American Pop
American Pop is Ralph Bakshi's love letter to this country.
It's an animated tale of Russian-Jewish immigrants fleeing the terror of the Cossacks for the poverty and turbulence of a new land, the filthy ghettos and gutters of NYC. It juxtaposes four generations of a family against the wild backdrop of the American cultural shift, as history progresses from the musty and stale, cigarette-smoke-choking air of the burlesque houses and dance halls of 1911, to the incense and peppermints perfume wafting up from so many stoned hippies, and later punks. We follow Zalmie, his son Benny (killed by a German soldier while playing piano), HIS son Tony, and finally "Little Pete," on their peculiarly American journey; one often marked by tragedy. It's a huge story with a huge, scuffed, beating, American heart, and it even manages to win a place in my jaded, cynical heart. But the film itself paints no rosy portrait of the human condition.
