Molly Crabapple on Making Art in a Turbulent World

Episode Transcript

Molly Crabapple We live in the most photography saturated era in history. There are more smartphones in the world than there are humans. There are very few people on this earth who have never had their photo taken. And there is no mystery or numina to a photo. We just pick up our little smartphones and hold it in front of our faces and click, click.

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Whereas, because drawing takes time, because drawing has all of the evidence of the human hand in it, it's a completely different relationship between subject and creator and also between subject and viewer. The drawing shows that human life was invested into the creation of the image in a way that sometimes photography doesn't.

Virginia Marshall This is Molly Crabapple. She’s an artist and writer who documents the extremes, from nightclubs to war zones. She’s also the author of several books, including Drawing Blood, her memoir and Brothers of the Gun, a memoir of the Syrian War co-written with Marwan Hisham.

When I sat down with Molly a couple of months ago, we talked about the difference between words and images, the power of cartoonists to disrupt fascism, and about the ground-breaking graphic novel Maus, which was the subject of our last episode. You probably heard clips from our interview with Molly Crabapple, but there was so much more that we couldn’t fit into that episode. So we’re sharing the full interview here as a bonus.

You’re listening to Borrowed and Returned: a podcast from Brooklyn Public Library about the books that have changed us, and changed America, too.

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Virginia Marshall We started our conversation by talking about the book that brought us into the studio: Maus, the graphic novel about the Holocaust written by Art Spiegelman. Molly Cabapple has Jewish heritage, too, so she had some understanding about the Holocaust before she encountered the book.

Molly Crabapple And I think one of the reasons that that book was so transformative for me and so transformative for so many people was that it resisted simple narratives. A lot of times when the Holocaust is taught, it's taught as something where the Jewish victims don't have full humanity, where they're all either like perfect Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt geniuses, or else they're doe-eyed children. And that's not true for any group of six million people, right? And I think one of the things that has always stayed with me for Maus is giving people back their complexity and their flawed humanity, even in the midst of horror.

Virginia Marshall Wow, yeah. Thank you. And you actually interviewed Art … at least in 2013, I read your interview for VICE. I don't know if you've met him at other points in your life?

Molly Crabapple Yeah, yeah, I've met him a few times. He's so wonderful. One of the many things I love about Art in addition to him being a super genius, obviously, is his commitment to resurrect these artists from the 20s and 30s, especially these like old school leftist Jewish artists who are so so so apt for this moment. Saving from the jaws of forgetfulness, right? That resurrection from the hole of history is something that he's done throughout his work. I mean also something that he did, right, by transforming what comics could do. And his joy in that when you see him in person is something that always strikes me.

Virginia Marshall But in that interview, at least for VICE, you asked him something towards the end, which I wanna ask you now, which is: what is it about cartoons that makes the powerful so angry? If you remember, you asked that to him. And just as we're thinking about book banning and how graphic novels and comics are under attack, it seems like, right now … I wonder if I could ask you, like, what is it about cartoons that makes the powerful, so angry?

Molly Crabapple I’ll start with an anecdote. Hitler actually had a list of British cartoonists that he wanted to murder as soon as he invaded the UK because they had hurt his pride so much. And what it is about comics that pisses off fascists so much is that one of the demands of fascists is that they do the most ludicrous things and in the most violent possible way, and then you have to take them seriously. And if you don't take them seriously, they will send you to a concentration camp. This is fundamental to all fascism, the demand to strut around pretending you're a werewolf or an ice god and murdering anyone who disagrees with you. And what cartoonists do is they skewer that. They say, ‘You're a pathetic flea, and I'm going to draw your pathetic, stupid, and repulsive inner essence, and people are going to laugh at you because you're pitiful.’ And when they do that, when they puncture fascists in that way, it makes them lash out so furiously. Because they've seen them, and what the fascist doesn't want is he doesn't wanna be seen for what he is.

Virginia Marshall Mm-hmm.Yeah, yeah, and it feels like a space, too, where truth can come out in a subversive way. [Laughs]

Molly Crabapple Exactly. Exactly. It doesn't have to be—you can say truths in a different way. You can, like, write around them. You can seduce people to them. You can lead people to them. You can make people laugh.

Virginia Marshall You make people laugh, yeah. And be very serious too. Like, one thing that Art said about his work that sort of stuck with me is that when he was depicting the Holocaust, he said it had to be horrible. Because when you're depicting acts of violence, it has to be true to that. And I know you have also drawn war and drawn suffering, and so I'm wondering, like, what decisions do you have to make when you're kind of depicting those awful moments in a person's life?

