Crumb, directed by Terry Zwigoff, produced by David Lynch and Lynn Odonnell, focuses around R. Crumb, the very influential and controversial cartoonist from the 1960's beat era. It is probably one of the best, if not the best, documentaries ever made. This film has an uplifting and empowering message about taking control of your life no matter how incredibly screwed up you may be. It does a great job of portraying R. Crumb as a sort of "Diamond in the Rough", by paralleling him to vastly more dysfunctional siblings and mother and the stories of his menacing and domineering father.
Even though Crumb himself is a vastly strange man, his brothers were obviously tremendously more affected by his fathers abuses than he was. Crumb uses a few interesting strategies to dodge his own mental condition and at least appear somewhat more normal than the rest of his family. All three of the brothers are extremely artistic, but it seems that Robert had a better handle on using his art to release the negative emotions that live within his mind. Both Max and Steven had problems that eventually undid them in their later life, but Robert, somehow had a better handle on his negativity and through his art made his problems into his modest prosperity.
In the scene where Max is talking to Robert about his years as a sex criminal, it still seems that he is consumed by these incredibly unnatural feelings. He talks openly and almost gleefuly about chasing a girl around a drugstore to pull her pants off and look at her posterior. These feelings and actions are the ones that Robert would write cartoons about, instead of actually acting out in public. This is a way for Robert to stay nearly normal in society without becoming a sex criminal...
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...artoons of Crumb's that I have seen involving blacks are illustrated like a satire of a satire, all of his black charecters look like early 1900's cartooons like "Little Black Sambo", but they give the feeling that that kind of view of thing is an unhealthy way to think. Everyone at some point in time deals with this sort of negativity, and Crumb's work way his way of staying out of the kind of darkness that overcame his family.
Crumb was empowering due to the fact that Robert was the only one of his family to, "Make it". He did his thing on his own terms and ultimatley became a better person for it. Better in comparison to the rest of his family is still incredibly flawed, but at least he has become celebrated due to his eccentricities, and not maligned. Watching Crumb and his brothers also made me feel normal, which left me empowered as well.
So with all the symbols I came to think that Bobby has not fully matured enough for his baby. He wants so badly to still be a kid like when he went to the arcade for when he spray painted the wall. But he is trying to to grow up so he can be the best dad he can
In his autobiographical work, Black Boy, Richard Wright wrote about his battles with hunger, abuse, and racism in the south during the early 1900's. Wright was a gifted author with a passion for writing that refused to be squelched, even when he was a young boy. To convey his attitude toward the importance of language as a key to identity and social acceptance, Wright used rhetorical techniques such as rhetorical appeals and diction.
Cullen tried to write an ambitious poem on the subject of lynching. The poem was called “The Black Christ,” The 900-line poem exemplifies Cullen's shining poetic layering of racial and gay themes. Jim the main character is v...
Wideman points out how the racism in America is an unbroken chain as he states, “The circle of racism, its preserve logic remain unbroken. Boys like Emmett Till are born violating the rules, aren’t they? Therefore they forfeit any rights law-abiding citizens are bound to respect. The bad places—ghettos, prisons, morgue slabs—where most of them wind up confirm the badness pf the boys” (Wideman 32). Wideman’s form and content in this quote is sarcastically profound to reveal the unfairness of the typical stereotypes that African Americans have to deal with, in their daily lives. Most certainly, black color skin when seen out in the public, and its connection among the ghetto, black skin is correlated with poverty status. Such arrogances effect the unfortunate African Americans living in
It is evident that Max tries to escape his reality and get lost in a world where he can find freedom from his complex troubles, much like every other child in the world today whom does not know how to deal with such chaotic and complicated thoughts. Max, unknowingly comes face to face with all his emotions through the lives of others, helping him to come to an understanding in his escape. In the film “Where the Wild Things Are” Max’s sister ignores him, he feels his mothers new boyfriend is taking her from him and he is overall portrayed as a lonely, lost character. Max is told by his mother that he has gone out of control, which essentially is the last straw in initiating him to run away to where he eventually ends up where the wild things are. According to the article “Fantasy - Necessary for Sanity and Morality” in order for proper development, “A child needs to understand what is going on within his conscious self so that he can cope with that which goes on within his unconscious.” This can be attained by daydreaming through stories and scenarios to ...
