Ralph Bakshi and the kind of people who like him

I have come to this weird suspicion that the kind of people who are big fans of Ralph Bakshi aren't very sheltered and are unlikely to claim that X film raped their childhood, in addition I've noticed that along with myself, Bakshi tends to appeal to those of the "hard livin'" disposition who may or may not be PTSD ridden or depressive.

I was in the Jesu Otaku livestream of Cool World and noticed she said "There IS no Good Bakshi" but I doubt her or anybody in that stream would have tried to watch or even heard of the classic Heavy Traffic, nor would they have noticed the animation in Heavy Traffic is superior to that of Cool World and of course Who Framed Roger Rabbit is technically superior in comparison.

What I'm implying here is that the hard livin' types who feel beaten down by society in general are the people who tend to see value in Bakshi at all. It would certainly explain why black audiences repealed the NAACP boycott of the movie Coonskin back in the day.

Bakshi is for depressive people who've seen some shit. People raised on Disney who've never seen horrible things outside of a movie theater may not understand Bakshi's main thesis of "life sucks but you gotta grift to get by sometimes".

If Jesu Otaku thinks there's no good Bakshi films, she clearly hasn't seen enough yet.

I'm definitley a fan of Bakshi, and I guess I am a miserable little bastard. Coonskin was a work of art. I'm mixed and I'm not 100% black, but that film definitley struck a good nerve in me, and Bakshi knew all about how tough life is for minorities in urban America, having spent his childhood growing up with them. I don't think there will ever be such a ruthless deconstruction of racial stereotypes and the exploitation film genre in all of animation like that ever again.

I also agree with his vitriol towards The Godfather. He portrayed the Mafia for what they really were, a bunch of bloodthirsty racist thugs who somehow aren't behind bars, not a couple of classy romantic dudes in nice suits who drivel on endlessly about "ethics" and "business".

And who is Jesu Otaku?

edited 26th Aug '12 1:23:33 PM by TailsDoll

I'd call Bakshi an acquired taste, and certainly not for everyone. From a purely technical standpoint, his films often seem slipshod and lazily executed, but that may simply be a matter of his frequently not having much of a budget (the frequent rotoscoping, the use of repetitive scenes, the reliance on stills during exposition, etc). His urban work reminds me a lot of Will Eisner's urban stories, though Bakshi is much more likely to get crass than Eisner (not a bad thing, just a difference in approach and style). I appreciate Bakshi's fantasy work for a variety or reasons (the fact that he was doing mature fantasy/adventure animation when literally no one else in the west was, the fact that he actually attempted to bring the visual style of Frank Frazetta to the screen, his admirable attempt at Lord of the Rings — I still think his Gollum was even better than Jackson/Serkis's Gollum). I'm as whitebread as whitebread gets, grew up in a small town in the midwest, and I love most of the Disney catalog, and I like Bakshi. I don't deify him, I'm not uncritical, and, while I'm glad I saw them, there are a few of his films I wouldn't care to see again, but he's still a great animator and filmmaker in my opinion.

He's very hit-and-miss as I see it,on one hand

He had a hand in:

The trippy Spiderman cartoon

The Mighty Mouse revival

The Butter Battle Book special

Coonskin

American Pop

Heavy Traffic

Then again he also did:

Hey Good Lookin

Fire And Ice

Fritz The Cat

Cool World

Influenced John Kricfalusi

And then there's the very half-baked stuff such as:

Wizards: + Great voice-acting (especially from Mark Hamill as a One-Scene Wonder fairy using the Luke Skywalker voice),decent animation for the simple movements, and the main character is interesting enough and does in fact "just shoot" the villain

- Other animation is stiff (rotoscoping does that though),gratuitous boobs,resorts to Godwin's Law to figure out who the villain is,only the main character and Mark Hamill's character seem remotely engaging

Lord Of The Rings:

• Very faithful compared to what Rankin-Bass and Peter Jackson did to the same material (The Hobbit doesn't count thank you very much), Legolas,Aragorn,and Frodo are definitely better characters than Jackson, The Orcs and Nazgul look perfectly trippy

- Inverted Animation Bump after Boromir gets killed off,too much Milking the Giant Cow, most fast-paced adaptation of a hit source until M. Night came along,worst ending spot possible,and Samwise just sucks. It's still lightyears better than Rankin Bass though (The Hobbit doesn't count)

Just rewatched the Mighty Mouse revival,...man this stuff is hilarious

@Robbery I would very much agree, Bakshi is an acquired taste. I like and appreciate Bakshi, but it's something which is hard to definitively say is "One of the greatest animated films of all time!" He's not someone who necessarily fits this overwhelming critical acclaim, and maybe that's how it should be. I think sometimes, we appreciate more what Bakshi represents rather than the movies themselves, which do have their flaws.

I used to be kind of pissed at Bakshi(along with Kricsfalusi) with their Disney bashing, because I felt that it created a pointless dichotomy. That "screw Disney animation, it's too popular and childish". Every animation style has its different brand of dark moments and lighthearted moments.

I respect Bakshi for challenging animation perceptions and making what he wants. I'm not a fan of dividing adult and children's animation, because people just make what resonates with them. It's a medium to be utilized for so many intents. It can be purely entertainment, it can be art, it can be espousing ideals,etc.

edited 7th Apr '13 8:17:24 PM by blueflame724

Yeah, I never cottoned much to the Disney-bashing. A lot of people in a lot of creative fields seem to like to bash what's been successful if what's successful isn't what they themselves want to do. Still, I can imagine getting pissed off at people who go to your very adult animated film and complain about how it's not enough like a Disney film, but his rancor is misplaced, I think.

