13 ms·

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 cu

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.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
majormajor 4y ago
"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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    > fighting the Twitter moral police. There are no twitter moral police, there are just opinions you don't like.
    - lmm 4y ago
      The regular police are also ultimately just people who might have different views from you.
      - sbf501 4y ago
        What is your point? Twitter isn't the government and doesn't carry a gun and doesn't get qualified immunity when they shoot people. But you knew that, right? Or are you one of those lovely people who thinks Twitter removing Qanon/Russian propaganda violates the first amendment?
        lmm 4y ago
        The twitterati may not carry guns but they can certainly have a huge impact on people's lives and livelihoods, and while they don't explicitly have qualified immunity they often benefit from selective enforcement.
        sbf501 4y ago
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    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.
  - lancesells 4y ago
    And let's not forget Bill Cosby raped people. R. Crumb drew pictures.
goto11 4y ago
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 4y ago
  Yeah, I am thinking I don't even know what "cancelling" means.
  - brudgers 4y ago
    My working definition: Canceling is when a person with power experiences social consequences from their actions similar to the consequences a person without power is likely to experience from a similar action. YMMV.
    - noduerme 4y ago
      Canceling happens more often to people with no power, for all sorts of unjustified reasons, and often based on unfounded accusation leveled by people with more power than they have. You just don't read about it, so don't perceive it that way until someone makes up a totally false story about you or someone you know, and tries to get people to stop working with you. The problem with cancelling people had nothing to do with whether or not it's justified; it has to do with setting a pattern where anyone can ruin someone else's life by making up anything, and encouraging people to believe it without checking for themselves.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Usually means trying to disrupt someones employment or have them removed from being able to publish on the internet. These days it's powerful enough if a popular streamer is after you, they can have your domain name provider, email host, phone number provider, and infrastructure hosts shut you down which at that point you are gone.
    - JKCalhoun 4y ago
narrator 4y ago
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 4y ago
  > 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.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1472959 https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1472959 That's not even an incest one
    - JKCalhoun 4y ago
      To be sure, I am not questioning the "pornographic" aspect of some of Crumb's work. Hard-core pornography is "accepted" by society today? Is that true? Because hard-core pornography is accepted by society today, we now appreciate Robert Crumb more? I'm not seeing it. Robert Crumb was accepted (by some) back in the 60's, 70's, etc. long before the internet and PornHub. Robert Crumb is rejected (by some) even today. If he is more popular today than he was 5 decades ago it's because he is an elder statesman of sorts with a rich (storied) and wide body of work. He is an icon of an era and a movement both culturally and artistically. He is an amazing artist with an identifiable and unique style.
- prvc 4y ago
  The NYT, masthead of the mainstream, appears to already be in the process of co-opting him for it.
michaelwww 4y ago
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.
- Lammy 4y ago
  > even if they are filled with misogyny "This is not a fantasy. They dwell among us!" https://i.imgur.com/9tituT7.png https://i.imgur.com/9tituT7.png
  - noduerme 4y ago
    But it's funny. And how is it misogynistic? Misogyny means "hatred of women". As far as I can tell, he loves them, in his own strange way. Objectifying someone's physical attributes can go two ways. It can come from a place of hate, but it can also come from a place of obsessive love. I think people see their own worst selves when they look at Crumb. His only crime is being honest enough to draw the dirty jokes that go through his mind. But this isn't a commentary on women, let alone a statement of hate. He's observing himself, from a distance, and unafraid to write and draw what he sees, regardless of how people think it reflects on him. He's always displayed a total rejection of ego... and it's just ego and hypocrisy which drives his critics.
    - function_seven 4y ago
      Agreed. That diagram was downright wholesome. Appreciation for a woman’s body that doesn’t conform to typical beauty norms is, like, the opposite of misogyny.
    - badpun 4y ago
      > But it's funny. And how is it misogynistic? Misogyny means "hatred of women". As far as I can tell, he loves them, in his own strange way. I think that was the point of the OP. Crumb is clearly fascinated and taken by women.
exolymph 4y ago
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 4y ago
Turns out that "cancel culture" is just a marketing slogan.
- Test0129 4y ago
  It's not at all a marketing slogan. The woke people have a problem though. To cancel someone properly they have to possess a desire to stay in the social strata they are in. For example, a developer makes a Python joke and loses their job over it. Those developers had a desire to stay in their industry and thus canceling worked on them. "Cancel culture" is the term for the phenomenon of people actively looking for opportunities to cancel someone. I've seen it at two companies now where people seem to be deliberately offended at something no matter how mundane. This is the "culture" part of "cancel culture". Crumb doesn't care what social strata he is in. There are plenty of people like him who don't care. These types of people are impossible to cancel because no matter what social mechanism you use to bully them it will not work. It is far easier to cancel someone who needs some social status to eat than it is to cancel someone who couldn't care how he eats.
chasd00 4y ago
"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.
- bhk 4y ago
  It apparently can also include losing your email hosting, website hosting, domain name registration, payment processor, or book deal, and having your independent business spammed with negative reviews. But, yeah, if you don't use the internet and do not have income (and don't associate with anyone who does... because they might be targeted as well) you really can't be canceled at all.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    There are several cases of people having their email and phone number through google and having them both shut down at the same time. Effectively locking them out of everything including personal banking and government services.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jibe 4y ago
Phoebe Gloeckner, the author of the graphic novel “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” (2002) and an associate professor at the University of Michigan, was accused of “curriculum-based trauma” by students in a comics course, in part because she showed them Crumb’s work As a society, we need to come together and move past things like curriculum-based trauma. Not good for anyone.
- rwnspace 4y ago
  Let's pray they didn't read Maus on that same course!
- Crumbbum 4y ago
  Broadly, I agree. I don't think removing a seminal artist like Crumb from a curriculum because some students are offended is at all good or appropriate. However, when you read into the Gloeckner case it seems like the students weren't the only ones acting insufferable. The thing is if you're going to be teaching Crumb in an academic environment you have to be able to speak to the more challenging aspects of his work on an intellectual level. If even half of the allegations were true, Gloeckner wasn't justifying her curriculum academically, and she also wasn't behaving appropriately in and out of class for her position. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/daily-investigation-finds-allegations-of-microaggressions-against-comics-professor/ https://www.michigandaily.com/news/daily-investigation-finds...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

