Fritz the Cat
Have you ever heard some random fact, but never took the time to figure out whether or not it’s true?
I remember hearing that there was some adult version of Felix the Cat when I was younger. I always wondered how such an innocent character could be “adult” but I never looked into it. (This being before I’d ever heard of anime…)
This weekend I found that it wasn’t Felix the Cat that was an adult cartoon, but Fritz the Cat. Since I am a curious creature, I scoured the internet to see if it was posted online anywhere, and I found on Veoh (you can also find it on Youtube).
I watched it last night.
Wow. I think I’m a bit traumatized.
So Fritz the Cat is the predecessor to Family Guy, the Simpsons, South Park, Boondocks…all the satirical based cartoons of today. It was the first cartoon to be rated X by the MPAA due to its graphic depiction of animals having relations and showing genital and thangs.
Here’s a summary from imdb:
It is New York City in the 1960’s,and Fritz is a h0rny hippie New York City(by way of Manhattan) cat who plays guitar in the park with his buddies. Chatting up to three women he invites them round to his apartment for an 0rgy. There are various other friends join in a feast of [relations] and drugs which is interrupted by two pig cops. Then,Fritz is chased through a synagogue before hanging out in Harlem with some black crows. He gets very stoned, has some more [relations] and preaches about revolution before his friend gets killed in a vicious and violent street riot. Fritz flees with his girlfriend Winston for a journey out west, but the two fall out on the road and Fritz hooks up with some revolutionary, [relationaly] abusive types. They encourage Fritz to blow up a refinery and set him up to be killed. Finally, fully recovered in a hospital he enjoys some more group [relations] with his girlfriends.
Now that all seems very straightforward and random I admit, but this movie is famous for its commentary on 60’s “counterculture.”It supposedly lays bare all the protests, revolutions, race issues, stereotypes, everything that was going on at the time. Much like its modern day contemporaries (Boondocks and Family Guy especially) it over exaggerates stereotypes to prove a point. Except with Fritz the Cat it is WAAAAAAYYYY more offensive, at least to me, to the point where its social message is kind of lost on me.
For example, every female character had partial if not full nudity, sometimes even for no reason. I remember one part when Fritz was in a Harlem bar, a Black “woman/crow” was reaching for something in her skirt…instead of simply moving her hand to her pocket, she put her hand down her shirt, flashed her “chest” and grabbed whatever out of her pocket.
Then Black people are depicted as black crows. There’s one “shuffling slave” character that praises YT and tries to protect him. There’s a Black female character with big “T&A” who gets Fritz high, insults his genitals, then has relations with him. There’s a gay crow who is insulted when YT “hippies” try to sympathize with the Black Struggle, insulted not because they were “trying to be cool”, but because they considered him Black.
There were some depictions of nationalist crows which weren’t too bad, but still, one of them was the aforementioned “woman/crow” who flashed her chest for no reason.
I also found Fritz “enlightening” the Black people to revolt against “the man” to be a bit disturbing…mostly because he was “white” and was also depicted as the savior of the Black race.
I don’t know if I’m misreading this movie or what. I guess I see that it was trying to expose the radicalism of the 60’s to reveal which causes were real and which were simply means to achieve selfish gains, but I don’t know…I kind of had a “two girls one cup” kind of reaction to it. Not THAT disgusted…but leaning that way.
Has anyone else seen or heard about this film? Maybe you can shed some light on this for me…