The Negros Art Hokum and The Negros Artist and the Racial Mountain are well-known article written by African Americans George S. Schuyler and Langston Hughes and in which both of them argues about Negros Art in America. Both of the article were published 1926, The Negros Art Hokum was published One-Two weeks before the Racial Mountain because the racial mountain was a response to the Negros art Hokum. George Schuyler argues that Negro art doesn’t exist on his article The Negro Art Hokum, while Langston Hughes disagrees with Schuyler’s article and writes a response to his article and argues that everyone has right to be them self and everyone has their own beauty.
In his book The Souls of Black Folks, he expressed his sadness, rage, and frustration with the hardships that black people encountered
Richard Wright was arguably the most influential African American writer of the twentieth century. Richard puts an image in my head by his detailed writing. His writing is very influential especially to African Americans because of his up bringing. He struggled early in his life and went through hardships in order to get to where he was. I connect to his stories right away because of strongly he speaks when he is stating his point in the text. Wright’s language is so visual that it almost seems begging to be turned into a movie. Take this scene: "There was the speechless astonishment of seeing a hog stabbed through the heart, dipped into boiling water, scraped, split open, gutted, and strung up gaping and bloody". You can just see the hog being
Schuyler stated in his article “The Negro Art Hokum,” that “Negro art ‘made in America’ is as non-existent as the widely advertised profundity of Cal Coolidge, the ‘seven years of progress’ of Mayor Hylan, or the reported sophistication of New Yorkers.’ He worries that essentialism stems from racial differences, which is unacceptable in American society. Schuyler does give some exceptions to this claim- music and dance; but as far as literature, painting, and sculpturing go, the white and black races are the same. However, while Schuyler argues that the white and black races are the same in terms of race, W.E.B. DuBois counters that by saying until “art of the black folk” is recognized by other races and in American society, they won’t be equal. “They will not be rated as human” he
From my perspective, in the poem, he says that while riding through the Baltimore, he was excited and enjoyed every bit of his travel and sight that he had. During his travel he happened to notice a Baltimorean starring at him for no reason. Those made him wonder why the stranger was staring at him. He says in the poem in the second stanza that, he was a kid then who was just eight years old and the stranger who was starring was not anyone older than him, it was just another boy of the same age. Seeing him, the poet just smiled, but it was taken back when the other boy just stuck his tongue out and called him a "Nigger." This shows that even children are being taught racism at a young age and they keep blacks from thei...
The sympathetic humanist might bristle at first, but would eventually concur. For it's hard to argue with poverty. At the time the novel was published (1912), America held very few opportunities for the Negro population. Some of the more successful black men, men with money and street savvy, were often porters for the railroads. In other words the best a young black man might hope for was a position serving whites on trains. Our protagonist--while not adverse to hard work, as evidenced by his cigar rolling apprenticeship in Jacksonville--is an artist and a scholar. His ambitions are immense considering the situation. And thanks to his fair skinned complexion, he is able to realize many, if not all, of them.
Although the concept is off-limits and offensive in culture today, he defends this significant part of American history throughout his book. The impression given to us of the White Negro by Mailer can help us look at it as a form of blackface that has found its was in American society. Although artists like Al Bernard and Bert Williams were performers of physical blackface on stage in the 20th century, the hipster has shown to become a form of non-physical blackface. A type of blackface that isn’t ridiculed or criticized by society, but accepted or sometimes even ignored as a grand section of American Popular
Joseph Conrad makes some remarks about blacks that are very disturbing and racist. One example of this is when he says, "…the thought of their humanity-like yours…Ugly" (Conrad). This just goes to show how Conrad was a complete racist. The thought of a black man’s humanity being compared to Conrad’s was just plain ugly to Conrad. That is plain and simple racism. Another example is the first time he saw a black man he said, "A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards" (Conrad). This remark Conrad made was disturbing and clearly racist because he described the black man as a "nigger" more then once.
I am in agreement with Walker in this essay also. The way in which Walker relates her ideas is one of directness. Her view of the world as a whole does not seem to concentrate on the victim mentality or of the evil of white as seems the prevailing opinion of some black writers of the day. There exists a positivism in her writing that is to be applauded. Walker states, "It is the duty of the artist to present the man as he is" (137) and it is this commitment to honesty that makes her a great writer.
And from time to time, Robert does exhibit some outstanding qualities of character which have earned the respect of so many of us gathered here today. He is generous to a fault – especially if it’s his own. He is exceptionally modest – although he has plenty to be modest about (or at least he did until Pamela became his girlfriend). And he is a man who always sticks by his convictions - he will remain in the wrong no matter how much he gets ridiculed for it.