No new light shed on Bakshi's dark animation

IT'S strange to recall that during the early 1970s Ralph Bakshi was hailed as the filmmaker who would revitalize the American animated feature. Thirty-five years later, except for "Fritz the Cat" (1972) and the cult favorite "Wizards" (1977), Bakshi's films are largely forgotten. Contemporary directors look to Walt Disney, Hayao Miyazaki and the Pixar artists for inspiration rather than to the creator of "American Pop" and "Cool World."

Bakshi's career, which has had more ups, downs and hairpin turns than a roller coaster, is overdue for a serious examination. "Unfiltered" is not that book. Compiled by two avowed fans with heavy input from Bakshi and his family, it's a sloppily written paean that reads like the product of a vanity press.

Throughout his career, Bakshi has generated controversy. When he and producer Steve Krantz adapted "Fritz the Cat" for the screen, they turned Robert Crumb's satiric portrait of a superficial college student into a gritty, angry, violent film.

American audiences were shocked to see sex, dope and blood in an animated film. Although it did well commercially, Crumb hated the adaptation. In a final comic, he turned Fritz into a decadent Hollywood star, ruthlessly exploited by "Ralphy" and "Stevie" -- caricatures of Bakshi and Krantz. A disgusted ex-girlfriend stabs Fritz with an ice pick ("Another casualty of the 'sixties").

The success of "Fritz" and the semi-autobiographical "Heavy Traffic" (1973) was overshadowed by the furor surrounding Bakshi's third film, "Coonskin." When it previewed at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1974, representatives from the Congress of Racial Equality objected to its depictions of blacks and disrupted the program. As the controversy over "Coonskin" grew, Paramount dropped the film; Bryanston Films distributed it.

Bakshi still doesn't seem to grasp that in 2008, as in 1974, many African Americans take offense at ugly, thick-lipped caricatures -- and at a white man writing a song titled "Ahm a Niggerman." On "Coonskin's" release in 1975, Time magazine critic Richard Schickel dismissed both the film and the surrounding controversy: "No one who does not wear white sheets in public could intentionally offer such a blatantly distasteful representation of blacks on the screen at this late date and hope to get away with it. Irony was surely intended -- and sorely missed in the end."