting critiques of the American Way of Life at some later date.
The single most memorable thing that emerges from this brief exchange is that Robert Crumb, the archtypical American boy-man and justly famous underground artist, does not like American society, and that is noteworthy even if not particularly new. After all, Crumb, who has been a counterculture icon for much of his adult life was not quite in sync with the individualist/consumerist ethos eons ago but now the critique has become clearer, broader, and more focused. The incessant din of commercial mendacity, induced imbecility, and political criminality that permeate all facets of American life with virtual impunity offend and irritate the hell out of him. More than that, it makes him ill. Psychologically healthy, despite his legendary “weirdness,” he is at once baffled and inexpressibly angry at what he sees in America, but his bitterest sense of alienation is reserved for the widespread passivity and sheepish conformity displayed by his compatriots. Life in France, however, has given him, at last, not just the kind of mental peace and release from the tentacles of corporatism impossible to imagine while embedded in America’s social fabric; it has furnished him with a rich cultural platform to make informed and definitive comparisons.
Crumb’s self-exile is becoming a far more common phenomenon than the mainstream press would admit. The denial is one more way in which the ideological gatekeepers maintain the illusion that America remains the ideal society, the best of all possible worlds, the place where everyone wants to be. But US culture, as Crumb and many other expats point out, is not a pleasant or healthy culture. In fact, for a variety of reasons, the main being that it carries the virus of a savage capitalism, it is downright toxic. What’s more, in the last quarter century the US has spawned not just a gigantic global apparatus of hypermedia, packing almost every conceivable form of mass communication, from newspaper and radio chains to television, music, and Hollywood products to the blogosphere, it has also devised ways of infiltrating other nations civic cultures to tilt them in favor of Washington’s global designs.
Given the infernally seductive (and now seditious) power of American culture, which most foreigners never understand until it’s far too late, a culture really based on the wholesale marketing of fantasies and evasions, this is a serious danger to all healthier, reality-based cultures, for even at the most banal, the DNA of corporatism is mendacity writ large.
The problem that this poses for the world is that while many Americans sense that something is terribly wrong with “their” system, they refuse to believe it is actually far worse than a number of alternatives, a colossal fraud in which reality itself needs to be kept under chains at all times if the social order is to retain its legitimacy.
This banishment of reality demands not only a routine suppression of truthful news, but the inversion of meaning for every key word and concept that might give the game away. Violence unto the language itself is therefore a requisite for the social peace, and the emergence of an Orwellian lingo inevitable.
As Morris Berman has noted with more than a tinge of sadness and bitterness, “in the United States private interest is [seen as] virtue, and genuine dedication to the commonweal is, if not actually regarded as demented, then viewed as softheaded in the extreme.” This is what has made America’s cultural soil so welcoming to the enthroning of corporate fascism. For more than 400 years Americans, like a swarm of locusts imported from Europe, have lived to square the circle, so to speak, in terms of social morality. Worshiping Mammon, and feverishly scrambling for “success”, they have thought themselves good Christians. In pursuit of property at any cost, hostile and contemptuous of actual community, they have not sought a refashioning of society to make it more just, but its precise opposite. It’s not surprising, then, that they have warmly embraced a system whose core dynamic is unalterably—some would say, proudly—rooted in the most callous selfishness, and mustered the audacity to pronounce it viable, beautiful and virtuous.
An impartial observer—and they exist—would declare that such assertion is invalidated by its sheer absurdity and error. But it makes sense, doesn’t it, from the perspective of the cynics in the 0.0000003% —”the winners”—who benefit grandly from the perpetuation of this sick rat race. And for the untold millions who, mesmerised by America’s siren song, far from being sore at the oligarchs that exploit them, would like nothing better than be them. —PG
[box] Patrice Greanville is editor in chief and founder of The Greanville Post. [/box]
“When I go back to America, after a few days I am once again filled with this kind of angry alienation and disgust with this thing there that America has got…
R. Crumb rarely grants interviews, but he did get on the phone this week with Los Angeles Times writer Deborah Vankin, who will be covering the more literary-minded end of the comic sector for Hero Complex, and the conversation veered from corporate greed to senior sex to his upcoming work with his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb.
R. Crumb (Criterion Collection)
DV: What comics are you reading these days?
RC: All I read anymore is investigative journalism. You name it. Scandalous political stuff, the pharmaceutical industry, all that crap. I’m fascinated by that stuff. There’s many heroic underappreciated investigative journalists. Celia Farber, Jon Stauber — “Toxic Sludge Is Good For You” is a great book. Naomi Klein – Jesus, I read her latest book and found that really impressive. “The Shock Doctrine.”
DV: “Genesis,” which was a success both critically and commercially, is behind you, what are you working on these days?
RC: Aline and I are working on a collaborative book together. It’s from WW Norton. Since “Genesis” sold well, they’re up for anything I’m involved in. We did stuff for the New Yorker over the years, short pieces, and before that we did comics together. Mostly it’s gonna be a gathering up of older stuff that we did for the New Yorker. And we’re doing one new story.
DV: Is it autobiographical?
RC: Yeah, yeah, kinda. It’s about getting old and failing. Aline says it’s about senior sex.
Bob and Aline
[At this point Aline yells in background: “It’s not a pretty sight!”]
R. Crumb (Criterion Collection)
DV: But you guys have been married a long time now. You must have a good thing going. Any advice?
