Some time within the last 20 years, R. Crumb was interviewed–I think it was in The Comics Journal–and he dismissed movies like Silence of the Lambs on the grounds that they were law enforcement propaganda, trying to convince us that there are murderers around every corner and thank God the police are here to keep us safe from them.
I’m trying to find the original quote. Can any comics fans on SDMB help me out here?
That was in the Comics Journal last year. The interview is here .
Here’s the beginning of that part of the discussion:
I think there’s about as much reason for concern as there is for food additives, or anything else where in order to sell more of something they pander to the lowest common denominator, to people’s weaknesses, to their fears. They’re debasing and degrading the whole population. There’s probably as much of that in pornography or violent movies or television soap operas. It’s all part of the giant lie that the media perpetrates and these people buy it. The fucking daily newspapers, you know the way they write the news up: It’s full of fear and paranoia and it plays on your worst emotions.
That’s getting back to Silence of the Lambs and Texas Chainsaw Massacre . The big difference between what they do and what I do is that I honestly express myself, even at the risk of people looking at me with horror and thinking I’m a monster. I’m willing to take that chance because I’ve got to get that out. But in a movie like Silence of the Lambs, the way they portrayed the serial killers and the sexual aberrations makes people afraid that there’s some guy like that lurking behind every telephone pole. This makes people more willing to bow to authority, as if the FBI really knows what it’s doing, and every weird-looking guy on the street should be locked up.
That’s what you come out of that movie with: Anybody with weird sexual quirks or who engages in unusual behavior is potentially a killer or a dangerous person. It creates a terrible atmosphere of fear; that atmosphere of fear probably causes more violence and anger and rage than anything else.
Actually, that movie was more liberal than most because the weird doctor, Hannibal Lecter, gets away in the end. He’s portrayed as a cool guy. Although, I don’t know how healthy that is either. But then they have this square-up. The FBI girl, who’s completely pristine in any sexual motivation whatsoever, kills the weird pervert guy, which reinforces the deepest, most puritanical fears and repressive attitudes.
It’s cynical and pandering. It made me feel bad. There were hundreds of young college kids getting out of the theater at the same time I was in Davis, and I just felt like one of the creepy, pervert guys in that movie, that I shouldn’t be in the same world with all these healthy, young college co-eds. I’ll do something bad to them.
37 minutes. Awesome! Thanks.