Molly Crabapple I remember probably the most brutal image I've done, which isn't necessarily an image that shows explicit violence, but it's the implications of it—was, I covered a story of these six prisoners who were in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania. They were called the Dallas Six. And they did an act of protest because someone was being tortured in their prison. They put up towels over the windows of their solitary confinement cells. And the guards responded by pumping the cells full of tear gas and coming in with electrified batons and electrified shields and beating them and stripping them and putting hoods over their head. And then the state charged them with rioting. And I started covering this because of the Orwellian abuse of language. Rioting is a group activity, you can't riot if you're locked alone in solitary. And the mother of one of these men gave me footage that was taken by the prison of the raids on her son and her son's comrades' cells. So I drew a picture of her son being dragged off with the hood by these guards. And, you know, I knew her son. He's like an amazing guy. He was funny, and smart, an artist, an ambitious guy. And to see him that way, being tortured by these representatives of the state, it nearly broke my brain. And I was trying to convey both the brutality of that, but in other pieces in the article, also to convey the amazing man her son was as well.

Virginia Marshall Mmm. And how, I guess, how did you make that decision in drawing? How did that come across?

Molly Crabapple I drew two pictures. I drew one of her son being brutalized and then another of her son with her, you know, smiling during one of those pictures that they take when family members visit their loved ones in prison.

Virginia Marshall Got it. Yeah, so showing those two aspects that you just talked about. Wow. I'm actually thinking about, you know, the power of comics to draw attention to things like war and things like these atrocities, and thinking about I guess, Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco's recent comic, right, on the war on Gaza and Palestine. Was—I guess, what did you think about that?

Molly Crabapple Oh my God, I thought it was brilliant. I thought I was brave, right? So many people have suffered such horrific personal and professional consequences for speaking out about the genocide in Gaza. And for someone like Art, who knows—I mean, he writes about it in the comic, he writes that his id knows that he's going to get so much grief for this—and to be like, no, my morals demand that I say something. I thought, first of all, it was just a profound act of moral courage, and I think, I mean, I'm personally really grateful to him for doing it.

Virginia Marshall Just thinking about Art, too, as a person who—not doesn't shy away from controversy—but speaks out at moments where he feels like he should. Like I'm thinking about Amadou Diallo, like he did a cartoon around that, and the Crown Heights riots, too. And so I wonder, like, you are also a person who kind of speaks out through your work. How do you decide where to … there's so much wrong in the world, right? How do you decide, like, this is the thing that needs my voice. How do you make that decision?

Molly Crabapple I think, you know, it's different for everything. I think probably above all else I'm a New Yorker, and this is where I was born. It's where my mom's family has lived for 120 years now. And I love this city so much. I love it in my bones. And so when there are things in the city that are hurting its people, that are making it so its people can't live here, that are impoverishing them or brutalizing them. Of course I would speak out about it. It's my city, right? It's my home.

Virginia Marshall Yeah, yeah, definitely. So things that are closer to home.

Molly Crabapple The things that are closer to home. And I think in a larger sense, I've always had a soft spot for really smart people who are in a situation where the world doesn't want to permit the possibility that they're smart, and I think a lot of my stories, that's part of the core, too. Like when I wrote about the Dallas Six prisoners, I came to the story because of the obvious Orwellian injustice of charging people with rioting who were in solitary, but I think that the reason that I stuck to the story was that they were amazing guys. They were clever, funny, solidaristic, amazing guys, and I wanted to spend time with them on the page. I wanted to get to know their story. I think those smart rebels against the order of the world have always been the subjects that most drew me.

Virginia Marshall Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And I wonder if I could ask you a question about your activism in your drawing and how the two intersect?

Molly Crabapple I don't really consider myself an activist.

Virginia Marshall Oh really? Okay, what would you say?

Molly Crabapple Um… what would I say about … ? Well, I just never liked the word activist. I feel like there's civic responsibility that we have, you know, as people to like participate in our society. And I feel they call it people calling themselves activists when it's not actually like their profession, it's a way of being like, I'm a special person doing something special. Whereas like we actually, all of us do have to have a basic level of civic participation.

Virginia Marshall Maybe the question then is like, how does your art interact with the world? Like how do you bring it into the world as a person?

Molly Crabapple Well, one of the things that I have always rebelled against is the idea that there's like this special art place called the “art world,” where you take art and you put it on a white wall, like a butterfly that you just killed right by putting it on display. And I was like, no, man, like art needs to be everywhere in life. And I think maybe some of this is my radical upbringing. Some of it is the fact that I just love illustration and I loved when art, like, is part of every aspect of life from your candy wrapper to your graffiti, to your dress, to everything. I think maybe some of it is a populist streak or just a rebellious streak that dislikes boundaries. But I have always been most honored when my art is out in the world, and particularly it's being held by people who perhaps the art world doesn't resonate with.

