I wrote this essay for a subject entitled “From Mickey to Manga: Understanding the Animated Image“. Teaching the history of animation is a great idea, but this was by far one of the worst courses I did at UniSA. The entire module was only offered in the uni holidays, and it was only taught online in a program called Second Life. If you don’t know what Second Life is, then consider yourself lucky. The aim of the essay is to analyse a historically significant animated film, so being the punk rocker I am, I chose the most controversial film I could think of (outside of certain Japanese films.) I managed to score a HD for my essay, which I find a little surprising, because upon re-reading it has a number of spelling errors (which I have now fixed). If you are a student DO NOT REFERENCE ME! While I plan to be reference worthy some day, at the moment my opinions are worth dick all. I HAVE however included my own reference list at the bottom of the page which you are welcome to use.

An Anaylisis of Fritz the Cat

About the Film

Fritz the Cat is a 78 minute feature length animated film, written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. As of 2010, it is the highest grossing independent animated film of all time, costing under one million dollars to produce and making over one hundred million dollars worldwide. The film is based off the comic book series Fritz The Cat, created by alternative comic book artist Robert Crum. The film is about Fritz, an anthropomorphic cat living in New York City and the misadventures he gets into. The film’s characters were animated using traditional 2D animation, the same as Warner Brothers and Walt Disney cartoons of the time, using painted backgrounds and characters drawn and painted onto frames of plastic sheeting before being photographed with an animation camera to be placed onto film (Bordwell & Thomson, 1993).

Fritz the Cat is well known being one of the first ever animations to target only adults as an audience. It is even better known for being the first ever animated cartoon to be given an X rating. Bakshi started the project with the intent of creating an animated film that distanced itself from the ‘Disney Storytelling’ style of film, popular among children and families (Johnston & Thomas, 1995). Instead he wrote a satire film set in the 1960’s to target the growing population of adults drawn to animated films, a bold move considering the high risk involved in creating an animated feature film (Lenburg, 2009). Fritz the Cat was social commentary about the lifestyle led by college students during the sixties. It includes frequent drug use, sex, violence and strong language. It also featured mature themes such as racism and politics, topics which were far too controversial to be properly explored by Disney.

Fritz the Cat has an episodic structure. There is not one common goal throughout the film but several smaller stories. The film was written this way by Ralph Bakshi so that if funding dried up or the film was a flop it could be split up and distributed in different ways (Gibson & McDonnell, 2008). The first Act is about Fritz picking up 3 girls and having sex with them at a party, where all the characters smoke marajuana. Two police, humorously represented by pigs, raid the party. Fritz manages to escape, after a chase through a church, back to his college dorm. The second part begins when Fritz befriends a Black Crow named Duke. They steal a car and drive to a pot dealer’s house to escape the police (the same two cops who were chasing Fritz earlier). Fritz smokes too much and decides he must lead the black crows in Harlem to a revolution against the police. This results in Duke getting shot when the police come, along with tanks and jets to stop the riot. Fritz escapes by hiding in a trash can. Act 3 begins when his girlfriend Winston Schwartz finds him and they drive across country to escape the police. Fritz quickly finds Winston too controlling and escapes from her. He eventually winds up with a religious cult who plans to blow up a power plant.

Themes in Mainstream Animation and Fritz the Cat

Sexuality

Surprisingly, the differences between Fritz the Cat and a Warner Brothers Cartoon’s are not as great as you might think. Sexuality is a huge element of the film, Fritz’s main goal throughout the film is to have sex with any girl he possibly can. While this is not quite the case in a Warner Brother’s Cartoon or Disney Film, the suggestion of sex is often implied. For example in the Walt Disney Production Private Snafu: Booby Traps (1944) the protagonist, Private Snafu, excitedly runs into a room filled with prostitutes. We think his excitement is at the attractive, overly sexualized, women but he comically runs past them to inspect the piano.

Sexuality is also evident in Warner Brothers Animations, where Bugs Bunny will often disguise himself as an attractive woman to deceive the film’s antagonist (Bouldin, 2000). Because these films are usually watched by children, sex is only implied and never shown. Fritz the Cat on the other hand features several sex scenes complete with nudity. The film opens with Fritz and his friends playing guitars in a park trying to impress girls. Fritz meets three girls and tricks them into thinking he is an intellectual stating “I’ve been up and down the four corners of this big old world. I’ve seen it all and I’ve done it all. I’ve fought many a good man, and I’ve laid many a good woman.” He claims that he know a place they can all ‘join souls in sacred truth’ which turns out to be an orgy in a bathtub.

