The World Is Passing You By
It had been some time since there was an animator other than Walt Disney who left his mark on the animated feature film. The last people who were artistically and financially competitive with the man in the feature film business were the Fleschier Brothers, but they would be gone from the picture by the early 1940’s. In the decades that followed Walt Disney had a virtual monopoly over the art form since he was the only man who had the capital and brand recognition to produce a successful animated feature. It is for that reason why feature animation was played by the Disney rules for so long. But this all changed rather explosively a few years following Walt’s death when an up and coming New York animator named Ralph Bakshi challenged the status quo of the industry. And man did Bakshi challenge them with what was perhaps the most shocking animated film ever made at that time. Ralph Bakshi had intended for “Fritz the Cat” (1972), based Robert Crumb’s popular underground comic strip, to be the antithesis of the Disney animated film. Bakshi was never enamored with Walt Disney’s animation aesthetic because he felt the Disney studio was short changing animation with their family friendly cartoons. He believed that the art form had to stand up for something meaningful about the times in order to remain relevant with contemporary audiences. To Bakshi the Disney animated films, fairly or not, were disconnected from the modern world because of the studio’s preference for safe formulaic films. What mattered to him was not the amount of money put into producing “quality” animation, but the content of the film itself. As far as he was concerned Disney Animation was holding back the art form from fulfilling its true potential. Disney Animation was not the only target on Bakshi’s radar. He was critical of other animation houses in the industry who were complacent in continuing the perception that animation should be for all ages…in other words just for kids. The general consensus in the town was to just stay inside their tiny bubble and not pay attention to all the change that was happening around them. This belief earned Bakshi no love from veteran animators who actually paid for newspaper advertisements denouncing his work as trash. Yet this creative vacuum and debate opened the door to a new breed of animators Bakshi needed who also believed animation was losing respect because it was not seen as a serious art form. In a perverse way Bakshi ended up with the same ambition as Walt Disney had in their determination of redefining animation as a sophisticated form of storytelling to the public. Bakshi’s film was speaking to an audience that was being ignored by the mainstream studios. His audience were the kind who were wondering why the art from was not connecting with them. Why can’t there be an animated film that was made by adults be catered toward adults? Should there not be a cartoon that raised well-meaning questions regarding the state of our lives? Were there any written rules that stipulated that animation had to avoid all of the issues of the day? If society praises the nude paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci as a work of art then shouldn’t animation be regarded to that standard with its depiction of nudity? My God there was finally a contemporary animated film that answered these questions and spoke directly to adults.
I liked how Bakshi developed Fritz as a lost soul in search for something meaningful in his life. Fritz may be a feline but he comes across as human as any one of us. The situations, questions, and problems he faces are believable because we find ourselves at one point or another in Fritz's shoes. You have a young individual who is trying to find his place in the world and figuring out what is wrong with the society he lives in. The scene where we see Fritz question himself inside his mind is a profound moment that you seldom see in a cartoon. Fritz is also not you typical animated protagonist of the day either. He is a smooth talker and indulges in sex & drugs to satisfy his needs. He is naïve about the true intentions interest groups have behind their agendas. Fritz can be a coward when he chooses not to help someone who is subjected to a morally deplorable situation. For several decades it was rule of thumb for animated films to have flawless heroes as the protagonists. Not since Walt Disney's Ichabod Crane did we see a protagonist who is capable of doing right and wrong. Yet despite those choices we do not hate the guy because the film does not make him so intolerable to the point we can't understand his wants and desires. The film succeeds when it directly confronts the hot button issues of the day. Race, Drugs, Sex, Politics, Religion, Sexuality, you name it…everything is left on the table. I always thought the scene introducing Fritz to the trio of politically correct girls with the gay black crow was very telling. I would have loved to have seen the reaction of the first audiences when they saw how the entire conversation unfolded. It was Bakshi telling his audience this was the cartoon you’ve all been waiting for. And that was just the beginning as the plot unfolds with Fritz getting caught up in a race war between the crows & the pigs and is then stuck in a radical leftist group that plans to bomb buildings for the revolution. The film takes no prisoners with its critique on society. It indicts the authorities as being corrupt with power, minorities for allowing the system to take advantage of their interests, and the counter culture for resorting to terrorist methods to accomplish their agenda at the expense of others. It is true that the lingo and caricatures of the film may offend today's audiences, but keep in mind the film was reflecting the times and that it was made in a different period from our own. The art direction and animation of the film is a stark contrast from the mainstream animated films of the era. Bakshi purposely created a more independent style of animation that was reflective of the underground comic book scene of the 1960’s and 70's. Bakshi had not only a new breed of animators working under him but extremely talented animators from the Golden Age of Animation like Virgil Ross and Manuel Perez contributing as well. The backgrounds and character designs are nicely detailed with minutia cross hatches and Rapidograph line work that are remarkably close to the designs of Robert Crumb. The authentic look to the film’s world was accomplished by tracing over the photographs of actual locations in New York City and a painterly coat for the Ashcan style aesthetic that was popular in the city. A number of backgrounds play around with perspective and are devised with a fish-eye lens or long pan shots in mind. Some shots are even animated in their entirety to give the impression that the camera is moving around the scene as it would in a live action film. What also added to the film’s realism of the city was the sound. Bakshi wanted the voices heard in the film to realistically reflect how the people lived in the city. The animator, who was a resident of the Bronx, would go to the local bars and streets and record whatever miscellaneous sound he could find for the film. The vast majority of the characters were not voiced by professional thespians but by regular people Bakshi ran into during these excursions into the streets. The sounds were not recorded in the studio so they lacked the sharpness of a professional recording; however, they gained a freshness and authenticity that would not have been achievable inside a sterile room. In addition, Bakshi allowed the actors to speak loosely and candidly in their character which adds a bit of freshness to their dialogue.
