Betty Boop Cartoon - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh3gNrPqxs8

This particular Betty Boop cartoon starts out by her giving an introduction with a song and dance performance about the entertainment stars of the future, which are talented infants from various ethnic backgrounds. The first performer is a Caucasian male infant that plays the drums on baby walker, as well as on items sitting on it. The second baby to perform is a little Russian girl who does a well-known Russian dance. Following the Russian, three African babies come out sing a sad song while crying. In order from them to stop crying a watermelon was brought out. After this performance, there happened to be only black women in the audience who also had a baby in her arms. The baby then started to cry out for watermelon as well. When the mother tried quieting the baby, it started signing the sad song that was just sang by the three on stage. Finally, the mother gave into the baby’s wishes and gave him some watermelon. The infant quickly ate it and spit the seeds out on the back of a white man’s head that was sitting in front of them. The cartoon then focused again on the performers, the next one being an Asian boy who did a talent with a top that spun on his body. The infant then ended his act by shooting a pretend gun at toy soldiers who appeared white. Finally, the last infant performers were five Hispanics who played various instruments, with one dancing.

The Betty Boop cartoon that I found online deals with five different ethnic groups and common stereotypes about them, which is why I picked it as one of my pieces in my portfolio. It is obvious that there are a lot of ethnic issues throughout it that can be easily related to the subjects covered in class. It is said that this cartoon was banned, and I could only assume because of the strong racial issues that were presented. The most significantly racial part of the cartoon revolved around the three African-American babies and their relationship to watermelon.

During the movie Ethnic Notions, there were various cartoon images of an African American. How these cartoons acted were thought of as how real black people acted. The mammy figure, the large, overbearing black women, was introduced in the early 1900s as to represent a woman who was the protector of Caucasian household. Also, as stated in the movie ”She is a controller of her own people, of the males in her own um society, uh, when the female should be dependent and subordinate”. She was supposed to be seen as the head-of-the-house in a black family. In that time period, men were supposed to rule the house. By showing a black woman being the dominant figure in the family was supposed to imply that African men were weak and inferior to women, which was seen as an insult. The mammy in the cartoon was to bring to light that the husband figure was unable to fulfill his duty of being a spectator.

The movie also talked about how the media showed black people as being easy to pleasure by the simple things in life such as food, song and dance. The crying babies were easily calmed when shown a watermelon, which is ironic because that is not something a baby would normally be given. The other babies in the film were given infant like things such as a bottle.

I had never before seen a Betty Boop cartoon, but I had always assumed that she mostly just sang songs and danced. After seeing this, I lost a lot of respect towards cartoons produced during that time. The other children of different races were stereotyped as well, but the Caucasian baby was shown drumming an American song. To me that was implying that by white was the only way to be an American, which disgusted me. There were too many racial implications throughout the cartoon that shocked me.