TO LAUGH OR NOT TO LAUGH? BORDERLINE HUMOUR IN ROBERT CRUMB’S COMIX
TO LAUGH OR NOT TO LAUGH? BORDERLINE HUMOUR IN ROBERT CRUMB’S COMIX

Summary/Abstract: Dwelling on an interdisciplinary approach of underground contemporary American comics, especially Robert Crumb’s intentionally unapologetic depictions of gender roles and gender politics, this paper looks into how the mechanisms of parody and caricature are able to produce seemingly divergent effects, which depend inasmuch on the author’s intentions as they do on the consumer’s cultural and ideological background. Humour and pathos, as well as revolt and outrage may all be triggered by the parodic (mis)representation of caricature, which makes it fascinating to study the underlying capacity of such visual distortions to evoke very different strong emotional responses, but also to subvert well-established societal and cultural models and ideologies. Departing from well-established definitions of parody in contemporary literary theory and expanding to applying them in the field of gender studies, this article is trying to expose and explore the subversive streak of humour, as it comes across in Crumb’s underground comics. To this purpose, it investigates how the excess and transgression of caricature are used to ideologically destabilize and interrogate long-lasting concepts and patterns of behaviour such as gender and gender roles, while still eliciting a comic effect. Also, this study seeks to identify the root causes of the general public’s divergent responses to Crumb’s visual narratives, which are often viewed as offensive and outrageous while, at the same time, brilliantly comic and anti-canonical. Borderline humour is thus defined as that incredibly thin line between witty mockery and straightforward offence.

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