University of Virginia Library

Cinema

A Portrait Of The Counterculture

By BARRY LEVINE

Rarely has film treated the
counter-culture in any way
that encompasses both its
vitality and its myopia. Most
on the subject tend to express
one at the expense of the
other. "Easy Rider" was
self-indulgently self-oriented;
"Joe" cynically saw the culture
as just another hypocritical
class; "Strawberry Statement"
and "Getting Straight" treated
politics as farce and sex as
revolution, implying, I
suppose, that this generation
all but literally has its head up
its ass. Offhand, I can't think
of any film except the Maysles'
"Gimme Shelter" that doesn't
largely dismiss or glorify the
generation.

However, "Fritz the Cat"
which opened this week at the
University, comes close to
capturing a genuine and
delightful self-portrait, perhaps
in the only way possible.

Role-Playing

What most "youth" films
drastically neglect to their loss
is the counter-culture's
obsessive ridicule of
role-playing. Mick Jagger, as
someone has noted, plays the
rock star with something
approaching camp, and he's a
star. Incongruous clothes
satirize personas; dope often
acts to release one from the
necessities of responsibility,
including those to external
identity. Nixon might not be
so hated if, unlike John
Kennedy and McGovern, he
didn't act as if he really got
goosebumps when they play
"Hail to the Chief".

"Fritz" ingeniously
understands this contribution
of the culture, and, in a way
that such films as "Easy Rider"
barely touched, turns it back
upon the culture. Fritz, the
cartoon character created by
famed underground cartoonist
R. (for Robert) Crumb, is
literally a cat who wants
nothing more than to be cool.
Two cops who break up a dope
party are actually dumb and
pigs, but lovable: they want
nothing more than to be
tough-ass cops. Blacks, as
representatives of the one
American culture (except for
Indians) that the
counter-culture admires, are
sleek, smoothly-moving crows.
And so on.

The film also pays sharp
attention to the ways in which
environment can likewise be
detached and appreciated for
its form Like Firesign Theatre
and Cheech and Chong, with
their throw-away lines and
afterthought humor, "Fritz"
abounds in irrelevantly realistic
background noises, and
dialogue and voices that might
be close to documentary if
they weren't so typical in the
ways they characterize the
speakers.

Adept Stereotypes

The young female-cats
(whom Fritz expectedly calls
"chicks", although cats being
chicks is another way of
playing with incongruous roles)
drool over a cool, sun-glassed
black crow, cascading him with
all sorts of "I'm liberal, too"
cliches. The cops practice their
"Open this door!" routines.
Fritz discovers in an
inexplicable flash of inspiration
that he has to preach the
Revolution, and, from a car
roof, exhorts the ghetto-people
to fight against those "bosses
in their limousines". ("Get off
my car," an uninspired voice
yells to him)

And, in a scene that
virtually creates setting by the
sound track, old Jews in a
synagogue used as refuge by
Fritz interrupt the
undercurrent buzz of prayer
for a few bits of desultory
dialogue on Growing Up
Jewish. In another such scene,
blacks in a bar carry on their
own sort of ethnic verbal
counterpoint. I found both
scenes hilariously adept at
recognizing the comic uses of
stereotypes.

Like a good deal of the
counter-culture, "Fritz"'s
attention to form and style
supersedes any interest in
content. Iridescent landscapes
merge into one another
without any real movement,
physical or mental. Violence
on and deaths of character
become something between the
vivid cartoon bloodshed and,
like their very human voices,
something psychologically real,
as when a pool-shark crow
sinks to his death by bullets to
the decreasing heartbreak of
imaginary bouncing hillard
balls. It's a neat stylistic trick,
but our response is torn by
finding cartoon characters with
real consciousnesses. We're
surprised at finding
two-dimensional characters
with depth.

Characterization

But the film ultimately
characterizes the
counterculture as
psychologically real and
realistically superficial. Fritz,
in an echo of the blatant
anti-intellectualism of the
romantic left, culminates a
tirade against school and books
by a mass-burning of written
material, only to discover to
his horror that he's destroyed
the notes for his exam. He
preaches comic book
revolution, only to discover
that repression uses real
bullets. He talks about the
need for love and equality, but
grabs at everything with two
breasts and (literally) a tail.
Like many of us who become
too immersed in their own
culture, "Fritz" can't see
beyond his own role.

(Now at University Theater)