Fritz the Cat

I’m sure in the stale purple clouds of pot this movie was very deep and made a lot of sense. As a totally sober viewer in 2013, this was one of the most painful and faux-profound films that I have had the agony to sit through. Fritz the Cat is only of interest as a cultural curio – the first X-rated animated film in existence. A modicum of praise must be offered the film’s way for expanding the scope and audience from family-friendly entertainments to something more adult and wider, but that’s all of the positives that I have to give. The rest of the film is steeped in half-baked notions of satirizing the political and counter-culture moods at the time. Racism and sexual morality get torn to shreds, but what they really reveal about Ralph Bakshi is more disturbing.

Racial identity and physical characteristics are grossly oversimplified or too on-the-nose in their renderings. Pigs as cops, crows as black people, bunnies as slutty co-eds, it’s like someone’s straightjacketed perversions have been given reign to violate your mind and eyes. But the most egregious thing is the depiction of any and all female characters. None of them are able to appear on the screen without flashing their anthropomorphic breasts at some point in time, no matter how unnecessary and distracting. It begins to feel like someone’s suppressed sexual desires and misogynistic views of women are slowly leaking out onto the screen. A radical terrorist bangs on the table and her breast pops out, no reason is given at all and nothing is made of it. Every female character only exists to be sexualized and commoditized by Fritz/Bakshi’s leering eye.

Fritz is only of passing interest for, and made its entire infamy on, being the first X-rated cartoon. And forty years later, that’s pretty much all the interest it has going for it. I failed to see the humor involved and knew after about ten minutes that I was probably going to hate this movie and regret watching it. I did, but I’m not sure if regret is what I feel. More like general confusion over how it’s managed to remain in some small way a part of the popular conversation about animated films.