Race Relationships

Fritz the Cat makes light of what are usually considered serious issues, another feature that separates it from other animations of the time. The theme of racial understanding is present in the film, which Bakshi uses as a technique to humorously show the arrogance of college students, but also results in a humorous dialogue exchange. Bakshi represents all the black people as Black Crows in the film and white people as cats, dogs, rabbits or horses. The character Fritz is a poseur (Gibson & McDonnell, 2008) who is confident in his own superiority, despite the fact he is lazy and all he essentially does is have sex and take drugs. At one point he angrily rants about his college friends who are too busy studying to pay any attention to him.

“You think learning is a really big thing an’ you become this big fuckin’ intellectual and sit around tryin’ ta out-intellectual all the other big fuckin’ intellectuals…”

Frustrated he leaves and goes to a Black Crow’s Bar and begins a discussion with one of the Crows named Duke, ironically contradicting his previous monologue claiming that he understands what the Crows must have gone through as he studied the race problem and Duke snaps back saying that “you gotta be a Crow to understand the race problem!” To which Fritz replies; “Listen man, this thing affects me very deeply fella. As a cat, I have a considerable guilt complex because my kind has always brought suffering on your kind.” This fully explains Bakshi’s humorous symbolism, comparing of the past relationships of African American people and white people to the animal kingdom.

Violence

Violence is another element present in Disney and Warner Brothers Animations. Usually physical harm does occur to whomever gets, blown up by the stick of dynamite, but the consequences are very short term. In the following scene Wile E. Coyote will be fine and only more determined to capture the road runner. Fritz the Cat follows this tradition often having the two police officers who pursue fritz throughout the film fall off cars and get hurt, but return in the next scene unharmed. However this tradition occasionally gets broken. For example Duke gets shot and, unusual for an animated feature of the time, dies. Even more unusual is that he bleeds everywhere from his wound before dying. Another example in the film is during its conclusion where Fritz is about to blow up a power plant with some explosives. However the explosives are detonated early and as a result we are lead to believe Fritz has died. However he eventually regains consciousness and has sex with the group of girls visiting him and the film ends.

Fritz the Cats Impact

It is difficult to say whether the films content aided or hindered its success. The marketing of the film certainly embraced it, the taglines being ‘X Rated and Animated’ and ‘It’s X Rated for a Reason’. However several newspapers refused to advertise the film and some cinemas refused to show it (Gibson & McDonnell, 2008). The film was also disowned by Fritz the Cats original creator Robert Crum who was unhappy with the amount of sex in the film and the portrayal of the character Fritz. Eventually he would also claim the film was made without his approval, he sued Ralph Bakshi to have his name removed from the credits of the film and ended up killing off the character of Fritz in his comic books to reduce the chance of any sequels being made. Regardless in 1974 as sequel entitled The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat was made without the involvement of Crum or Bakshi. Fritz the Cat remains a cult classic to this day in both the underground comics by Crum and the films by Bakshi. While not the first animated feature to target adults it was the first to feature such an adult form of humor, as well as feature drug use and sex scenes. It proved that there is money to be made from an adult audience and paved to road for television series such as The Simpsons. Today there are many forms of animated media which target an adult audience such as Family Guy, Drawn Together and South Park.

References

Private Snafu: Boobytraps 1944.

Bakshi, R 1972, Fritz the Cat.

Bordwell, D & Thompson, K 1993, Film Art : an introduction, New York, pp. pp. 417-424.

Bouldin, J 2000, ‘Bodacious bodies and the voluptuous gaze: a phenomenology of animation spectatorship’, Animation journal, pp. pp. 56-67.

Gibson, Jon M.; McDonnell, Chris (2008). “Fritz the Cat“. Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi. Universe Publishing. pp. 58; 62-63; 80-81.

Lenburg, J 2009, the encyclopedia of animated cartoons, Facts on File/Checkmark Books, New York.

Ollie Johnston & Thomas, F 1995, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, Disney Editions,