Fleischer Brothers

i really think these are pretty much the most american things ever.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/archive/innovators/fleischer.html

If "Bimbo's Initiation" isn't the pinnacle of human civilization "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor" is.

"who's the most magnificent, extra-ordinary fel-low?"
"popeye the sailor!"

quibble: "remarkable" rather than "magnificent."

But also, check out the INSANE background animated, painted backgrounds. The two shots. The hordes of savage beasts. Boola the yiddish two-headed giant. Popeye explaining that he's 'one tough gazuchis (??!?)' in his song.

why betty boop merch so popular in the ghetto?

What ghetto you in? Cause it ain't in my ghetto.

what's more:

http://popeyeanimators.blogspot.com/

lotsa gooooooood shit here!

Seriously? Yeah, hoods in FL and NY both have an overabundance of Betty Boop wears, in swap meet, at work, and on the streets

x-post

Austin TX. I have seen absolutely zero Boopwear. Granted I live more among the border crossin' kind of ghettos than the other kind.

This paper I just finished ended up leading me deep into Betty Boop territory, watching or at least skimming every one of her surviving cartoons. They're amazing, although the conventional wisdom is right that they do start to get much more boring after 1934 or '35, which some people attribute to the Hays Code, others to attempts to keep up with Disney. Unquestionably she shows less skin and gets more 'domestic,' and more gradually the plots/action/gags just get slower and lopeyer; by the end you really miss the complete madhouse of Twenties/early Thirties animation where just one ridiculous thing can lead to another and everything in the universe is alive and awaiting its chance to do its one arbitrary thing in time to the music. The very first Mickey Mouse shorts are like this too - check the 1928/29 version of "Plane Crazy," it's a hoot. The one thing that stays with Betty is her urban setting - it does get less manic, less frequently seen, and less 'working class' - but there's an affection for Manhattan that never quite fades despite the influence of antisemetic midwest->hollywood asshole Walt. Compare "I Heard" with "Donald's Gold Mine" - both set in mines but the former looks like a (cartoonified) version, of, you know, a mine. Where people work and smokestacks roar... whereas Donald seems to be the single solitary inhabitant of this artisan, back-to-basics American crafftsman mine...

Highlights: "Minnie the Moocher," "Bimbo's Initiation" as mentioned upthread, "Snow White," hell, all of 'em really. Even the cartoon Betty debuts in ("Dizzy Dishes," where she's kind of a poodle-headed cabaret bloboid) is just charming as all hell. Really need to dig into other Fleischer; I've always adored the three or four of the Superman toons that I've bothered to watch (god, labor was cheap then, you can see why both Disney and Fleischer had strikes within five years of each other)...

"everything in the universe is alive" is the single thing that makes these cartoons so unheimlich and amazing imo

true... though that was a general characteristic of early sound animation. see also disney, ub iwerks' stuff (apart from disney)

at their best fleischers take it to a whole 'nother level of comic and allusive density, though

Love ub iwerks! Totally snubbed in the animation poll (1st thread I ever posted in if anyone wants to apportion blame)

iwerks def shows up in annecy's list of the top 100 animated films

doc casino otm (except for disney being 'anti-semitic')

the superman cartoons aren't as much fun as the earlier stuff IMO but they are beautiful to behold

basically it's all about popeye, i could watch those from now until eternity

and if i ever have a kid that's what we'll do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1q0as8qEBg

re: anti-semitic - has that been debunked? I admit the biographical stuff wasn't a major part of this paper and so I skimmed over a lot of things. Just sorta got the impression he wasn't comfortable with Jews, didn't promote them, etc., that kind of thing. I might also be reading more than is fair into his decision to meet with Leni Riefenstahl when everybody else in Hollywood was boycotting her.

the anti-semitic charge comes from marc eliot's book, which is pretty much a piece of tabloid junk, though maybe the writers of 'family guy' are more to blame for keeping this one alive.

mike barrier's biography, which is by far the best one i've read, basically debunks the idea that disney was personally racist or anti-semitic, while portraying him as a bit of a bastard to work for (tho not any moreso than any other studio head of the era).

Rotoscope inventors the Fleischer bros did the BEST thing ever w/the form, which is rotoscoping Cab Calloway as a ghost walrus. Unfortch, a bunch of footage of Gulliver constantly chuckling over squeaky-voiced rubber hose Lilliputians is MORE typical of the form.

The character design contrast in that movie IS at least PLEASANTLY jarring, unlike others (looking at U, Bakshi!).

http://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/6041/25372209_.jpg

COME ON THOUGH

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iObxc7AMizs/TpBV8pdOTfI/AAAAAAAAB30/6NGxNTatdVY/s1600/Minnie4.JPG

the fleischer 'gulliver' is pretty cool tho it probably is at least partly responsible for everyone only remembering the first and most boring chapter of the swift book.

hm - I thought the sources I was looking at were a little older than Eliot's book but maybe I'm misremembering...

The Barrier had some good stuff though, yeah, and was more even-handed, that's true. If I remember wtf I'm talking about I'll report back.

what is your paper about? i'd love to read it!

Haha no you wouldn't! It's a rambling mess, badly in need of editing and/or of me going back in time and choosing not to pursue one of two big threads. But basically it's an interrogation of Adorno's comments in "The Culture Industry" re: Donald Duck and Betty Boop, with an eye towards urbanism/geography, in other words suggesting that Donald/Betty is not only duck/woman and Disney/Fleischer but more specifically LA/NYC, both in the cartoons and in terms of production. And then that this refracts onto Adorno's intellectual work in this period generally insofar as he's writing everything while living in highly suburbanized Los Angeles, so his comments on 'America' are really on 'the suburbs.' Arguably! I took it as far as trying to figure out which drive-in theaters he might have patronized if he were so inclined. Like I said, really in need of a second pass, but I just finished it Friday so I'm still kind of hesitant to actually peek at the thing.

I would read that. The LA/NYC makes a lot of sense just from your paraphrase there.

I think there's an argument for the film of Minnie the Moocher being an actual seance.