I was hoping to have a whole week of exciting Halloween-related content, but sadly I was too busy doing classwork, carving pumpkins, and putting together my McCabe costume to write any of it. Maybe I’ll have a week of spooky stuff at Christmas time, just to be different. Anyway, it wasn’t hard to choose which cartoon we should watch today.
As pre-code Boop goes, this one is actually pretty lackluster. The song isn’t very memorable and has nothing to do with the holiday, and I really feel like there could be more monsters. I mean, the scarecrow and the ghosts are great, but this is the early ’30s. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, and Mr. Hyde had all just exploded into cinematic consciousness, but there’s none of that stuff here (to be fair, Mr. Hyde makes an appearance in another Boop cartoon, which we’ll save for another day).
What I do like about this cartoon is that the spooky Halloween stuff is all friendly. The scarecrow decorates for the party, and the strange ghost-creatures serve as a line of defense against the party crashing gorilla. I don’t regard the gorilla as a particularly “Halloween” sort of antagonist, since everyone in Betty’s world is some sort of anthopomorphic animal anyway. He does make a good villain, though, and I love the bit when he gives the owl two black eyes.
I’m also fond of Betty’s Goldberg-esque Jack O’Lantern process. I’m only sad we didn’t get to see who’s responsible for the nose and mouth. The Witch Paint and Cat Paint are also fun. I find myself wishing that decorating for a party was more like this.
My favorite bit of all, though, is the revelation about the black cat at the very end. I won’t spoil it, in case anyone is reading before watching, but the important thing is that this is one of the only Boop cartoons that has an actual surprise in it that’s worth a spoiler warning, if you see what I mean. Even when you’re having fun, you usually know exactly what to expect, but that took me by surprise the first time.
I’ve been putting off the last of the Cab Calloway shorts, because it’s one of what I think of as the Problem Cartoons. That is, it’s one of several Boop cartoons in which humor is derived from a threat of sexual violence. Despite that rather large stumbling block, though, there’s some other great stuff going on in it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Unlike in Minnie the Moocher and Snow White, Calloway and his orchestra perform throughout this entire cartoon, and Calloway voices the owl at the beginning in addition to the title character. This transforms the whole short into a kind of rhythmic jazz opera, which would be even more delightful if its subject matter wasn’t a mountain village being menaced by a scat-singing hillbilly rapist.
Betty’s decision to go see the Old Man isn’t well justified (and the Owl is definitely baffled), but it seems to be her habit of eliminating problems for her animal friends. Meanwhile everyone else is running away. I love all the little bits of pure Fleischer animal business in this: the lion skating on two rabbits, the spider enlisting his trapped flies to carry his web, and the caterpillar moving out with all its furniture. The hippo lady and her unfortunate hybrid progeny are rather less funny, and become even less so the more you think about all the implications.
The music is comprised of two slightly rewritten Calloway numbers, the title tune and “You’ve Got to Hi-De-Hi.” The latter is actually my favorite, because it’s a duet between Calloway and Mae Questel as Betty (the only time this happens in the three Calloway/Boop cartoons). It also features the trademark rotoscoped Cab Calloway dance, which looks even stranger as performed by a giant white cave man than it does when essayed by Koko the Clown or a walrus. Then of course there’s the standard chase scene, and the quick defeat of the Old Man by Betty and all the animals, who, judging from the clues given earlier, decided to give up on running away and come help Betty because she’s just that hot.
I’m curious to get some reader opinions on this one: Does the undercurrent of sexual assault ruin the whole cartoon, or is it just an unfortunate product of its time that’s balanced out by spectacular music and delightful animation?
Also, would having bugs in your beard be worth it if they fed you a beer whenever you needed one?
I recently got to attend a screening of Copyright Criminals, which is an excellent documentary about the history of sampling in music. As I’ve always been an advocate (and occasional creator) of art which incorporates found sounds and images, this put me in the mood to find something along those lines. This video’s been around a while, but it’s probably my favorite sample-built piece on YouTube.
I love that it’s not just the images that are drawn from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, but all the sounds as well. This is not a fannish attempt to create a video “tribute” to Alice, or to tell the movie’s story in musical form. Instead, it takes the pieces from the film and reassembles them into something entirely other.