It's funny, but I've seen Wizards several times (not recently, though) and I never knew Mark Hamill was in it, nor could I point to what character he was. Shame on Bakshi for pretty nakedly ripping off both Vaughn Bode and Wally Wood for this one, though.

So far I've only seen Wizards and some Mighty Mouse, which I thought was pretty good(I think Doug Walker liked it as well). I think the rotoscoped army scenes were a bit long, but it's an interesting flick. The screaming could get grating though(I think the guy was Weehok?)

What do you recommend? I think I might check out Fritz or Coonskin next

Regarding Disney, I totally understand the frustration of perceiving Disney as the zenith of animation. Much as I love them, that would be irritating. Fleischer, Warner, MGM are often emphasized as their contrasts for better or worse.

edited 7th Apr '13 11:12:27 PM by blueflame724

Whew, glad you made it! The thread's only been up for, like, eight months now.

I haven't seen much Bakshi outside of his Lord of the Rings, which I love if only because of how silly it can be at times.

Did he do Fire and Ice? I've seen that too, it was okay.

The only thing of his I've ever seen was his Lord of the Rings movie, which was atrociously bad, incoherent and horribly animated. Pretty much turned me off any of his other stuff.

That would explain why I don't favor Bakshi.

Also, I find it funny that Bakshi's protege (and shitbag extraordinaire) John Kricfalusi is known for railing against cheap or lazy animation, when LOTR (and what fragments of Ralph's other stuff I've seen) has some of the cheapest, laziest, most utterly inept and ugly animation I have ever seen.

edited 8th Apr '13 10:26:42 AM by Vox

Okay, let's try this again.

Starting a thread with "people who like X are Y" is not very nice.

That is all.

the kind of people who are big fans of Ralph Bakshi aren't very sheltered and are unlikely to claim that X film raped their childhood,

I don't know, this doesn't sound exactly like an insult to me.

I respect Bakshi, but I don't particularly like his films. I'm not a fan of rotoscoping unless it's for really complicated movements that are very hard to duplicate (i.e., playing the piano), but he relies on it too much. I can respect his attempts at keeping traditional animation in the West relevant, but making really niche animated shorts isn't exactly the best approach.

Well it does have a touch of arrogance, that people who like Bakshi are more hardened compared to people who enjoy Disney(which is something which I disliked)

Please, let's not turn this into a "Bakshi-likers vs. The World, or vice-versa." No one would hold Bakshi up as the technical zenith of animation; he's much more about what he's attempted than what he's achieved. He's approaching animation from a completely different place than Disney or Warner Bros; their goals were very different. Like I said above, I don't think he's necessarily a brilliant director, but he's a very important, very interesting director.

Yes, Bakshi made Fire and Ice (with a script from Roy Thomas; just as an aside, Peter S. Beagle, who wrote The Last Unicorn, among other things, wrote the screenplay for Bakshi's Lord of the Rings) and much of the design work on Fire and Ice was done by Frank Frazetta. I've never seen Fritz the Cat myself, but I have seen Coonskin (under the name Street Fight) and it is, thematically, an ugly and somewhat disturbing film. The three main characters are modernized versions of Bre'r Rabbit, Bre'r Bear, and Bre'r Fox, and it's a pretty hard and unsentimental look at racism (it's also, apparently, one of Wyclef Jean's favorite films). Did I like it? No, not really. But again, and you'll hear this a lot from me in regards to Bakshi, it's interesting and worth seeing if you're interested in film or animation.

American Pop is another one I'd recommend. Outside of his pure fantasy pieces, it's probably Bakshi at his least aggressively unsettling.

Anyone ever see (I think this is the right title) Spicy City? It was an HBO series Bakshi did, shortly after Cool World, in the 90's.

I wasn't trying to, I was merely pointing out why the Opening Post potentially has those implications(apologies if I came off as trying to antagonize). I myself have already made my case about Bakshi(flawed movies, but definitely innovative and important in animation). I do want to seek out his work for its social commentary as well as his general worldview

edited 8th Apr '13 10:47:48 PM by blueflame724

The original post I made was in direct reaction to Jesu Otaku saying "There is no good Bakshi" in a stream and acting like Cool World was some atrocity to mankind.

I actually like Disney a lot, but dismissing Bakshi's efforts to keep traditional animation relevant in the West is kinda insulting. As is claiming "There Is No Good Bakshi".

EDIT: Admittedly I did come off as a bit snobbish but not intentionally towards Disney fans. There are plenty of Disney fans who have had hard times (Tumblr provides many examples) but I was making a theory that Bakshi is inherently appealing to the Grumpy Cats of this world. In a good way.

edited 10th Apr '13 5:27:08 AM by NewGeekPhilosopher

Let's face facts here, she's right and she's wrong. Yeah, Bakshi's done some groundbreaking work, but it's still mostly all crap. Although, I don't think a lot of people would want to agree with Jesu Otaku about much after recent... But that's for another thread.

I just think it's important that animation that caters to the Grumpy Cat demographic is allowed in today's Hollywood. Grumpy people need movies that speak to them.

Didn't realize Gardfield had his own type of demographic.

In Bakshi's defense, he tends to work with most factors going against him (not enough financial backup, Executive Meddling, etc), so it's amazing he gets things done at all, and understandable his end results are often not up to the standards of those who follow a more marketable style.