Was Crumb right? | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Was Crumb right?

05 May 2025

Words by Soham Gadre

A man in glasses and a hat sits in a cluttered room, looking thoughtful.
A man in glasses and a hat sits in a cluttered room, looking thoughtful.
As Ter­ry Zwigof­f’s doc­u­men­tary about the stub­born­ly under­ground com­ic artist Robert Crumb turns 30, we con­sid­er his scep­ti­cism regard­ing the inter­sec­tion of art and capitalism.

It was in my junior year of col­lege that I watched through Ter­ry Zwigoff’s fil­mog­ra­phy and was stunned and amused by his wry humor and frank hon­esty about Amer­i­can ways of think­ing and life. It also stunned me that he made so few films and basi­cal­ly no fea­tures fol­low­ing his last movie Art School Con­fi­den­tial, in 2006. The last bit of news I had heard about him was that he was com­mis­sioned to do a bill­board for the GAP cloth­ing brand, which he found disin­gen­u­ous, espe­cial­ly since he had spent a lot of time… try­ing to have some sort of social and cul­tur­al cri­tique of con­trived consumerism”.

His great­est film in my esti­ma­tion, was his land­mark 1994 doc­u­men­tary Crumb, focused on coun­ter­cul­ture under­ground comix writer Robert Crumb. Sim­i­lar to sev­er­al of Zwigoff’s nar­ra­tive film char­ac­ters, through Crumb’s artis­tic work – often pre­sent­ing an iron­ic view of an obliv­i­ous and increas­ing­ly clut­tered and cacoph­o­nous Amer­i­can soci­ety – he expressed a lamen­ta­tion of the way the world was unfold­ing around them and pre­sent­ed char­ac­ters who tried des­per­ate­ly to cling to an iron­i­cal­ly crit­i­cal view of mod­ernism and retreat­ing to the safe­ty of the old fash­ioned’. It seemed at least on the sur­face that Ter­ry Zwigoff had a con­scious agree­ment with the way that Robert Crumb saw the world, but he expressed that it’s not that sim­ple. Yet, their long-stand­ing friend­ship, which start­ed in the 1970s, man­i­fest­ed into artis­tic careers that were inex­tri­ca­bly linked cul­tur­al­ly through fight­ing the increas­ing­ly con­sumerist and com­mer­cial Amer­i­can mindset.

Zwigoff fund­ed Crumb the painful and patient old-fash­ioned way of Amer­i­can indies, rais­ing mon­ey through favors and slow­ly build­ing the pro­duc­tion over the course of nine years. Filmed on 16mm, the movie pro­duc­tion was tumul­tuous not only because of Zwigoff’s finan­cial strife and severe back pain, but also because of the lack of coop­er­a­tion from Crumb. He was nat­u­ral­ly inclined to despise and reject atten­tion and focus from any­thing even adja­cent to a Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion – one of the film’s final scenes was Crumb on the phone, vehe­ment­ly reject­ing an offer by a pro­duc­er to adapt Mr. Nat­ur­al into a movie. Zwigoff men­tioned how Crumb did not play along at all” with stan­dard ques­tion­ing and direc­tion, and he found it to all be very false, as if he was coop­er­at­ing in some sort of cha­rade that he didn’t want to be a part of.” This per­son­al­i­ty is reflect­ed through­out the film, where Crumb is quite frank about not want­i­ng to do pro­mo­tion or reject­ing any sort of filmic adap­ta­tions of his work dur­ing calls with agents. Robert Crumb drew a com­ic for the movie suc­cinct­ly express­ing his feel­ings with the film­mak­ing process as a sub­ject, where a gigan­tic cam­era was point­ing down at him in bed, like a beast ready to eat its prey, with Crumb meek­ly say­ing I’m nauseous”.

Despite his apa­thy to becom­ing famous and pop­u­lar, Crumb has become a much more gar­gan­tu­an fig­ure in art as the years have gone on while Zwigoff has seem­ing­ly dis­ap­peared from view oth­er than giv­ing an occa­sion­al inter­view. Crumb speaks in the doc­u­men­tary to a group of stu­dents as a guest lec­tur­er where he says that the famous Keep on Truckin’” com­ic, often found on mud flaps of large trucks”, caused him immea­sur­able pain. He goes on to present some of his oth­er work, such as mag­a­zine cov­er art, that he says grant­ed him a measly pay­day of $600 but CBS stole the rights and it even­tu­al­ly sold anony­mous­ly at Sotheby’s for $20,000. Crumb also describes how he had one of his most famous cre­ations, Fritz the Cat, killed off by an ostrich woman to spite Ralph Bakshi’s car­toon adaptation.

Car­toon­ist Bill Grif­fith, one of the film’s sev­er­al inter­view sub­jects, says Crumb’s view of the world is very rare qual­i­ty espe­cial­ly in Amer­i­ca where every­one aspires to be a sell­out.” Crumb’s can­tan­ker­ous and dis­tant rela­tion­ship with soci­ety and his inces­sant need to keep away and bury him­self in his obses­sion while feel­ing suf­fo­cat­ed by the direc­tion of where Amer­i­can com­mer­cial­ism and con­sumerism is head­ed is a feel­ing I think has become pro­lif­er­at­ed among the younger gen­er­a­tions. His lega­cy is man­i­fest­ed in his own com­ic of the small short bit­ter man look­ing at the tall well-built Nor­mal Guy” and say­ing Look­it that stu­pid ass­hole!”. Our online ter­mi­nolo­gies of normie” would be a per­fect descrip­tion for some of the tar­gets of his humor, while our ideas of incels” and nice guys” would be a per­fect man­i­fes­ta­tion of Crumb’s self-inserts.