majormajor 4y ago

"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 4y ago
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 4y ago
  > fighting the Twitter moral police. There are no twitter moral police, there are just opinions you don't like.
  - lmm 4y ago
    The regular police are also ultimately just people who might have different views from you.
    - sbf501 4y ago
      What is your point? Twitter isn't the government and doesn't carry a gun and doesn't get qualified immunity when they shoot people. But you knew that, right? Or are you one of those lovely people who thinks Twitter removing Qanon/Russian propaganda violates the first amendment?
      - lmm 4y ago
        The twitterati may not carry guns but they can certainly have a huge impact on people's lives and livelihoods, and while they don't explicitly have qualified immunity they often benefit from selective enforcement.
        sbf501 4y ago
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  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.
- lancesells 4y ago
  And let's not forget Bill Cosby raped people. R. Crumb drew pictures.

goto11 4y ago

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 4y ago
Yeah, I am thinking I don't even know what "cancelling" means.
- brudgers 4y ago
  My working definition: Canceling is when a person with power experiences social consequences from their actions similar to the consequences a person without power is likely to experience from a similar action. YMMV.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    Canceling happens more often to people with no power, for all sorts of unjustified reasons, and often based on unfounded accusation leveled by people with more power than they have. You just don't read about it, so don't perceive it that way until someone makes up a totally false story about you or someone you know, and tries to get people to stop working with you. The problem with cancelling people had nothing to do with whether or not it's justified; it has to do with setting a pattern where anyone can ruin someone else's life by making up anything, and encouraging people to believe it without checking for themselves.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Usually means trying to disrupt someones employment or have them removed from being able to publish on the internet. These days it's powerful enough if a popular streamer is after you, they can have your domain name provider, email host, phone number provider, and infrastructure hosts shut you down which at that point you are gone.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago

narrator 4y ago

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 4y ago
> 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.
- tomcam 4y ago
  https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1472959 https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1472959 That's not even an incest one
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    To be sure, I am not questioning the "pornographic" aspect of some of Crumb's work. Hard-core pornography is "accepted" by society today? Is that true? Because hard-core pornography is accepted by society today, we now appreciate Robert Crumb more? I'm not seeing it. Robert Crumb was accepted (by some) back in the 60's, 70's, etc. long before the internet and PornHub. Robert Crumb is rejected (by some) even today. If he is more popular today than he was 5 decades ago it's because he is an elder statesman of sorts with a rich (storied) and wide body of work. He is an icon of an era and a movement both culturally and artistically. He is an amazing artist with an identifiable and unique style.
prvc 4y ago
The NYT, masthead of the mainstream, appears to already be in the process of co-opting him for it.

