Posts Tagged 'xmas'

There are no Betty Boop Christmas cartoons because she’s Jewish. There are no Superman Christmas cartoons because that would just be weird. There’s a Grampy Christmas cartoon, but I really detest Grampy, and have no intention of ever featuring him on a Fleischer Friday if I can help it.  However, Popeye the Sailor also celebrates Christmas in his fifth short, although of course he celebrates it in his own special way.

I’m keeping it short this week, since we all have holidays to get back to, so here’s a few quick observations:

• In Popeye’s World:  Earmuffs are essential.  Scarfs are optional.  Coats and jackets are unheard of.
• On a related note, you can’t really tell if a Fleischer character is shivering, because they constantly shake in time with the music.
• Olive Oyl fares much better without Mae Questel than Betty Boop does.  In this instance, Bonnie Poe does her voice.
• “It’s a day for peace on Earth!” is the very best thing you can say before punching someone.
• Popeye and Bluto are shockingly graceful on ice skates.
• I’m completely baffled that Bluto avoids cutting Olive’s head off at 03:35.
• The bit where Olive crawls across her own legs (or however you define that move) is pretty unsettling.
• Can’t afford tree trimmings?  Just punch a guy really hard.

If you’ve learned only one thing from reading this blog, I hope it’s the name of the primary (and best) voice of Betty Boop, Mae Questel.  What you may not know is that the final screen appearance of “the Betty Boop Girl” also happens to be a Christmas classic (for those of us who came of age in the 80′s and 90′s, anyway).  Yes, Mae Questel, mere months before her death, played the hilariously out-of-it Aunt Bethany in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  She’s only on screen for a few minutes, but she’s hands down the funniest character in the film.  Despite her age, you can still see and hear Betty Boop lurking within her, and her singing voice is surprisingly strong.  If you haven’t watched the movie yet this year I realize it may be too late to get your hands on it, so I’ve done you a favor and assembled all of Aunt Bethany’s scenes into one action-packed highlights reel.  So enjoy, Merry Christmas, and… Play Ball!

Although The Royal Tenenbaums (despite the evocative surname) is not a Christmas movie, it does prominently feature one Christmas song. Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time is Here,” originally from A Charlie Brown Christmas, serves as Margot Tenenbaum’s personal theme music. It’s first heard as she’s leaving her husband’s house early in the film, and recurs when she’s having ice cream with Royal toward the end. This choice of accompaniment always worked for me instinctively, but I never gave much thought as to why until recently.

The Peanuts (particularly Charlie Brown himself) and the Tenenbaums (particularly Margot and her brother/love interest Richie) embody a similar sort of restrained melancholy.  Despite Charlie Brown’s occasional “RATS!” and Richie’s impulsive suicide attempt, these are not characters who generally express their discontent in melodramatic terms.  Rather, their moods hang over them like an overcast sky.  When asked how her brother’s doing, Margot says, “I don’t know.  I can’t tell.”  In discussing the Holiday season, Charlie Brown laments, “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy.  I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”  When rejected husband Raleigh asks if she still loves him, Margot replies, “I do, kind of.  I can’t explain it right now.”

In the visual media, exceptional portrayals of depression are rare, because it tends to involve a lot of being still, quiet and inexpressive.  Tony Soprano comes close, but the focus is always on his physicality: trouble breathing, panic attacks.  George Bailey is a man at his wit’s end, but his desperation is portrayed as situational, and expressed overtly through yelling at his family and planning to jump off a bridge.  For those of us who’ve really dealt with depression in our lives, however, nothing could ring more true than a perfectly calm person, dry-eyed and steady-voiced, staring out at a field of snow and saying, “I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”