I was sad to hear about Lena Horne this morning, although if anybody had a good long run, it was her. Here she is with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, from Stormy Weather. I figured the title song would be everywhere today, so I went with “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” If I mention she was easily one of the most beautiful women of the 20th Century, I don’t mean to minimize the fact that she also had one of the most beautiful voices of the 20th Century.
This week’s number finds a gorgeous jumpsuit-clad Jane Russell on an ill-advised quest for romance in a gay gym. This ought to run off any lingering masculinists brought here by the Heavy Metal takedown…
For this week, here’s Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, along with Billy Barty and a vast chorus, doing a classy Busby Berkeley number about fooling around in public.
I’m trying to avoid too much critic-talk on these MMM posts, but I have to take a second to mention what an interesting picture this number paints of issues relating to sexual consent at the time of its creation. It’s clear that male pleasure comes first, but the ideal seems to be that the woman will enjoy it just as much, but both partners (though especially the woman) are expected to pretend to disapprove. When the woman really is into what’s going on, the faux-resistance can be experienced as a fun game (as it seems to be between Powell and Keeler here), but obviously if a woman genuinely didn’t want to, that’s where things would get disastrous pretty quickly. I think that the issues on display here are the same as in a number of Betty Boop cartoons, as well as the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (arguing about the implications of that song has become a Holiday tradition across the feminist internet).
I’ve always found that nothing helps start the week on a positive note quite as well as a great old fashioned upbeat musical number. Even though I’ve shared it in other venues before, I can’t think of a better clip to start with than “Jumpin’ Jive” from Stormy Weather, by Cab Calloway and his orchestra, featuring the genuinely mindboggling dancing of the Nicholas Brothers.
First of all, this is one of several Fleischer shorts with titles that have sexual connotations that I’m relatively certain are actually accidental. Secondly, nobody is sure who does Betty’s voice here, but it certainly isn’t Mae Questel. And when you hear Betty speak, you’ll realize just how essential Questel is to her popularity.
The first part is probably my favorite, where Bimbo emerges in his scary Bandit outfit and shoots his guns for the fun of it. Note that not only are his guns alive, but that there’s clearly a risk of them going flaccid if he doesn’t give them the attention they demand. I love how the animals are just so offended that he’s shot them for no reason. The worm is the best, though. I was convinced that “Oy, my operation!” had to be a Jazz Age reference I was just missing, but Google searches only seem to return discussions of this cartoon.
The sequence of Betty climbing over the train is pretty great, and apparently got animator Grim Natwick some job offers. Unfortunately, once Betty opens her mouth, things go down hill. This Betty lacks any semblance of the cutie pie voice she’s known for, and most of her charisma is missing as well. She is kind of a badass, though, when she shows up in a creepy mask and reveals herself to be a bandit as well. Of course, her main goal turns out to be to make her deadbeat husband come home and help her raise their brood, which is less groundbreaking than she seems to be at first.
This is also one of several early Fleischer shorts which ends with blatant (though off-screen) sex. When Bimbo and Betty send their underwear out on the clothesline as the train chugs rhythmically along, the meaning is not terribly subtle.
Interestingly, the name Betty uses here, “Dangerous Nan McGrew” was originally a song (entirely different from the one she performs in the cartoon) by the performer she was primarily based upon, Helen Kane. Kane’s version, as seen below, is much funnier and closer to the sort of personality we expect from Betty herself.
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.
In diligently keeping up with the world of genre movies and television, I frequent the frighteningly prolific science fiction blog, io9. It’s a great source for information on coming attractions, even though it requires sorting through entries on Supernatural, Twilight, and plenty of other stuff I couldn’t care less about. There’s also a smattering of that implicit white male privilege (despite several female bloggers) that’s all too common in geek circles, but being a privileged white male myself I can usually set aside my bleeding heart long enough to caught caught up on the Doctor Who Season 5 spoilers and speculation.
One of the other things I’ve been following closely, as I’ve mentioned, is the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are movie. Something I’ve noticed in the io9 coverage, though, is an attitude of distrust toward anything that’s read as too “indie” or “hipster.” The most recent headline, for example, claims that the film’s soundtrack “Stands at the Hipster Tipping Point.” I don’t even know what that means, but apparently it has to do with Karen O doing the music (even though I’d call her a pretty mainstream artist, as things go these days). Commenters have also singled out director Spike Jonze, the trailer’s use of The Arcade Fire, and even the hand-lettered titles. Sofia Coppola has also been brought up more than once, despite having nothing to do with this movie and have split with Jonze years ago.
But my purpose is not to quibble over the validity of associating Where the Wild Things Are with hipster culture. My purpose is to ask, who cares? If you see a trailer and hate it, fine. We all have different tastes, as much as I might wish more people agreed with me (about The Venture Brothers). But if the only reason you can come up with for disliking something is its association with a particular subculture, then you’re a snob. I don’t care if you consider your particular subculture to be oppressed by the “cooler” ones because of the way they treated you in high school. High school is over, and you need to get over it. I’m reminded of the episode of 30 Rock where geeky Liz Lemon goes to her high reunion and discovers that her defensive sarcasm was more hurtful than anything that was done to her.
To my fellow geeks out there, look, I understand. I was a dweeby freak kid in high school too. I learned at an early age not to try and do anything the cool kids were doing, because they’d just mock anyone who tried and failed to be like them. So I went off and found a cadre of other strange, smart kids, and we developed our own taste and style (or at least found other places to steal it from). My sophomore year, my style icon was Shade the Changing Man, for what it’s worth.
The problem with high school is that it happens to us at a very impressionable age. Even though it only lasts four years, bits of its psychological detritus can linger in our subconscious well into adulthood. I know I was into my twenties before I realized that I was free to dress however I wanted (stylishly, even) without anyone calling me out as a poser. Clothes are just clothes, and culture is just culture, and most adults don’t go around judging each other by which imaginary cafeteria table they belong at. Sure, there are a few indie rock kids who might look down on you if you call yourself a Neutral Milk Hotel fan because you’re really into The Aeroplane over the Sea but you’ve never heard On Avery Island, but how is that any different than a comics fan who’ll judge you if you’re really into Joss Whedon’s X-Men but you’re unfamiliar with Chris Claremont? If we judged every subculture by its snobs, nobody would come out looking too good.
The thing is, if you avoid things just because they contain cultural markers that you’re not used to, you’re severely limiting your enjoyment of art and entertainment. Geeks who are uncomfortable with hipster culture are far from the only example. Think of white people want nothing to do with hip hop, or Americans who refuse to see foreign films. Or a guy, concerned with seeming cool, who’s nervous about seeing Star Trek. Maybe I’m a pop culture idealist, but I think the sole standard in deciding whether or not to partake in something should be how enjoyable it looks to you. Putting prejudice aside throws open the doors to a vast array of entertainment options, whereas holding on to the petty concerns of the wounded high school kid within can only ever stifle and limit us.
I hope my ramblings have made some sort of sense to somebody, but in any case it’s something I felt the need to say. And in fairness toward io9, plenty of people over there have defended WTWTA against its anti-hipster detractors. I just felt the need to add my own thoughts to that chorus. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go read old Flash Gordon comics while listening to The Octopus Project.
In diligently keeping up with the world of genre movies and television, I frequent the frighteningly prolific science fiction blog, 