There’s a haunting quality to the song Pogo creates, and it’s accentuated by the lack of coherent lyrics. He cuts apart and reassembles Katherine Beaumont’s dialogue so that there are snatches of discernible words, but they don’t go anywhere. The lines that get stuck in my head seem to say, “There is a long way… it’s a long, bitter [gibberish],” which I find unsettling in that good way. This Alice is lost inside her own mind, and can’t even explain how she got there. And as if that weren’t bad enough, those creepy flowers won’t stop singing.
This reading is supported by the visuals, which accentuate the contrast between Alice’s growing concern about getting home and the flippancy of the other characters. You’ll also note that although things calm down at the end of the video, she never actually wakes up.
It goes without saying (since I already said it months ago) that my expectations were extremely high for Where the Wild Things Are. I tried my best to keep them in check, but there was no hope. Now that I’ve finally seen it, it’s taken me a couple of days to feel ready to sit down and write about the experience. In a way, the movie doesn’t feel real to me; it feels like a dream I had. With a movie like this, I can only regard that sensation as a mark of overwhelming success on the part of the filmmakers.
From here on, there will be what you could call spoilers, but if you’ve read the book you already know that Max’s supper is still hot at the end, so you’re probably safe reading on (but see the movie as soon as possible anyway).
To begin with, the structure of the narrative was everything I could have hoped for. From the trailers, I was expecting Max to travel back and forth more than once between the real world and the home of the Wild Things, which I felt would be an unfortunate departure from the book. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is not the case. He only goes there and back once, preserving the importance of the journey, and of the goodbyes between Max and the creatures he’s befriended.
On the other hand, there was one key point of departure from the book that I felt was absolutely the right choice. In the film, Max’s bedroom does not become the forest. Instead, he leaves his house and finds an actual forest through which to travel. I’m fine with the “it’s all a dream” aspect of the book’s story, but in films that’s already an overdone trope that’s very rarely satisfying. Of course we know the Wild Things are all in Max’s head- where else would they be? We don’t need to have that telegraphed for us with scenes of Max falling asleep and waking up. For Max, it’s all really happening, and we get to see it that way too.
The Wild Things themselves are as perfect as they could be. First of all, every Wild Thing that appears in the book is in the movie (unless you count the Sea Monster as a Wild Thing, which I never have). Secondly, there are no new Wild Things created for the movie. We meet a few other creatures in that world, but they’re all recognizable animals rather than hulking amalgams. The combination of costumes and CGI used for the Wild Things creates a phenomenal effect. They have real weight to them in a way that CGI creatures rarely do, but their faces are far more expressive than animatronics would allow.
James Gandolfini gives an exceptional performance as an emotionally erratic Wild Thing named Carol. The other Wild Things are great too, particularly Lauren Ambrose as KW (the redheaded one) and Chris Cooper as Douglas (the cockatoo headed one). Nobody does a growly monster voice, which is a relief (fortunately, Christian Bale was not asked to play a Wild Thing). The kid who plays Max is so perfect that it feels like he stepped off the page, and Catherine Keener gives us some memorable moments in a small role as his mother.
The thing that really won me over about Where the Wild Things Are, more than anything else, is its emphasis on the emotional core of childhood. This is the most nakedly, unapologetically psychological kids’ movie I’ve seen in a long time. I love that the story of the Wild Things is all about their relationships. There’s no villain – no evil force threatening their homes which Max is their only hope of defeating – there’s just a collection of big, clumsy creatures who are even worse than Max at controlling their emotions. The Wild Things exist to teach Max how to be a part of a family, and they serve this function elegantly. There’s no pithy moral or “this is what I’ve learned” speech, just a growing understanding that loving others doesn’t always make it easy to get along with them, and that everyone has their monstrous moments, even those people we care about the most.
There’s a lot more I could say about this film (I haven’t even touched on the music, the cinematography, or that dog), but I’m going to end this review for now and leave the door open for more posts later. I can’t wait to hear other reactions (I’m sure they won’t all be as positive as mine), so if you’ve seen it, let me know what you think.
