En mi editorial del número que presentamos este viernes comento un poco el tema de lo estirados y pesados y stalinistas que pueden llegar a ser muchos de los activistas políticos que nos rodean. Creo que es culpa suya que la mayoría de la población no se echen a la calle a hacer la revolución como un solo hombre (bueno, ellos y la tele). Porque ¿quien quiere una revolución en la que luego haya que soportar a esos plastas?
Después de American Splendor he estado buscado como un loco por internet cosas relacionadas con Harvey Pekar y Robert Crumb y he encontrado una entrevista muy buena en la que raja a gusto de los estirados de turno.
Me identifico totalmente con lo que dice, podeis leer la entrevista completa aquí, es muy interesante
SB: Anyway, you're not interested in depicting politics and politicians.
RC: Not like you do. You got that whole thing covered really well. There's no need for anybody else.
SB: You are quite strongly political and you have worked for worthy political magazines in your time.
RC: I'm kind of disillusioned.
SB: What was the name of the magazine you worked on?
RC: There were several - one was called Winds of Change. They all meant well and they all had high ideals and all that, but God, what a pain in the ass they were. Was it John Waters who said, "Leftwing radicals tend to generally be humour-impaired"? You could never do anything to please them - they wanted everything changed. They wanted you to be their hand, for their very specific idea, which was usually pretty heavy-handed.
SB: But you went along with it.
RC: Because I had those ideals. It was a good cause.
SB: You still have those ideals?
RC: I don't know. I'm very disillusioned now.
SB: But you've been disillusioned all along in a way, haven't you?
RC: No, in 1970-71, I believed in all that stuff, that there should be a revolution to bring in the socialist paradise. I believed that, all my friends believed in that, the whole youth culture did. Just waiting for "the rev", we used to call it. It was very strong. Maybe you're too young to remember what it was like.
SB: Oh no, I remember. That was very much in vogue.
RC: I used to worry, was my work revolutionary enough? Was I too bourgeois? Was I just a bourgeois, self-indulgent, existentialist? I was very frowned upon by a lot of people. So they want you to be very specifically political in a very specific way. It was about making a very specific political statement. And if you held aloof from that - "Well, I'm an artist..." - that's not correct.
SB: And that artist thing...
RC: That's a bourgeois idea. Stalin did away with that in Russia. [Makes popping sound]
