Crumb is a difficult documentary to know how to talk about. The formal qualities are all understated and the director’s presence so unfelt that any conversation about the film can really only veer to being about the subjects. Even in more fly-on-the-wall documentaries or nature docs, the director is felt by the sheer lack of interaction. But here, there isn’t even a strong enough absence to be notable. While the film is largely composed of interviews, the interviewer’s voice is not heard, save for a rare few occasions (and even then, it’s faint). Director Terry Zwigoff is not made an apparent subject or character in the film; he makes no appearance. More so than other people-centric documentaries I have seen, this one is not about the relationship between the creator and their subject, but instead the subject and his relationship to the world and those around him. Any criticism I feel myself being pulled to make about Crumb is not about Crumb but rather about Crumb, Robert Crumb: the man. A pull to criticize not the film of Zwigoff and his crew, but instead the cartoons and illustrations of Robert Crumb.
The portrait of Robert Crumb that is painted for us is made from a number of different angles. We hear from and follow the man himself, as he goes about his day, as he answers questions from the filmmakers, as he interacts and talks with other people in his life. We see his works, in all their shameless perverseness. We hear from the people who know him: his wife, ex-wife and ex-lovers, family. We hear from those that know him only by his work: both his admirers and his critics.
Who is Robert Crumb? As far as simple facts go, he is an artist who was most popular and active in the underground comics scene of the mid to late 20th century. But if this is all there is to the question, then Crumb would likely never have been made. At the very least, it would not be as interesting as it undeniably is. So then, the real question is who is Crumb’s Crumb? The two biggest avenues the film takes in answering the question are his family and his work.
He is a member of a deeply troubled family. One brother is a depressive recluse, who never leaves the homes he lives in with his mother. The other brother has been arrested for sexual assault in the past, strangers in public settings. Both of them clearly struggling with mental illness. All three of them artists at some point in life. All three of them have deeply fraught relationships with women and sexuality, as far back as their adolescence. An abusive father and a widowed reclusive mother. Sisters who refused requests to appear in the film.
What can be learned from his works? Without question, they are gritty and grotesque. Many almost, if not outright, pornographic. His ex-wife said she found his early works romantic. Some critics, one the one hand describing him as a genius and his work as groundbreaking, were troubled by the dark turn his works took later in his career. Others find a profundity in even his most vile of works and how the act as a dark reflection of society and the self. Feminist critics featured in the film criticize the misogyny and treatment of women, especially in his later works, and despite any satire that could be read in the works, still find them to be a danger. Crumb’s current wife finds her depiction in the works as liberating and credits them with building her self-confidence. Crumb himself admits many of his works are a means of getting out his most unsavory desires and to getting off to his own works. He readily admits to, for better or worse, holding some hostility towards women, despite his seemingly loving and affection relationship with his wife and daughter. But even though these feelings don’t come up in how he acts towards women in the real world (at least as far as the film shows), these biases still do exist. He makes no attempt to justify his works to an outside world or to rationalize any hostility he might feel.
On how he depicts himself in his works, one of his former lovers, the editor of several pornography magazines, says that they are honest portrayals of the man: lanky, awkward in the company of women, and…well endowed. For all his flaws, Robert Crumb does not seem to be self-deceived. He is aware of his opinions and desires, he is aware of how the world sees him, and leans into all of it.
So the question now is how are we to feel about Robert Crumb? Certainly, it is most obvious, and not without precedent, the revile the man, considering his admitted “hostility towards women.” But seeing the film’s portrayal in action makes this more complicated. It is not that the film asks us to not be grossed out by the man. Rather, it asks that, if we hold disgust, then it must be disgust towards someone who is more nuanced than we might readily admit. How do I feel about the man and his works? Disgust, certainly, but also just confused. Crumb, both the man and the work, confuses me. I am not fully sold on what image I think the film wants us to see, because I do not think the filmmakers themselves fully know what they think of the man. Some level of revulsion, certainly, to his attitude and desires, but not a disgust that is simple or straightforward.