michaelwww 4y ago

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.

Lammy 4y ago
> even if they are filled with misogyny "This is not a fantasy. They dwell among us!" https://i.imgur.com/9tituT7.png https://i.imgur.com/9tituT7.png
- noduerme 4y ago
  But it's funny. And how is it misogynistic? Misogyny means "hatred of women". As far as I can tell, he loves them, in his own strange way. Objectifying someone's physical attributes can go two ways. It can come from a place of hate, but it can also come from a place of obsessive love. I think people see their own worst selves when they look at Crumb. His only crime is being honest enough to draw the dirty jokes that go through his mind. But this isn't a commentary on women, let alone a statement of hate. He's observing himself, from a distance, and unafraid to write and draw what he sees, regardless of how people think it reflects on him. He's always displayed a total rejection of ego... and it's just ego and hypocrisy which drives his critics.
  - function_seven 4y ago
    Agreed. That diagram was downright wholesome. Appreciation for a woman’s body that doesn’t conform to typical beauty norms is, like, the opposite of misogyny.
  - badpun 4y ago
    > But it's funny. And how is it misogynistic? Misogyny means "hatred of women". As far as I can tell, he loves them, in his own strange way. I think that was the point of the OP. Crumb is clearly fascinated and taken by women.

exolymph 4y ago

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 4y ago

Turns out that "cancel culture" is just a marketing slogan.

Test0129 4y ago
It's not at all a marketing slogan. The woke people have a problem though. To cancel someone properly they have to possess a desire to stay in the social strata they are in. For example, a developer makes a Python joke and loses their job over it. Those developers had a desire to stay in their industry and thus canceling worked on them. "Cancel culture" is the term for the phenomenon of people actively looking for opportunities to cancel someone. I've seen it at two companies now where people seem to be deliberately offended at something no matter how mundane. This is the "culture" part of "cancel culture". Crumb doesn't care what social strata he is in. There are plenty of people like him who don't care. These types of people are impossible to cancel because no matter what social mechanism you use to bully them it will not work. It is far easier to cancel someone who needs some social status to eat than it is to cancel someone who couldn't care how he eats.

chasd00 4y ago

"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.

bhk 4y ago
It apparently can also include losing your email hosting, website hosting, domain name registration, payment processor, or book deal, and having your independent business spammed with negative reviews. But, yeah, if you don't use the internet and do not have income (and don't associate with anyone who does... because they might be targeted as well) you really can't be canceled at all.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  There are several cases of people having their email and phone number through google and having them both shut down at the same time. Effectively locking them out of everything including personal banking and government services.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jibe 4y ago

Phoebe Gloeckner, the author of the graphic novel “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” (2002) and an associate professor at the University of Michigan, was accused of “curriculum-based trauma” by students in a comics course, in part because she showed them Crumb’s work As a society, we need to come together and move past things like curriculum-based trauma. Not good for anyone.

rwnspace 4y ago
Let's pray they didn't read Maus on that same course!
Crumbbum 4y ago
Broadly, I agree. I don't think removing a seminal artist like Crumb from a curriculum because some students are offended is at all good or appropriate. However, when you read into the Gloeckner case it seems like the students weren't the only ones acting insufferable. The thing is if you're going to be teaching Crumb in an academic environment you have to be able to speak to the more challenging aspects of his work on an intellectual level. If even half of the allegations were true, Gloeckner wasn't justifying her curriculum academically, and she also wasn't behaving appropriately in and out of class for her position. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/daily-investigation-finds-allegations-of-microaggressions-against-comics-professor/ https://www.michigandaily.com/news/daily-investigation-finds...