For instance, I documented this protest by taxi drivers. Taxi drivers had basically been tricked by New York City into taking these loans for up to a million dollars for their medallions. And now these drivers were in a sort of debt peonage where they were just like working all day, always just trying to service this loan that they could never pay back, and drivers were starting to commit suicide. So there was a protest encampment in front of City Hall by taxi drivers and also a hunger strike. And from the start of the protest encampment, I started going down to draw the guys and to interview them. This eventually became a cover story for The Nation. But I also gave the guys prints. And you know, drivers, despite being the people who literally move New York City, are often rendered invisible. A lot of the city's working class is rendered invisible. They're just treated like cogs. And so, for these drivers, they weren't necessarily used to people really, really looking at them the way that artists do. And when I did these drawings of these drivers and I gave them the prints, they would hold them as protest posters. They would hang them in the windows of their cars. And I don't know, that means more to me than a gallery show.

Virginia Marshall Wow, yeah. That’s really, really cool. I’m just thinking about their own faces on the sides of their cabs. Like that changes the way a person walks into their vehicle, like if they see, wow, there’s art here. Really cool. I wonder if I can talk about your current project a little bit.

Molly Crabapple Oh sure, of course.

Virginia Marshall I don’t know much about it, but you're working on a project about the Jewish Labor Bund? Is that correct?

Molly Crabapple Yes, yes, I am.

Virginia Marshall So what drew you there? What's the story that you're drawn to?

Molly Crabapple Well, my great-grandfather was a post-impressionist painter. He was not like a fabulously successful painter, but he was still someone who was in the Smithsonian and who I grew up completely surrounded with his artwork. And my great-grandfather taught my mom to draw, and my mom taught me draw. So I feel like I was transmitted the artistic gift through him. My great-grandpa Sam did 600 paintings of the world of the shtetl that he came from in Belarus, a shtetl called Volkovsk. They covered every aspect of life, from him at 12 spying in the women's bathhouse, to reading the Torah on the night of Yom Kippur, to him as a bad boy in a religious school, when his teacher fell asleep lighting his teacher's beard on fire. [Laughs] So every aspect of life/ But there was one that I was obsessed with. It showed a young woman and she's wearing a little corset, long skirt, hair is all done up kind of like a Gibson girl and she is standing in an alleyway throwing a rock through a window. And her boyfriend is next to her with a bag of rocks—because the lady should not carry her own rocks—and it was titled ‘Itka the Bundist.’

And I remember the first time I came across, and it was probably in my teens, I was like, what's a Bundist? And so that question became the thread that led me to discovering and learning about and eventually writing a massive book about the Jewish Labor Bund, which was a secular, socialist revolutionary Jewish party that was born in the Czarist empire—one of the most racist places against Jews on earth—whose demands were that they should be able to live as Jewish people in their Eastern European homeland in freedom and in dignity and in safety. And who did not just say this as an appeal to the better nature of others, but who backed it up with armed force.

Virginia Marshall Wow. And so your grandfather was part of that movement?

Molly Crabapple Yeah, he was part of that movement, yeah. He joined it as, like, a broke young leather worker. And it was a mixture of, like a labor union that was fighting, you know, for their basic rights as workers, with sort of like a self-education society that where they were like reading Marx in illegal libraries, mixed with like an armed paramilitary group that was trying to overthrow the state.

Virginia Marshall Wow. And also thinking about the heritage, right, like you're writing about your grandfather's story, thinking about Art Spiegelman too, it's like he has inherited a different story. And yet there is a rich tradition of Jewish illustrators and cartoonists, like do you see yourself kind of in that lineage as well?

Molly Crabapple Oh my God, absolutely. I mean, that's one of the reasons I'm so obsessed with Art’s projects of historical reclamation. I feel like there's this huge lineage of Jewish leftist artists that is so formative to like the visual culture of New York, as well as Europe, but especially like New York City that created such powerful work. And I think that all of us are the heirs and beneficiaries of that.

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Virginia Marshall Molly Crabapple’s new book about the history of the Jewish Labor Bund is called Here Where We Live Is Our Country, and it’s available for preorder. We’ll put a link to it in our show notes.  Next week, we’ll have our last episode of the series: all about Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. So stay tuned.

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Virginia Marshall Borrowed and Returned is a production of Brooklyn Public Library. It’s written and produced by me, Virginia Marshall, and co-hosted with Adwoa Adusei. You can read a transcript of this episode and our show notes at BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] podcasts.  

Adwoa Adusei  Brooklyn Public Library relies on the support of individuals for many of its most critical programs and services. To make a gift, please go to BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] donate. Our Borrowed advisory team is made up of Nick Higgins, Fritzi Bodenheimer, Robin Lester Kenton, and Damaris Olivo. Jennifer Proffitt and Ashley Gill run our social media. Laurie Elvove designed our logo. 

Virginia Marshall That’s it for this episode. Until next time… keep re-reading.