The film has its issues though. It can be fairly argued that more can be positively said for what the film represented for its time rather than its story-line. Bakshi can’t help but get carried away with the amount of shock humor he uses for the film. The low brow scene where Fritz is “doing it” with the black female crow, while having some truly kinetic animation, runs a bit too long for its own good. The climax where a young female horse is being physically whipped with a bloody chain by the counter culture terrorists comes across as gratuitously violent. The attempts to shock audiences with content like the aforementioned come into conflict with the sociopolitical and philosophical themes the film is trying to explore. Bakshi could have aimed Fritz to be a sophisticated animated satire along the lines of something like Charlie Chaplan's “Modern Times”, and indeed he would reach that level with his masterpiece, "Heavy Traffic". But with "Fritz the Cat", Bakshi was more concerned with making a loud cartoon that was very much a product of its time, which in his defense was the point he was trying to make. The plot line is actually based loosely on three stories from Robert Crumb's popular underground comic strip. But as it has been said over the years, Crumb's influence lessened as Bakshi's view takes over the story by the end of the film. This creates an imbalance as Crumb's original themes get lost to Bakshi's numerous attempts to push the buttons. Crumb had signed off on the film (via his wife) and was seen in a few pre-release material as supporting the project. But in the years gone by he grew to passionately hate the film for a number of reasons. Crumb believed Bakshi lazily created the film through his personal perspective since the animator chose to not directly adapt the author’s strips. He was also upset about the abundance of sex and violence that appeared in the film. To him Bakshi misconstrued to the public his comic strip whose satirical nature was essential to his artwork. The final straw though was with the characterization of Fritz, particularly during the last act where the character Crumb saw on the screen was not the same one he had written in his comic strips. His outrage over the film led him to actually kill off Fritz in his comic strip so as to ensure there would be no more films made off from his character. (As it turns out there was a sequel, but thats another story for another time). When the movie was finally released on April 12, 1972 it caused shock waves throughout the industry. “Fritz the Cat” was among the top ten grossing films of the year and it earned 100 million dollars at the box office globally. The kind of money the film earned was something only the Disney animated films could achieve. But it was the critical acclaim for Fritz that even the storied studio could not help but be envious about. Fritz received love from institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and accolades from influential film critics such as Vincent Canby, Gene Siskel, and Roger Ebert. Equally important the movie received support from amongst the intellectual animation circle from the likes of Ward Kimball and Chuck Jones. And lastly it captured the imagination of the young people who were hungry for the art form to venture forth into new territory.
Bakshi’s audience was not the same as Disney’s audience so he posed no threat to their family brand as Don Bluth would have a decade later. “Fritz the Cat”, however, proved that Disney was no longer the only animation house in the industry that could churn out successful animated films. The critical and financial success of “Fritz” showed that there was a public demand to make animated films that were not of the Disney formula. Consequently younger audiences no longer viewed Disney as the standard bearer of animation…now they had Ralph Bakshi to speak for them. And that was more than enough to show that the Disney Studio was painfully behind as the world was passing them by. “Fritz the Cat” is still a strong film from the time and context it was made. The film sent a message to the industry that animation could be aimed for adults alone. It opened the door for future adult cartoons like “The Simpsons” and “South Park” to satirize on the topics of their era. It was a trailblazer for its time, and even today it still is in my opinion.
