I am a Senior Lecturer in the University Writing Program at Rochester Institute of Technology where I am actively engaged in teaching, research, and scholarship in the fields of Comics Studies, Visual Literacy, and Multimodal approaches to Composition. Address: 12 LOMB MEMORIAL DR
I contend that responses to Crumb’s disturbing images often occupy the extremes of admiration and... more I contend that responses to Crumb’s disturbing images often occupy the extremes of admiration and revulsion. My paper occupies the ambiguous threshold between these two positions, arguing that Crumb’s work is an embodied expression of the signifying trickster’s dual consciousness, simultaneously representing both the lofty role of the culture-hero and the sordid role of dirt-worker. I divide trickster consciousness into three interrelated modes of “shameless” expression: the con artist, the clown, and the sexual exhibitionist. I position myself within the recently heated debate over the offensive nature of Crumb’s images, particularly the social justice reevaluation of his work as a result of the #MeToo movement. I frame the paper by responding to and forwarding arguments made in the recent article “Cancel Culture Comes for Counterculture Comics” by Brian Doherty, a senior editor at Reason. I hold that as a trickster figure, Crumb’s troubling cartoon representations of misogyny and “deviant” sexuality can be viewed as a desire to deliberately dispute, disrupt, and deconstruct the socially-constructed conventions and power dynamics of gender and sexuality, at the same time shifting the established boundaries of comics.
I contend that responses to Crumb’s disturbing images often occupy the extremes of admiration and... more I contend that responses to Crumb’s disturbing images often occupy the extremes of admiration and revulsion. My paper occupies the ambiguous threshold between these two positions, arguing that Crumb’s work is an embodied expression of the signifying trickster’s dual consciousness, simultaneously representing both the lofty role of the culture-hero and the sordid role of dirt-worker. I divide trickster consciousness into three interrelated modes of “shameless” expression: the con artist, the clown, and the sexual exhibitionist. I position myself within the recently heated debate over the offensive nature of Crumb’s images, particularly the social justice reevaluation of his work as a result of the #MeToo movement. I frame the paper by responding to and forwarding arguments made in the recent article “Cancel Culture Comes for Counterculture Comics” by Brian Doherty, a senior editor at Reason. I hold that as a trickster figure, Crumb’s troubling cartoon representations of misogyny and “deviant” sexuality can be viewed as a desire to deliberately dispute, disrupt, and deconstruct the socially-constructed conventions and power dynamics of gender and sexuality, at the same time shifting the established boundaries of comics.
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