In my Experimental Film class, YouTube is frequently denigrated as the epitome of artless silliness. In response to this, I’m experimenting with a new feature for the blog, in which I will share YouTube content that I think has substantial artistic merit, and then attempt to justify my choice. So here goes:
This video is something like a year and a half old, so my apologies if you’ve seen it. However, I think it has one of the best ratios of formal simplicity to thematic complexity of anything on YouTube. That is, it’s not a huge elaborate production- just one camera and one performer on a busy city street- but it really has some interesting stuff going on.
On one level, Charlyne Yi is just doing what she always does: being really strange and awkward at you until you laugh. However, this video is particularly interesting because it has things to say about the “Everyone’s a Celebrity” culture of YouTube, about the nature of performance, and about how it feels to be put on the spot. By giving people the opportunity to speak without explaining anything to them, Yi creates a surprising amount of discomfort in her subjects.
Her own exaggerated and expectant facial expressions add to this effect. The young man in the brown jacket provides a particularly clear example of this. The man in black who follows him laughs along with Yi at first, then begins to awkwardly back away as it goes on a little too long. The girl with the panda purse does the same, and even hides from the mic as Yi continues to offer it to her.
The bits where she offers the mic to people behind glass don’t work as well for me, as those people clearly know they can’t be heard. I do like the part with the police car, though. The video may not be perfect (and I do wish the picture was a little better), but for a work that’s less than three and a half minutes long it’s got a lot of great stuff packed in there.
Since I’ve become rather busy with school, I’ve decided to let other writers handle some Character Spotlights. This will also give us some insights into characters that I haven’t necessarily spent much time considering. This first one is by my sister, Jill Meredith Collins Sinnott, a talented feminist writer who’s been published in Off Our Backs. –Dustin L.
Character Spotlight: Jessica Rabbit by Jill Meredith Collins Sinnott
Visitors to this blog are doubtlessly familiar with female sexuality as expressed through animation, which for years took the form of Betty Boop. However, in 1988, Betty made an appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, wherein she briefly shared screen time with another, more colorful, far bustier female: Jessica Rabbit, the title character’s wife.
Betty Boop seems to realize and accept that she’s being upstaged. She works as a cigarette girl at the Ink and Paint Club during Jessica’s performance, and calmly picks up Eddie Valiant’s jaw when he drops it after seeing Jessica for the first time.
I don’t think Betty needs to worry too much. Betty Boop may be past her prime, but her curves will always be appreciated for being both hot and realistic. Every woman I know appreciates the fact that broad hips and meaty thighs were once considered glamourous, even without a tiny waist between them.
Jessica Rabbit, on the other hand, sports an almost comically tiny waist and a bust so large that her strapless, backless dress seems to be defying gravity. Her legs are shapely (and fully exposed by an immodestly high slit in her dress), and it seems impossible that her slender ankles and dainty feet could support everything else. In short, Jessica’s sex appeal is so over-the-top and in-your-face that it’s difficult to take it seriously. As John Grant notes in the Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters, “She is more a caricature of a desirable woman than any pretence of an accurate depiction of one.” I suppose that’s why it’s so easy for me, like Betty Boop, to laugh off the male viewer’s reaction to Jessica Rabbit: not only could I not look like that if I tried, I wouldn’t really want to.
Neither, it stands to reason, does Jessica Rabbit. She tells Eddie Valiant, “You don’t know how hard it is being a woman looking the way I do.” She may use her overwhelming sensuality to her advantage (both in her occupation as a lounge singer and to get help with her husband’s legal troubles), but she’s a cartoon woman in 1947, and her resources are limited.
She may not even be flirtatious by choice–the movie makes it clear that toons answer to different laws of physics than humans do. Roger states that he can only do what is funny, so perhaps Jessica can only do what is sexy. But the restraints of their nature didn’t stop them from falling in love and remaining faithful to one another, which is really the heart of why Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of my favorite movies, and also why I feel the need to defend Jessica Rabbit.
My husband has said many times that the song “Rescue” by Eve 6 reminds him of the beginning of our relationship. This song contains the line “Like Jessica Rabbit, she collects bad habits, gets her drinks for free,” which compels me to ask what Jessica Rabbit and I could possibly have in common, other than a taste for somewhat goofy men. My husband just rolls his eyes and tells me I’m taking the song too literally, which is, of course, true. It’s that same tendency towards the literal that makes me ask, “What do they mean, Jessica Rabbit collects bad habits?”
Think about it. Jessica is established in pop culture as a woman whose reputation precedes her, but what has she ever done to warrant that reputation? In the course of the movie, the only morally questionable thing she does is pose for patty cake pictures, and we soon learn that she was blackmailed into that. She truly loves her husband, and remains fiercely loyal to him (she does hit him on the head with a frying pan at one point, but it’s for his protection).
Jessica’s signature line is “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” It’s my opinion that the line is less of a joke than an honest statement. Her sad tone of voice makes it clear that she’s resigned herself to the hard truth that female sexuality is seen as mainstream society as “bad.” What she’s referring to, specifically, is Eddie Valiant’s assumption that she must be a slut. From the moment Eddie lays eyes on her, he assumes that she’s guilty of adultery, that a woman like her couldn’t possibly be satisfied by Roger Rabbit. He figures the marriage must be a joke to her, like it is to everyone else. But Eddie is wrong. As soon as they meet face to face, Jessica makes it clear that she loves her husband. It was out of concern for his career that she allowed herself to be blackmailed, and now that Roger’s being accused of murder, she’ll do anything to clear his name.
Ultimately, Jessica Rabbit is just one more woman being pigeonholed and stereotyped due to her appearance. Her problem is exacerbated by the fact that she is the product of someone’s drawing, giving her even less control over her appearance than the average woman. Given the fact that she wears the rather impractical evening gown throughout the entire film, I have to wonder if she’s even able to change clothes. If nothing else, it can’t be easy to find toon clothing to fit her measurements.
The husband and wife pair share little screen time, bringing dramatic effect to the final scenes, where Jessica showers her husband with kisses and compliments. They walk into the sunset together, and Jessica promises to bake Roger a carrot cake when they get home, fully rounding out her role as the perfect wife. Hope is restored among all the men in the audience, that one day the perfect woman will love them because they make her laugh.
Oddly, Kathleen Turner was uncredited for her role as the voice of Jessica Rabbit. The credits name the voice of each character who made a cameo appearance, each of the weasel henchmen, and each human bit part, but no credit appears for Jessica. Somehow, this oddity adds to her overall effect: perhaps Jessica Rabbit was never a cartoon character in a movie at all, but a force of nature, finding her own way onto the screen by sheer willpower. A woman will, after all, go to great lengths for the man she loves.
A word of warning: the last minute and a half of this cartoon is creepy beyond belief.
As you can see, this cartoon revives the old “Out of the Inkwell” convention of Max Fleischer making drawings that come to life. I love how Betty calls him “Uncle Max,” by the way. Does this mean she calls Dave Fleischer “Daddy?”
It’s always struck me as odd how in cartoons people eat sweets and immediately get a toothache, which isn’t usually how things work in real life. Maybe it was a more common problem in the olden days when regular dental care was less common and people were more likely to have festering cavities waiting for sugar to fall in and irritate them. On the other hand, it might just be the sort of thing that happens in cartoons. Regardless, the little spike-driving devils in Koko’s tooth are one of my favorite images in the cartoon.
For the record, my other favorite image in the cartoon is Koko’s sock garters.
The battle between the dentures and the pliers is pretty bizarre. The music drops out which makes it feel like a disconnected interlude, and it goes on for what feels like an incredibly long time.
The creepiness begins in earnest when the laughing gas starts flowing. First of all, it’s hard to escape the impression that it infects Betty by billowing up her dress (and presumably entering her body through a non-respiratory orifice). Then she sings the “Ha Ha Ha” song, which is marginally unsettling, but nothing compared to what’s to come.
Once the gas leaves the page and spreads through the real world, things really become terrifying. The first time I saw the cuckoo clock erupt into full-throated laughter, I thought that might be the creepiest image in any Fleischer cartoon. However, it’s immediately topped by the typewriter keys distorting into a demonic grin. Then things start to ease up a little, but before long an entire cemetery full of headstones breaks out in guffaws, and you realize this cartoon wants to eat your soul.
As in Koko’s Earth Control, we see here that the cartoon world has power (specifically, destructive power) over the real world. This is an especially interesting notion since at the top of both shorts we see the creation of the cartoon world by that most foolhardy (or secretly malicious) denizen of reality, Max Fleischer. The man was practically a supervillain.
