[HN Gopher] R. Crumb Means Some Offense
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       R. Crumb Means Some Offense
        
       Author : prismatic
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2022-09-19 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | js2 wrote:
       | A picture is worth the first paragraph:
       | 
       | https://imgur.com/h1D5Qo3
       | 
       | (Oddly, mid-way through the article is an image of six of the 12
       | panels but in black & white.)
        
         | pfarrell wrote:
         | I was wondering if there was a licensing thing that prevented
         | them from publishing it. I thought it was kind of weird too.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | nemo44x wrote:
       | A thing that modern, typically liberal people and journals don't
       | understand about people like Crumb is they come from a background
       | of not trusting authority. And they conflate 1960s counter
       | culture of not trusting Nixon and the mainstream conservative
       | culture with trusting liberal authority. And for some, sure. But
       | for many it's about not trusting authority regardless of which
       | side wields it.
       | 
       | So his Covid paranoia is totally consistent with a worldview of
       | not trusting authority ever and never assuming that there's a
       | group of "good guys". It's difficult for The NY Times editor to
       | understand because they are in fact part of the authority and
       | want a particular side of it to be it.
        
       | nraynaud wrote:
       | Funny, I first heard of him from friends who live une the same
       | village. I have met his daughter but not him.
        
       | nanna wrote:
       | I'll never forget how nine months before my PhD was due, I had to
       | tell my supervisor that I'd not written a single line that could
       | be kept, and that I'd come to the point of feeling 24/7 like R
       | Crumb's "little guy that lives inside my brain" really was inside
       | my brain.
       | 
       | https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0a/95/97/0a95973f25e055a10a4e29b03...
        
         | randombits0 wrote:
         | Check out R. Crumb's "illustrated Book of Genesis". I thought
         | for sure it was going to be a spoof or parody. Nope, he plays
         | it straight and it's even creepier than his other work! I love
         | it!
        
           | bravura wrote:
           | His illustrations make it enjoyable to read 30 men who beget
           | each other in turn, or what look like endless log statements
           | of various valuables, like 50 oxen, 30 gold ingots, 50 calfs,
           | &cetera
           | 
           | https://theslingsandarrows.com/wp-
           | content/uploads/2020/08/Th...
        
           | aidenn0 wrote:
           | My wife went to seminary and that was on a recommended
           | reading list for one class; maybe the only time she borrowed
           | a book from me for school.
        
         | hhmc wrote:
         | How did your supervisor react?
        
       | W-Stool wrote:
       | I am a Crumb fan and enjoyed this piece, although I guess I'm not
       | surprised at some of his world views. The 1994 movie "Crumb"
       | referenced in this article is really, really interesting. Fun
       | fact: I've been through Winters, California many times on the way
       | to Napa and had no idea he used to live there.
        
         | itronitron wrote:
         | I'm not a Crumb fan but I highly recommend the "Crumb"
         | documentary that you mention. It was very interesting hearing
         | that he and his brothers were creating their own comic books,
         | and there are some other useful insights to the creative
         | process.
        
         | dieselgate wrote:
         | Oh I wasn't aware he no longer lived there
        
           | avrionov wrote:
           | At the end of the movie "Crumb" he moves to France.
        
       | SleepilyLimping wrote:
       | I like how there's a degree of "too old to cancel" and R. Crumb
       | is in there. I don't think people who bring up how messed up a
       | dude he is can get much social currency from cancelling him, so
       | he just kinda persists.
        
         | michaelwww wrote:
         | To be cancelled you have to first be part of acceptable society
         | and want to remain there, which Crumb never was and never
         | wanted to be. He's a creep who likes to make interesting
         | cartoons, even if they are filled with misogyny and bitterness.
         | He comes from a creepy family, which the film "Crumb" makes
         | clear with Crumb's blessing. He's doing alright considering.
        
         | majormajor wrote:
         | "Too old"? He's younger than Bill Cosby...
         | 
         | Maybe "cancelling" is a cheap word for a more complex set of
         | phenomenon than you're treating it as.
        
           | standyro wrote:
           | R. Crumb was authentic.
           | 
           | That said, I think "canceling" has more meaning behind it
           | than you might think.
           | 
           | Bill Cosby was an inauthentic and visible symbol of the black
           | middle class and "canceled" among media types because his
           | messy real life persona clashed with his clean cut image. Age
           | didn't factor in. I think many also had an ax to grind.
           | 
           | These days, to be "canceled", I think you have to be
           | profoundly inauthentic and ultimately accept the blame when
           | the Twitter mob comes. Plenty of media figures have woven
           | their careers to even embrace the image of fighting the
           | Twitter moral police.
        
             | sbf501 wrote:
             | > fighting the Twitter moral police.
             | 
             | There are no twitter moral police, there are just opinions
             | you don't like.
        
             | JKCalhoun wrote:
             | I like that.
             | 
             | Yeah, hard to imagine people like R. Crumb (or Ed "Big
             | Daddy" Roth, others) worrying what the hell Twitter
             | thought. Some artists (lets add Frank Zappa?) would
             | probably have relished the publicity.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | chasd00 wrote:
         | "canceling" means getting kicked off of social media platforms
         | and fired. if you're not on social media platforms and self-
         | employed then you can't really be "cancelled" at all.
        
         | goto11 wrote:
         | I'm not sure how you could "cancel" someone like Crumb. He is
         | self-employed making independent comic books.
         | 
         | But with his oeuvre it is unlikely Disney will hire him any
         | time soon.
        
           | JKCalhoun wrote:
           | Yeah, I am thinking I don't even know what "cancelling"
           | means.
        
         | exolymph wrote:
         | It's not about age. It's about whether you piss off the people
         | paying your bills and/or gatekeepers who can restrict your
         | ability to reach the people who pay your bills. I'll hazard a
         | guess that Crumb fans aren't overly invested in ideological
         | purity.
        
         | klyrs wrote:
         | Turns out that "cancel culture" is just a marketing slogan.
        
         | narrator wrote:
         | If you've ever read Crumb's comic books, he was fully
         | cancelable in the 1970s. He has always existed outside the
         | mainstream and thus has never relied on mainstream distribution
         | or publicity. If anything, he's a little more acceptable to the
         | mainstream now because hardcore pornography is more widespread
         | and grudgingly accepted these days.
        
           | JKCalhoun wrote:
           | > If anything, he's a little more acceptable to the
           | mainstream now because hardcore pornography is more
           | widespread and grudgingly accepted these days.
           | 
           | That seems like quite a stretch -- and I would say built on a
           | questionable premise.
        
       | CharlesW wrote:
       | The page was unscrollable for me, so for anyone who might be
       | having a similar problem:
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20220919190513/https://www.nytim...
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-19 23:00 UTC)