![]() ![]() He casts a wide cultural scope, from Looney Tunes to sword and sorcery. He grew up loving cartoons and eventually made his own. ![]() Ralph Bakshi was born in the British Mandate of Palestine before his family moved to a predominately black Brooklyn neighborhood, which he claims grew his sensitivity to African American issues and certainly contributed to the autobiographical Heavy Traffic. He doesn’t want the revolution to succeed. This is the real fraud of Crumb and why film Fritz’s speech about real revolution pushed his buttons and exposed his immaturity- he’s not a revolutionary, because that would imply at least the hope of social success and acceptance. His rejection of Bakshi’s masterpiece adaptation is really just the same sour grapes that led to his resentment of “Keep on Trucking”, the delightfully meaningless bromide that would become the bane of his existence. He embraces counterculture but eschews hippie affiliation, and when he becomes part of the establishment- not because he’s become more conservative but because society has shifted – he’s in trouble. ![]() Crumb, a lapsed middle-America Catholic and proto-hipster- note his trademark fedora and informed but insubstantial affinity for old jazz records (not unlike Seymour in Crumb fosterling Clowes’s Ghost World, these old white men seem more interested in the medium than the music) – never seemed comfortable in his own skin or with his own crowd. Perhaps we can glean some sense of their cultural sensibilities from their backgrounds. Well, who was right? Why such a clash? On paper, Bakshi the animator would seem like a perfect match for Crumb’s oversexed comics. This speech, eschewing violence for love and closing with a quote from The Beatles, is what Crumb took most issue with, calling it “red-neck and fascistic” and insisting Bakshi was putting words into the kitty cat’s mouth he would never write. The love you give is equal to the love you get. And when you get right down to it…that’s where it’s really at. You don’t know what a real revolution is. You’re full of shit! All you care about…is a reason to hurt, to destroy, to blow up. After falling in with some violent revolutionaries with a perchance for swastikas and gang rape (keep that in mind when Crumb implicitly takes their side), Fritz ultimately refuses to participate in their terrorism, and denounces them with the following speech. More strikingly, Crumb takes issue with the film’s climax, where wayward Fritz finally matures and makes a moral decision. ![]() It’s like real repressed horniness he’s kind of letting it out compulsively.” Pictured: Less twisted than Bakshi? … It’s compulsive or something…like that sex attitude in it very much. It’s really twisted in some kind of weird, unfunny way. In a way, it’s more twisted than my stuff. There’s something real repressed about it. “It’s weird: it’s really a reflection of Ralph Bakshi’s confusion, you know. Amongst his complaints were the sexual content, which was perverse, but not Crumb’s shade of perverse. Robert Crumb, creator of the character, hated Ralph Bakshi’s movie and was not afraid to say it. Yet all were not pleased with this pornographic pussy’s cinematic outing. 1972’s Fritz The Cat, the movie, was a seminal cultural moment, the first X-rated cartoon, an adaptation of a notorious counterculture brought to the big screen and grossing nearly 100 million worldwide, remaining the most successful independent animated feature of all time. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |