Hello and welcome to picsandportraits.
We are back with another animated future from the past.
This time looking at Ralph Bakshi’s Spicy City.
This is a crossover with Century of Schlock, our Patreon-exclusive series looking at trash
media from the 20th century.
There’s a new episode up now so if you’re into animated smut please consider supporting
us, patreon.com/picsnportraits.
Speaking of animated smut, Spicy City is full of it.
This show was produced in 1997 and was created by Ralph Bakshi, who had rose to prominence
in the early 1970s with an adaptation of R. Crumb’s comic strip Fritz the Cat.
This was the first animated feature to be rated X, denoting it was for adults only.
Bakshi would became known for his boundary-pushing adult-animation.
At a time where seemingly only major studios could afford to produce animated features,
he managed to do so independently, and this let him get away with much more then he would’ve
otherwise.
Later in the decade he moved towards fantasy and sci-fi, with 1977’s Wizards.
Seeing this, and his previous work, Spicy City makes perfect sense.
It premiered the same year as Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, and is very similar in tone.
Producers were looking at a animated series specifically for adults and as such, it’s
very edgy.
It’s HBO, they can swear, and so we get excessive “fucks” and plenty of sexually
suggestive situations.
The series apparently grew out of talks to adapt Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Christmas short
Jesus vs. Santa.
To see how worked out, check out our South Park video but ultimately HBO had settle for Ralph
Bakski, which is a great consolation prize.
This was not Bakshi’s first foray into television.
He had gotten his start in TV animation and more recently, he had created The New Adventures
of Mighty Mouse.
Though it caused some controversy, viewers believed in a scene Mighty Mouse was railing
lines, but this was still considerably more wholesome than his other work.
As such, Spicy City somewhat marked a return to form.
It is an anthology series that explores the darker side of a futuristic city.
Each episode is hosted by the sultry Raven and stories are rooted in the noir genre.
Hard-nosed detectives and double crosses.
That sort of thing.
It can be filed under the cyberpunk aesthetic, which was huge in the ‘90s.
I think the best way to describe this show is if Blade Runner was written by a horny
teenager.
As far as I can tell, from a newspaper in an episode, it appears the year is 2097, which
would make sense given that is 100 years from production.
Where they see the future going is somewhat more restrained than others we’ve looked
at.
Personally, one of the most entertaining aspects of the show is seeing their predictions as
to where the internet would go.
It was common for speculative fiction to present the internet as a virtual world you would
jack into, complete with custom avatars.
As a reminder, here is the state of the internet in 1997.
What they imagined would take another six or seven years to become reality, with Second
Life.
It’s very quaint, considering what can be done with it today but one detail I love is
that they based this seemingly off 56k, so anything taking place in the virtual world
is slower with more limited animation.
I think that’s a great touch.
As it takes place in the seedy underbelly of a city, most stories take place in bars,
staffed with robots.
We see familiar staples like flying cars and laser guns, genetic cloning, but rather than
cell phones, we get these floating video screens, which is pretty conspicuous for gangsters.
However, given the title and tone, a lot of the advancements focus on sex.
There is this weird sex projection machine that’s used for blackmail and one episode
follows a human sex worker as she tries to compete with virtual girls.
These VR brothels of full of women whose data and lives have been stolen, which is probably
the most interesting episode, Sex Drive.
For such a short series, there is also quite a bit of same-sex relationships, which is
nice to see, though ultimately this queerness feels exploitive.
It’s really just fetishizing lesbianism to be honest.
Another criticism I have is the tech they predict is extremely outdated.
There are still CDs and cassettes and the computer designs leave a lot to be desired.
However, the series ends with a virus outbreak and quarantine so maybe they were onto something.
This would be Bakshi’s last major work until 2015’s Last Days of Coney Island.
I am a fan of Bakshi.
His ’70s work really reminds me of my dad but this animation lacks the character of
those films.
I know he only directed two episodes but I find the whole series tries too hard to be
polished and loses some of what I think makes him so special.
But I’m not going to lie, it has been nice to get away from optimistic futures and towards
something a little more relatable.
All six episodes are available here on YouTube, I will link in description.
Let me know what you think.
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