Peter Jackson's The Hobbit is coming for a holiday release, and early previews of the semi-completed film are garnering quite a bit of WTF.
The complaints are coming because of the 48fps process as opposed to the 24fps that is usually used for films.
This is apparently being done because the film is being produced in full 3D straight from the camera, which as far as I know, only a few movies thus far have been done this way. They claim that 3D with 24fps causes issues for many people.
I think that this just goes to show that 3D is total crap, but I digress. There is a good reason why 24fps was chosen for cinema and why it looks more "real" than higher fps film: it blurs like human vision.
Most film is recorded at 24fps with a 1/48th second exposure of each frame, and then 1/48th second of black shutter. Sometimes, they will shoot with faster exposures, creating a hard, defined, and edgy look. You'll see this sort of effect in scenes intended to give a starkly dramatic look, like the beach landing scene at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan.
Human vision blurs the world as it moves around us. 24fps, or more precisely a 1/48th second exposure, does a very good job of capturing that blur on film. Without it, things appear hard and lifeless, because life exists between the frames, not on them.
Not much to see in this episode of Betty Boop. The reason for watching it is that, in classic Fleischer style, you could not possibly predict the ending. Of note, the dance at the end is rotoscoped, which was still something that only Fleischer was doing.
Betty Boop's development has been something of a rocky road. Some of them are amazing, like Bimbo's Initiation, while others elicit more of a "huh?" reaction, like Betty Boop For President. Many of these I simply skip, but a few, even if they're lacking in some areas, have something worth mentioning, like Louis Armstrong's early appearance in I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You.
Today's selection sits between these two types and I'm mentioning it primarily because of later, better cartoons. Betty Boop's Crazy Inventions plays, to me at least, as a direct precursor to Tex Avery's Of The Future cartoons that would premier with the House Of Tomorrow, sixteen years later.
What strikes me when watching the two cartoons back-to-back is how much progress was made in those intervening sixteen years. It reminds the viewer that, even though Betty Boop had come a long way, and Disney's epic Snow White was only six years away, these were very much the wild west days of animation. Skills and principles that, today, animators can, quite literally, buy in a book, were being developed every day. When this cartoon was being made, cartoons were essentially still being invented.
It's not simply the animation, though. The comic timing and staging of Avery's later cartoons are leagues ahead of Fleischer's cartoon, but the general philosophy is there: set the stage, introduce concepts, wacky action, deliver the punchline. But where Fleischer's hadn't advanced his timing and still had much of his staging and concept rooted in the stage performances of Vaudeville, Avery was a master of delivering quick jokes and moving on. Truly, the radish burper is one of my all-time favorite jokes in the history of cartoons. I laugh near-hysterically every time.
And finally, interesting for no other reason than "well... isn't that interesting" purposes is what I believe to be the first representation of a helicopter in the history of movies at the end of the cartoon.
It's been awhile. Busy and whatnot, but here I'm back, with some new pictures nearly ready to post. First off, though, is a new film class.
By this point in Betty's history, 1932, she was the biggest cartoon character in Hollywood and one of its biggest stars. Mickey Mouse wasn't nearly the iconic star that he is now. It's not hard to see why Betty remained popular right up until the Hays code took effect; she had actual character. Mickey has always been a shockingly bland creation. He has little personality aside from being the archetypical "good guy." That's not entirely surprising since he was created in an era where cartoons were still something of a novelty. You didn't have time to create character, you had staging, events, and sight gags, all of which had to be delivered in less than ten minutes. Disney's later characters would be much more inventive and dynamic, like Donald and Goofy. Truly, the only character to really rise to the level of genius was Goofy.
For a better comparison, compare Bimbo to Mickey. Bimbo always had more edge than Mickey, but was almost as bland. His construct is similar, with pointy ears instead of round. Both Bimbo and Mickey were creations of their time. Koko was a bit more unique, which is funny since he far pre-dated both Mickey and Bimbo. Hell, Koko was essentially a tech demo for rotoscoping. Still, as far as character went, he was a clown and that's about it. Only Betty would become an icon. She would also become the best cartoon creation until Goofy
I've added a cartoon from Disney, also from 1932, which conveniently is the first cartoon appearance of Goofy. Or, really, a proto-Goofy that was referred to internally as Dippy Dawg. It's interesting to see the difference in the cartoons. Disney's cartoon characters were better animated, and each individual frame was better constructed, but shockingly boring in comparison to Fleischer's cartoons. Disney knew quality, but he had a terrible sense for comedy, timing, and direction. The cartoon isn't bad by any measure, but it is undeniably bland.
Alright, enough comparison. I posted this Betty cartoon because it is the second cartoon to feature a now-famous jazz performer in a role. Fleischer loved jazz music and enjoyed working with them and it shows in the music choices for his cartoons. They were less classically inspired like Disney's cartoons. They were also, again, more lively.
This is also another Fleicher cartoon that gets dredged up for racist accusations. Not as frequently as Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle, but frequently enough. It's also a bit more reasonable to see racism in this cartoon. An idiot, monkey-like savage is directly likened to Louis Armstrong. Still, I think that it's incorrect to interpret this as racism. It was a cartoon where everything was stereotyped for visual boldness. We know that Fleischer himself was not racist, and this is more accurate explained as a jazz singer singing the role of an antagonist, just like Cab Calloway did in Minnie the Moocher. Only in that one, we can't extract any racist interpretation since Calloway is represented as a dancing walrus ghost.
Other than that, this isn't Fleischer's best. The timing is a bit slow, the animation isn't as lively or entertaining, and he almost completely abandoned any lip-syncing. If it wasn't for Armstrong, this wouldn't much warrant a mention.
I post this video not to disparage Disney. Truly, anyone who's ever tried to animate realistic movements of a basic skeleton knows how hard it it is to get it right. So I don't blame Disney for developing one that's really excellent and then using it repeatedly. I also don't find it surprising that the skeletons reused are mostly for dancing. Early animated dancing was either poor, or it was rotoscoped from a live dancer. Hell, when animators didn't use rotoscoping, it was a big deal. Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood's first dance sequence was so well done, everyone assumed that it was a real person being traced, even though it was all free-hand.
Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle is one that I absolutely had to cover. For one, it's really funny. It has some great sight gags. I especially like the swarm of swimming islanders chasing Betty and Bimbo's boat around the hemisphere.
But what people truly remember the film for is accusations of racism, with which I don't agree, and one of the most memorably risque moments in all of Betty Boop where Betty dances topless, with naught but a lay covering her nipples. As with most Fleischer, the set-up is thin and actually a bit weird (Bimbo's just motoring around the planet playing a lute? Poorly?) and is little more than an excuse to have funny stuff happen.
I found this one in high-def!
About the argument for racism, I don't buy it. Yes. It's a horribly stereotyped portrayal of islanders, but it's a stereotype that pervades Western culture and literature, and IT'S FUNNY. Not because it's true, it's funny because of the culture that fostered the idea. The actual islanders are unfunny, our perceptions of them are funny. Fleischer wasn't making a statement about Hawaiian or Polynesian islanders being retarded savages, he was exploiting an idea that persists to this day. Look at Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. That was purposely and explicitly imitating the old Saturday serials. When making comedy, you take things that are common in culture and exaggerate or comment on them. To call this racist is to liken it to the portrayal of the Japanese in WWII-era cartoons, which is silly.
Betty Boop M.D. is rather par for the course by Fleischer standards. I just want to touch on most of Betty's episodes if they have even a small amount of worthwhile material.
I said that M.D. is standard fare in the sense that Fleischer's cartoons are complete chaos. The world is literally alive, which is something that neither Disney nor Warner Bros. would experiment with for decades. Disney sort of set the tone for cartoons going forward with a well-defined narrative, events, backgrounds, and characters. Fleischer obviously rejected that concept. He rejected narratives in favor of fun... stuff, and preferred to have a world that was alive with motion. Look at the first shot, you don't simply see a vehicle driving down the road, you see a vehicle driving down the road while the road, composed of water-like waves, lift and drop the car, all the while the car is dancing to the beat of whatever Fleischer was drumming. I think that if Fleischer could have afforded it or found the time, everything on the frame would be moving at all times.
Again, like Bizzy Bee, the staging is essentially an excuse to have weird stuff happen. We have about two minutes of weird stuff, one of dialog, and then the picture abandons narrative in favor of three and a half minutes of scat singing, weird imagery, and end credits.
A few interesting points: Fleischer still spent little time on lip-syncing, only doing it when absolutely necessary, with Betty. I also find it interesting how the concept of the traveling snake-oil salesman used to be so universal. Much like the junk collector from Any Rags, this used to be a cultural touchstone. It isn't just Betty that this theme appears. It was in westerns, cartoons from other studios, and even early TV, although by the age of TV this was replaced by the door-to-door salesman. Perhaps it was made more viable as people moved into cities and suburbs in increasing numbers after the war, thus negating the need for carts and stages to sell. Finally, the baby at the very end turns into Mr. Hyde from the 1931 version of the film. This film was very famous, partially for being risque by the day's standards, and would have still been in wide circulation by the time that M.D. was released almost a year later.
The Thief Archive, the YouTube project to try and keep The Thief and the Cobbler alive, has uploaded a documentary done by the wife of Richard Williams, Imogen Sutton, on pioneering animator Art Babbit (read an interview here). She took full advantage of her access to the production of Thief, and uses it as an introduction into the life and work of one of Williams' lead animators. It's a great overview of animation history as seen through the lens of one guy's life. I especially like the insight into Goofy, which is, both technically and for sheer entertainment value, Disney's best character.
And just for a bonus, here's a behind the scenes for Roger Rabbit that aired in CBS back in the 80's.
This will be a very short class, I'm only posting this because it so perfectly embodies Fleischer's early philosophy of cartoon production. It was something that was both brilliant, and his ultimate downfall.
This cartoon makes NO sense. There's essentially no plot. It's just Betty and company put into an environment, wacky shit takes place, and it's over. No narrative. No script. Basically no dialog. It is cartoon entertainment brought to its most basic. Unfortunately, unlike Disney, Fleischer was never able to leave this paradigm behind and move towards a more refined concept of animation. Now, with hindsight and 100 years of animation development, we can see that both ideas are legitimate. Hell, Fleischer's paradigm is what damn-near all television cartoons follow (Hello, Spongebob). But at the time, Disney is what pushed the evolution of animation while Fleischer stagnated. And in a nascent industry, the company that evolves is the company that dominates.
It's been awhile since my last Betty Boop Film Class, but you can look at the gap as representing Betty's big move. Today's selection, Stopping The Show, is the first cartoon to be credited as a Betty Boop cartoon. No more second billing. No more Talkartoons. This puppy is 100%, gen-yoo-wine Betty Boop.
Granted, 100% Betty of course means that we don't even see her until nearly halfway through the cartoon. I think that even at this late stage, the success of Betty was something of a surprise to Fleischer and his crew. They might have gone back and adapted some of their working scripts to include Betty, raised her profile, or simply left the scripts untouched. For example, Jack & The Beanstalk was less than a year before this cartoon, "starred" Betty, but actually featured the old Bimbo design.
First things first, the opening credits. Notice how they seem to rotate down in 3D space to face the audience. Ub Iwerks is credited with the creation of the modern multi-plane camera, which would become immensely influential in animation, but I actually think that Fleischer was more edgy and inventive. He would manipulate his animation in any way necessary to get something unique. While Iwerks and Disney were more interested in refining animation, Fleischer wanted to bend reality and animation together. Both endeavors are of great importance to animation history, but Fleischer gets overlooked.
So, we finally get a look at Betty at about 3:35, and some of Fleischer's priorities are pretty obvious. He never got very good at lip-syncing, likely because he saw it as unimportant. He wanted to grind out wild, visually impressive works that captivated the eye more so than the brain or ear. Just look at how well Betty's voice is synced, during the vaudeville-like part, in comparison to EVERY other voice in the film. Animating to voice is difficult, and it's obvious that Fleischer just didn't want to take the time except when it was absolutely necessary.
This is actually a pretty unimpressive film. Whereas other cartoons had singing set to something stimulating, Betty does pretty much nothing on screen. She just stands there. Truly, this episode wouldn't even be much worth mentioning if it wasn't Betty's first headlining film.
For those who are interested, Fannie Brice was a comedian of great fame back in the 20's, 30's, and 40's. She earned her comic bona fides in the famous Ziegfeld Follies, and developed a variety of characters and mannerisms that were well-known to a 1932 audience. The only woman today who fits the bill is Ellen, but I think other comedians who have a very specific on-stage persona would fit the bill.
Maurice Chevalier was another performer who rose to fame in the theater, and I think it's no surprise that Fleischer chose two vaudeville performers to mention in his cartoons. He came from Vaudeville and most of his work's aesthetic is rooted in vaudeville.
And, finally, while it might just be coincidence, but the ending of, and the general staging of, the entire film could be a grand introduction of sorts for Betty. It's her first film, she's headlining the show within the film, and the episode ends with the audience screaming for more, causing her to come out on stage and thank everyone for wanting her so badly. It makes we wonder if this was a message from Fleischer to his real-life audience. "Thanks so much for loving what I've made. There's more to come."
Chess-Nuts is a light little ditty of a cartoon, notable for its use of live action, stop-motion, and animation. Not the first time Fleischer did it, but it is the first time with sound.
I love when the black king first throws a bomb like a bowling ball, and the camera tracks the ball as it rolls towards the white army. It's just so dynamic.
Again, Betty plays a very small role in the action. The bulk of it focuses on Bimbo because, I think, when most of these episodes were story-boarded, Bimbo was still going to be the star. Betty's rise to stardom apparently caught Fleischer off-guard and every episode in the Talkartoon series confirms this.
We're also seeing increased naughty jokes. Betty's dress goes up twice, the bed is visible in the room to which the king drags her, but the bed is disgusted with the king so it runs away. Even the mouse in the wall is apparently a polygamist.
I've uploaded a long commentary on the documentary Mickey Mouse Monopoly. It's basically an anti-Disney documentary that argues that Disney corp. holds too much power and perpetuates social problems.
In general, I disagree with everything it argues. The facts are facts, but its interpretation of them is highly selective and erroneous. Mickey Mouse Monopoly (A Candle in the Dark)
Otzi08 Has been kind enough to upload one of the few Betty Boop cartoons not available on YouTube; the tragically dated Teacher's Pest. I'm jumping back in time for this one, since we're already up to Minnie the Moocher, but the uploading of it was a big enough event to warrant a new film class post.
It's alarming to see how old this cartoon feels. The comic timing, the staging, the animation, the voice, everything seems old. Strangely, it feels older than some of Bimbo's earlier cartoons, like Dizzy Dishes.
Much like most of Fleischer's earliest cartoons, it seems to be ripped straight from Vaudeville, with most of the action built around allowing song-and-dance numbers. The overall staging has not yet started to delve into the surreal, instead simply using a school day as an excuse for aforementioned song & dance. Still, though, he's using cartoons to produce moving images that are simply fun to look at, and that's the only reason they exist. Like Bimbo snoring; there's no reason to have ten seconds of the table walking around other than that it looks funny. This also allows him to come up with a funny animation sequence and then repeat it. The audience doesn't notice the repeated sequence of frames because they're so damned weird to begin with that the eye actually appreciates the extra time to contemplate what it's seeing.
Furthermore, while the staging is archaic, the animation is anything but. It's substantially more advanced than what was seen in Dizzy Dishes. The constructs are still a bit wobbly, but they're much firmer. None of the grotesque fluctuations seen in earlier cartoons, where the character looks vastly different from scene to scene. To see what I mean, bring up Dizzy Dishes and freeze any given frame. Then do the same for Teacher's Pest. Each frame stands alone much better, and this cartoon is less than a year younger.
And here we are. Minnie the Moocher is the Betty Boop cartoon. It's one of Fleischer's three cartoons in the top 25 cartoons of all time. It's a landmark in animation style and construction. It's also the first Betty Boop cartoon that is actually about Betty.
If you go back to the previous few cartoons, you can watch how Betty is slowly becoming more and more the centerpiece of the episodes, but with Mask-A-Raid and Boop-Oop-A-Doop, Betty does not open the cartoon and it all plays out more like an ensemble cast. Dizzy Red Riding Hood opens with Betty, but seems to concentrate on Bimbo. This the first one that opens and closes with Betty alone, her role as a flapper is cemented, and she's now officially a teenager rejecting the old ways of her parents. Awww. How emo of her! I bet she'd just love Twilight.
The video I've uploaded includes audio with very low gain, so turn up the volume. I had to use it because it was far and away the best video quality of all the uploads.
I'm not going to comment much on it. This is a cartoon that should simply be experienced. It's just as trippy as Bimbo's Initiation. The lip-syncing animation is just continuing to get better. I especially like the mouth animation of the prisoner ghosts. The finer details are still lacking, and the patterns are still very exaggerated, but they're much more expressive and quick. One thing that's of importance is the first use, as far as I know, of motion lines/motion blur in the animation of the walrus to illustrate fast movements.
Keep an eye out for Koko to come out of the inkwell, again.
The rotoscoped animation of Cab Calloway's Walrus is really great. But it is a bit jarring when it jumps between that and the non-rotoscoped walrus. Moreover, the lyrics and themes of the song really drive home that, at the time, cartoons were very much aimed at adults. Kids wouldn't understand any of it, certainly not the pun of a cat singing scat. And the animated flip-out that concludes the show I think would have just overloaded anyone under the age of ten.
I hate new 120Hz and 240Hz modes on televisions and I know exactly why.
Many people complain of the "camcorder look" produced by the 120Hz modes on new, modern TV's. Basically, the Hz rating of a television is the number of times per second that the screen changes. So, theoretically, the TV is capable of producing 120 frames per second. Sadly, TV broadcasts are 30fps, and movies are 24fps. Even most video games don't go higher than 60fps.
Now theoretically, 120Hz is a holy grail for home film reproduction? Punch it into your calculator, it's the lowest common denominator for 30 and 24, and that's big. That means that every frame of a film's 24fps multiplies into an equal number of screen frames. Specifically, five frames. Currently, televisions refreshing at 60Hz have to perform an action known as the 2:3 pulldown. That's the only way to distribute 24fps evenly across 60 frames.
But with 120Hz, oh baby, each frame from the film's 24fps is displayed on screen for an equal 5 screen frames. Or with television, each of the television signal's 30fps is displayed 4 times. Or each of a video games 60fps is displayed twice. This means that video from any source is reproduced smoothly.
Unfortunately, television manufacturers are trying to find ways to advertise their sets beyond what should be done. This piece of marketing shit is called motion interpolation. We'll use film for example. Instead of displaying each frame from the film five times, resulting in 24 images seen by the viewer every second, the television will create new frames from the information contained in the 24 original frames to fill the full 120 that the TV is capable if displaying. Theoretically, this should result in smoother motion, without any of the jittery display commonly associated with film footage on TV.
Too bad it doesn't work. Everything in modern video technology is based around the old limitations. DVD's were mastered and the films were filmed with 24fps in mind. Television is made with 30fps in mind. Trying to interpolate your way past it cannot remove some of the details. Film looks realistic because it is the closest thing to human sight we can achieve with images captured. If something is moving quickly, 24fps gives us motion blur. Trying to interpolate frames in between that results in abnormal motion, because the human eye does not see in 120 perfectly distinct moments every second.
Things blur and flex as they whiz past. They do not go past us quickly while remaining perfectly clear the whole time. 120Hz does not capture how we see the world. 24fps does. Just think about taking a photo. If you set the shutter speed to 1/24 sec, and have someone move, the motion is captured in the frame. If you set the shutter speed to 1/120, you have much more of a "freeze-frame" look, with more detail, but less motion. In early cinema, they discovered that the amount of motion and detail captured in 24fps best approximated human vision. When they first started making film, they could have gone faster. They could have done 30fps, or 45, or 52, or any other random number, but they didn't. They did 24 because it looks right. 120 looks terribly, horribly wrong.
This is especially problematic for animation, which tries to approximate that sense of motion with each frame. For example, unlike something that was filmed, animation might use weird, exaggerated frames to make the in-film motion appear smoother or more realistic. Interpolating frames in between frames that were drawn specifically with 24fps in mind results in a unsettling, too-smooth look that seems to run too fast, because most of the interpolated frames are trying to "catch up" to the actual frames from the movie.
This is not a matter of taste, where I'm merely used to 24 and will get used to 120. 120Hz interpolation is breaking what was made. It cannot possibly alter everything about film creation to make it look good. If a film was made with 120fps, and everything was calibrated to make that 120 look good, that would work just fine. But we don't have that. We have 24fps, or 30fps, which looks like shit when bumped up to an artificial 120fps.
My advice to you, if you buy a new TV, find out how and TURN THAT SHIT OFF. Just say no... to interpolation. Or, if you prefer, friends don't let friends interpolate. Or, give a hoot, don't interpolate. Only you can prevent interpolation. Or one that actually rhymes: unless you hate, don't interpolate.
In between Bimbo's Initiation and the seminal Minnie the Moocher came a few less memorable Betty cartoons. They're noteworthy for seeing the beginning of Betty's rise from secondary character behind Bimbo to being the primary star of Fleischer Studios.
Bimbo's Express is the first cartoon to list Betty as one of the stars. She was on screen for less than a minute during Bimbo's Initiation, and perhaps has total screen time of no more than five minutes in all previous cartoons.
I love Bimbo's Express because many of the details are such a great throwback to a time not that long ago, but where things like horse-drawn moving carts are represented as though the audience would recognize them as every-day objects. Because they did. It was only 78 years ago, and yet a scant 60% of the nation's households had electricity. If you look at rural areas, that number dropped to less than 10%.
This cartoon isn't very memorable from a story or direction standpoint. The energy is low and lots of stuff seems pointless. The cartoon basically starts three minutes in. I LOVE how Bimbo suddenly turns into a tenor at 5:05. Coherency was not a big concern for Fleischer. It should be noted that their lip-syncing is getting much better by this point. They're still missing some of the finer principles, but what they have gets the job done.
A month later would bring Minding the Baby, which is notable for some of the most extensive uses of lip-synced dialogue up to this point, and also for some of the most explicit language in the series. At 3:15, Betty sings a song to try and get Bimbo to come over, since her parents are both gone, and all but states that it's a booty call. Bimbo responds by saying his parents are having a fight over an ice man (again, a great reference) who keeps coming over even though they have an electric refrigerator. A not-subtle reference to his mom having an affair.
Minding the Baby is otherwise forgettable, but the historical references are fun, especially the "Stuck Market" newspaper the baby reads. Remember, this was 1931. We were only two years into the Great Depression.
Two months would pass until the next Betty cartoon, and by now Betty is the only character getting top billing. This is a Betty cartoon. It's also time to say hello to the full-human Betty for the very first time.
Mask-A-Raid is another cartoon that seems to follow no rhyme or reason. There is total chaos on screen for five solid minutes. While not as weird as Bimbo's Initiation, it's up there.
The next film, Jack and the Beanstalk, was released after Mask-A-Raid but had begun development earlier.
I think it may have been a leftover from Grim Natwick's days, judging from the design of Betty and Bimbo. Regardless, this is the last cartoon to feature Betty as a dog. I guess it's debatable as to whether she's a dog in the next cartoon, Dizzy Red Riding Hood, since her ears are hidden the whole time, but since the overall design follows Mask-a-Raid more closely, I'm assuming she's human.
UPDATE: Where Jack & The Beanstalk fits in is something interesting that I didn't touch on. Bimbo's design is most useful in this cartoon. First, it can't be too old, since the animation principles for lip-syncing were more advanced than in Mysterious Mose. Second, Bimbo's head has become uniformly white by the time of Jack. Unfortunately, many Bimbo cartoons are not available online for me to watch, so I have to go on this website, which indicates that Bimbo had gone white, as seen The Bum Bandit, in Tree Saps.
The same website lists The Herring Murder Case as the debut of the modern Bimbo. I'm assuming that the redesign happened in time for production of Bimbo's Initiation, which is the second cartoon to feature the modern Bimbo. This Bimbo is seen in all following pictures except for Jack & The Beanstalk.
