Art and words by Derf Backderf
Editor Charles Kochman
Designer Pamela Notarantonio
Managing Editor Jen Graham
Production Manager Kathy Lovisolo
Published by Abrams ComicArts in 2015.
. . .
"Think of the economy as a giant digestive tract. And we're here at the rectum of the free market to clean it all up."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
This one's about the life cycle of garbagemen. A guy's living at home post high school. He blew off going to college, because maybe he didn't have the best grades, or maybe he didn't see the point of getting albatrossed with student debt, or a combination of both, so he goes job hunting for that entry level fruit, and soon enough he's hanging on the back of a truck.
At first he's repulsed by shit-filled diapers, writhing maggots, swarms of flies, dead dogs, and cans filled with liquid waste 'cooked' by the summer sun. But you do the same thing day in, day out, and suddenly it's not such a big deal. You can get used to anything. Sure, the inclement weather sucks. And having to lift heavy-ass pianos and all manner of busted up appliances and machinery is a bum deal-but you're young. You've got body to burn. And the rest of your life to figure out how the fuck to escape your hometown, to escape the life of a garbageman. Maybe you'll even be pushed to take the leap into the void of student loans. Or you could decide to work in sanitation for life. Fuck it, right?
Trashed is a fictional story, but it's backed up by real facts and figures about the ever expanding amount of waste that the USofA's ever growing capitalist economy calls into existence. The working class story of the garbagemen is interwoven with documentary style expositions of the grandiose scale of the landfills required to disappear our All-American super jumbo sized mountains of waste, and the delusions necessary to effect such erasure. Recycling is nice, but insufficient. Our garbage weighs in at triple digits of millions of tons. Styrofoam does not biodegrade. Plastic water bottles reproduce exponentially. Disposible diapers lose none of their allure. Electronic waste production probably already exceeds the human birthrate. To say nothing of improperly disposed dangerous chemicals and industrial byproducts.
Toxic waste gets through the phony barriers lining the 'fills, and into the water supply. Methane gas accumulates and sparks off now and again into explosions. All the figures are underestimates. Politics and capital distort the truth, thus distorting policy, thus passing the shit-caked buck onto future generations.
And climate change only makes the summers more extreme. The soup in those trash cans boils ever hotter. Yum-yum.
Author Derf Backderf doesn't hide the grim realities, but he also manages to tell an endearing story. Yes, shit is fucked at the systems level; but the garbagemen are resilient. They see their situation for what it is, and they establish a camaraderie around both their hardships and in knowing the dirty secrets of capitalism. They know the solution is to drastically reduce consumption. All metrics indicate that consumption absolutely must increase for capitalism to maintain life functions. Therefore, consumption increases. And so it goes. Shit is permafucked.
Backderf uses two page spreads to evoke the reeking grandeur of landfills. He uses cutaway schematics to break down the layers and processes of how garbage accumulates. The mixture of fictional narrative and documentary reminded me of the Scorsese movies Goodfellas and Casino. These movies and this comic book all deal with crooked, destructive processes that have a compelling, almost fateful power to them. Of course, Trashed doesn't suggest that the life of a garbageman has the seductive allure of being a gangster or playing on the house's side of the poker table, but there's something appealing about seeing a side of life most would prefer not to think about, right? Why be a normie consumer asshole when you can be a hip insider, eh?
Trashed shows how municipal waste collection works on the macro scale, but also includes highly localized vignettes about how capitalist erasures are also linked to conservative family values. At one point, our garbagemen are obliged to pick up used condoms and beer cans from a little league playing field so Moms and Dads can go on pretending that their teenagers are perfectly pure and unsullied. Beats funding evidence-based sex education in public schools, y'know? Just throw that shit in the landfill, too, while we're at it!
Lots of gross'n'gritty details: roadkill cleanup; racist co-workers; not-so-secret rightwing Nazi scum campaigning for local elections; walking in tall grass to collect piss bottles thrown out the window by drivers on their way to wherever; the quirky freebies-porno mags, furniture,boots-to which sanitation workers help themselves; crashes, accidents, injuries-Trashed is fun in the way it is told, but the fun comes at a cost.
I kinda want Backderf to do a sequel focused on nuclear waste, but that's probably just me. Backderf would be the cartoonist to do it, tho'. Trashed 2: Goin' Nuclear. It could happen. No, I'm never careful what I wish for . . .
One double page spread basically gives it all away: a four hundred foot deep landfill in which you could bury Cinderella's Castle, the Flatiron Building, Big Ben, and the Statue of Liberty. Except you can't. 'Cause it's filled with garbage. With more on the way.
So . . . now you know.
Shit is permafucked.
But at least you know.
That, I suppose, is the secret glamour of being a garbageman.