An elderly man wearing a hat is sitting on a bench and writing in a notebook.

Zwigoff’s work exists in a sort of sim­i­lar head­space. In Crumb, he jux­ta­pos­es Crumb’s ram­blings with shots of the adver­tis­ing-infest­ed streets of down­town – the signs, the music, the pro­mo­tion, the inces­sant noise – and then takes to one of Crumb’s most provoca­tive draw­ings: a man with mouth agape and an erect penis in front of him rep­re­sent­ing media and pro­mo­tion and brands ready to ejac­u­late into it. The man says gimme gimme gimme” and the car­toon is titled Col­o­nized Minds’. Zwigoff went on to make a few oth­er movies and even gar­nered an Oscar nom­i­na­tion along­side Daniel Clowes for Ghost World, but his career has been sparse and he has had a dif­fi­cult time secur­ing financ­ing as well as find­ing per­son­al projects to make.

Many of his movies includ­ing Ghost World fea­ture out­sider char­ac­ters like Sey­mour (Steve Busce­mi), who is a stand-in for both Robert and Charles Crumb, and Enid (Tho­ra Birch), com­ing to a reck­on­ing with their own alien­ation in a world that rejects their cul­tur­al taste and reclu­sive per­son­al­i­ty. Art School Con­fi­den­tial deals inti­mate­ly with bro­ken ide­al­ism and puri­ty of art as its cen­tral char­ac­ter Jerome (Max Minghel­la) comes face to face with a failed artist-turned-alco­holic Jim­my (Jim Broad­bent). Such a reck­on­ing has come to Zwigoff dur­ing the shift in Hol­ly­wood stu­dio think­ing in the 21st cen­tu­ry. He men­tions that stu­dios now weren’t inter­est­ed in mak­ing a mod­est amount of mon­ey… they want bil­lions… so you can shoot your movie on an iPhone or you can be one of the 10 guys mak­ing a Mar­vel film. I don’t have any inter­est in that.”

Zwigoff uses Crumb’s art in Crumb in a sim­i­lar mode of turn­ing sub­ject into object the same way Herzog’s used Tim­o­thy Treadwell’s footage in Griz­zly Man. It becomes a part of the aes­thet­ic of the frame. Zwigoff spoke on how it was dif­fi­cult to do this, with the cam­era being wide while the comics were pre­sent­ed in a ver­ti­cal por­trait plane, but the results are still stu­pen­dous. A bril­liant sequence late in the film occurs when Zwigoff cross dis­solves the frame of Crumb’s A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca that shows the trans­for­ma­tion of a small farm town into a bustling metrop­o­lis of wires and cars and adver­tise­ments. It not only real­ly under­lines the run­ning theme of both Crumb’s work and the inher­ent nar­ra­tive” with­in Zwigoff’s doc­u­men­tary (which is book­end­ed by Crumb’s move from Cal­i­for­nia to the French coun­try­side, of which he says France isn’t per­fect, but it is slight­ly less evil than the Unit­ed States”) but it also high­lights in the most cre­ative way how Crumb’s work could work cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly, how it told a visu­al sto­ry that could leap beyond the pages it was print­ed on. It was a sort of coa­les­cence of Crumb and Zwigoff’s artis­tic impuls­es into one crit­i­cal thought on soci­ety and Amer­i­can his­to­ry that they both shared.

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of Crumb in the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness of young peo­ple inter­est­ed in art is not a coin­ci­dence. While the crit­i­cisms of his work – name­ly the sin­cere misog­y­ny and racism that per­co­late with­in its irony – feel out of place with a much more inclu­sive mod­ern art cul­ture, it’s the sen­ti­ments of every­thing get­ting out of con­trol, the chaos of signs, logos, wires, fast fash­ion trends, and the obses­sion and pres­sure to buy and con­sume (what Crumb called an Amer­i­can hor­ror­show”) feels in sync with feel­ings peo­ple have about how art and its appre­ci­a­tion have trans­formed into flat con­tent” that is con­sumed”.

Zwigoff is but one film­mak­er whose career has fall­en to this exact thing, and it makes Crumb feel even more impor­tant today than it’s ever been. In one of the film’s touch­ing sequences, Crumb adjusts the dials on an old ana­log TV set that is play­ing black-and-white car­toons. His young daugh­ter watch­es on, irri­tat­ed, and remarks Why does every­thing have to be old and black-and-white?” Crumb chuck­les and says It’s just bet­ter that way.” Some may roll their eyes at the mil­i­tant coun­ter­cul­tur­al dog­ma in Crumb’s incu­ri­ous and reac­tionary rejec­tion of every­thing that’s mod­ern, but see­ing where con­sumerist cul­ture in art has led us, can you real­ly blame him?

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