The lines in Bimbo's eyes are very simplistic in Jack, so much so that they almost never fully surround his pupils. By Silly Scandals, and even The Bum Bandit, Bimbo's eyes were much more coherent as opposed to just two dots and a line for defining expression. So I think that Jack had begun production before Bum Bandit. Jack & The Beanstalk may very well be the first cartoon put into production with the newer Bimbo design, but since I can't find some cartoons to watch, I can't be sure.
Still, this means that Jack sat on the shelf for nearly a year before being released. I wonder what was going on behind the scenes. Whatever it was, Jack & the Beanstalk is definitely a relic from Grim Natwick, released after he left.
END UPDATE
Dizzy Red Riding Hood isn't terribly noteworthy, I only make mention of it because you can see more directly that with Disney's work the connection between Japanese animation and American animation, which was the stated inspiration of the early anime and manga authors. The wolf is very strongly similar to later Japanese work, so much so that he looks like Sonic the Hedgehog.
Much like Minding the Baby, Betty and Bimbo partake in actions at the end that represent sex. I also think that his usage of the word eat might be a rather blatant reference to oral sex. It's a tough call. It's first recorded usage is 1927, which usually means it had been around in the vernacular for some time before, but Fleischer might not have known that context at all and was just using it to describe passion.
Next up is Any Rags. This is a serious throwback for people today, to the point where the setup makes almost no sense.
The viewer can kind of piece together what's supposed to be going on, but only with a complete historical context do the events seem coherent. Bimbo is playing the role of a rag man, or rag-and-bone man. Believe it or not, we had one of these in North Kingstown, RI up until the late 1990's, which is the only reason why I knew what it was.
This cartoon is also the first of Koko the Clown's return episodes, where, strangely, he's apparently gay. It's funny that the effete stereotype of a gay man was already entrenched in popular culture way the hell back in 1931. It's also of extreme interest that this gay character is displayed in a positive way. I wonder if Fleischer had gay friends or family members. History seems to indicate pretty strongly that none of Fleischer Studio's primaries were gay, so it makes you wonder.
Take note of how, even though by now Betty was the most popular of Fleischer's characters, that cartoons starring Betty had not really made it through the production pipes. Even though Betty gets top billing, this is very much a Bimbo cartoon. Betty is on screen for a scant 23 seconds. I counted. But, in that short time, we get to see her bra twice. Ohh, Fleischer. You pervert.
Moving on, we have Boop-Oop-A-Doop. Notice how we still have not gotten to the point where the cartoons are completely about Betty. Over half of the screen time is taken up with random characters and Bimbo being an ass. And lord knows why he's trying to sell peanuts to his little brother from Minding the Baby, who appears to be be voiced by Mae Questel. It's also Koko's first non-cameo appearance, after his five seconds of screen time in Any Rags. Appropriately, Koko is drawn out of the inkwell.
Boop-Oop-A-Doop continues the sexual themes of Betty cartoons, with the ringmaster being overtly perverted. He gropes Betty and makes an obvious insinuation that if she wants to keep her job, she better put out. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first film portrayal of workplace harassment in history. This cartoon also references Betty's Boop-Oop-A-Doop in a noun form, subtly implying that it means her virginity.
And that's that. After all of this build-up, we come to Betty Boop as one of the most persistent and iconic stars of the cartoon age, and Minnie the Moocher, one of the greatest works in cartoon history. These seven cartoons represent an immense amount of growth in cartoon and animation principles over less than a year. We saw the push for ever-more explicit sexual references, only to be killed in less than three years by the Hays Commission. We saw the exeunt of Grim Natwick, Betty's founding animator, who would go on to a job as lead animator on Walt Disney's Snow White and mentor to Chuck Jones. Basically, we saw the solidification of modern cartoon principles as we saw the solidification of Betty herself. The rise of Betty IS the rise of cartoons.
I've been learning a lot about animation in general as I go through all of the research required to write the Film Class posts. I have unearthed a treasure trove of material on Betty's original designer and first animator, Grim Natwick.
