Of Fritz and Bakshi

Ok, so we’ve made our first video-interviews that are still waiting to be edited. The interviewees are Bill Plympton and Ralph Bakshi, two names that carry a meaningful weight not only for the industry but also have a special space in my heart.

I’d like to talk about Ralph because, well, it’s been more than a decade since his last movie and he might need a bigger introduction. Thus I have decided to talk a little bit about Fritz the Cat. Don’t worry, I won’t be reviewing it, as many and better reviews can be found on the web. Besides, I don’t think I can be objective when it comes to Bakshi.

Because, you see, I love Ralph. He represents to me a kind of spirit that the arts have lost. He’s bluntly honest when he speaks and when he’s making movies. He may be wrong or contradictive, but he’ll never try to deceive you, not even for the sake of playing it cool. This may come out as harsh sometimes, and in these days it can be summarized as a politically-incorrect tone. But he’s not afraid to speak his mind.

And I think that’s freedom, a freedom we’re losing as our efforts go deeper and deeper into avoiding offending groups instead of saying something that’s true to ourselves. We’re becoming meek, too afraid of becoming ostracized if our thoughts speak too loud, too wrong. As Jeff Winger said on Community “keep it or lose it: either way you’re doing it for the sake of others. That’s what’s weak.”

Bakshi’s movies are deeply political but avoid politics. He’s not speaking as a right-wing lackey or left-wing zealot, but as a man. They’re like bombs that leave in shambles everything around them, like blades so sharp they cut their subjects clean, without meddling in the swamp. He strikes fast, hard and moves on. I was wrong: he’s not a man, he’s dynamite.

And that’s also why I like Fritz. Both, the character and the movie are in equal parts love letters and critiques to the culture and subcultures of the sixties. Fritz is by no means a hero and by no means a villain. He lives and breathes, f***’s up and redeems himself driven only by an insurmountable appetite for life. He can sum himself up better than us in the following phrase: “I've been up and down the four corners of this big old world! I've seen it all! I've done it all! I've fought many a good man, and laid many a good woman! I've had riches and fame and adventure...I've tasted life to the fullest, and still my heart cries out, yes, cries out in this hungry, tortured, wrecked quest: 'More!'”

And I don’t know about you, but at least part of me wishes I could coin those words for myself. Anyway, I’m digressing.

This film (as, really, any other in Bakshi’s filmography) works perfectly fine because Bakshi found a new language perfectly apt to talk about something specific. The cartoonish style of his early films reflects something more than a satire, something that conventional means of expression could not grasp. Like Hunter S. Thompson’s hallucinatory chronicles of America, they subvert reality and expose the inherit madness of their subject matters. Social commentary would do them no justice, as they both they tackle down the deep psychology, the subconscious roots of our social boundaries.

And that’s why they have aged so well. Now more than ever I think it’s a good time to revisit Bakshi’s work. I think that by today’s standards, his films are even more offensive than they were in the seventies. And we should be offended, and inspired, and remember the voice we lost to make a perfect human speech that has left us innocuous and the tools of discourse we so lovingly crafted, ineffective. We’ve got to remember that animation, the precious media we deal with around here, can be bolder and braver and say things in a way no other media can. Better yet, unearth the remains of our own appetite for life, allow ourself the jaded pleasure of seeking to live life to the fullest and maybe failing, instead of contenting ourselves with imitations. That's Fritz. And Bakshi can get us there, he can offend us in ways we thought we were un-offendable, stir the feelings we deemed dormant, because first, you gotta get MAHD!

Yeah, little quote from Network to start closing things up. Anyways, the interview with Bakshi was amazing. We’ll take a while longer to edit it because the audio was really bad and we’re doing subtitles to make listening to him easier on you. In the meantime, take some time to watch Fritz the cat and his early films. His words will have a different ring to themselves if you have the movies fresh in your mind.