What we Owe Ralph
Bakshi: Or One Doesn’t Simply Rotoscope Into Mordor!
Wizards,
hobbits, drugged out punks, over-sexed cats and mixed media, that’s what little
girls’ dreams are made of. Okay, well that’s what mine were made of. As a child I was introduced to Ralph Bakshi
through his strange cartoons played only on Thanksgiving. As a child I was more
captivated by the movement of the animated figures that would appear too fluid
and then suddenly become jerky, as if they were more alive than Tom and
Jerry. The figures moved with the same
unpredictable nature that people did, and the backgrounds were not the endless
hall ways that cats chased mice down, but pictures and footage from the history
channel and PBS. I wouldn’t know until a
little later that Bakshi’s approach to using animation for adult purposes is
part of Bakshi’s fame. He would first shoot his principals, then draw carefully
over them creating the animated character and the setting to fit the story as
needed. From there the background would
be toyed with, this created a separation of principal and setting to keep the
audience’s eye from sitting too still on one characters.
For
example, his animated
film Wizards, the story of two
brothers born of one woman but from opposite magic fight across a
post-apocalyptic landscape for control over the world. The good son, a natural wizard who embodies
the use of natured-based magic, intrinsic talents that are only found in those
worthy of possessing them, battles his brother, the second son, who, lacking in
natural magic abilities, turns his mind to that of resurrecting the ancient war
machines of the Third Reich. The
allegory is clear and arguably overt. Bakshi,
the dirty hippie, sides with the return to a natural way of magic, a natural
way of life and by surrendering the characterization of the enemy to Nazi
Germany argues against a man-created war machine. His use of the story is simple, but it’s his
ability to tell it as a series of backdrops masterful.
Within
the story Wizards the brothers travel
to find and destroy one another, the backdrop of the destroyed landscape is
made from found footage of abandoned cities.
Signs of man’s greed and inherent violence can be seen in the burnt out
Texaco signs. Bakshi, not even attempting
to hide these behind a cleverly painted overlay, simply enhances the image
around it, so that the roots of trees, mutated and warped through years of
exposure to fallout, grow up around the sign, bending it unnaturally but never
actually tearing it down, nor eclipsing it from the viewer’s sight.
The
final battle between brothers ends in animated footage fighting over the stock
footage of World War II aerial battles.
With Avatar, the good son, finally destroying Blackwolf, with the help
of more Tolkein-inspired creatures (a very voluptuous fairy, a hot-blooded
Weehawkan Elf and a robot fighting against its programming… Windows Vista?).
Bakshi’s
success allowed him to negotiate the adaptation of The Lord of the
Rings. Originally meant to be
done in two parts, sadly the film was never completed. LOTR was a financial success for 1978, but
the critics were uneven and studios didn’t believe that people would really
care if the ring got to Mordor. Fortunately Peter Jackson was a fan. Although
in an initial interview he claimed to have not been influenced by the movie, a
quick look at Bilbo’s birthday will dispel any question. Proudfoot would never had been Proufeet
without him.
The use
of rotoscoping in this film is important as well, however it is more to capture
human nature than human history. Bakshi
would often film the extras unaware to see what people who were “off-camera”
really moved like. For example the scene
in which the Uruk-hai eat the mouthy Orc is actually a bunch of extras
attacking a buffet table. Bakshi was no
stranger to the macho bravado men create in the absence of women. He addressed
it head-on in his earlier films Coonskin, and Heavy Traffic. These films address not only the issue of
gendered violence, but rape, sexual abuse and gender domination. Bakshi used some of LOTR to reflect his
earlier work for a comment on gender roles.
Bakshi
would finish off a trio of films with American Pop
released in 1981. This film, following
the life of Zelmie a young Jewish immigrant to American through his
descendents, to watch the how the American dream is achievable only to those
who will sacrifice their former identity to the new god. Told through the development of the man, the
film also follows the story of America as the country grows from an emerging
financial superpower, bought for with the sacrifice of unskilled labor dying in
the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire, to a global leader in World War I. Zelmie, injured abandons his dream to sing
and becomes a Jewish mobster. His son,
following in the footsteps his father hoped to erase joins to fight in World
War II. Leaving behind his pregnant bride and very promising music career the
young man is shot by a German soldier as he plays the piano. The son, now
removed from his Jewish heritage entirely is absorbed into Italian mob culture
and eventually escapes to California, leaving behind a pregnant waitress in the
Mid-West. The blond-hair blue-eyed
great-grandson of the immigrant achieves the musical success only through
desertion of heritage and ideals. Which Bakshi ensures will hit the audience
like a punch to the gut as we watch Pete, the great-grandson, mockingly “rock
out” to a rabbi singing the prayer that his unknown great-great-grandfather
died to during a Pogrom.
More
than a collection of America’s greatest hits, American Pop, is really a collection of America’s darkest secrets.
The use of immigrant labor, the threat of assimilation and the myth of the
American Dream as an achievement of industry and labor, Bakshi takes full aim
at all of these and pointedly demands his audience to fess up. Fortunately his
medium, animation, kept the message from hitting too hard and becoming too
preachy. At the exact moment the audience might feel too bad for “little Pete”
we seem him swagger down the street as a successful and unabashed coke dealer
who has no problem holding the drugs and his customers hostage until they agree
to hear one song.
I
have to admit, I did always like Bob Seger.
[Next series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Other animated histories and stories you’d add to
the week’s series?]
No comments:
Post a Comment