RC: It’s been a long time, we got married in ’78. If you’re jealous it’s doomed. Doomed. The two people have to respect each other and give each other room to breathe.
[Another yell from Aline: “Slack on the leash!”]
DV: You left the U.S. 19 years ago — how’s life in France?
RC: It’s good, life is good here. Good quality of life. All I can say is: You can keep Los Angeles. No, seriously, what’s not to like? You’re not constantly bombarded … there’s some room to breathe from that constant corporate propaganda that America is saturated with. You don’t know how saturated you are with that. Here it’s not to the degree that it is there. They resisted. The French hold onto their traditions. I was always so alienated in America. My work was this constant reaction to that. And I don’t have that here. So it’s different.
DV: That must have some influence on your work.
RC: Yeah, probably. I couldn’t characterize exactly how, but I’m sure it has. Maybe I’m less angry. I don’t know. Actually, I’m not less angry. When I go back to America, after a few days I am once again filled with this kind of angry alienation and disgust with this thing there that America has got – you have no idea how pervasive it is there. The public relations and propaganda put out by the corporate mono-culture there is so pervasive. When I’m over here, I look at America and think,‘Why are people not more angry about what’s going on? Why are the people not more up in arms?’ I mean the banks and all that stuff? Good God. How can they stand it? The thing about the corporate approach is it’s smart and it knows how to distract people really well with entertainment. It doesn’t just take, it gives back in this smarmy way… they give you this seemingly McDonald’s version of the good life which is completely phony and fake, from top to bottom. It pacifies the people.
DV: So do you come back to the U.S. for inspiration, then — if you could call it that? To get in touch with what triggers this anger – which, then, informs you work?
RC: I don’t go back for that reason, but it certainly brings it all back, the bile starts to rise. It’s keeps your edge up. [Aline yells something in the background.] Aline says to say that it’s her mother every year in Miami, just to get a dose of that. She goes to the beauty parlor there just to have that experience.
DV: Have you connected with the art or cartooning community in France?
RC: No. We have nothing to do with the cartooning world here, nothing whatsoever. Our daughter does more than we do. She knows some of the young French cartoonists.
[Aline again: “Speak for yourself!”]
HC: Do you miss it – the Zap comix days?
RC: No, I don’t. That was like 30, 40 years ago, that’s long gone. I have no interest in that anymore.
— Deborah Vankin
SELECT COMMENTS
Kevin Kunreuther
If Mr Crumb is happy in France, he’s found his serenity, why come back to the States and get angry? There’s enough angry people in this country now and look what happened this past election? No good at all. He’s free to follow his passions whatever they may be, he’s earned the right not to be aggravated anymore.
The very title of this article misquotes Crumb and misses his whole point: He is not “a lot less angry”. In fact, he insists that he is NOT less
Rich Tommaso
Nice article, apart from misquoting him in the title.
Way to go, LA Times – Crumb complains about McDonalds-ization of U.S., and you have a hyper-link to the McRib. *******s.
Picture are really old. He does not look like that anymore. The pictures are probably over 20 years old.
Also, the link to McDonalds is annoying.
Angela Jackson
Mr. Crumb has decided to take leave of the North American condition, which brings-out his more traditional distemper; and he’s right! It’s impossible to do anything without injustice, coercion, and bad taste staring you in the face.
The Supreme Court decided corporation are people with campaign donation rights? Unbelievable. The sad part is that now, since the 1960s (vietnam), when you trace back into history the causes of today’s problems, it just gets worse!
Even back to the 16th amendment in 1913, and the civil war, the US has suffered blows to it’s autonomy by powerful interests which sought to secure greater interests in a coming nation; a nation which would rival an awakened China.
France may have well maintained her roots of liberty.
Adrian Stuehler
Sadly, France lately is turning to a national malaise of insecurity, disgust and a mixture of ennui and angst. Doesn’t help to have Hollande playing the Obama, cowering…
· 228 weeks ago
I was recomended this article from a friend, i am in Australia, i found it interestisng but then the the interview trailed out, no substance. His cartoons are attacking corporate culture and he finds France welcoming but doesn’t mix. sometimes perspecive is clarified by distance. For answers not here will you find try DemoKratia instead me thinks the US needs it http://demokratia.jesaurai.net/about/
Paul Houston
· 223 weeks ago
Just got around to reading this. Great interview I wish it was longer. He’s totally right about America though, I lived in Slovakia for two years and came back to america recently and was disgusted by exactly what Crumb was saying. You really don’t notice it until you’ve left and then come back. But the reason americans don’t do anything about it is because we/they don’t know exactly what to do about it. We’re confused. We have so much. Now if some of this luxury was taken away en masse then I think people would stand up and do something. But if we can still have access to McDonalds and our Xbox’s & Wii’s and every little thing, we feel no need to get up. We’re placated. It’s a terrible cycle. And why america is ridiculed so much everywhere else in the world.
Rick Barrett
· 205 weeks ago
As documented in The New Yorker several years ago in Graphic Novel form, Crumb brings Alene and daugher Sophie to his old family farm in Pennsylvania for the annual Crumb reunion party. Then they may all trek to Florida to reconnect with Alene’s family. Then they get out as fast as they can.
SOURCE: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/comics/r-crumb-on-greed-senior-sex-and-life-in-france-im-a-lot-less-angry/