Fritz

Basically, it's about anamorphic animal characters, generally Jewish, during the 1960's trying to find the answers to life in short-sighted fashion. Focusing primarily on Fritz, he swindles his way into getting drugs and sex without having any responsibility. Eventually he meets up with anarchists who con him into destroying a power-plant in the desert in which he blows himself up in the process. Miraculously, he survives. You think he'd change his ways by this point but in his dying breath still cons some visiting girls using emotional blackmail into performing group.. well.. you get the idea. 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. 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.

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