SATIRE

Topor: "Some people don't like when I show what's in their mind"

by Joe Szabo

Sitting in his studio in a pleasant, well-to-do neighborhood of northwestern Paris, I am overwhelmed by the crowded walls, stacks, and rolls of original drawings, paintings, posters, and three dimensional dreams of Roland Topor.

A typewriter, halfway between us on the table, tired of taking long hours of constant pounding, is given a break. We are sitting right next to it, and I can see that inside, an unfinished page of manuscript is ready for a nap stretched out and bent backward.

Topor proudly points out the paintings of his father, who, as a Jew, fled Poland in the 1930s to move to a less threatening part of the Old Continent. Al-though he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he credits his father as the man he learned the most from. "What-ever I was doing was always good, but there were rules to follow," he says.

Speaking in articulate English, he makes it clear at the beginning of our conversation, that he doesn't like to be called a cartoonist. That is a limitation Topor vehemently resents. He enjoys being just a free man who loves to do cartoons, but is equally intrigued to do illustrations and paintings, and write screenplays, song lyrics, direct shows, and design puppets.

Tele Chat, a popular TV show, provides him with his "bread & butter." He designs character images and costumes for the show, but is also involved in other creative aspects of the production.

"I like the word 'also.' I'm also a cartoonist," Topor says. "I don't want to be reduced to a single function. I don't like specialization."

"I am interested in humor, but not actuality, nor ambiguity, rather in-between," he declares. When I ask him about comics, he shakes his head: "I am a free man. Comic book artists become employees; I don't want to be one."

In the early years when he tried his hands at cartoons, Punch and The New Yorker magazines turned him down, saying that his work was "too amateurish." "I stay amateur," he says with a smile that radiates a sense of the self-confidence of a very successful pro.

Maurice Horn, editor of The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, says that Topor is a master of black humor who blends the most far-out and disturbing images into a deceptively classical style. In his entry, he quotes Michael Melot of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, saying that "Roland Topor is not only an original draftsman but a researcher who bursts out of the traditional bounds of thought."

Topor emphasizes the importance of spirit and enjoyment, and the escape from boredom. Not wanting always to do the same thing the same way, he is constantly experimenting, which occasionally gets him into confrontations.

"When you change your style, and an art director calls you to do a job, he or she expects you to do it in a certain style. This is the most perverse censorship, that obliges you to work the same way you did ten years earlier," Topor says passionately. "I never cooperate with requests for preliminary sketches, and I am very selective to work only with nice people," he adds. If they ask for his work, they will get it, "and that's unpredictable."

It's impossible not to notice that sexual images turn up in greater number in his work than anything else. I can sense that my questions in this area don't surprise him. "Why should the famous be treated preferentially? Faces are only for them. But sexuality is part of everybody's being. I hate hierarchy. When naked, everybody is the same. Sexual organs are considered 'dirty parts' of the body. I wonder why. This is stupid. We come from them. Everybody. We were not born from an ear or nose. There is nothing wrong with picturing or making fun of sexuality. It's just another natural part of our lives."

Topor says that imaging sexuality should be natural, but some people "don't like when I show what's in their mind."

Relationships also take a share of his "escaping boredom" philosophy. "I am monogamous, but for periods in different times," he says with a chuckle.

I am looking at the cover of his biographical book. There is a picture of a woman's bare body between the waist and mid-thigh. In the middle, in an upside-down dark triangle, there is a face. I ask him about the symbolism. "It's a church," he says, pointing at the body of the woman, "and that is the devil in the middle." I think of his earlier objections about genitals being considered "dirty" by many people, and wonder why he called the same part "devil" this time. But he goes on, and we are already on another subject.

"I don't believe in generalization, and I don't judge others," he says. "Everybody should be freer than they are. Too much fear is control. People are manipulated. They are given desires like a car, house, dog, or religion, and it's terrible that many are doing things that they are told. They have no opinion and no courage to step out of the expectations of their environment. People become more and more bourgeois because they are weak in the daily confrontations in society. A society that is driven by fear. I have fear too, but I am trying to get rid of the unnecessary fears.Physically I am a coward, and (although society keeps putting pressure on), I don't want to be obliged to be a hero."

I notice that Topor is getting tired (or bored?), and is ready for the continued challenge of beating up on his typewriter. The sleeping paper in it, no doubt, will wake up at the first blast and will be "obliged to be a hero." Unlike its master, it has no choice. Obedience, conformism, control, boredom, and repetitious work are in order to serve the flamboyant and unconventional.