There's so much to discuss about Natwick, his legacy, and his connections throughout the animation world that trying to condense it all here would be silly. Instead, I heartily recommend that you click through the following links to read up on him and animation in general.
Of note, in my Film Class about the Bum Bandit, I brought your attention to Betty on the locomotive. Apparently, if a commenter here is to be believed, Walt Disney also noticed how great the whole scene was.
John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren & Stimpy, is an animation fanatic. Any and all posts of his are worth reading. - Posts on Betty Boop - Posts on Popeye - This post is about the solidity of character design like I was mentioning, and how early Fleischer lacked a lot of solidity.
Michael Sporn Animation Inc. is another blog dedicated to a discussion about animation is just as good as Kricfalusi's
Moving ahead only one Betty cartoon, we come to Bimbo's Initiation. Released about a month after Silly Scandals, Bimbo's Initiation was immediately hailed as a breakthrough in animation. The surreal visuals, smooth lines, and incredibly dynamic backgrounds were eye-popping and are impressive even today.
Unbeknownst to viewers at the time, Bimbo's Initiation was also the beginning of the super-bizarre style that would soon be applied more broadly to Fleischer's later works. In his earlier films, cartoon physics held sway, but they existed in a cartoon representation of reality. In The Bum Bandit, Betty chomps off the tip of the Bum Bandit's gun (How symbolic, *giggle*), but that just represents how tough she is. It's a cartoon representation of a real-world concept.
Bimbo's Initiation, on the other hand, is a cartoon representation of, I dunno', a nightmare, I guess. No physics take hold. Anything can happen and will do so for no apparent reason. Cause & effect have no purchase. He falls down a manhole, some random mouse comes up and padlocks the ground. What?! All of the order members have candles on their heads. Knives come to life. Flames dance to a fiddle. Whole rooms rotate for no reason. The events transpire simply because it's possible and it looks funny. That cartoons would be used as a way to represent things happening simply because they could, with no logic or reason behind any of it was actually quite new at the time.
This was the last of the Betty/Bimbo films to be animated by the the guy behind much of Betty's creation, Grim Natwick, and some of the touches he throws in are just fantastic. at about 3:55, Bimbo blazes into a room riding a bicycle, where a pool full of fish is center-frame. Bimbo's reflection, smoke and all, is animated. It's such a glorious touch that adds a great amount of depth to the scene, where the various elements actual feel like they exist in the same universe.
Sexual elements are perhaps more pervasive in this cartoon than any of the earlier films. From Betty's first appearance at about 4:15, where she beckons Bimbo with the phrase "come inside, big boy," to Bimbo's interpretation of that as something sexual, illustrated by his perverted giggling, sex is strongly implied. I LOVE the hilariously outdated term he uses to describe Betty: a pippin. Apparently, this comes from a coveted type of apple in the late 1800's and is used to describe an "excellent person or thing." Love it! I'm so using that word in general speech.
The theme of sex continues with the underlying theme of asses and ass-slapping. From Bimbo bumping over things as he falls down the manhole cover, the ass-slap bicycle, the hilariously pronounced butts of the order members, the stairs on Bimbo's way into the basement, and finally Betty and Bimbo's completely insane dance at the end, the rump could practically be called the third cast member.
The whole cartoon might seem like chaos, but it was groundbreaking. The animated backgrounds were amazing, the solidity of the characters shows even further advancement, and the combination of bizarre visuals synced with music resulted in what can only be described as a mini-masterpiece. You might not have known about it, but in the world of animation its legacy is alive and well. In 1994, it was recognized as the 37th greatest cartoon of all time.
I would also like to provide my interpretation of this cartoon. It represents a dream of Bimbo's that starts off as day residue, turns into a nightmare that represents Bimbo's struggle with the real-world's sexual mores, and finishes as a wet dream after Bimbo has accepted his sexuality. He leaves the real world by entering (penetrating) a hole, and themes of holes and penetration are found throughout the film. He finally realizes near the end that the beautiful thing that he wants is the same thing as the ugly thing that he was initially afraid of, and what's wrong is his perception, not the thing. That's my two cents. Or maybe one.
