American Pop is not a Hester Street nor a Mean Streets, films which deliberately develop ethnic themes and settings as their central focus. On the contrary, it is a film which incorporates ethnic material in a subplot, but the subplot of the melting pot and the call of the American Dream is so essential to the history of American popular music that the subject actually provides the narrative core for the entire film…. American Pop is more than music; it is about nothing less than the Great American Dream. All of Bakshi's films in fact, with the exception of his two voyages into fantasy, Wizards and The Lord of the Rings, are about the American Dream in one form or another…. (pp. 105-06)

Aside from his two fantasy films, all of Bakshi's work dramatizes the cultural diversity of American urban life. In Fritz the Cat (1972), Heavy Traffic (1973), and Coonskin (1975), Bakshi satirized various forms of the American Dream, that vision rooted in the past and projected into the future which promises the good life for those who follow the advice of the Dream's godfather, Benjamin Franklin, and diligently work to rise from poverty and obscurity to success and celebrity.

These three early films are full of violence, sex, drugs, and stereotypes; they are also very moving and very funny. They were attacked vehemently for Bakshi's inclusion of scenes of drug use, as well as for the openly sexual and often violent nature of his characters. Of course, self-proclaimed defenders of the public morality rise to attack any realistic portrayal of life which does not at least implicitly condemn drug use, violence, and open sexuality, and Bakshi's treating of such taboo subjects in a "children's medium" brought forth the double wrath of the moral critics. Critics of "serious literature" accept the fact that realistic satire of modern urban life cannot ignore these subjects, but, again, there was a feeling that the subjects were not suitable for animated film.

Bakshi's use of ethnic stereotypes raises more serious questions. Ethnic stereotypes are dangerous, and many people were offended by Bakshi's use of them in his early films. Watching these films is, at times, uncomfortable, but social satire exists within a framework of exaggeration and stereotype; the objects of the satire must be easily recognized by a fairly wide audience. And often, as is the case in Bakshi's films, the stereotyping is as much an object of satire as the satirist's other targets. Bakshi has not been discriminatory in his use of stereotypes; nothing escaped his ridicule in these early films. All of his characters—Blacks, Jews, Italians, Irish, Wasps, hippies, straights, politicians, cops—were exaggerations drawn from the popular imagination. And like all good satirists, Bakshi's intention was to make all of us laugh at ourselves and our eccentricities.

Fritz the Cat made Bakshi a hero of the counter-culture and offended everyone else. He adapted R. Crumb's hip and sassy cat from Zap Comics and turned him loose in theaters across the country. Fritz, with his bad mouth and bad attitude, was the perfect character to attack comfortable middle class assumptions about sexuality and the work ethic. The ideology of the American Dream preaches sexual fidelity and hard work as the way to happiness and success, but in Fritz the Cat Bakshi told the story of happiness from the other side. Fritz and his friends took drugs, never worked or studied, and pursued sex as if it were the Holy Grail; they also enjoyed themselves, appeared to prosper, and never felt retribution. The solid citizens in the film—the policemen, businessmen, and politicians—were boring, stupid, and unhappy. Bakshi's message came straight from the pages of Zap Comics and the spirit of the late Sixties, and even though Fritz the Cat is the least serious of his non-fantasy films, the hip message Bakshi delivered challenged comfortable beliefs.

He turned to more serious issues in Heavy Traffic. Most reviewers who bothered to write about the film at all saw it as another Fritz the Cat, a pornographic cartoon. But while the language and sexuality looked back to his first film, the subject matter was different. Heavy Traffic is a story of urban life. Unlike Fritz the Cat, which used an urban setting but did little with it, Bakshi's second film is all about life in the city. (pp. 107-08)

In Heavy Traffic Bakshi launched his first direct attack on the idea of the melting pot. In this film he drew upon his own background in Brooklyn…. Set in the Fifties, Heavy Traffic tells the story of a young, virginal cartoonist whose father, a small-time mafiosi, ignores his wife, a stereotypical smothering Jewish mother. The cartoonist falls in love with a Black barmaid and follows her to Harlem. Along the cartoonist's trail Bakshi provides images of the racism, poverty, drug abuse, crime, and empty lives that make up a large part of city life. Much like Stephen Crane's naturalistic novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Heavy Traffic documents the underside of ethnic life in New York City; it shows not how far the members of the various ethnic groups have come, but rather how far they still have to go. (p. 108)

American Pop is Bakshi's most ambitious and carefully made film. In it he avoids the excesses which at times distracted from his serious satires before, and by grounding his critique of the American Dream in a story of popular music he creates a far wider audience for his most sustained attack upon comfortable assumptions. The style is less abrasive, but the subject is still deadly serious. (p. 110)

The controlling themes in the film are the development of American popular music, the assimilation of the family into the culture, and the frantic pursuit of success. The history of popular music gives the film its title and is the vehicle by which the various family members move into the culture, especially the lucrative musical subculture. The musical selections, ranging from "The Maple Leaf Rag" and "Swanee" to "I Got Rhythm," "Take Five," and "Don't Think Twice It's All Right," provide an overview of the century's hit parade, documenting the changing nature of popular music and the fascination it held for Bakshi's representational characters.

While the music becomes a metaphor for the dream of success and excitement which the characters chase with the intensity of Jay Gatsby's pursuit of the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan's dock, the real story of American Pop is more serious. Bakshi uses the image of the melting pot, first popularized by Israel Zangwell's play, The Melting Pot, to describe how successive members of the family "make it." Bakshi's characters continually throw off old forms of behavior and take on new ones as they prosper in America and become Americans. For his characters the process of assimilation is not a matter of choice for any single individual; it is a process which takes all of four generations. Bakshi is no romantic; he documents the cost, a loss of identity and community, as well as the successes. The way to wealth and acceptance, according to Bakshi, is fraught with losses. (p. 111)

In a sense, American Pop is a cartoon. Complex processes are simplified, and story and character are developed only in outline. In this particular cartoon, however, serious ideas are presented. The image of America as a land of plenty and opportunity, part of our cultural heritage since William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, the suggestion of a rise to worth, and the idea of a melting pot provide the theoretical foundation for the story of an immigrant family. This is the subject of serious art, and this has been the subject of most of Bakshi's work. Bakshi asks us to examine some of our most fundamental assumptions about our country and our optimistic visions. Just as ethnic scholars are debating these very questions in traditional literary works, American Pop demonstrates that they are embedded as well in the popular arts. (p. 112)