University of Virginia Library

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.