Ralph Bakshi
1972
This marriage between Ralph Bakshi, counter-culture animator supreme, and Robert Crumb, counter-culture cartoonist supreme, is an excellent satire of the waning 60's liberalism, starring animals who do drugs and fuck. The titular hipster spits period slang and slums it in the ghetto working for the all encompassing pursuit of street-cred and tail. For all of Fritz's flagrant disingenuousness, he remains a likable hero: at least he knows what he wants out of life, and his faked affectations in the pursuit of self gratification appear far less dishonest than those that truly "live" them. Bakshi's animation is choppy, but the aesthetic's right-on with a few instances of animated visual gags livening up what sounds like unscripted natural dialogue. The representation of race is particularly ostentatious with African Americans depicted exclusively as ink-black crows, and as for the notorious "X rating," after a lifetime of viewing animated anthropomorphized talking animals it is particularly hilarious and gratifying to see them rendered with genitals for a change.
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