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FORTY years ago Robert Crumb, along with Spain Rodriguez, Victor Moscoso and others, was an integral part of the anti-Establishment comix revolution.
His Fritz the Cat and Mr Natural mercilessly, and justifiably, ridiculed the navel-gazing of middle-class hippydom.
But that was then and now Crumb looks more than ever a forlorn one-trick pony. Sex Obsessions is a pathetic embarrassment.
Entirely bereft of the exploratory gravitas of an adventurous mind and permeated with sadism, these outpourings are by his own presumably tongue-in-cheek admission “a vile piece of misogynistic pornography.”
Those who seek gratification, as Crumb so obviously does, in exploitative, coercive and violent delusions about women might find encouragement in this crap which could at any moment spill over far beyond just a guilty masturbatory fantasy — with dire consequences for any woman forced to make that fantasy a reality.
Crumb’s egotism leads him to believe his own hype. Perhaps such self-conferred status and “freedom of speech” permits him to indulge in a marketable and “sexy” moral ambiguity if not artistic licence. If he does, he’s wrong.
Sexual fantasy has had a time-honoured place in all art forms since antiquity, from Japan to the frescos of Pompei and the Moche figurines of Peru. Its purpose has always been to entertain and instruct. Crumb does neither.
Peddling the violent sexual exploitation of women, disguised as edgy introspection, is a joke — and a sick one at that.
Review by Michal Boncza
